15 NOVEMBER 1957, Page 7

THE THIRD ANNUAL REPORT of the ITA, together . with Sir

Robert Fraser's speech introducing it, makes specious, though interesting, reading. The report charts the progress (if that is the word) of Independent Television during the year and looks forward to 1960, when it expects to have some 90 per cent, of the country covered. There is some delicious shilly-shallying by the Authority over the question of the £100,000 grant offeced by the Postmaster-General to the Authority so that it could maintain a proper balance. It will be recalled that the programme companies, understandably reluctant, to have their pro- grammes balanced, objected strenuously to the Authority's acceptance of the grant, and the

Authority tucked its tail betwen its legs and de- cided it would not take any of it. The report rationalises this unmixed defeat thus :

As the year drew to an end the Authority could not fail to recognise that the atmosphere in which it had found it necessary to press for a grant had been greatly changed by the marked improvement in the companies' advertisement revenues. . . . This development, together with some promising trends in the programmes them- selves, led the Authority to withhold any im- mediate proposals for drawing on the grant at the outset of the financial year.

Sir Robert's speech was even more disingenuous. 'Already,' he said, 'in news, politics, public affairs and religion, the ITA has substantially more regular programmes than the BBC. . . Sir Robert conveniently ignores the BBC's irregular programmes in this category, which bring its total in any one week well above that of the ITA. Sir Robert strains credulity still fur- ther in the following passage of imaginary dialogue with a critic :

You don't have any serious programmes, they say.

Oh yes we do, you reply, we have—and you steel yourself to recite the catalogue of inde- pendent television's remarkable news, political and religious programmes.

Ah, they say, you may have more of these programmes than the BBC. but you put them on when everyone is either in the bus or in bed, so no one sees them.

Angels defend me, you reply, we put them on when we have found it best, and they have very large audiences indeed.

In the first place, it is noteworthy that the 'regu- lar' has now disappeared; Sir Robert seems to be claiming that the ITA has in general more of such programmes than the BBC, which is not

anly untrue but not even nearly true. And in he second place, they do put them on when :veryone is either in the bus or in bed; in 'peak' vriods there is a total of forty-five minutes of ;uch programmes in the regular ITV week, as Against something like three hours for the BBC.