Time for a New Look
ONE of our modern poets, it may be remem- bered, was moved to describe the English Mid- lands as 'sodden and unkind.' This evening, however, ITA shock-troops are due to bring relief to the distressed area when they advance at 1945 hrs, upon the BBC's Second Front— notoriously bristling with Archers. Still, the Lord Mayor of Birmingham will be present to offer the liberators an official welcome, and the Bishop of the diocese has consented to close the subsequent TV gala with an Epilogue. The blinding, and so frequently misdirected, spotlight of modern publicity methods will be switched away from the main TV, battle area, and, with any luck, may remain focussed on this new ITA sphere of influence for the next few months. One can but hope so, anyway. Devoutly.
For here at last, it seems to me, is that badly-needed chance for those in charge be- hind the operational scene, in BBC and ITA headquarters alike, to take realistic stock of the situation brought about by Act of Parlia- ment last September; to do this, moreover, in the light of their common practical experience ever since that memorable, if ludicrously over- trumpeted, first competitive TV clash.
Now, surely, is the time for both sets of pro- gramme-planners to get down quietly to some timely hard-thinking about their prime responsibility to provide millions of licence- paying viewers, all widely differing in tastes and backgrounds, with a regular service of TV programmes of genuine quality,' each one aimed, at all events, at being the best possible product of its kind. Really quite a lot, one cannot help feeling, might thus be contributed to the truly adult viewer's further appreciation of the miracle that is television, brief though
the interval may prove before the central programme-planning bodies once again find themselves subjected to an incessant, madden- ing daily stream of ill-informed, pin-pricking, gossipy criticism [sic].
Having thus proclaimed a welcome truce in the futile BBC-ITA sniping campaign, I must risk an immediate charge of, inconsistency by confessing that just now I am finding myself puzzled, to put it no more forcibly, by Lime Grove's apparent refusal to admit (more from traditional obstinacy than sheer complacency, I suspect) that already the New Boys have scored heavily off the Old Masters, and on the latter's historic home ground at that.
Confronted with the drive and hearteningly human vitality now displayed by 1TN's news bulletins of every kind—and this, be it remem- bered, after only five months of experience, with considerably limited initial manpower and technical resources—how comes it that the BBC remains apparently content to cling so tenaciously to a hybrid form of TV news- presentation, at once singularly clumsy and unrealistic?
The present outmoded 'formal' treatment of news bulletins on BBC television (further aggravated by the use of regular Broadcasting House news-readers, helplessly steeped in sound-radio traditions) is unlikely, surely, to attract a generation as naturally 'informal, in its day-to-day reaction to the latest news as the present generation undoubtedly is. If his TV News is going to be presented in so un- imaginative a way as to leave our viewer pictorially cold, so to speak, one can be per- fectly sure that although the TV set may re- main switched on, his attention will auto- matically and abruptly, be switched off. This, of course, is precisely where ITN has scored so heavilyand so soon; thanks largely, in my view, to an early realisation of the simple, fundamental truth that the whole essence of television is its peculiar quality of intimacy. Unless someone in real authority at the Television Centre takes fairly urgent steps to scrap the BBC's present lamentably non- telegenic presentation of television news. and to replace it by one deliberately streamlined for viewing, ITN will further consolidate its surprisingly early victory in a field which. after all. has been hallowed BBC ground. first in sound radio and now in television, these many years already. In the not unimportant matter of the Corporation being able to retain its hold on a nation-wide television audience, such an inroad by 1TN might well have the most serious consequences.
LIONF.L OAMLIN
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