SPRING BOOKS Simon Raven on Shulman and the box populi

British television is the best in the world, they say. Oh, indeed; and why? Well, in America it's all advertising, and in Russia it's all Communism, and in West Germany and Scandinavia it's just stodge, and in France it's run by conceited and precious Frenchmen, and in Italy by hysterical Latins; and since nowhere else much counts, that leaves Great Britain well out in front, q.e.d. Not very strong competition then? Nobody ever said there was — and certainly not Milton Shulman, who doesn't think much of British television either, beyond conceding that our techniques are of quite a high order; these apart, he informs us in his Introduction*, TV in this country is distinguished only by the "unanimity of concern amongst those who have conscientiously investigated the medium " (italics mine). " It is in an attempt to trace the causes of that unease," Mr Shulman then states, "that these pages have been written."

Written, one should now add, for the second time, Milton Shulman, as some will not need to be reminded, was for some years the once-a-week television critic of the Evening Standard. Eschewing, on the whole, any detailed criticism of individual items, he pursued a routine of generalised but none the less vigorous complaint about TV's shameful lack of moral, aesthetic and intellectual aspiration. He frequently deplored the prominence both of sport and violence, he girded against politicians' contempt of the medium (a contempt which embraced everything to do with television, he claimed, except their own appearances on it), and he stooped, from time to time, to pick over some particularly fetid scandal, such as the disparity between the rich and varied programmes which the commercial consortia promised when applying for franchises in 1967 and the stale rubbish which they actually produced from July, 1968. All this Mr Shulman did with relish and competence in the columns of the Evening Standard; and all this he now does again here, though he never, of The Least Worst Television in the World Milton Shulman (Barrie and Jenkins £2.75)

course, uses precisely the same words, and he has taken some trouble to re-organise his occasional diatribes into one consecutive thesis. Since the thesis is serious and in many ways sound, it is worth stating in some detail.

Mr Shulman starts by praising the excellence and responsibility of radio broadcasting under Lord Reith, goes on to consider the relatively high merits of early BBC Television, and then reveals the snake which was already slithering through the grass on its well-oiled belly — the commercial lobby. Once this serpent had said its say, everyone (except the Parliamentary Labour Party and a few oldfashioned idealists) not only sampled the apple but positively hauled it off the tree by the bushel and fell about guzzling it. Degradation (but little guilt) set in all round. The independence and integrity of the BBC were eroded, its standards sagged perilously under the pressure of commercial TV's meretricious competition, the men who held shares in the new companies made anything up to 1,600 per cent profit (very much more, in some cases), and, what was worst of all, the great British public, hitherto the BBC's docile and grateful alumnus, turned fiercely against the Corporation, accusing it of being superior and paternal, and proceeded to wallow in quiz games and soap operas.

But all hope was not yet gone. The Angel of God, in the person of Harold Wilson, was waiting just outside the Garden to restore order as soon as he was elected — for had not Clement Attlee pledged the Labour Party, to take back TV " out of the hands of private profiteers," when the fatal Television Act was first made law as long ago as the early 'fifties?

Alas, it was too long ago. By 1964 Harold had either forgotten Attlee's pledge or funked fulfilling it. (To be fair, the prospect of depriving some 70 per cent of one's supporters of what was by now their favourite pap would have daunted nobler

men than Wilson.) What Wilson was

undeniably concerned about, however, was that politicians, himself especially, should receive a pretty showing on the box; but as things fell out his chance of getting this was somewhat diminished by the one really heartening event which had oc curred in television over the previous ten years — the rise of Sir Hugh Greene to be director general of the BBC and his constant encouragement in his staff of ironic, sceptical and probing attitudes towards current affairs and all official pieties, these attitudes being instanced, not least, in the notorious and wildly popular satirical shows of the period.

In a passage as virulent and entertaining as any to be found in the Diaries of Cecil

King, Mr Shulman describes how Wilson mounted his campaign against the marauding satirists of the BBC and set about unhorsing their gallant leader, Sir Hugh. In 1967 Lord Hill, a Conservative indeed but also a politician and therefore in sympathy with the publicity problems of all other politicians, was installed by a Machiavellian (almost a Borgian) coup of Wilson's as chairman of the governors of the BBC.

Already Greene's daemon had shown signs of deserting him, and for some while now the brilliant symposia first got up under his inspiration had been tiring in their ideas and antics; with the arrival of Lord Hill, the wine lost its subversive sparkle, and by the time Charles Curran had replaced the battered Greene as director general in 1969, the cup of satire was empty. The BBC was back where it had been in the late 'fifties — full of solid merit, to be sure, but doubtful whether such merit would help to regain an audience which, now that the bold satire romps were done, was rapidly deserting again to the slick trivialities of the commercial networks. These, meanwhile, had become snugly possessed, in the summer of 1968, of new contracts for a long time ahead, and so had advanced, under Wilson's Labour Government, to a more threatening position vis-a-vis the BBC than ever before.

In sum, then, Mr Shulman charges Harold Wilson with totally neglecting the new medium of television except in so far as he wished to exploit it for political ends; with stiffing talent in order to rid himself of inconvenience; with dealing spitefully

and shabbily with distinguished and public-spirited men; and with more or less deliberately allowing himself to be conned by the commercial consortia, which, having sanctimoniously promised programmes replete with culture and intellect, then proceeded as soon as they were safe to push out a mixture more jejune and demanding than anything ever seen yet.

And so what have we got as a result? asks Mr Shulman. Commercial services which (with some one or two honourable exceptions) are ineffable; a BBC-1 which is fatally harassed by the so-called 'democratic obligation' to compete with the commercial services, on their own squalid terms, for audience figures; and a BBC-2 which represents, as it were, the conscience of British television — but is not above going whoring on its own part from time to time. We also have an amount of sport which is quite ludicrously wasteful of time, effort and money; an incitement to gambling (on televised racing) which is proven and flagrant; a disregard of serious matters which is nothing short of insolent; and, constantly presented, an easy, instant violence, which, being divorced from justifying causes and treated as a natural concomitant of everyday affairs, is obscene in every sense of the world. All this Mr Shulman urges (and a great deal more, I can tell you), and then finally asks: does it matter? His answer (in brief): it matters very much, because never before has there been a visual medium to which so many people, especially young ones, attended for such long hours daily — in their own homes at that and therefore with the maximum of comfort and compliance. Very soon now, warns Mr Shulman, we are for the first time going to have adult generations which have been suckled on the box from their very birth. Caveant omnes.

So speaks Mr Shulman. He speaks loud and clear (if not always elegantly) and in my opinion he speaks true. Apart from wondering why the 179 pages of his book should cost as much as £2.75, I have no quarrel or question. Except this: how can a man as intelligent as Mr Shulman ccynceivably be so naive as to complain about it all? How can he ever have expected anything else?

For a start: of course Mr Shulman is right to deplore the introduction of Commercial Television; but in a country in which people have been nagging away for decades — for centuries — about the common man's right to freedom of choice (part of 'human dignity,' you understand), how can Mr Shulman have ever supposed that this choice could be limited or even regulated, in the article of TV or anything else, once the extension of it was known to be technically possible? Human ' rights ' and desires being what they were, more TV had to come, and of course it was bound to be subsidised by advertising. For if it had not been so subsidised, it must have been on the BBC model (i.e. by public charter), and the public must have paid for it direct. Now, doubtless Mr Shulman himself would have been happy to fork out an additional licence fee; but most people griped bitterly enough about the existing fee and many did their damnedest to defraud the Corporation even of that. Only one view is possible: the people wanted choice and they believed they had a right to it (so used had they become to flattery and pampering) without further charge. Commercial TV as we have it was the answer, and no politician could have stood out against it for long.

And so the people were given wider choice (as they had to be), and it turned out immediately that the nastier the choice was, the quicker they were to opt for it. Given the fashions in popular amusements over the centuries, what else could anyone in his senses have hoped for? Even the starry-eyed Mr Shulman wrote a TV play about kidnapping called Kill Three, a title which does not suggest a very exalted notion of viewers' tastes. The brutal truth is that viewers did not want to be edified or improved; they wanted to be amused or titillated, and on a low level at that. And so they were. The people get the television, as they get the Government, which they deserve. It is not only the programmes on offer, or the politicians who condone them, that are beastly or trivial, but the people (i.e. most people) who want, who demand, to see them, and who now refuse to do without them. Man is the measure, and no one who has read any history need expect to find that measure very elevated. "We needs must love the highest when we see it," comes the liberal credo in reply. But poor Queen Guinevere, in whose mouth Tennyson places this remark, stands refuted by her own conduct.

So why does Mr Shulman persist in blaming the low standards of British television on TV organisers or politicians, and not on the mass audiences, who have consistently rejected anything better when it was available? Cannot Mr Shulman understand that from the moment British TV became a mass medium (in 1955, or thereabouts) it was doomed? For once you let the masses in on anything, it is doomed. Mass prosperity means mass pollution and destruction. Mass ownership of cars means that there is no room for the cars themselves or anything else. Mass tourism requires that beautiful places be turned into holiday ghettoes of concrete. Mass education, beyond the most ele mentary stage, simply leads to mass discontent (as all it can teach most people is that they are in any case ineducable) and to an hysterical abandonment of standards in the name of ' equality ' and in hopes of quieting the discontented. No need to labour the point: whatever the masses are allowed to touch they contaminate, if only (to take the most charitable view) because there are far too many of them.

And so of course mass demands have contaminated and degraded British tele vision. It only remains to ask why Milton Shulman insists that it is the TV men and the politicians who are the villains of the piece. Well, I suppose that it affords him hope of a kind: it enables him still to discern some excellence in the British people despite the cretinising impact of British television. To me, the only source of hope is the very reverse — that I can still discern some excellence in British television despite the cretinising demands of the British people.