Television
Ad infinitum
Richard Ingrams
If the Conservative Party have got the right idea in limiting their party politicals to five minutes the BBC has done exactly the opposite. The Corporation obviously thinks that it has some kind of moral duty to provide blanket coverage of the election, giving a fair share of air-time to all the various viewpoints. If anything will kill democracy this will. What it means for a start is that the news bulletins every night are padded out with special election reports which seem to go on for ever. David Dimbleby is wheeled on looking, as always, responsible and concerned. Then we have round-ups from men like the scarcely in- telligible John Cole on such vital questions as the ethnic vote, the teenage vote, what the National Front says. Then we go back to the ghastly John Humphrys for the other news. Then Dimbleby has another crack at the election. Then back to Humphrys again. No wonder if at the end of it all the general consensus is: Politicians! Arentcha sick of them?
Meanwhile Panorama, playing it safe, is doing interviews with all the three party leaders, starting with Woy. The notion of listening to Woy talking to Robin Day for 50 minutes is not one to make the heart leap and I wonder if it occurs to the great man himself that it might not be in his best in- terests to waffle away at this length. Might not voters be driven into a state of moronic apathy by listening to him droning on in his extraordinary voice about inflation and unemployment? Might it not be counter- productive? But I don't suppose it ever oc- curs to a politician to think that he might be a bore.
World in Action at least tried to do something different by inviting the veteran American pundit Walter Cronkite, a genial old buffer — to borrow Worzel's descrip- tion of Oyster-Eyes — complete with moustache and pipe, to give us a foreign perspective. He went on the campaign trail with all the parties, rode along the South Bank in Dr Death's campaign bus, tramped through the mud of Cornwall with Mrs Thatcher, listened to Worzel hamming it up in Wales and later was seen dozing in the back of the plush limo that whisked him back to London along the M4. The programme may not have conveyed any startling insights but at least it made an at- tempt to provide some sort of variety and interest which has been so much missing from all BBC's coverage.
One of the reasons for Labour's decline has been the way they have recently come out of the closet over their relationship with the trade unions. A few years ago when the unions were thought to be all-powerful and in danger of taking over the country the Labour Party might have had a point in making much of their close links, if only to show that they were the only people who could get along with them. Nowadays when the power of the unions has declined and when they still remain as unpopular as ever it can't make sense for the Labour Party to parade their close ties. David Basnett, the lugubrious leader of the General and Municipal Workers has recently come to the fore as the chief propagandist for Labour. He featured again in the latest par- ty political, lecturing Mrs Thatcher about efficiency of all things. The main speaker in this fairly hopeless appeal to the voters was the aptly named John Smith, a grey Scotsman of faintly sinister mien who was pictured against a variety of demolished buildings representing the destruction and decay which Mrs Thatcher has brought in her wake. Like many Labour spokesmen in recent days, especially those from the moderate wing of the party, he seemed to have no great enthusiasm for what he was saying.
I wonder whether we shall be seeing Melvyn Bragg at all on the Labour Party's broadcasts. He is, it transpires, the most fervent Labour supporter among the media folk, with John Cleese representing the Alliance and the two Ronnies the Conser- vatives. Here again one wonders how much help these people actually do for the respec- tive parties. A wavering voter like me could easily be put off the Alliance for good on learning that not only Cleese but Sir David Attenborough is right behind them, and Bragg's rooting for Worzel might well turn out to be the last straw after Basnett and Pat Wall. Now, if only Russell Harty were to declare his profound undying faith in Mrs Thatcher and all who sail in her I might stay away from the polling booths altogether on 9 June.
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