Tories Behind the Screen
There is nothing alarming In the Independent Television Authority's interim report. In the autumn of next year there will be three independent stations (London, Birmingham and Manchester) in operation, transmitting programmes which will be provided by a total of five or six competing contractors. Three of these programme contracting companies have already been selected and named—Broadcast Relay Services and Associated Newspapers, Granada Theatres, and the Kemsley- Winnick group. Presumably it will soon be learned how Mr. Norman Collins's organisation, the Associated Broadcasting Development Company. fits into the picture, and also Mr. Prince Littler's Incorporated Television Programme Company. As time goes on and more stations come into operation, so will more programme contractors be needed. Competition is the key to commercial television's success, and the Independent Television Authority is under an obligation to promote it. Until the allocation of time among the various companies has been worked out and published, further comment is impossible. but meanwhile the touch of comedy provided by the Daily Mirror this week should be noted. On the eve of the ITA's statement the Mirror discovered a Tory plot (i.e. the presence of Rothermere and Kemsley capital in two of the programme contracting companies selected). Considering that advertisers have to sell their wares to Liberals, Socialists, Communists and Anarchists as well as to Tories, this argument looks a trifle thin. But the Mirror, adept as ever, converted its cry of sour grapes into a lively stunt, for on the following day it plastered its front page with the resounding statement that the Mirror, an independent newspaper of the Left, is pre- pared to make a joint application for a licence with any organisation with the competence and resources to produce first-class programmes? Anyone who wonders why the Mirror has not already done so does not realise the supreme impor- tance of stunting. It will be odd if this stunt is at an end. Perhaps the Mirror is simply keeping its charger—on which it will yet ride forth, with maximum publicity, against the wicked Press Lords—in the stable against a better day.
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