Contemporary Arts
A Second Programme?
TRE BBC has again declared its desire to have a second television programme. I hope it succeeds. As the Corporation's annual report states: competition with ITA does not give a real diversity of choice but merely choice between different programmes of the same kind.
There is a 'danger that our legislators may look at the proposal too narrowly and argue that ITA can provide all the panel games, music hall and guessing competitions any unreasonable viewer could want, leaving the field of culture clear for the BBC. But this would put the BBC in jeopardy. It would leave it with a permanent and perhaps diminishing minority of viewers and make the majority resentful of paying three guineas a year for a service they do not want. Further- more, it would destroy the BBC's stealthy efforts, to broaden popular taste by sandwich- ing serious items between the nitwitteries; and it would destroy the affection and esteem in which it is held by listeners and viewers. Over the years a precious relationship has been built up between the public and the Corporation. The BBC is one of the most powerful unifying influences of the nation and it must be cherished and defended.
But why should the BBC not begin its
second programme in a modest experimental way now? The PMG restricts its output of television to fifty hours a week in the belief that any more of it would debauch us. Could he not be persuaded to allow the BBC to televise items appealing to minorities between eleven and twelve at night, on Sunday morn- ings, or even between six and seven in the evening? The last period, known as the toddlers' truce, is commonly believed to be imposed so that the children can be got to bed without their parents having to tear them from the screen. But there is surely at this hour a potential minority of viewers who would appreciate a programme that would repel the younger children. A BBC man, to whom I put the suggestion that the second programme could begin in the fgrbidden hours, immediately objected: 'But there would be a very small audience.' Exactly. That is just what Lime Grove needs—freedom from an obligation to please an enormous, hetero- geneous audience all the time.
I am now trying out a new receiver with a less repulsive appearance than most of them have, and with FM radio built in. The com- bination has had a curious psychological effect. It is much easier to make a'fair choice between sound and vision than when one has to switch off the television and switch on a separate radio. The battle between the two mediums reached its height on Monday night when the Home was doing Figaro from Glyndbourne and Channel 9 was putting out a splendid performance of Rice's The Adding Machine. Rice won, chiefly because I wanted to see how the old Expressionismus comes out on tele- vision. The answer is that it might have been specially designed for television, which is least effective when it is using a naturalistic back- ground. The weak spot in the play was, how- ever, mercilessly revealed; Rice's message is conveyed not through his main character, but to him by— literally—a deus ex machina. Bill Owen's performance as Mr. Zero, the dried- up, bespectacled bookkeeper who murders his boss, I rate as one of the best I have seen on television. His natural voice has a rasp un- common in speakers of standard English and it made his American accent completely con- vincing to my cars. I should like to know the reaction of the commercial television audience io this shattering portrayal of the common man.
The interviewing about which I wrote crossly last week has been better during ffie past few days. Fewer interviewers have adopted the manner of prosecuting counsel, or the child sucking up to teacher, or reproduced the forced cheerfulness of nanny or Uriah Heepish obsequiousness. For really good inter- viewing I recommend the Tuesday series Picture Parade, a review of films in the making or about to be presented. This could easily be so awful but it soft-pedals on Holly- wood superlatives and wiggly-hip glamour. Derek Bond did a most unusual thing. He talked to an actor, Barry Nelson, about acting and got an interview on the naturalistic versus the Stanislavsky style now in vogue on Broadway that could have gone straight into the Observer. Peter Haigh brought off some- thing more difficult. He interviewed the twelve- year-old actress Mandy Miller as an intelligent adult talking to an intelligent child. For an example of un-class-conscious interviewing of people without much skill in verbalising, I cite Michael Ingrams's conversation with canal folk in Look in on London, which robbed me of fifteen minutes of Mozart.
Last week I thought there were too many horses chasing too many fences. I enjoyed the Joyce Grenfell show, though I wish she had more material completely new to me. I even found myself feeling charitable to Dixon of Dock Green, which had a better script and gave Joan Young the chance of showing an authentic working-class mother. It is a pity that Ted Willis, who is a devoted studept of working-class life, should be satisfied with such poor literary standard in this series. I feel sure he has the talent to rise above the level of the novelette without sacrificing the popular
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