BROADCASTING
Lean year
BILL GRUNDY
The last twelve months have probably been the most important in broadcasting since the commercial TV companies arrived on the scene fifteen or so years ago. The reasons for this aren't far to seek. The year 1969 saw the BBC management go completely mad, pleading poverty on the one hand and set- ting up local radio stations nobody wants on the other; talking about the service to the public they have provided over the years and at the same time planning the destruc- tion of the regions which have given the broadcasting system its backbone since the beginning—back in 1922. Manchester went on the air the day after London. They further proved their madness by saying that nothing would be done until there had been a public debate on the proposals and then announcing that public debate was over before anybody realised it had started and certainly before there had been anything' which the unions considered to be negotia- tions.
Mr Charles Curran finally shattered any ideas one might have that Lord Reith was still watching over Portland Place by imply- ing—and on one occasion, if my information is correct, by saying explicitly—that if the Government has made a decision there is no point in resisting, an attitude which would surely have made the Reithian eye- brows come together in a frown and would have elicited the well-known Scot- tish rebuke 'I hear ye', meaning 'but I don't understand ye'.
All, therefore, is not well at the BBC. But nobody is laughing in the commercial companies either. So far as the big boys are concerned, we can save our sympathy. They have for so long been used to ES million profit a year, that £2 million looks like bankruptcy to them. But for the smaller boys it is a bitter world they find themselves in at the moment. Border Television made £9,000 profit last year; not what you'd call the handsomest of margins. Yorkshire came out with about f100,000, a pitiful return on capital. Peter Cadbury, of Westward Tele- vision, has said quite categorically that his company will not be applying for a licence next time. The other small companies are in the same shattered state.
The reasons for all this are; of course, obvious and the villain of the piece is the Government. By setting a date for colour which was ridiculously early, they com- mitted all the companies to enormous capital expenditure for a total countrywide audi- ence of about 150,000 sets. They then added insult to injury by increasing the levy which the programme companies have to pay.
The worst thing about the levy apart from having to pay it, is that it falls on total income and not on income after programme costs have been deducted. So programme budgets throughout the country have been fairly well razored throughout the year. It's no bad thing to watch that waste doesn't creep in all over the place. It is a very bad thing if programme budgets have to be cut because the Government can't see that the levy should be based on what's left after the programmes have been paid for.
All in all, the state of play with the com- mercial companies—even the big boys who, though I dismissed them earlier, have got their troubles too—is that most of them are looking forward to the next big review of the structure of both ITV and the BBC which Mr Edward Short, that diseminence grise, promised some years ago. They are looking forward to it rather in the way incurables look forward to death—as a happy release, something to put them out of their misery.
A gloomy picture then. Anything to feel happy about? Yes. The rise of Yorkshire Television as a major outfit after one of the hardest starts any company could have had. A strike to begin with, with its conse- quent loss of income, a transmitter-mast collapse, which meant another loss, a feeling that the Big Four didn't want them and were trying very hard to ensure that they were not turned into the Big Five—all this made it look very unlikely that the Bayer- stock Brigade would ever survive the initial barrage. But they seem to have done, and good luck to them.
I'd have had a word to say about what Thames Tv are doing but I work for them so that's out. As for London Weekend; well, I never did believe their prospectus so I wasn't surprised they didn't live up to it. The departure of all their top brass clearly marked the death of the Mark I version. Of the dead say nothing but good, and as I can't find anything good to say, I'll have to :amain silent. LWT Mark H is clearly too --
much of an infant for me to say anything but `Diddums'; further comment must be reserved until it comes of age.
Anything else? As far as programmes go, plenty. The BBC'S arts programmes, though sometimes precious to the point of price- lessness, always give me the feeling that I can't actually think of a commercial com- pany that would have done them at all. Omnibus, for example, keeps up a remark- able standard, and covers a very wide variety of subjects.
In most of the other departments, drama, sport, children's shows and schools pro- grammes, the standard has been high. The serials, the bread and butter shows, seldom get reviewed, so they go unnoticed except by the millions who watch them devotedly, which is the sort of recommendation they're after anyway.
It all adds up to not a bad output. How long it will go on like that depends on a lot of things. Not least, the courage of the 1:36 of the BBC or the chairman of the ITA a quality with which neither of them has overwhelmed us lately. For them it could be a very difficult time ahead. Sitting in front of my set I remember that I am not Mr Charles Curran, neither am I Herbert, Lord Aylestone. For which I give thanks to the good God.
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