The B.B.C.'s Future
By MARY STOCKS *
HE B.B.C. is in a most unhappy position and seldom if ever has a public service deserved its tribulations less. For close on two years it was probed and pricked, criticised and cross-questioned by the Beveridge Committee of Enquiry into the proper disposal of its Charter, due to expire on December 31st, 1951. That Committee did its work with meticulous thoroughness, driven by a chairman whose only bias, if he had any, was a general distrust of monopolistic power as such. Week after week the enemies of the B.B.C. poured hostile criticism into the ears of the Committee; week after week the B.B.C. was faced with demands for information, more information and still more information. Printed memoranda flowed from it, and behind that printed memoranda could be discerned hourg of committee-work and consultation at all levels of the B.B.C. hierarchy.
And at the end of it all—with the exception of one member whose faith in private enterprise survived what he saw and heard of American broadcasting—the Committee was unable to find anything radically wrong with the operations of the B.B.C., or devise any machinery other than a public service under unitary control for providing the public with entertain- ment, information and education on the air. Thus, with a hundred helpful (or as the Governors of the B.B.C. would doubtless say, hinderful) suggestions, and with the one dissentient above-mentioned, the Committee recommended that the B.B.C. Charter be renewed on virtually the same terms as before.
One might have assumed at this point that the B.B.C. could breathe freely and devote itself with renewed confidence and encouragement to its proper tasks. But it was not to be. A new Government with, it may be presumed, other ideas on the desirability of public services as such, felt the need for second thoughts. The existing Charter has therefore been given a six- months' extension while certain persons re-think the problem presented to the Beveridge Committee. Who they are, and whether they are giving as much time and trouble to the job, is not generally known; but it would appear that they are pro- ceeding with grave deliberation, because information has found its way into the Press that they are likely to require yet another six months—six months more of frustrating uncertainty for the B.B.C.; and six months more of uncomfortable apprehension for those members of the public who greatly value the B.B.C.'s consideration for the needs of intelligent, selective listeners, whose intensity of pleasure in good music and good drama is more than proportionate to their numbers.
For it seems, though there is no means of provirig it, that strong pressure is being exerted upon the Government to intro- duce some measure of sponsoring into British sound and T.V. broadcasting. Where this pressure comes from is not clear. For obvious reasons the Press is unlikely to advocate any such change. Nor, to judge from evidence offered to the Beveridge Committee, is there a majority demand among advertisers for the right to exploit this new advertisement-medium. Such demand as there was came from a few large advertisers who were presumably confident of their own financial ability to shout down smaller competitors on the air. But—to judge from certain letters to the Press—it is fairly obvious that some Of those who are advocating sponsoring have no clear idea of what sponsoring is. They confuse it with the kind of advertising normally done through the Press, where the advertiser buys space for his advertisement and buys no more. He does not, for instance, buy the right to compose the leading article, select the news-items or assemble the magazine features.
But when a sponsor buys time on the air he buys the right to supply the programme into which he inserts his sales talk, and it is his business to select a programme which will attract
Mrs. Stocks, the late Principal of Westfield College, was one of the four members of the Beveridge Committee who went to the United States to study broadcasting there.
the maximum number of potential buyers for his goods. When three members of the Beveridge Committee, including its chairman, suggested that the B.B.C. might be given permission to turn an honest penny by setting aside certain times on its programmes for the broadcasting of advertisements, they made it perfectly clear that they felt no less strongly than the majority of their colleagues about not allowing advertisers to sponsor programmes, or indeed taking any action which would make the B.B.C. dependent on advertisement revenue, as are certain sections of the Press today. To the suggestion that this might impose upon the B.B.C. an embarrassing responsibility for the selection of suitable advertisers it maybe replied that such responsibility is already discharged without apparent com- plications by the advertisement-manager of the Radio Times. To the further suggestion that we already have a surfeit of advertisements in our newspapers, on our hoardings, in our 'buses and theatre programmes and through our letter-boxes, and that our will-to-consume is thus adequately sustained, there is no reply. It is a matter of taste.
But many of those who advocate sponsoring do, in fact, know perfectly well what they are advocating. Their view is conditioned by two simple syllogisms : " Monopolies are bad; the B.B.C. is a monopoly; therefore the B.B.C. is bad," and " Those who want to make profits must please the public; advertisers who sponsor programmes want to make profits; therefore advertisers who sponsor programmes must please the public." The first of these syllogisms need not detain us long. Its major premise is faulty. Some monopolies are not bad; the fact of monopoly may be conditioned by the physical nature of the service rendered, as in the case of water-, gas- or elec- tricity-supply. In a continent where wave-lengths have to be allocated by agreement among a host of competing sovereign States it may well be that broadcasting falls into this category of monopoly. American broadcasters are more fortunate. They have the broadcasting air of a whole continent to play with.
The second syllogism is more convincing. Its major preMise is substantially accurate, if by the public we mean the majority of listeners. And to judge from the results of listener research what most members of the public most want is " variety " and presumably more Variety and better variety than the B.B.C. with its limited licence income, and its cultural mission, is either able or willing to provide. Does not America with its sponsoring system (or lack of system) do better for its listeners ? It certainly gives more variety, thanks to its multiplicity of wave-lengths and because it is nobody's business to encourage listeners to develop more mature tastes. Whether, by paying more, it produces better variety is a matter of doubt. Indeed, it is possible that in the case of variety we have some- thing which does not conform to the principle that the more you pay for a thing the more you can have of it and the better it is. It may even be that humour, like the produce of the earth, obeys a kind of law of diminishing returns.
The world's great comedians have certain acts which they per- form repetitively in different places. We see them at rare inter-, vals, and the repetition of their humour delights us. But radio comedians are asked to do something altogether new in the history of popular entertainment. We demand of them, not repetition of the same act in different places; but the repetition of different acts in the same place. The marvel is not that we cultivate humour at lower levels but that we get as much humour as we do. Humour at its highest level is not suffi- ciently expansive to meet the insatiable demands of the air. We are up against a fact of nature.
But the advocates of sponsoring do not only ignore this fact of nature; they ignore something else—a fundamental difference between communication by air and communication by the written word, which brings us back to the faulty major premise of our first syllogism. If one wave-length were to be devoted to sponsored broadcasts and one, or possibly two, to a truncated B.B.C. for public-service broadcasting, a few of the more fastidious minorities might be .duly catered for. But in the-case of the written word the minorities can and do cater for themselves in a world where innumerable publications can and do exist side by side with their large or small circulations. The factlhat they can and do, and that incidentally they are able to effect a running commentary on the doings and mis- doings of the B.B.C., should reconcile us to the existence of a unitary broadcasting system whose aim is direct service to the listening public, modified by tactful attempts to widen, diversify and mature public taste.
But why should reconciliation be necessary ? Is it pedantic or unreasonable to suppose that a semi-educated public has still something to learn about aesthetic values and the satisfac- tion to be derived from them '? Are we violating some latter- day conception of " parity of esteem " when we acknowledge that some people know better than others where and how that satisfaction may be sought ?
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