ON THE FACE OF IT the suggestion made by the
Committee of Public Accounts that commercial television contracts Should be reached by competitive tender is unwise. It would merely encourage the Present trend, which is for the contract- ing companies to regard their business as being primarily to make money. This is Particularly true of the provincial corn- Panics, who do little to foster regional talent, instead concentrating their atten- tion exclusively on profits; but it would become even more of a rat race if contracts were put up for auction. What is needed to stop companies from cash- ing in on their State monopoly as they now do is competition: preferably the competition which would be provided by Pay as You View television. There is ho reason why it should not be tried ' experimentally here—as it is going to be, Shortly, in the US on the pattern outlined in last week's Spectator; the belief,
apparently held by the Government, that PAYV has been tried already there and failed, is not correct. In the mean- time, there is a perfectly easy solution to the present problem of how to stop the contracting companies from enriching themselves at the community's expense. The ITA can start enforcing the original idea of balanced programmes, compelling the contractors to devote more of their attention to minorities and less to keep- ing the mass audiences gorged with their nightly pap.
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