Anything Wrong ?
Is there anything wrong with the entertainment programmes on commercial television— Sir Robert Fraser asked the assembled members of a press conference last week—when viewers put them in the Top Ten week after week? Is there anything wrong with the consumption of alcohol —a French farmer might ask, with the same justi- fication—when France has the highest rate of alcoholism in the world? Commercial television has effectively demonstrated that here, as in America, huge audiences can be persuaded, week after week, to watch and presumably to enjoy programmes which are preternaturally silly, pro- grammes which exploit violence, and pro- grammes which rely for their appeal on the fact that audiences enjoy watching the public humilia- tion of other men and women. This is no longer in dispute; but that the Director of the Indepen- dent Television Authority should actually boast about it is a sad commentary on the Authority's notion of what it was established to do. If there is anything radically wrong with Independent Television, Sir Robert asserted, there is some- thing wrong with the Authority. Yes.
Previous page
