A Spectator's Notebook
WHEN, LAST MONTH, the Independent Television Authority lamented .that it could not ensure a proper balance on com- mercial television programmes, unless it was paid the £750,000 it was entitled to under the Act, I argued that it was the Authority's duty to provide the balanced programmes first— to earn the 050,000, as it were, by good behaviour. The Authority disagreed; but in the course, of the argument, I assumed (and, I imagine, so did you) that the 'balance' which the Authority proposed to redress was between light entertain- ment and serious programmes—there being now hardly any serious programmes left. At a gathering held by Associated Rediffusion this week, ho\Vever, a spokesman for that company insisted that we were wrong. 'Everybody in the press seems to think that serious was meant' he told us; not so; the balance might be between, say, different varieties of sport. Many individual sports have only a minority appeal; during Wimble- don, for example, more people switched to Children's Hour than to the tennis. Part of the £750,000, therefore, could be used to subsidise programmes of less popular sports. And part of it, the AR spokesman went on, could be used to pay the Independent Television Authority's staff, and the cost of its establishment—which now has to be paid for by the con- tracting companies. But whatever else might be done with the money, we could take it that it would not be used to plant serious programmes in the broad acres of peak hour entertain- ment. For, apparently, as soon as anything serious comes on in commercial television, viewers switch to the BBC; and some- times they fail to switch back, so that the next commercial programme, however popular, loses some of its potential audience. No: seriousness is only to be allowed in the after- noon, or late at night.
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