Television
Border Incident
By CLIFFORD HANLEY
A SMALL crack has appeared in the solidarity of the Inde- pendent Television contractors. Mr. John Burgess, chairman of Border TV has abandoned class loyalty to attack the big boys for cornering the net- work system and keeping out the small boys, like Bordet.
The Burgess incident, nowever, isn't likely to lead to any large-scale civil war among the contractors. The smaller companies--with the exception of Grampian whose licence to print money is still uperatmg in reverse—have generally found -both comfort and profit in the Big Brother system. It would cost a great deal of money and trouble to open a regional tele- vision station and aim at self-sufficiency. It is immensely convenient to open one and operate it as a pipe-line outlet, concentrating the local resources on a few programmes to meet the pro- portion required by the Television Act.
Personally, I would lik2 to see the regional stations trying harder and producing more, and I am in sympathy with Mr. Burgess. It would also be good to see the network becoming more of a two-way System. Even at best, however, I wouldn't expect the present system to be over- turned. Obviously, the big companies have most money and will continue to attract the best talent; and there is an absolute limit to the amount of first-class talent available in the country.
It's interesting to look at the occasional breaches in the 'traditional' networking process. Anglia has mounted full-length plays for the grid, but these were in fact produced under a co-operative arrangement with one of the Big Four. Wales has succeeded in selling some Welsh song to the network. Scottish Television has broken in with some of the film programmes of John Grierson.
These small victories are fine in their way. Slightly more puzzling is the case of Borderline, a Freeman-type interview series put out by Mr. Burgess's own station, and accepted by at least one other company, STV. I saw several of the items in this series this year, and found them well-devised, interesting and even important. But they were transmitted at the same time as Boothby's dinner-party affairs.
This coincidence seems to suggest the ITV companies recognise a fixed limit for middle- brow programmes, and that if you produce one, you transmit it instead of the networked job, and not in addition to it.
Another slightly puzzling example of regional independence is the fact that Scottish Television has never accepted Tempo. or The Time, the Place and the Camera, or the current Sunday afternoon Bookman series. In the case of the Bookman, there isn't even another programme in its place. The Scottish transmitter stays silent until 3.15 in the afternoon. I don't know (because, to be fair, I haven't asked) whether these programmes are rejected as a result of motivational research into Scottish viewers, or because the company just doesn't fancy that high-flown stuff.
Once I had started thinking about this, I got curious about canned programmes, which are the simplest alternative to networking. Among other trivial facts, I found that ITV, in both London and Glasgow, put out eighteen Ameri- can or mid-Atlantic canned items per week, compared to the BBC's total (this staggered rne) of only five.
The filmed series is also here to stay. It's easY to handle, it can provide variety in the schedules, and it can be very good, as well as very bad. The Westerns, for instance tend to maintain a consistent standard--that is. they vary from pretty good to not bad. In my own list, Have Gun, Will Travel is pretty good; Gunstnoke is not bad. I just like Westerns, even yet. Wagon Train is not excessively bad—it's merely a bit of a cheat because it uses Imre and more scripts that aren't Westerns at all, and rams them somehow into a wagon train. Among the non-Westerns, I regard Mr. link: as among the most original artistic creations 01 the television age. On the other hand, baffled by my friends' enthusiasm for The Flint' stones. This is a cartoon, but that doesn't disguise its woeful corniness as an old domestic-contedY routine, and it has one joke the prehistoric joke' which is fairly funny, once. We just won't talk about Dial 999. As for? Sunset Strip, this got me, back at the beginning, largely because of Efrem Zimbalist; but some kind of doom seems to await all Warner Brothers series in the end. Their most obnoxious to date has been Hawaiian Eye, mercifully absent at the moment. This distasteful offering shows to3 bully-boy ptivate dicks who on occasion have fired revolvers at a bystander because he pened to run away, and kicked a man io the kidneys while he was halt-conscious. The same glorification of fist and boot vitiate! Route 66, which also preaches the corral' doctrine that a good-looking broad must be ready for laying within six hours of apPear. in the script. Never mind the morality of tals'
it simply isn't true. to
Actually, it's tough, it's murderous, to have s produce a series, and we must make allowa0ce. when the stories get thinner or more preposter. ous, as they do in Danger Man or Top Secr.eets But one factor which seems to hold a serl,..0 together is a reasonable moral base, which is 1`1, strength of such assorted specimens as Boaaav.: and The Defenders, Have Ge,n, and Robin 11°T; In the final analysis, as they say in the TUC, goodies havehave to be good.
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