17 FEBRUARY 1956, Page 7

I FEEL rather sorry for Sir Robert Fraser. A few

days ago he tried to prove, in a letter to The Times, that commercial tele- vision is doing as much for the serious viewer as the BBC. His thesis was turned upside down, shaken, and found to be empty by several hostile critics. That was only to be expected. What he can hardly have expected, though, was to find Commercial Television News lined up against him, with a leading article condemning the abandonment of serious, programmes—in- cluding one which Sir Robert had cited among his examples of seriousness. CTV News is a trade paper, devoted to the cause : yet it, too, finds the drift to catchpenny. triviality nauseating. 'That Jemmy Twitcher should 'peach me . . . '- poor Sir Robert I