A THOUSAND A MINUTE would not be pleased if they
were deprived of their new enter- tainment. It was reasonable enough to support, as the Spectator did, the idea that there should be an alternative to the BBC, provided that its standards were as high as those of the BBC, in order to gain more freedom of opinion on the air. But the Prime Minister has recently said that restrictions on discussion such as the Fourteen Day Rule will continue to apply both to commercial television and to the BBC after the latter's mono- poly has been broken. It seems likely, therefore, that in order to make commercial television work, safeguards will have to be abolished and standards lowered, and that there will be no compensation for this in the shape of greater freedom of expression: we shall have achieved the worst of every world.
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