Broadcasting
Not in front of the viewers
Paul Johnson
Last week Jim Prior, leader of the cabinet Wets, warned the nation that Britain had fallen in the wealth-creation league to the level of the developing nations. Our living standards were keeping up simply because 'we are living off the capital invested 20 or 30 years ago'. As a result 'some of our public facilities', hospitals, sewage systems and so on, were in a perfectly frightful state. It seems an odd time, then, for government to authorise an additional £400 million or so on providing TV entertainment. But that will be the extra bill if the second ITV channel, breakfast TV, and Welsh language TV are all allowed to go ahead, and Willy Whitelaw gives the BBC their £50 colourTV licence this November.
Of course it's good news for some people. The Independent Television Contractors Association claim that, between April 1979 and April 1981, average earnings in the industry increased by an enormous 66.5 per cent. Numbers on the payroll rose by an extra 15.5 per cent in the same period. TV technicians, one of the most relentlessly avaricious groups in British industry, have been doing even better than usual, with average earnings for electricians now notching £15,000 a year, a 71 per cent increase in two years. Since the TV unions run some of the tightest closed shops in the country (thanks to Jim Prior's lethargy), expanding the industry still further will increase their bargaining power and accelerate the wage inflation. From an economic point of view, it is sheer madness to pump those hundreds of millions of public money into the industry just now.
And of course it is public money: let's get that quite clear. The notion that the new luxuries being foisted on ITV will somehow be paid for by the companies is a fantasy. Most of them calculate their profits are about to take a nosedive. TV advertising has held ,up surprisingly well during the recession but this very fact has lured more printed rivals into the field. The Sunday Express colour magazine is now established. The News of the World-Sun mag starts in September. The Sunday Mirror follows next year. That makes six in the field, plus the increasingly competitive TV Times and Radio Times. Mass-circulation colour mags need to charge between £15,000 and £20,000 a page for colour advertisements. That is a lot of money to take out of the kitty. But there are disturbing signs for the ITV companies that mags are offering better value for money, largely because of the huge rise in the costs of making commercials. At the Monte Carlo TV and radio conference this Febru ary it was claimed that a 40-second food commercial cost on average £50,500 last year. What is it this year? Some indication is given by the ITCA's calculation that their companies' costs rose 59 per cent from May 1980 to April 1981. In the same period income was up only 30 per cent.
Obviously there is a financial squeeze ahead. ITV-2 coming next year and breakfast TV coming in 1982 will further increase competition for the available advertising. But more important are the immediate direct costs falling on company budgets. Under the new contractual arrangements, the IBA is expected to take an extra £15 million a year. The Welsh language service will add £20 million to the bill. This is the most resented, for there is nil evidence of public demand and its chief function will be to provide jobs for the boyos. ITV-2, however, will be the heaviest burden, costing the companies £90400 million.
No one, apart from their shareholders, will weep much if ITV companies go into the red. But the real loss will be carried by the Treasury, and ultimately by the general taxpayers. John Watson, Conservative MP for Skipton, calculates that government receipts from the IBA levy and corporation tax will fall by 'at least' £74 million and possibly by £100 million. That is going to be the cost to the public of ITV-2, or Channel Four as it is sometimes called. What are we going to get in return? Nothing new by the looks of it; just the same progressive-trendy guff. One suggestion, I hear, is that the Third World enthusiasts, who already have a full page in the Guardian, will supply half an hour a week of Third World uplift. Just what we've been waiting for! The first big ITV-2 presentation is to be an eight-hour showing of the Royal Shakespeare's Nicholas Nickleby at the Aldwych. It will cost anything up to £2 million, of which ITV-2 will bear the biggest slice. Nickleby is a fairly well-flogged horse too, I should have thought. London Weekend is to do two hours of the RSC production on 2 August. The novel has been serialised three times by the BBC.
God knows what the BBC will do with the vast sums they will collect if their licence or poll-tax is raised to £50. A regular spot for IRA funerals and other old Irish folklore? What disturbs me is that, although TV is often referred to as the one genuinely demotic medium, there has been very little democracy about the new expansion programme. Has anyone asked us whether we wanted Welsh-language TV? Were we consulted about setting up ITV-2? Were we asked if breakfast TV was something we really needed? Has it been or will it be put to us whether we would like to fork out £50 a year for our TV sets or whether we'd settle for a less ambitious, and less spendthrift, BBC— or a BBC that takes advertisements? Such questions are never posed to us but are invariably settled by our betters, working in secrecy and in conjunction with powerful pressure groups. I would like to see backbench MPs bring them out into the open.
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