Like Her Old Auntie
It was, suggested here when the initial controversy was at its hottest that no man in his senses would go to the stake for commercial teleyision. But now, as then, it must also be said that its opponents overstate their case to a degree. The Government has taken all reasonable objections into considera- tion and produced a plan swaddled in respectability and thickly hedged about with safeguards and restrictions. Ming-. worth in the Daily Mail pictured it as an infant admired by the neighbours as being just like her old Auntie BBC. He was nearer the mark than Low in the Manchester Guardian who introduced a chimpanzee into a genteel tea-party. No chimpanzee could get through the barbed-Wire defences laid out in the White Paper. The question is, rather, whether the advertisers, who are to be allowed only to buy time for their advertisements, just as they buy space in the newspapers, but not to " sponsor " programmes, will find sufficient attraction in the scheme. Will the private companies, which are to run the programmes under the proposed public corporation, be able to raise enough revenue to cover the huge costs and make a profit ? The advertising organisations consulted assured the government that " separation of advertisements from the programmes would not prejudice the financial success of the new television service." Advocates of com- mercial television were not dismayed by the proposals. Its opponents continue to assume that advertisers who are Dr. Jekylls in the newspapers turn into Mr. Hydes in television studios. But the safeguards and restrictions will not permit this alarming transformation. And so, say the opponents, the future may be forecast thus : no monkeys, no money, no competitive television. Which remains to be seen.
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