TELE-SCOPE • SIR,—The TV contro4ersy suggests that there f is
some general disquist as to its future: a longer view might reveal the urgency of considering another aspect of the problem.
Smoking and mechanical entertainment already absorb a disproportionate percentage of the cost of living. When an expensive 'IV set becomes a home necessity, not a luxury, to be duly supplanted by an even more expensive coloured TV set, with ever-increasing licence duties, where can it be seen to end ? Can the national economy afford this conception of the standard of living ? Need it afford it ? The set in every home is like the private motor-mower for every little back lawn, and is as extravagant a multiplication. Surely these things can be more sensibly and practic- ally shared !
Now, Sir, in spite of Sir Alexander Korda's forecast, signs are not lacking that private TV will hit the film industry very hard. Could it not be contrived that the film indus- try be kept alive by transferring, with no great difficulty or disruption, its activities, its plant and studios, to the production of the live and contemporaneous picture, instead of the film, in the cinemas ? To exhibit TV in public rather than in private might yet save the individuality of home values. True, there might be some hardship amongst those who cannot go to the cinemas: there would be vastly more in the failure of the whole film business. And manufacturers might add small TV sets to our export trade.
One can't put the clock back But we do it every autumn 1—Yours faithfully,
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