Alice in television land
BUSINESS VIEWPOINT BARRY KING
Barry King is managing director of British Relay Wireless and Television.
The extent to which government intervention can disrupt and unbalance an industry is no- where more clearly demonstrated than in the television field. In any well-conducted business the anti-influences can be sensed and identified long before impact and evasive adjustments made, but the corrective hand of the govern- ment descends without warning, undetected and unsuspected in approach, like the teacher's cane upon the shoulders of a small boy absorbed in some enterprising but non-conformist activity in class.
The television industry is accustomed, along with others, to its indiscriminate 'thwack' in the form of credit controls and has learnt to live in the shadow of the Whitehall birch. Living and thriving, however, are not the same thing and there can be little doubt that, in all the cir- cumstances surrounding the industry, the arbitrary inclusion of television receivers in the range of goods subjected td the vagaries of credit controls has been sometimes unnecessary in any context, sometimes inappropriate and at all times harmful to the development of tele- vision generally.
Where the television industry differs from others is that the government itself promotes the substance that gives rise to the commodity. The decision to introduce a new channel which cannot be received on any television receiver then normally in use implies a willingness upon the part of the government to allow an audi- ence for the new programme to develop. When, following the report of the Committee on Broadcasting (as far as they felt able to), the Government confirmed that a third television channel, BBC 2 as we know it, would be intro- duced, they accepted that there would be no audience for the new channel until new receivers capable of receiving UHF signals and displaying a 625-line picture had been produced and sup- plied to the public.
The industry had already been consulted on these plans and had set about the business of making television sets to the required specifica- tion well in advance of the new programme's debut. An army of people at the Bac began work on the programmes and an even greater army on the design, manufacture and installa- tion of the new equipment needed to generate, distribute and transmit the new channel. One year after the programme's faltering start, when it was just beginning to find its feet and still while the available audience was a mere hand-
ful, the Government decided that they would make it difficult for people to see the new pro- gramme by the yet again indiscriminate in- clusion of television receivers among commodi- ties subjected to credit restriction. The available audience for BBC 2 remains the smaller fraction of the licensed viewers and the enormous cost per potential viewer of sac 2 transmissions has been successfully maintained for over four years.
The popularity of this Alice-in-Wonderland approach to the world of television was again
demonstrated—this time, as it were, in reverse —when, in the wake of new credit curbs and in the midst of portents of more to come, the early introduction of colour television was an- nounced. This was not only inappropriate tim- ing in relation to the credit squeeze but also in relation to the imminent technological changes in broadcasting. Colour can only be transmitted in the ultra high frequency band (because of the present occupation of the VHF band) and, until BBC 1 and rra transmissions are duplicated in this band, is confined to Bac 2. This dupli- cation is to commence in 1969 when all three channels will be able to carry colour. The de- cision to start colour on one channel involved the industry in the design and production of a complex television receiver capable of operat- ing in the vtiF band on 405 lines as well as in the UHF band on 625 lines. Already, less than a year since the colour service began and when the associated commodity is scarcely dry behind the ears, the industry is wondering how to phase it out of existence in 1969. The distributive section of the trade is equally in a dilemma : at what stage in 1969 is the public going to stop buying this interim receiver and, if it does so, will it buy a receiver that, for a period, will. yield only one programme or will there be a hiatus in buying?
A deferment of two years would have avoided the expenditure of untold effort, both in the fac- tory and in the field, on a commodity not only predestined to be superseded within two years but also branded by its governmental pro- moters as a product upon which national effort should not be deployed.
That decisions on the development of broad- casting cannot be taken unrelated to those affecting the development of the audience had already been demonstrated when commercial television was introduced in 1955. It had then to be anticipated that interest in television would quicken— the programme contractors were surely going to see to that—and yet, within six months of the inception of rra broadcasting, television receivers were indiscriminately in- cluded in the comprehensive list of commodi- ties which the public was to be strictly restrained from acquiring. The effect was to hold back the natural demand that was the inevitable and, surely, comprehended consequence of the earlier action. It is rather like promoting a theatrical production and then being horrified to find that the public is buying tickets to see it.
The further consequences of this 1956, two- years-and-ten-months clamp-down have to be seen in relation to the technological changes in cathode ray tubes and the further develop- ments in broadcasting. By I956—that is imme- diately after the introduction of a second tele- vision channel—television receiver design had stabilised around the ninety degree deflection angle I7-inch diagonal picture tube. In 1960 the 110 degree short-necked 17-inch tube appeared briefly, heralding the 19-inch square-faced tube and its 23-inch counterpart which have re- mained the standard picture tubes since their inception in 1961. These developments in tube design were not only predictable but known; for throughout the era of cathode ray tube evolution we were following at some distance behind America. It was, therefore, within the competence of anyone, however remotely con- nected with the industry, to envisage the pat- 'terns of change. But in fact the arbitrary in- clusion of television receivers in the restrictive orders of 1956 checked the buying of a com- modity which, as I have said, had just entered upon a four year period of stability, while the total removal of restrictions in October 1958 encouraged the acquisition of a by now obsoles- cent one.
At the end of 1960 about 80 per cent of the eligible homes had, by one means or another, acquired a television receiver. A substantial proportion—over 60 per cent—had relatively new receivers of a by now obsolete design, so that the market for the modern receiver was confined both by saturation and by the displace- ment in time relative to the evolution of the commodity of the replacement factor. As a further brake upon demand, controls were once again applied to television receivers, inter alio, in 1960. By 1964, therefore, when BBC 2 began, the vast majority of sets in use were incapable of receiving the programme and had an average age of about six years. Following the further curbs imposed in 1965 and twice intensified in 1966 this average age has increased probably to eight and possibly ten years.
There is thus a disproportionately high volume of old and obsolete receivers now in use. They require for their maintenance the continued production of components, including valves and cathode ray tubes, which have long ceased to be part of a current manufacturing programme. Being old equipments they make high demands upon labour. Overall it may well be the case that the diversion of national effort to keeping these obsolete receivers in use has been greater than that conserved by the re- straints imposed upon the manufacture and sale of new equipments. Certainly the cost of ser- vicing the nation's television receivers is very much higher than it would have been had the natural replacement demand not been inappro- priately stifled.
Without the unique maintenance capacity created by the highly developed rental services of this country, it is doubtful whether this large volume of ancient receivers could have been kept going. Quite apart from the fact that a substantial proportion of the nation's receivers, being rented, are subjected to regular processes of maintenance that are rarely applied to indi- vidually owned receivers, the grouping of large numbers of receivers under one control has greatly facilitated the provision of eccentric components and kept down their cost. It is also open to question whether, without a highly- developed rental industry, the skilled labour force needed to meet the situation would have been built up. The reward to the rental industry for its extended salvage operation is the iniquit- ous burden of Selective Employment Tax— imposed, unlike the credit controls, with careful discrimination on the television service industry but not on the makers of pop-corn.
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