Victory for Nosey Parker TELEVISION By STUART HOOD N OT since
the publication of the Command Paper setting out the Government's plan for a University of the Air have I been so de- pressed as by the news that our new Postmaster- General—who one might have thought had more urgent jobs to tackle, such as the efficient collection of licences—is considering setting up a Viewers' Council, to act as 'public watchdogs' over both BBC and ITV. The mere fact that he is open to the suggestion is a major victory for the Clean Up TV campaign which has been agitating for precisely such a body. The puritan wing of the Labour party has held out a hand to Mrs Whitehouse, who is duly triumphant. Why the PMG should have chosen to give her this moral support at a moment when her grass- roots campaign was beginning to lose itself in the undergrowth must remain a matter for speculation. It is more interesting to inquire what possible purpose he believes such a Council might serve.
It is not as if BBC and ITV were without advisers already. There are—to begin at the top— the Board of Governors of the BBC and the Board of the Independent Television Authority. The effectiveness of both these bodies naturally depends on the personalities of their chairmen— and, in the case of the BBC, on the power and independence of the Director-General. Their members inevitably are members of some branch of the Establishment, whether it be the trade unions, banking or the universities; they are by definition not ordinary viewers. But they have wide contacts in their own fields and are quick to relay reactions, comments and criticisms from their special spheres. The BBC, moreover, has no fewer than thirty-three advisory councils ranging from the General Advisory Council, a not entirely supine body, which the BBC is obliged to appoint under the terms of the Charter, through advisory committees on re- ligion, agriculture, music, appeals and pro- grammes for immigrants to consultative groups on science and engineering. The ITA, for its part, has it own advisory committees on adult education—some of its members serve on a similar body advising the BBC—and on schools programmes. Its religious policy is supervised by the Central Religious Advisory Council, which also advises the BBC. It is, parenthetically, a body on which the women members—includ- ing a splendid pipe-smoking Anglican lady—are more progressive and better informed than the assembled prelates and divines. In the case of the independent companies there are company committees to advise on religious and educa- tional matters. The members of the boards of directors are also very free with comment.
To appear before any of these advisory com- mittees is a trial of the spirit for any programme- maker. The criticism is often jejune, the com- ments secondhand, the programme suggestions usually unworthy of a trainee director; but it is good for his soul to have to justify himself before a body of laymen. If he is wise he will use these occasions as opportunities to keep in contact with the movements of public opinion, which is neither as static nor as bigoted as the loudest reformers might lead one to believe. They might, indeed, do well to ponder the results of
an inquiry conducted by the Independent
Authority in 1965 'to discover the extent to which viewers find items in programmes dis-
tasteful.' The results were a demonstration of the good sense and tolerance of the viewing public. Asked whether programmes distasteful to some people should be shown or not, only 17 per cent said No; 77 per cent thought they should be shown and supported their view with statements like 'opinions differ' or 'it's a free country' or 'they can turn it off.'
It is the instinct of any good programme- maker to have as many antennae out and active as possible. To put it at its lowest, he needs to. be aware what will go in his particular field —drama, entertainment, documentaries. In a more serious sense, he requires to have a feeling for the climate of the society in which he works. - It is often forgotten by the reformers that television producers and directors live in the same world as they do, move about in it, have wives and children, parents and grandparents, work in the same atmosphere and are exposed to its currents of opinion and taste. In the society in which we live there has been in the last ten years a marked shift of opinion—one of the liberalising documents of the period was the Wolfenden Report, which demonstrated that homosexuality could be openly and decently discussed; it is natural that television pro- grammes should have reflected that shift. There remains the problem of how far one can go, how near the frontiers of opinion one can operate in a mass medium. It is difficult to see what help the programme-maker might hope to receive from a body composed—if the worst came to pass--of representatives of the police, social workers, women's groups, magis- trates, local government workers and youth organisations, all of whom are probably estim- able people in their own professions but entirely ignorant of the problems and responsibilities of communicating to a mass audience.
What, one wonders, would the police repre- sentative on such a body have made of Z Cars. which, when first screened, led to highly emotional reactions from various chief con- stables, but was enthusiastically received by the public and welcomed at a lower level in the force as, at last, something approaching a true picture of what policemen and police work were really like? And how would the protest have been made? In the case of Z Cars the protests were personal and impassioned. They were finally placated as the result of confrontations between programme-makers and police. The history of television is full of occasions when groups or interests have felt themselves deni- grated, believed that programmes were ill- advised, and made their feelings known to the television organisations. These pressures have sometimes been resisted, sometimes given way to—sometimes for no good reason, sometimes rightly, for pressures in themselves are not evil. Some are indeed irresistible. There is, as things stand, no reason why protests should not be
lodged with the BBC or the ITA or, for that matter, with any of the programme companies. In my experience they are considered carefully and fairly. There is no need for a Viewers' Council to make the television authorities aware of the sensitive spots in public opinion, the areas where offence may be inadvertently given, the boundaries of acceptability in our society. Occasionally, on the contrary, what is needed is something to give them the moral courage to stick to their principles.
It is difficult, to come down to practical questions, to see what a Viewers' Council could usefully do. Audience research? There is a mass of information already. Offer criticism and guidance? With what qualifications? The Pil- kington Report is still a rich source book, but it is not under the section of memoranda sub- mitted by 'other organisations' (which include the very ones which would be prominent in such a council) that one turns for enlightenment n television programming. The PMG could, of course, attempt to force the Council upon the broadcasting organisations. This would, one hopes, be resisted by everyone who believes that the independence of broadcasting in this country, which we owe to Reith, is valuable and should be preserved.
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