THE INDEPENDENT TELEVISION AUTHORITY
has been scared out of Its few wits by the mounting criticism of breaches of the Television Act. Mr. Christopher Mayhew's Bill to fix by statute the amount of ad- vertising permitted was the red light; although the advertising interests on the Tory benches in the House of Commons can be relied upon to talk the Bill to death, or otherwise stifle it, the Authority is not happy at the growth of a public attitude that it is simply the tool of the contractors. Now, I learn, the Authority has decided to make a show of independence. As one would expect, its decision is as foolishly in- flexible as its behaviour hitherto has been cravenly supple. It has made a rule, I gather, that no interval is to be permitted in any play whatsoever unless there is a 'time-gap' in the play at that point. Even if the play in question is a stage play, and the intervals the author's own, it is still for- bidden. Patrick Hamilton's Rope, for instance, could not be played with intervals on ITV because the author wrote it in three continuous acts; nor Edgar Wallace's famous thriller The Terror; nor Christopher Fry's A Phoenix Too Frequent nor Mr. Ted Willis's Hot Summer Night--successfully performed on television before the rule was introduced; nor Sartre's Huis Clos nor The Tempest nor The Comedy of Errors nor most of Aristophanes.
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