Will Waspe's Wispers
Not everything is rosy in the world of television advertising. ITV revenues may be up, but advertising budgets are down — a seeming paradox, but the cutbacks take place everywhere except in the money spent on screen time. Expenditure on new commercials has plummeted, and among the companies who produce them panic prevails. Two sizeable ones, Natural Breaks and the Timothy Gray Partnership, went out of business last month. Smaller fry are wondering where their next reel is coming from.
The wise ones are diversifying. Arrow Productions, for instance, are getting into the educational films and documentary fields. The fact that they are collaborating with the BBC on the Everest documentary should help compensate for the decision of their £25,000-a-year customer, British Steel, to order no new commercials this year.
The profits of Pan
My colleague Skinflint referred some months ago to disturbing rumours about the disposition of the lucrative Peter Pan stage contract, rumours suggesting that considerations other than artistic were involved. With money talking so loudly it will be no surprise if, despite earlier assurances, it goes to one of the showbiz big-timers. But there has been a notable lack of news from the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital to whom Sir James Barrie bequeathed the rights.
But there have been other curious occurrences, among them a change of mind by Stephen Arlen of the London Coliseum about the availability of his theatre for the production.
Mrs Jim Callaghan, chairman of the hospital governors, is said to have sought expert advice. It would be illuminating to know from whom—for qo far no one has consulted Roger Lancelyn Green, recognised as our leading autnority on the play.
Ill wind
Humphrey Burton of LWT has written to correct Aeolus's confusion (Notebook, June 12) over the chronological order of Brian Young's becoming ITA chief and Rupert Murdoch's arrival at LWT; also to say that "Leonard Bernstein's underpants do remain on view from time to time" in his documentary for Unitel (not Intertel): "no changes on this score have been made or requested."
The last in Burton's current series of Aquarius this weekend will feature Covent Garden's retiring musical director Georg Solti, and on Sunday, in Music in the Round, Burton will be talking to jazzman Graham Collier. Aeolus hopes that the privacy of both Solti's and Collier's underpants will be respected.
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