Cox and box
Sir: Stuart Hood says (9 June) that the idea of scrapping scheduled programmes to deal with the Arab-Israeli crisis 'would not cross the minds of the present us/ contractors, whose indifference to current affairs is almost complete.'
I am left with the impression that Mr Hood's indifference to actually watching the programmes he criticises is almost complete. It was Granada who asked Mr Anthony Nutting to go to Egypt to interview President Nasser and, as a result, Inde- pendent Television News was the first TV organisa- tion in the world to transmit part of this interview on Sunday night. With the fullest cooperation of Rediffusion, the remainder of the interview was transmitted on Monday night—somewhat ahead of a DEC interview incidentally—and drew a large audience. It is a pity that Mr Hood thinks this programme, for which schedules were rearranged, was 'thrown away.'
Magazine deadlines are somewhat earlier than television deadlines and, therefore, I can only assume that Mr Hood was not able to see Granada's World in Action special on the crisis on Wednesday night (replacing the advertised pro- gramme Cinema which is normally in the Top Ten). In this programme the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Eshkol, was interviewed for the first —and as I write the only—time on television. This programme came out of the laboratories at 4.30 pm and was transmitted at 9.5 pm in the North.
Do I detect a certain inaccuracy in Mr Hood's reporting?
Barrie Heads Executive Director, Granada Television Limited, Manchester 3
Previous page
