The B.B.C.'s survey on television is a highly interesting social
document. Everyone travelling into London (or other great cites) by rail or road must have been struck by the fact that it is predominantly on small houses occupied to all appearances by roughly the £800-a-year man that television aerials are visible. That is surprising in view of the cost of a television-set—though no doubt the hire-purchase system helps. The surprise is intensified, and the appearance corrected, by the survey report. Three-quarters of the television-sets in Britain, it is stated, belong to persons with incomes of between £225 and £600 a year, and seven out of every ten " viewers " have had no full-time education after fourteen or fifteen. You can make what you like of these facts and the consequences that flow from them, but it is very difficult to make anything much good of them. In the types of homes in which three- quarters of the television-sets are to be found there is pretty certain to be only one living room; the whole family, therefore, must be under the domination of television. Reading goes by the board, children's homework is interfered with, the children themselves are kept up too late. Altogether television must be regarded, not indeed as a necessary evil, for there is nothing at all necessary about it, but as an evil which at this time of day must be accepted. But at least it can be controlled. Any extension of the present hours would be highly regrettable; all- day television, similar to all-day broadcasting, would be a disaster.
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