THE SPECTATOR
• ARTS LETTERS • MONEY. LEISURE TELEVISION
Face to face with LWT
PETER FIDDICK
For myself, I do truly believe I am a most natural conservative and a very pessimist among men. (I do find, don't you, that having got past the correspondence pages one could almost be convinced that all men write this passing-fair style of English, though in fact it's just the Cambridge breed, on account of not having had the Anglo-Saxon. Doubtless the fit will pass as we proceed.) I don't know about opiates of the people, but regular perusal of tele- vision must surely produce in any man conservatism of the deepest kind, a total disbelief in the possibility of change.
Yet in the daylight hours—before I can stagger back to the reality of the box—I find it suggested that these are changing times within television itself. For a month or more, at least until the greater carnage nearer home, my evening newspaper had carried horrendous stories of blood-letting among television executives, surpassed only by the full might of the Grope-squads descending into the slaughter to retrieve details of lunches at the club, of telephone calls from America to Australia, lunches in the country, visits to a Mr Brian Young. Even leader-writers haVe done their thing. And I am indebted to a figure of no less stature than Skinflint for the observation that so long as Mr John Freeman, a new television executive, believes that 'a high degree of economy for its own sake is a virtue and leads to success', all will be profitable. Skinflint, of course, is an optim- ist, as befits Someone—albeit no one identifiable—in the City. Most other people just think it will be different. But I see no reason to expect, as an outcome of the London Weekend affair, that from the viewer's seat the .new regime will appear different from the old, queue at the canteen with the workers though Mr Freeman may.
For what is going to change? Is it the Popularity of the programmes London Weekend shows? Is it the quality of those it originates, or their number? Is it, even, simply the number of us who watch them?
London Weekend has not been produc- ing bad programmes under the old dis- pensation. I am not one who would go to the stake for Aquarius, for it is capable of lapses (such as Humphrey Burton's stub- born interview with Ken Russell) quite as great as Mr Peter Cook's. But it has pro- duced, in the excerpts from the Vienna rtdelio, quite the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen on the small screen, and it is certainly as good as, any of the BBC arts programmes. Yet it is notorious that the network will not take it. This, of course, is the most often-quoted example of the sort of programme Mr Freeman's Weight and diplomacy will forthwith per- suade into other areas. One wishes him well, but even if he succeeds, is it going to be anything more than a goodwill token from the other tycoons?
Remember that the Frost shows were, in
the very early days, shuffled to the parson's nose of the schedules in non-London areas, with nothing of obviously greater merit put in their place. And if both culture-vultures and Frosty make you reach for your spittoon, as is perhaps understandable, consider the case of The Big Match. Since association football is one of the nation's most popular activities, one might have expected that the commercial channel's programmers, cursing their luck at having Saturday-night soccer pre-empted by the BBC'S fat and exclusive contract, would at least make the most of what they do have: The Big Match, with the informed analysis and relaxed presentation of Brian Moore and Jimmy Hill, has had Messrs Coleman and Wolstenholme trailing behind it for the past two seasons. Imagine, then, the surprise of the football fan visiting northern parts recently who, asking why his fooball was adorned with not so much as an
action-replay, received, in effect, the re- sponse: 'Who's Jimmy Hill?' If there is what some programme planner may consider to be a rational explanation for any of this, I do not think I need to hear it. The consumer is entitled, when the talk is tough, to ask simply: 'For whose benefit?' If there are good pro- grammes being produced and not being used, then I find it hard to accept that the fault lies with the producing company.
The wholesale knocking of London Weekend has now reached the pitch where the company is being blamed both for not getting its own programmes on the net- work and for showing imported pap- /Van/7/x, The Untouchables—which every- one else is showing as well. I have no brief whatever for LWT: what troubles me as a viewer is that its troubles might be serving as a diversion from sonic deeper failure of the whole television system, of which what we now see is but a symptom.
It appears to be the case, for instance, that a major contractor does not really need to produce major programmes at all. At a time when the financial pages are pre- ' dieting a strong recovery in the shares of Associated Television, that company has just got its first regular programme since Christmas into the IICIAR Top Twenty, and that is a rather weak comedy series, Coppers End, unlikely to live long in the memory. I gladly acknowledge that this is in part a freak of the networking system and that ATV are the producers of a sub- stantial drama series currently adorning a late Sunday-night slot, but this does not significantly alter the apparent fact that as long as somebody is producing market- able programmes a contractor with a monopoly ITV position in a huge area, seven days a week, can fill his schedules with them and sit pretty.
It is scarcely creative tension, let alone the lash of unbridled competition. When. therefore, I read of Sir Lew, or Lord B or some other eminence, allegedly complain- ing to the ITA that the antics at London Weekend are bringing discredit on the system, I reach for the Alka-Seltzer.
It is not as though there is no hole to fill. The very cause of London Weekend's troubles show where the hole is: on Satur- day evenings, where for months the BBC have been grabbing large audiences early in the evening with a row of the only pro- grammes—C/iff Richard, Dixon and Cilia —it has regularly got into the Top Twenty. Highly problematical for mit% of course, since it has only three nights to collect its revenue, and this is one of the most im- portant. But the ratings in the regions— where they have no need to run the same programmes as LWT if they think they can do better—indicate virtually the same collapse in the face of the BBC. Why do they not produce their own programmes to fight back? Could it be that with the rest of the week to earn revenue, the others do not need to bother? Could it be, more precisely. that nearly all the most successful light entertainment shows on ITV of late have been coming from Thames —the midweek London contractors and therefore the last people to worry about Saturday nights?
And then there is the patrial in the woodpile. It is not the sliehtest use any- one—be he tycoon or leader-writer- calling for high-minded action from the Independent Television Authority when a major cause of the problem is the entry into the mass-audience stakes of a new- comer of such impeccable ancestry as the itr. It has two channels to maintain its cultural spread and it has besides—if Skinflint will forgive me—the willingness to spend a lot of money. Change? The most important change of the past three weeks as far as London Weekend is concerned, is that both The CO Richard Show and Cilia have ended their BBC runs.
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