ENTER THE SPONSOR
AFEW days before its first birthday, commercial television held an anticipatory celebration by putting on a sponsored programme. Its history is interesting. Pye Ltd., the sponsors, are one of the pioneers of television. Soon after commercial programmes began, Pye's managing director publicly ex- pressed his dissatisfaction with their quality. Presumably the company felt, as many others do, that it could do better itself, given a free hand. One Sunday recently they booked the entire fifteen minutes of an ATV advertising magazine on the net- work, and employed a comedian, Harry Secombe, to plug products then on display at the Radio Show.
So far from sponsoring being used to drag down the level of programmes, as opponents of the TV Bill had feared, it was being used here to pull them up. But what of the legal position? There were mutterings from the other programme contractors that the Act had been infringed. ATV's lawyers denied this; so did Sir Robert Fraser, Director-General of the Independent Television Authority. 'All that the Act says about advertising,' Sir Robert asserted (according toCommercialTelevisionNews), `is that it must be absolutely plain to anybody in their senses that an advertisement is an advertisement and not a pro- gramme.' With respect to Sir Robert, 'all' is a terminological inexactitude : the Act has a great deal more to say about advertising—much of it, to the lay eye, designed to prevent sponsoring. But if Sir Robert is right, then the draughtsmen fell down on the job : for, on his own showing, sponsoring is per- missible. There is nothing in theory to prevent any advertiser from putting on any programme, even Hamlet, provided that he interrupts it often enough to make it clear to anybody in their senses, if any such are watching, that the object of the programme is to advertise a product. The more plugs, the better.
The arrival of sponsoring would not necessarily be a matter for regret. Many firms would put on programmes of a consider- ably higher standard than those Which are now being broad- cast; and bad though other sponsored programmes might be, they certainly could be no worse than the present trash. In fact it could almost be unfortunate that sponsoring is unlikely to -spread, owing to the cost; it is even losing ground in America. Still, it remains true that the Television Act 1954 had safe- guards designed to prevent it; that a sponsored programme can go on the air is only the latest indication how the Act has failed in its makers' purpose.
The Spectator supported the Act in principle; but we argued that in its final form it was unworkable. In this we were wrong. It has proved workable; but only because ways have been found to twist it to mean exactly the opposite to what it was intended to mean; or, failing this, to ignore it. The classic instance concerns 'balance.' The Act requires 'that the pro- grammes maintain a proper balance in their subject matter and a high general standard of quality.' After a few weeks com- plaints began to appear about the lack of balance; serious programmes were being thrown overboard. Sir Robert Fraser, in a letter to The Times, argued that this was not the case; he produced statistics purporting to show that in. fact the com- mercial programmes were as well balanced as the BBC's. The statistics were vulnerable; but in any case the amount of time devoted to serious programmes continued to dwindle. Sir Robert, therefore, had to change his tune. Commercial pro- grammes, he now admits, are not balanced; they cannot be balanced unless the Government hands over the £750,000 it holds in reserve against emergencies.
In other words, the Act is being flouted. The only balance left is between give-away programmes and panel games. The Independent Television Authority has abdicated; its only present function appears to be to act as a supernumary public relations officer for the contractors.
A nice instance of this can be found in Sir Robert's enthusi- astic puff for them in the TV Times this *ea. 'Some people,' he says, 'feared the programmes would be politically coloured. They have been models of impartiality' (his italics). They have, indeed! A high level of impartiality has been attained by removing politics—and controversial subjects of all kinds— from the programmes. A monitor of last week's programmes would have had to report that there was not even one devoted to serious discussion of contemporary issues. This is what is called 'freedom of debate.' It all very well for Sir Robert to boast that he and the contractors get on 'like a house on fire' in making the Act work : but it is a pity he does not start trying to make it work as it was intended to work—to improve the quality of television programmes in this country, not to make them a laughing-stock.
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