When the new franchises were advertised at the end of 1966 the general assessment was that the new company, Yorkshire, was being introduced to dilute the power and profitability of the four major companies, and perhaps to make life more difficult for them; thereafter, change for the sake of change would bring in two or perhaps three new regional contractors.

The real problem facing us at ABC Television was how to find a new area to replace our ‘lost week-end’ as Peter Black of the Daily Mail called it. The company’s reputation stood high with the Authority, but it would now be homeless. London was our objective. Like the other companies, we thought that the Authority would be content with simply weakening Rediffusion by lopping off the Friday evening. We at ABC therefore decided to apply for the London two-and-a-half day week-end contract, and, as second choice, the seven-day Midlands contract. The boards of directors of all the companies had studied their potential revenue and costs figures before reaching decisions. There was little difficulty in convincing our own Board that although the extra evening’s programme in London would be costly, the resulting revenue for the week-end would provide a profit at least equalling ABC’s current £3,000,000 [£55,000,000 today, allowing for inflation] and perhaps more if we worked hard enough at it.

The Authority had been doing its own arithmetic. It was on the assessments of their canny Director of Finance, Tony Curbishley, that the Authority had divided the five contracts as evenly and as fairly as they could. Curbishley, who had access to all the details of every company’s finances, had worked out the potential revenue of each area, deducted the running costs, and he calculated that the net profit on each of the four major companies would be £3,000,000, with smaller Yorkshire below this level. It was Curbishley who had been responsible for re-dividing London’s revenue and he calculated that the total income would be evenly split if the London week-end contract began at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. on Fridays. According to his figures both of the London companies should show a profit of £3,000,000. This confirmed the figures we had worked out and presented to our own Board. The fact that London Weekend failed to achieve such profits in the early years reflected their early difficulties and miscalculations.

And perhaps now was the opportunity for new blood to be infused? It soon began to leak out that certain BBC executives were being nominated by would-be new contractors and were, in fact, appearing at the Authority’s Brompton Road hearings alongside the new applicants. Then, ominously, Michael Peacock resigned from his job as Controller of BBC1 to join Aidan Crawley’s London Weekend Television consortium. Whilst other BBC executives were known to have allowed their names to go forward, to be revealed only to the Authority, we decided that some sort of assurance must have been given to Peacock before he would venture from security into the unknown. It was discovered that he had been nominated as Managing Director of the proposed company, and other BBC names began to emerge: Humphrey Burton (music and opera), Doreen Stephens (head of BBC children’s programmes), Frank Muir (supervisor of comedy shows) and also John Freeman and David Frost. Such expertise and renown would be almost irresistible to Lord Hill.

By this time there was confusion and suspicion in the ITV boardrooms and on the third floor at the BBC. For everyone concerned, the final pronouncement by Lord Hill could not come too soon. The Authority reached its final decisions on the new contractors at their meeting towards the end of May and it was decided that the Chairman would make the announcement two days later, on a Sunday, to avoid Stock Exchange reactions.

On the fateful Sunday morning the Chairmen of the three London contenders returned with their cohorts to Brompton Road for their final interviews with Lord Hill and Sir Robert Fraser. Thus it was that London Weekend was awarded the programme contract it had sought, while John Spencer Wills, Chairman of Rediffusion Television, was told by Lord Hill of the Authority’s decision – which was to merge Rediffusion with ABC Television and to award the London weekday contract to the new joint company. There would be an equal sharing of profits but fifty-one per cent of the voting shares and the control of the new company would go to ABC, who would provide the managing director and the controller of programmes. Lord Hill described John Spencer Wills’ reaction as ‘deeply shocked, if not flabbergasted, but courteous throughout’.

Next it was ABC Television’s turn and I went with my Chairman, Sir Philip Warter and the deputy-chairman Robert Clark. We were given the same formula, with the addition that Lord Hill and Sir Robert Fraser congratulated me on my appointment as Managing Director of the new London company. It was only on the day after the meeting with Lord Hill and Bob Fraser that I began to realise fully the enormity of the task upon which I had been so suddenly embarked. My first thought was for the staff; nearly three thousand men and women employed by both companies were now reading in their newspapers that something had happened to their jobs. To operate the new company (and what should we call it?) for four-and-a-half days in London would need fewer staff than Rediffusion employed and more than had worked for ABC. There would be jobs for little more than half of the total payroll of the merged companies. Lord Hill had already tried to quell rising apprehension among the ITV workers by a promise that there would be a job for everyone – somewhere.

It was important too to retain the most valuable programme executives and I had to make rapid decisions as to who should be in control of the six programme departments, bearing in mind the equal division between the two original companies and the knowledge that some people had committed themselves already to new contractors.

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This brought incessant problems of morale and money. The ABC staff, trained in Manchester, were facing upheaval from their comfortable homes to start afresh in a ‘foreign’ city. Studio staffs had their loyalties split down the middle and were uncertain whether they would be working for LWT or for the new and unnamed company arising from the demise of ABC and Rediffusion.

ABC paid out half a million [£9 million now allowing for inflation] in redundancy settlements, and Rediffusion almost twice as much. There was also the question of pensions, and transfer of rights. Since Rediffusion’s pension funds had been invested with typical business acumen there were handsome benefits for those whose careers had developed with the growth of their company. Somehow we managed to keep ABC Television going and by the end of our last financial year (March 1968) we had a turnover of £11,753,000 [£203,000,000] and showed a trading profit of £2,159,000 [£37,350,000]. The parent Corporation could have no complaint about the return on its original investment.

When we came to giving the company its name I was resolutely opposed to any more initials. I had always envied the solidity and sturdiness of a single word like Granada or Rediffusion. I believe in descriptive titles for companies and products and I would have liked to include the magic word ‘London’ but already this belonged to London Weekend Television. (I had no regrets when they began to use the initials LWT for in the process they lost some of the impact of the word ‘London’.)

As well, I wanted a name that would lend itself to a graphic symbol. My first thought was Tower Television, combining the symbols of the old and the new, Tower Bridge and the General Post Office tower. In the end we settled for the name of Thames, influenced partly because our Teddington studios were alongside the river, near the ancient lock. It was also a name of international recognisability and our future expansion lay in world-wide sales. Above all, Thames was a romantic name, for many have come to London as I did, to stand on the bridges and gaze on the breath-taking skylines. My own favourite skyline was the rooftops of Whitehall, as seen from the bridge over the lake in Green Park, and it was this that led to the London skyline which became the symbol of Thames Television. We did take artistic liberties with our spires and somehow the Post Office tower popped up from behind St Paul’s Cathedral. The London Evening News calmly ‘lifted’ the skyline idea, turned it into a silhouette and used the result as their own symbol. We could hardly object, because London belongs to all of us who live and work there.

The signature music came to me when I saw a gypsy woman selling lavender in a Chelsea street. She was singing ‘Who’ll buy my sweet lavender?’ The street cries of London were the very first singing ‘commercials’. When the day came to launch Thames officially with a rather pompous opening ceremony at Mansion House, Lord Mayor and all, a pretty girl strolled into the gold-plated hall with a trayful of sprigs of lavender, singing ‘our song’. She happened to be a soprano from Sadler’s Wells, but the simple melody was a refreshing change from the customary fanfares. Some fortunate composer was commissioned to ‘orchestrate’ the tune, almost to the point of unrecognisability I regret to say, and it probably provided him with a pension for life.

But it was not all harmony in Television House when we began to move in to the former Rediffusion headquarters. I took a corner office in the building, from where I sighted Ivor Novello’s former roof-top flat, and Thames’ occupation began whilst the remaining staff of Rediffusion were still struggling loyally to complete the advertised programme schedule. Brian Tesler was already planning our new ‘mix’ for London weekdays. We decided on which ABC series to retain, and which of Rediffusion’s. Beyond that we planned new series like Frontier, a vigorous North West India episodic tale of war and love. For economy reasons this had to be filmed in the mountains of North Wales, which surprisingly were not all that different from the authentic Himalayas.

Rediffusion’s venerable current affairs programme This Week, was an inevitable choice, but we decided to drop the two quiz programmes which had overstayed their welcome and possibly had handicapped Rediffusion in their application, Take Your Pick and Double Your Money. We also decided to discontinue ATV’s Crossroads because of the poor quality of scripts and acting compared with Coronation Street. This turned out to be a mistake and the series had to be brought back by sheer public insistence. For this reason Crossroads episodes transmitted in the London area always languished six months behind the Birmingham sequences. Only years later were the episodes synchronised, with Noelle Gordon interpreting to the London audience in a special ‘what-happened-then’ edition the missing strands of the endless saga.

The post Who will buy my sweet lavender? appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Lord Mountbatten was born in the first year of the century and had taken part in the pageant of history, with a seat in the Royal Box. Always attracted by the visual arts and a pioneer in the use of the motion picture for the training and entertainment of the Royal Navy, he had turned down all the offers to publish his written autobiography. It was typical of Mountbatten to choose the most up-to-date of all media, television, as his means of personal communication. His agreement with Rediffusion was that he would make himself available, together with his rare collection of diaries, letters, photographs, films and memories, to record his life on camera. In return he would possess the overseas rights of the resulting programmes, for the benefit of his Broadlands estate. Rediffusion assigned to him their distinguished documentary producer, Peter Morley, and for three years these two men worked together, with increasing understanding. Lord Mountbatten has admitted the early attempts to interview him on film were disappointing, but inexorably he mastered the technique and became an accomplished professional broadcaster.

I believe the original concept was a series of twenty-six half-hour programmes, although no networking arrangement with the other companies had been negotiated. During lengthy screening sessions Brian Tesler and I reviewed the results with Peter Morley; in ‘rough cut’ we looked at hours of library material, mostly in black and white, with new material filmed in colour of Lord Mountbatten returning to his scenes of glory.

Our decision was to make this the show piece for Thames. We took the bold course and decided to make twelve one-hour episodes, transmitted at the peak time of nine o’clock, though we had no illusion that any of the other stations would be likely to follow our example.

All this we explained to Lord Mountbatten and his film producer son-in-law Lord Brabourne, a joint ally valuable to both of us. I remember how Lord Mountbatten came down to our riverside Teddington studios to get to know us better. After luncheon aboard our ‘retired’ boat, the m.v. Iris, a survivor of Dunkirk, we went on a tour of the premises. On the nearby car park the Drama Department were recording a section of Frontier, where a firing squad in British Army uniforms was lined up to execute an Indian spy. As we were walking towards them the production halted and out of habit Lord Mountbatten ‘inspected’ the shooting squad. They must have looked a motley lot, actors in uniforms hired from Berman’s. There was only one real soldier around, a regimental sergeant major seconded from Aldershot to act as military adviser and obviously enjoying a few leisurely days at Teddington supervising an Equity squad and drilling them for the sequence. His embarrassment can be imagined when the raggle-taggle of actors suddenly found themselves being inspected by the Supremo himself! The RSM’s face was red as Lord Mountbatten gave him a curt nod. Inside, a prison play was in production. Lord Mountbatten was impressed with the dress rehearsal of a scene where the prisoner was taken from the condemned cell to face the Governor in his office. The reproduction was accurate, as Lord Mountbatten knew from his recent survey of prisons and subsequent report to the Government on the subject. He smilingly congratulated me afterwards on the excellent organisation of having troops on parade and a prison play laid on for him!

This was a pleasant interlude away from the attrition which had broken out in the ITCA headquarters where the new “Big Five’ were now meeting to plan the first season’s programmes of the new phase of ITV. Interesting new characters had arrived upon the familiar scene, as the principals turned up with their adherents. The infiltration of the new had begun.

One familiar face was missing. Rediffusion’s former protagonist, John McMillan, had been submerged in the blending of ABC and Rediffusion. Cecil Bernstein, Lew Grade and I had agreed that John McMillan’s knowledge and experience should not disappear from ITV, and we lost no time in creating for him a new job in the industry, as Director of Sport. Such an appointment was not welcomed by the incoming London Weekend Television who were now to be responsible for Saturday sport and wanted to take over ABC’s World of Sport.

At the programme planning meetings the old guard was much in evidence; Cecil Bernstein, with another Granada pioneer, Denis Forman; Lew Grade, with his latest number two, Robin Gill, a pressurising young man with ambitions to succeed even Lew Grade himself; Brian Tesler and I, who had now moved up the ladder from the week-ends and provinces to London. The new companies were represented by Yorkshire’s Ward Thomas and Donald Baverstock, and London Weekend’s buoyant team of Michael Peacock and Tom Margerison, both eager to teach new tricks to old masters.

The situation was clearly defined. In the assessment of the Authority, four companies had equal strength and opportunity, with practically the same potential advertisement revenue and the same potential profit, £3,000,000. Yorkshire came fifth in size and revenue, but with their fair share of networked programming guaranteed by the Authority.

Lew Grade had been swayed by Robin Gill’s financial calculations to concentrate on the Midlands contract, but now he was without his foothold in London and was one more regional contractor. As a former tenant of the London Weekend preserve he was also smarting under the deprecatory comments Michael Peacock continued to make to the press about ATV’s shortcomings, and his promises of more uplifting programmes at week-ends. Surrounded by his shining knights from the BBC, he believed implicitly in what London Weekend’s colourful application for the franchise had set forth. Now he was determined to prove his words and to revitalise the week-end’s television.

Granada had been little disturbed by the changes, except that they now faced the problem of contributing from Lancashire their quota of Saturday and Sunday programmes on a reduced income. Yorkshire had its own task of starting off with new staff and without any programmes in reserve. They would have to originate fewer programmes than the other four, but correspondingly they had to network more than anyone else and therefore their ratings depended upon whatever new programmes were available for them. The programme output of Granada, ATV and Thames was predictable, but after the shouting had died down would LWT be capable of supplying an effective Saturday-Sunday output?

Even when the interchange of programmes was agreed payments would still have to be arranged between the five companies; a new system had to be devised. An immediate issue was that if LWT were to be given absolute control of Saturday afternoon sport why was the budget for World of Sport so suddenly inflated? What percentage of Midland, Lancashire and Yorkshire sports contributions would be included in the reconstructed programme?

Peacock and Tom Margerison faced up to this with apparent equanimity but when they returned to their office in Burlington Street there must have been some puzzled consultations with their colleagues. BBC-trained executives were used to competing in a gentlemanly way for allocations of the overall budget and once the figures were settled they simply ordered programmes from the appropriate departments. They had merely to ask for fifty hours of drama, sixty hours from Light Entertainment, and so on, then await the detailed proposals. ITV programme controllers had to go back to their studios and then make their own programmes. At LWT there was little understanding of the intricacies of ITV programme finance and the proper division of costs. Nor was the scheduling, planned with the other four major companies, the final stage; there still remained the ten regional companies to be convinced of the workability of the schedules.

The final judgement, though, would come from the public, and there was a wide difference between the time-honoured BBC policy of giving the public what was good for them, and the ITV attitude of trying to offer the public what they would like to view. If the public did not respond to whatever was new and revolutionary in the LWT week-end schedule then the advertisers, an ultra-conservative group, would probably sit back and wait until the required audience was assembled, just as they had done in the early and desperate days of ITV.

It was in this uneasy and uncertain mood that ITV was relaunched in its new career in August 1967. Many tried and favourite programmes had been thrown out of the new schedule. Unknown and unresearched programmes were being tendered by three new companies; a percentage of failure was inevitable. Unfortunately, too, a new method of audience research was being introduced. TAM Rating (Television Audience Measurement) was another of the casualties of the era of change, to be replaced by Audits of Great Britain’s new system (“son of Tam’ some called it). The new means of audience appraisal had the backing of the Joint Industry Committee for Television Advertising Research (JICTAR) and therefore was financed collectively by advertisers, agencies and the programme companies. It was an improved system but two years would go by before its new standards of measurement would be understood and accepted.

Meanwhile, according to the first JICTAR figures the audience for ITV had shrunk alarmingly, almost overnight.

The post Mountbatten’s ratings appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Then came the technicians’ strike. Disenchanted staff, suddenly transplanted from one county to another, or even from one part of London to another, were demanding compensation, displacement money, new agreements, new safeguards, new conditions. Men doing exactly the same jobs in the same studios were claiming redundancy payments. Men transported from Manchester to Leeds wanted money for new houses, legal fees, removal costs, and ‘displacement’ compensation. Who, after all, wanted to give up Manchester United for Leeds United?

ITV was crippled and the BBC scooped up the audience, as certified by JICTAR, basely backfiring on its new supporters. Advertisers switched away from the uncertainties of television and returned to the comparative reliability of the press. As if this was not enough for the programme contractors the Government decided to increase the levy on television advertising. Like everyone else, ministers and their civil servants had read The Times, Financial Times and Daily Telegraph, gloating on the financial bonuses Lord Hill was supposed to have handed out with bouquets to consortia, companies and a few Midas-minded individuals. In view of these predictions the Treasury moved in. Meanwhile, those of us who had laboured in these vineyards for twelve years without any capital gains at all glowered with some envy at the newcomers who were to amass fortunes simply by entering the industry.

In July 1969, within a year of the inauguration of the new chapter of ITV, the government levy on television advertising revenue was increased by the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Roy Jenkins, scalping another £3,000,000 [£52 million now allowing for inflation] out of the revenue.

Once again Independent Television was in a struggle for survival. In its first year Thames could show a profit of only £759,000 [£13 million], a poor return on its £7,000,000 [£121 million] capital employed on a six-year contract. Yet the warriors who had been through such experiences before were accustomed to the switchback career of the industry and when they were plunging down to the Big Dipper’s depths they knew how to hold on to their seats. To Granada and ATV it had become a way of life, and Thames had sprung from sturdy stock. Yorkshire, too, was no newcomer, for the staff had been recruited mostly from ABC and Rediffusion, and the Managing Director, Ward Thomas, had reared a small company, Grampian Television. His task at Leeds had not been easy because although Yorkshire’s brand new studios had managed to open on time their transmitting mast on the wilds of Emley Moor had been blown down in a gale, causing a £250,000 [£4½ million] loss of revenue.

It was now that London Weekend Television found themselves in a game where professionalism was all; not only in the art of television but professionalism in the business of television. They were in a do-it-yourself industry, where you not only had to conceive programmes, but you also had to produce them yourself, sometimes having to argue with staff and technicians about the conditions of making the programmes. It was an industry, too, where your future depended upon the customers’ support and without the viewer-customers you would not attract the advertisers, and without advertisers you would have no income.

A television programme company is an exceptional animal. It has to be a dynamic (but not explosive) band of artists, engineers and salesmen sharing a single aim: to produce a public service of imaginative quality. The advertising salesman must be sympathetic to the creative man’s ambitions; and the engineer to his foibles. The creative man has to meet the engineers half-way and he must have also sufficient business acumen to appreciate that without ammunition from him the salesman will not be able to raise the money for his own livelihood and, sometimes, his indulgences.

London Weekend Television was like an international football side of brilliant individuals but untrained as a team. When their confidential application was finally published in a pamphlet, The Open Secret, the prospectus was revealed to be a scintillating piece of authorship but lacking in practicability. LWT’s programmes and planning did not appeal enough to the public, the advertisers, or the other companies. As the week-end ratings subsided Granada, ATV and Yorkshire were unwilling to let their most effective programmes be slotted into the week-end schedules, and struggled to keep them within the security of the successful weekday schedule. There were also unfortunate press statements ones like Michael Peacock’s: ‘The trouble is that ITV believes that people stop thinking at weekends,’ and the epitaph spoken by the programme controller Cyril Bennett in a moment of truth when introducing LWT’s 1969/1970 plans: ‘The first duty of a commercial station is to survive’.

Michael Peacock took on a mammoth job; with loyal and better support he might have survived. He had to start from scratch, in studios which were less than up-to-date and with studio star disgruntled at the loss of employers who had kept them happy. There was no real and united production team at the top, only a collection of talented individualists who did not have the experience or the patience to weather the inevitably frustrating early years. There were sensational resignations and at last Michael Peacock was fired by his board two years after winning the contract. Several of his supporters who had been signatories to the original application resigned in sympathy with him.

After two years of headlines and front-page publicity, from the euphoria of the successful application and the promises of irresistible week-end programmes, to uninhibited full-page advertisements boosting its own talent, LWT appointed its new chairman and Chief Executive, John Freeman, and finally settled down into the new pattern of ITV.

With the limelight focussed on its competitor, Thames Television went quietly and unspectacularly about its job of welding together the choice ingredients of two companies with much solid achievement behind them. Out of the disappointments and disarray, a group with rare experience and proven ability was taking shape within Thames, which was to remain almost unchanged for six years. One of my earliest moves was to take thirty programme people, the most creative in the new departments, away to Brighton for a couple of days, to get to know each other and to exchange ideas, and to air publicly the more constructive critical comments overheard in the local pubs and in our Thames club.

The post All fall down appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

My other objective was of course to break down those barriers created by any merger when it brings together executives from rival companies of totally different philosophies. This was only the beginning of a long and tortuous process, for the loyalties of Rediffusion staff were deep and it took several years to overcome their natural resentment of ABC control being forced upon them. I knew that total integration of the two companies could only be attained by joint achievements, when everyone would be proud to work under the banner of the new company, Thames. Therefore this was a further inducement (if any were needed) for Thames to emerge as the leader in current affairs and informational programmes, in addition to its acknowledged strength in entertainment and drama.

The highspot, I decided, would be The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten which had been a Rediffusion creation. Once having decided to play this as a trump card and break away from the ITV network practice of putting on documentary series at off-peak time I tried to induce ATV, Granada and Yorkshire to follow Thames’ lead and run the series at 9 p.m. This proposal was gently supported by the Authority (although not made a ‘requirement’) but it was not found acceptable, and others slotted the programmes for 10.30 p.m. directly after News at Ten, athough eventually one or two of the regions did follow our lead.

In a despairing effort to coax the two most powerful executives, Cedi Bernstein and Lew Grade, into nine o’clock networking with us I harnessed the driving force of the dauntless Lord Mountbatten. During one of the social events we cornered Lew and Cecil, and Lord Mountbatten went straight into the attack. Lew was immovable: ‘Howard must be mad, putting on your programme against the BBC at nine! That’s when the BBC put on all those sexy plays with bad language. You’ll get slaughtered. Now when I put on the programmes, after the news at 10.30, there’ll be no opposition.’ (No opposition, I thought, only football matches and feature films.) Lord Mountbatten did not withdraw from his attack until Lew Grade told him: ‘I guarantee, Lord Mountbatten, that ATV will get better ratings than Thames. In fact, I’m so sure I’ll bet on it. If Thames get higher ratings than ATV I’ll pay you five hundred pounds.’ In fact, Thames did achieve higher ratings at 9 p.m. than ATV at 10.30 p.m. and I reminded Lew Grade of this bet. ‘I know, I’ve already sent Mountbatten my cheque.’ He lit a new cigar and added ‘Cheap at the price, wasn’t it?’

Thus when Thames next offered a series of equal importance – The World at War – the companies all agreed to follow our lead and network this at 9 p.m. The programmes were rarely out of the top ten. For once, we did bring out the brass band to launch The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten with a flourish of trumpets and drums, for this series clearly had the stamp of success. We decided to have three ‘premieres’ at the Imperial War Museum, which had been such a valuable source of material for us. The first showing was for Lord Mountbatten’s military colleagues, the other for the Queen and her family, and the third for the press. The premiere for Her Majesty was probably more royal than any previous occasion, attracting the entire royal family with the exception of the Duke of Gloucester who was ill.

I found with Lord Mountbatten that in spite of his forceful personality he was susceptible to reasoned resistance, and there were several occasions when he gave in to determined argument. Our opinions differed about the values of various episodes depicting his career. For the press screening he wanted to show the episode he had selected for the Queen, his magnificent days in India. I agreed that nothing could be better for the Royal screening but it was not the right episode for the press. I wanted the second of the series, The Kings Depart, which told the story of his marriage to Edwina Ashley and their honeymoon in Hollywood, where they had made a picture which was preserved in his astonishing collection of Mountbatten films. The honeymooners had stayed at the home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and taken part in a film Nice and Friendly, with Charlie Chaplin and the ‘Kid’, Jackie Coogan. It was funny and touching and was inevitably a hit with the newspaper men. Lord Mountbatten agreed afterwards that it was the correct decision. Our sales organisation went on to distribute the series on behalf of his Trust throughout the world.

For the first time we were able to break into French television. Only Mountbatten could have gone direct to De Gaulle to have the series shown in France. He then proceeded to re-record the commentaries in French, and indefatigably went through the same process to record a German version when German television also took the programmes. Our only failure was in the United States, where in spite of all the pressures and efforts the networks once again refused to find time for a series of British documentaries. Lord Mountbatten had Henry Ford as his house guest at Broadlands, for what I anticipated would be the most expensive outing of Mr Ford’s life, to sponsor the series in America. Although Mr Ford was willing, the American network concerned would not accept the programmes because they thought it would be disadvantageous to their ratings.

This series helped to consolidate the network, as well as Thames. Weekdays were now firmly established, partly because of the variable performance of the week-end schedules. The unpredictability and unreliability of Friday evening and week-end programmes disturbed the advertisers, who always wanted to be sure that their commercials would reach a known and countable audience. This could be guaranteed only on weekday television.

Thames could now claim leadership of the network, for the most effective programmes were concentrated from Monday to Thursday, based on Thames’ formula of the best of ABC and Rediffusion, plus new programmes, reinforced by the cream of the output of the three major regional companies. All this we celebrated at our first staff dance in January 1969, symbolising the union of the two companies. We had to take the huge Lyceum ballroom in the Strand to accommodate the staff of 1,600 plus their wives, husbands and friends, jubilant and secure after two years of doubts and hazards. All this gave me some satisfaction – not least that after twelve years of journeying from London to Manchester and Birmingham it was a joy to have my travels limited to Teddington.

Thames had moved into its new building on the Euston Road, which had been designed for the next phase of television, and we went forward with confidence into the world of colour. Now we set ourselves new sights with large-scale programmes which would take two or three years to mature.

Yet all was not well in the pastures of Golden Square. For years there had been trepidation about the inevitable sale of Warner Brothers’ share interest in ABPC; with Jack Warner’s advancing years speculation and rumour had opened up all sorts of possibilities. Then came a stranger at the door. At the end of January 1968 Electric & Musical Industries Ltd, had informed the Associated British Picture Corporation that they had agreed to purchase from Warner Brothers four million Ordinary Stock Units and thus acquired twenty-five per cent of the issued Ordinary Capital of the Corporation. Sir Philip Warter announced that the two companies had agreed to co-operate in the ‘full development of their combined resources in the field of entertainment at home and overseas. To this end the Board of the Corporation has invited EMI to nominate two directors for the Board of the Corporation.’ The two directors were John Read and Bernard Delfont.

Now the solid Associated British Picture Corporation began to feel the tremors of changes ahead. But Thames Television was consolidating its position in the television industry.

The post Consolidations appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Lord Normanton had died in office and the Chairmanship of the BBC had become vacant. In one of those occasional swings of the pendulum when power passes from Chairman to Director-General, or vice versa, Sir Hugh Greene had developed into a Director-General with character and personality strong enough to assume control of the Corporation’s policies and activities. His liberal attitudes towards programmes and programme-makers were less popular outside the BBC. It might be all very well to brush aside protesting do-gooders like the reforming Mary Whitehouse but it could be hazardous to antagonise a Prime Minister.

When the day came to decide on who should occupy the Chairman’s seat on the BBC Board of Governors the final choice rested with one man, the Prime Minister. There are two versions of what happened. One account is that during a Cabinet meeting the Prime Minister passed a scribbled note to his Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs, the Rt Hon Herbert Bowden, and asked him whether he had any preference for being appointed Chairman of the BBC or of Independent Television. ‘Bert’ Bowden was nearing the summit of an impressive career but, for domestic reasons, the travels essential to his Commonwealth duties had become irksome and he had notified the Prime Minister that he would welcome a transfer to another post in Britain.

When he read the message it did not take him long to make up his mind. He knew Sir Robert Fraser and liked him; Sir Hugh Greene was an unknown quantity and from hearsay the prospect was not attractive. Although the Minister had been an opponent of Independent Television in the beginning, his respect had grown for its accomplishments, and he decided that this was where his future might lie. He accepted the job, and the peerage that went with it. Lord Aylestone became Chairman of the Independent Television Authority.

The more familiar version is that the Prime Minister, dissatisfied with the BBC and its domination by the Director-General, came to the conclusion that the only remedy was to appoint a combative Chairman. Impressed with the performance of Lord Hill at ITV and his domination of its Director-General and members of the Authority, Mr Wilson decided to use the shock tactic of installing as Chairman of the BBC the ‘general’ in command of the opposition.

Perhaps when he contemplated such a switch Mr Wilson had been finally impressed by the firm way in which Lord Hill had dealt with the programme companies and his effective handling of the press at the Sunday afternoon conference to announce the changes. It was only six weeks after the press conference that Lord Hill was telephoned at his home in Harpenden and summoned to Downing Street to meet the Prime Minister on the following afternoon. Mr Wilson was accompanied by the Postmaster-General, then Mr Edward Short. The Prime Minister first complimented Lord Hill on his good work at the ITA and then offered him the Chairmanship of the BBC. Lord Hill’s own reflection on this was:

The Prime Minister had not given me a choice between an extension of my job at the ITA or the acceptance of the BBC Chairmanship. If he had, I suspect that I might well have accepted an extension of the ITA Chairmanship.

The one factor about which there was no doubt was the Prime Minister’s intention to put politicians in control of BBC and ITA.

Lord Hill moved into Broadcasting House and began a stormy regime at the BBC where the news of his appointment had been received with anger and bewilderment. A cold reception awaited him from the Board of Governors.

Lord Aylestone told me that his reception at Brompton Road, too, was chilly. The way he assessed it, everyone was speculating as to why he had been sent there, but before long his friendliness and his candour thawed out the freeze and he became the most popular Chairman with the staff of the Authority.

His first action had been to study the transcripts of all the interviews for the new franchises. His conclusions were that Television West-and-Wales had been treated fairly but he was not entirely happy with the handling of Rediffusion.

Born in Cardiff, where his parents ran a small but unsuccessful bakery, Bert Bowden became Labour member for Leicester South in 1945, gaining a safe seat. His five years at the Authority were extended to seven and a half years and he left with the goodwill of the staff and all the companies. A modest and simple man, his tastes in many ways reflected the programme preferences of the public, and above all he was totally honest and direct in his approach to problems. He was accessible to all and overcame most difficulties by applying ordinary commonsense.

Lord Hill’s legacy of new companies became Lord Aylestone’s baby, with all the pangs of youthfulness. There was also the task of finding a successor for Sir Robert Fraser, who was due to retire. I know that Lord Aylestone’s first preference for a new Director-General would have been John Freeman and an approach was made. At the time John Freeman was not attracted but ultimately, when the chaotic situation at London Weekend was heading for disaster, the company was salvaged by the appointment of John Freeman in the combined role of Chairman and Chief Executive, with Aidan Crawley becoming president.

Thames Television had succeeded in mastering most of the problems of a merger and was creating no difficulties for the new Authority Chairman. After a successful launching at the Mansion House Thames had reached the end of its first half year and in spite of the industry’s troubled re-start the Company looked well set for a good run.

Then came rumblings of another change. EMI had made a bid to take over ABC, half owners of Thames Television.

The post Over the Hill appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

There was little accord at the top. The brilliant lawyer, Eric Fletcher, as Deputy Chairman, was an imaginative appointment by Warner Brothers and his strong personality influenced the Chairman, Sir Philip Warter, who was in a role where confidence, drive and leadership were essential. The combination of the Chairman and Deputy Chairman, backed by the might of Warner Brothers, made it almost impossible for the main survivor of the original John Maxwell team, Robert Clark, to produce important British films at Elstree studios or to expand the Corporation beyond cinema exhibition. The power struggles at the summit kept the Board of the Corporation occupied with its internal affairs whilst in the City ABPC became regarded as dormant, ripe for take-over.

Over the years many bidders had been rumoured and as the fortunes of Warner Brothers themselves fluctuated in the United States, and the ageless Jack Warner began at last to grow venerable, approaches for the Warner holding in ABPC were openly discussed in the United States. British Government regulations controlling the ownership of British cinemas and studios had tightened up since the original wartime transaction, and American film organisations regarded some of the difficulties as insurmountable. The financial success of the Corporation’s only important subsidiary, ABC Television, had made the prospect more valuable but correspondingly more difficult, because of the strict limitations on foreign control of a British commercial television company. At least one of the American networks had studied ABPC’s financial structure primarily for the possibility of gaining ABC Television but the Government’s safeguards effectively protected British ownership.

The Board of ABPC did surprisingly little to defend its vulnerability or to expand its activities. Robert Clark, who had become a millionaire through his dealings in the property market, was understood to be anxious to acquire all or part of the Warner shares if they were offered for sale, but if this was his ambition it was never fulfilled. Meantime his expertise in property values had steered the Corporation towards its wealth in the ownership of cinemas occupying valuable central sites in hundreds of towns and cities.

The Corporation squatted on its mountain of cinemas like a sitting hen. Detailed reports were prepared for them on other industries, other companies, other ventures. Bulky grew the portfolios but the decision was almost inevitably a rejection or a postponement. It took me long years to push, nudge and coax the Corporation into Independent Television. When ABC Television became their most important asset, apart from the properties they owned, I did my best to urge them further into associated fields of opportunity. As the profits from television multiplied these were diverted into the ailing cinema business. The cinema executives, who predominated on the Board, were campaigning for the television profits to be invested in bowling centres on the basis that it was a fad which America had adopted and Britain would follow. It was also a practical way of using empty cinemas which had ceased to pay their way.

I was the only director arguing that we should diversify into by-products of television, particularly wired television. Granada had started up in this activity, as well as in music and publishing. ATV was in records, music and theatres. Rediffusion had not only expanded its wired television business but had acquired Wembley Stadium and was investing in other branches of entertainment.

I almost lost heart after I had brought to the boardroom an attractive opportunity for them to acquire an interest in one of the most promising television relay companies, Telefusion Ltd. This was the outcome of a relationship I had developed with the solid John Wilkinson who had started this company from his first shop in Blackpool and built up Telefusion into a powerful force in our northern area. He had a further asset in his equally hardworking and highly efficient son, and it was obvious that this company had a future. Together we worked towards a share deal between Telefusion and ABC Television. This was the flaw, because the Corporation wanted no partners, only cast-iron safe investments. I was depressed by their eventual and embarrassing rejection, because they lacked the vision to recognise the classic situation of a growing business with inbuilt management prowess.

Instead, the profits from ABC Television were poured into the conversion of a dozen cinemas into bowling centres. The venture collapsed and, a few years later, as the bowling centres were closed down, one after another, I watched Telefusion climb to a leading place in the wired television market, and eventually become successful applicants for the Yorkshire programme franchise.

The post Inside ABPC appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

The effect of this was that only a rich and established British company, acceptable to the Board of Trade as owner of a cinema chain, and to the ITA as partner in its ‘prime company’ with the London weekday contract, could effectively bid to take over ABPC in its entirety.

EMI’s wealth was mainly in profits from the records of the Beatles and it was a natural development for them to extend their diversification from electronics into the business of leisure. When Sir Joseph Lockwood had become Chairman he had hoisted EMI out of the doldrums up to the heights. He was also keenly aware that although capital assets and profits were key factors, where the entertainment industry was concerned entrepreneurism was all-important. Therefore he resolved to take under the wing of EMI the most professional of all the showmen, the Grades and their brother Bernard Delfont. Possibly EMI overpaid for what they eventually acquired in the Grade Organisation because events proved that Lew and Leslie were not available to add much to the EMI organisation, but it would be difficult to put a price on the tremendous contribution Bernard Delfont brought to EMI through sheer showmanship. The buying and selling of the Grade Organisation and the purchase of the Blackpool Tower Co. scarcely justified the high price paid by EMI, but ultimately the millions made from the Beatles and their music were deftly used Sir Joseph Lockwood and John Read to steer EMI into supremacy in the realm of British show business.

Now the amassed dollars of EMI and Capitol Records in America were earmarked for the purchase of Warner Brothers shares in ABPC and with it the control of one of Britain’s two major cinema circuits. There was a prolonged and bitter defence by ABPC when EMI finally made their bid for ownership. There were blasts and counterblasts of official statements to bewildered shareholders but the end was inevitable, with EMI’s determination to win, apparently regardless of the cost. Because of Robert Clark’s dour resistance they paid heavily for ABPC, perhaps too highly, but as the years have gone by their huge investment has never ceased to bring increased turnover, with the Group’s profits ultimately reaching £50,000,000 a year.

EMI gained control of ABPC early in 1969. Their encirclement of ABPC had been closely studied by interested parties in Independent Television, not least by the Authority itself. After all, Thames Television was the company it had designed to operate the principal contract in London. As Lord Hill has written since, it was the calibre of the management of ABC Television which had influenced the Authority in its decision to let the smaller company be in control of the resident company when the London weekday merger was effected. The Authority, therefore, was less concerned about the future of ABPC than it was with the key executives from ABC Television who were now running Thames precisely in the style and to the standard the Authority had stipulated.

The attitude of Lord Aylestone and Sir Robert Fraser was firm and definite. The Authority, in making its contract decisions, had chosen individuals, not merely the companies that employed them. If there were wholesale changes in a parent company’s Board the Authority’s priority would be to safeguard executives in the specialised posts for which they were highly qualified. The Authority’s policy, then, was to maintain the management and executives in Thames in their jobs so that they could continue to fulfil the contract as originally intended. It was clear that Thames Television had either to be given a protected situation within the EMI-ABPC merger, or it would have to be hived off and kept outside the transaction.

As the arguments wore on between the two giant company there were other interested onlookers. At ATV Lew Grade and Robin Gill were giving mysterious nods and winks to suggest that they expected to become party to the outcome of the merger. They were anticipating a close link between EMI/ABPC and ATV, extending their own interest to include Thames. We could all be together, they assured me, in running a colossal conglomerate.

It was this very assumption that compelled the Authority to lay down stringent rules concerning the take-over’s application to Thames. Their first conditions were that EMI would have to sever all connection with the agency activities of the Grace Organisation; nor could any members of that group be connected with the Board or management of Thames Television. The Authority had already exercised their right to approve the election of any new director of Thames from the Associated British side and they now reserved the right to approve any nominee of EMI proposed for inclusion in the specified number of directors on Thames’ Board. This was more stringent than the rules for Rediffusion who were free to nominate anyone they wished for their four directorships.

Unusual conditions like this were making the merger all the more complicated and difficult for John Read (now Sir John Read) EMI’s Managing Director, but he realised the potential for his company in Thames and its staff, and he was determined to keep the company within the EMI Group. I accepted assurances that Thames would in fact have greater freedom and more opportunity for expansion as part of EMI. This proved to be the case.

Although my involvement with the merger itself was limited to board meetings where Sir Philip Warter and Robert Clark reported on the state of warfare, I spent much of my time in delicate conversations with both parties, and with Lord Aylestone and Sir Robert Fraser. I kept my colleagues closely informed because they were as anxious as I was to preserve Thames Television management as a team, and to secure the maximum freedom and backing for the future development of the company.

The larger issue of EMI’s take-over of ABPC was drawing to its inevitable conclusion and Robert Clark was fighting to the last ditch to resist the financial onslaught of EMI. Such an abrasive relationship had developed that there was no possibility of Sir Philip Warter or Robert Clark staying behind to join the board of the victor if and when the Corporation were vanquished. There was an element of sadness for me in this because Robert Clark would have made a good Chairman of Thames Television, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that he and EMI were irreconcilable and it would not be easy for him to maintain smooth communication between EMI and Thames.

There followed an elaborate solution to the problem of establishing Thames as a subsidiary of EMI, consisting of the formation of a new company, Thames Television Holdings Ltd, to control EMI/ABPC’s majority stake (as partners with Rediffusion Television) in Thames Television. The four principal executives of Thames, George Cooper, Brian Tesler, Bernard Greenhead and myself, were allocated twenty per cent of the newly created voting shares in TT Holdings Ltd, EMI had the controling forty per cent, and two other independent companies mere to be offered twenty per cent each. EMI had difficulty in disposing of these shares to outside parties, because of profit uncertainties in Independent Television. They were turned down by British Lion Films but ultimately the shares were acquired by Sir Charles Forte and Charles Hunnisett.

Ail we wanted to do, at Thames, fiercely engaged as we were in building up our company, was to get on with the job and make programmes. There was relief when at last the details had been agreed and the official ITA announcement included the phrase: ‘there will be no change in the present executive management of Thames Television’.

The post Enter EMI appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

It is hard to assess what mergers do to people. After the machinations of boards of directors, merchant bankers, lawyers, financial wizards; after the battle has been lost and won, there remain the staff, the workers, the executives, and all their families, who have suffered so much worry, apprehension and, sometimes, sorrow. EMI could not have been more thoughtful and helpful in their care of the thousands of men and women who had worked so loyally for the old firm. Yet, as in any other merger, the middle-aged executives suffered most. The very qualities of devotion to a company and its bosses, often at the expense of rejecting other job offers, becomes a handicap when new, younger executives cast a cold eye upon the comfortably established men in their forties and fifties who have, perhaps, begun to take things a little too easily.

A merger certainly hurts. This one was too much for the ascetic Sir Philip Warter. Besides the feeling of inadequacy in that he had allowed his father-in-law’s business to succumb, he had the additional agony of losing his only daughter Shirley after a painful illness. When the merger became inevitable Sir Philip refused to remain on the Board and chose to retire to the West Country. He did not live for very long.

Even the sturdy, resolute Scotsman, Robert Clark, was disconsolate after the take-over, and probably felt secretly that his old master, John Maxwell, would somehow have saved the situation and held on to control. A tremendous worker, dedicated to his company in spite of disheartening experiences, Robert Clark took a year or two to recover and then began to enjoy the pleasures of getting closer to his family. Some day a sympathetic writer will have to analyse the effect of mergers – and there are hundreds of them – and the impact they have upon the people concerned.

At Thames Television our immediate assignment was to find a new and ‘independent’ Chairman.

On the EMI Board were several distinguished non-executive sectors and it seemed to us that the quest could begin there. One possibility was Lord Shawcross, a controversial and undoubtedly independent figure. When the Authority asked my opinion I said I considered he would make a prestigious Chairman of Thames. Thereupon Sir Robert Fraser said that I had better go around to Lord Shawcross and invite him to become Chairman of our Board of Directors. I had never met Lord Shawcross until I faced him across the desk of his small office in the Morgan Guaranty Trust in Lombard Street. Stern, lined, handsome, he sat like a judge before me and when he asked, unsmilingly, why I thought he should become Chairman of Thames Television, I decided to tell him the disadvantages. As a director of a commercial television company he would not be allowed to appear on ITV; for the same reason the BBC would be unlikely to ask him to appear on their television programmes; as a constant contributor to The Times letter page he would be seen to be writing more as a chairman of a television company than as a vigorous independent.

Lord Shawcross accepted the invitation, additional to his other directorships, and we began a five-year association from which I was to learn a great deal. Not an easy man to get to know, his personal swing from left to right had made him extremely critical of the political element which he was convinced would disrupt Britain. Lord Shawcross was also on very friendly terms with another cross-bencher, Aidan Crawley, Chairman of our rival, LWT, and the two Chairmen often found themselves in the same club comparing the very different performances of the two companies. At first they tried to find ways of working harmoniously together, but as London Weekend’s audiences and revenue slumped there began talks of a possible working collaboration. As the LWT situation deteriorated discussions between the companies ended, for there was doubt whether the week-end company could survive its internal and external troubles. There was indeed a point where I began to prepare for an emergency situation and plan a weekend programme service if requested by the Authority.

By this time Sir Robert Fraser had retired and Brian Young been appointed Director-General. 1970 was a difficult year to enter Independent Television and Brian Young, coming from the directorship of the Nuffield Foundation and the Headmastership of Charterhouse, soon found at the SCC meetings that he had inherited an awkward squad of prefects. He supported the principle of limited collaboration between the two London companies but he was opposed to any kind of merger or take-over. With Lord Aylestone he battled on through the firings and mass resignations of London Weekend executives, resisted the onslaught of Rupert Murdoch in his bid to popularise week-end programmes in the Australian pattern, and was relieved to support the appointment of John Freeman to stabilise the company.

Brian Young’s first experience of this turbulent industry was not confined to company survival. A Director-General has the final voice on whether or not a controversial programme should be transmitted. When his staff found themselves unable to reach agreement on, for example, the script of a play, the last stage would be a confrontation between the Director-General and the Managing Director of the company concerned. Outstanding playwrights were in short supply and Thames had been delighted to commission a play from an actor who had become increasingly successful as a dramatist, Colin Welland.

Say Goodnight to Your Grandma, was a modern North Country play about an independent young wife determined to hold on to her weak husband against a possessive mother and the pals of his bachelor days. When one of the friends, Ray, had banteringly propositioned her, Jean had flabbergasted him by suggesting they should adjourn to his car outside. As Ray retreated in embarrassment the husband asked Jean whether his friend had said anything to upset her. She replied: ‘No! Just asked if he could screw me!’ The writer and director argued that such a dramatic line was only a modern successor to Bernard Shaw’s ‘not bloody likely’ for Eliza Doolittle. The author wanted to use a more Anglo-Saxon four-letter word than the American ‘screw’ and the producer informed us that the two different versions had been recorded.

I believe it was the first such decision Brian Young had to take, and he wisely sought further opinions from the Authority. There was no question about the dramatic value of the line but the final decision on the actual verb to be used rested with the Authority. Brian Young telephoned me to say that if we used the word ‘screw’ there would be no objection and the play could go on at normal time, 9 p.m. On the other hand, if the company felt very strongly that the four-letter word was essential to the play then it could be used, but at a later hour; that was, at 10.30 p.m. following the ITN news. I settled for the normal time and the word less likely to offend viewers. The play eventually reached the West End stage unexpurgated and had a profitable run.

The post Exits and entrances appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

For years the formidable task of recording on television for posterity the history of World War II had bedazzled and yet daunted both BBC and ITV. The Corporation must have spent thousands of pounds on research, and bulky reports were piling an on executive desks. So was the cost, and therefore the BBC kept postponing a decision on such a mammoth undertaking.

At Thames, Jeremy Isaacs, the Controller of Features and Current Affairs programmes, had been nursing the possibilities of the subject for some time and had assessed the cost (including a special team researching for three years and assembling archive films) at £500,000. This proposal had the support of the Director of Programmes, Brian Tesler, and when we discussed at the Board meeting how best to deploy the uplift in our net revenue income I put forward The World at War. Inflation, higher salaries, travel, and particularly higher exchange rates to buy foreign film material soon made Isaacs’ budget out-of-date. By the time the twenty-six programmes were completed almost £1,000,000 [£12.5million] had been spent. The cost was eventually recovered because the series was transmitted in most countries throughout the world; but the importance of the series was that it was ITV’s ultimate challenge to the BBC in their domination of high quality documentary and current affairs programmes. The World at War proved that ITV was at least equal to the BBC’s highest standards, and, more salient, the ITV mass audience could be riveted to their receivers week after week by serious documentary programmes at the peak hour of nine o’clock.

My fears that the appeal of such an historic series would be largely to a middle-aged audience, for nostalgic reasons, mere disproved by research which established that the younger audience was equally fascinated. The success of the series owed much to the decision that it should be produced by a team of young people re-discovering 1939-45, with the years of strife seen through their eyes, rather than by older men remembering.

As the ITV contracts were extended, inflation forced costs to soar and advertisers to cut down their expenditure. From the peak results in 1973-4 the following years brought descending profits, reflecting the all-too-familiar switchback of ITV fortunes. By now the Government had accepted our arguments that levy should be taken on profits and not on revenue, but the swingeing two-thirds of net profits before tax was greater than the industry could bear without reducing expenditure on programmes. Once again the companies went knocking at the doors of the Treasury and the Home Office, pleading to be allowed to retain a higher proportion of their profits so that they could invest the necessary millions in important long-term projects.

Money counted in millions needs to flow through the veins of both BBC and ITV if big and bold concepts are to be brought to fruition. For Churchill’s centenary year only a wealthy company like Thames could have afforded to embark on such a spectacular drama series as Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill with Lee Remick as its star. Two years later, when profits were halved by reduced advertisement revenue, not even Thames could have afforded such a lavish programme. Again, the gamble of, for example, a 1977 Avengers-type of series would have cost £2,500,000 [£17million] for twenty-six one-hour episodes, a dangerous allocation of dwindling profits which few would contemplate.

The Independent Companies’ problem today is to find space for expansion, to employ fully the talents which have been generated to establish Britain as the standard bearer of quality television programme production. The solution lies in a second channel for ITV, promised long ago by previous Governments but still being sought against opposition by educationists, propagandists and political adversaries.

The film industry has waned, the press is shrinking in size and importance, and only the television programme industry seems capable of expansion and earning increasing overseas income. Ten years after the Labour Party had opposed the ending of BBC monopoly by the innovation of Independent Television, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, made a public statement declaring ITV to be ‘part of our social system and part of our national way of life’. A decade later the time has come to clear the for Independent Television to break out of its confines and to press forward, to become not only a national institution but a world force.

The post Settling down appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Here is Thames, a vigorous young company, producing programmes which continue to win worldwide acclaim, able to carry proudly back to Britain for a second year the most coveted award in the whole of international broadcasting. Here is Thames earning £3m annually in foreign currency for Britain, by exporting its programmes to more than a hundred countries overseas. Yet simultaneously and paradoxically here is Thames, in common with the rest of Independent Television and the BBC, under yet another scrutiny and with yet more uncertainty about its future. It is a situation which puzzles our broadcasting colleagues throughout the world. When I go to countries like Australia, where British programmes are regarded as the excellence to which their own productions must aspire, the idea of these continuing enquiries into television is regarded as a British eccentricity. Unfortunately, it is not so amusing for the people who work in broadcasting.

What is especially difficult for us in ITV is the double standard which is so often applied by those who write about, talk about, or take part in committees about us. For our part we are prepared to admit frankly that when ITV began 22 years ago, commercial necessity produced a service that was engrossed with ratings and seeking to maintain its existence. But that was very long ago. ITV has now achieved a public service of high quality, rivalling anything that broadcasting can offer in Britain or elsewhere in the world – and limited only by expansion into an additional channel. It is no accident that ITV companies have become increasingly attractive to some of the finest talents in the BBC: men and women who would not join an inferior service however rich the rewards.

Nevertheless there are still people reluctant to acknowledge how ITV has developed, from its beginnings as the brash newcomer of 1956. The BBC, for example, still refers to its monopoly of public service broadcasting’. A respected critic, writing in the Sunday Times, suggested that a BBC play about welfare state bureaucracy ‘would have had no chance’ of being screened ‘on the commercial networks’. There remains a kind of snobbism behind such blinkered attitudes.

THE ANNAN COMMITTEE mostly managed to avoid this trap, but then made some surprising conclusions. Having recognised that ITV now offers programmes quite as good as, and in some cases superior to, the BBC; having acknowledged that ‘it is difficult to make comparisons when the BBC has two channels’ and that ‘ITV output cannot be expected to have the range which BBC can provide on two channels’; and having argued for the inauguration of a fourth channel as ‘a challenge to broadcasters’ and ‘a nursery for new forms and new methods of presenting ideas’ the Committee then promptly rejected the proposal that it should be run by the ITV companies. They claimed there would then be a risk of giving the public more of what they already had, and intensified competition between ITV and BBC.

This is out of touch with reality. The best way to make a fourth channel thrive, in a world where the viewer increasingly expects free choice of what he watches, is to dovetail it with ITV’s current service. A fourth channel having to compete against BBC’s two and ITV’s one would be fighting a losing battle, which all the taxpayer subsidy in the world could not win. The result would be an elitist service for a tiny minority of viewers, subsidised at enormous public cost. Yet one of the main areas in which ITV producers can fairly claim to have established unequalled experience and success is in popularising minority subjects. That experience, coupled with complementary – not competitive – scheduling between ITVl and ITV2, is the key to providing a new and exciting service on the fourth channel.

AS TO THE ASSERTION that ITV2 would provide ‘more of the same’, there are scores of ITV programme makers who are clamouring for the chance to prove this judgement of Annan wrong, once the straitjacket of a single channel has been removed. But if we were to assume that the staff and managements of ITV companies would want to produce on ITV2 a service identical to ITV1, the machinery of the Independent Broadcasting Authority is there to prevent such a duplication. We at Thames (and most of our colleagues in ITV) would expect to provide an ITV2 service which is obliged by statute and by IBA control to fulfil requirements not yet met by ITV or BBC. One of those, for which we put forward the original proposals in 1971, is the acquisition of programmes from independent producers for showing at peak time. We would welcome these additional freelances, though I suspect that they are neither so numerous nor so devoid of opportunity as the critics of BBC and ITV suggest. The fact remains, however, that the ITV companies are already equipped to provide a service which will meet the philosophical demands of the Annan Committee and also win a sizeable audience. Alternatives to ITV2 can do the first, but not the second.

The Annan Committee reported almost a year ago. As I write, the Home Office is about to produce the results of its deliberations on that report. So once again broadcasters have halted to await their future. We wait also to hear when and how the new IBA contracts are to be advertised and awarded. At Thames we await with confidence the confirmation that our record will ensure the continuation of our contract in the future. But we wait. And while we wait, we have to go on working.

Elsewhere in this Review you can see what ‘going on working’ means. In 1977 it meant producing 300 hours of programmes for our region and a further 700 for the ITV network. It meant raising a bountiful revenue from our advertisers, establishing new records. It meant selling more programmes overseas than any ITV company has ever done before.

Those achievements are made possible by what I believe to be the most professional staff in British television. But those bare facts could imply that Thames in 1977 was identical in all respects to Thames in 1976, ploughing the same familiar furrow. Far from it.

IN 1977 we introduced Thames At 6 – a daily regional programme which replaced the former Today and brought Andrew Gardner from ITN to be its chief presenter. Already the new programme has been praised for its impact, and this is only the first stage of impressive developments in television journalism covering local news and current affairs.

In 1977 we introduced Time For Business, a weekly 45-minute programme for the London region, not only a forum for the world of business, manufacturing and the city, but emphasising to the general public the importance of business and its contribution to their life style. Presented by the unique popularising talent of Eamonn Andrews, the programme is ITV’s first in the field. It arose directly from the consultation between business and union leaders and ITV companies, promoted by the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

In 1977 our outstandingly successful Light Entertainment Department produced another string of entirely new hits. There were the situation comedies The Upchat Line and Miss Jones & Son; the sparkling variety shows Night Out At The London Casino; and a range of superbly spectacular productions, including the highly acclaimed Tommy Steele And A Show, now chosen to represent ITV at this year’s Golden Rose of Montreux.

In 1977, the year in which the Annan Committee put into ITV’s mouth the words ‘If the public prefers series, why produce one-off dramas?’, Thames’ Drama Department in fact transmitted in peak time two seven-part series and fourteen ‘one-off dramas’, or plays.

DETAILS OF THESE and other innovations are in the Managing Director’s accompanying report of the year’s programmes, together with information about other imaginative projects. But it is not only in our programmes that new developments are to be found.

In 1977 our Technical and Engineering Department, in addition to its many other technological developments, launched a new Outside Broadcast unit of its own design, which packs into a single vehicle the resources of a vast studio.

In 1977 our Sales Department launched Enterprise, its own entirely new computerised airtime sales system, which provides a faster, more comprehensive service to advertisers and also increases the efficiency of our internal operation.

In 1977, with London Looks Forward, Thames created and financed an unprecedented investigation and debate about London’s future, on which the Duke of Edinburgh commented: ‘This is the first time a television company has become so deeply involved in the organisation of a project of such great public interest. It must also be the first time that a television company has managed to establish what might be described as two-way communication with the public.’

Those are considerable achievements, but it is inevitable that hundreds of other successes go unrecorded in a formal Chairman’s statement. The award of the OBE to our brilliant Controller of Light Entertainment Philip Jones and other honours to our staff – and the programme awards, both to complete production teams and to individuals like cameraman Nick Downie (Royal Television Society News Feature Award) and designers Alex Clarke and Rod Stratfold (RTS Design Award for Rock Follies) bring pleasure and pride to all of us. In the same way, the achievements of week-by-week programmes like Help!, Money-Go-Round and Magpie (which has now raised more than half a million pounds for children’s charities), go largely unsung although they remain a crucial part of our service to the public, especially to the underprivileged. These are not the routine achievements of some shapeless thing called a company, but the creation of dedicated, imaginative people; for people are the main ingredient of a television programme company.

DURING THE YEAR we have made several changes in our structure and management, building a younger team to move Thames forward. This energetic group is now led by Mr Bryan Cowgill, the outstanding BBC programme maker and channel controller, who joined us as Managing Director in October. He took over from Mr George A. Cooper who had reached his retirement age after contributing so much to ITV as well as to our company. The first Sales Director both for ABC Television and for Thames Television, Mr Cooper succeeded me as Managing Director in 1974. His knowledge and advice continue to be available to us on a consultancy basis.

AFTER TEN SUCCESSFUL YEARS, changes in the Board were inevitable. One of our earliest directors, Mr Humphrey Tilling, formerly Company Secretary of EMI Limited, and a member of its Board, also came to retirement age. The wise and polished contributions of Mr Tilling will he missed at our Board meetings, but we shall continue to enjoy hearing his scintillating after-dinner speeches at our social events. In his place, we are fortunate to have another EMI director, Mr John M. Kuipers, particularly because of Mr Kuipers experience of electronics and his recent supervision of EMI’s interests in Australia and the Far East. Retirement age was also the reason for the resignation of one of our two independent directors, Lord Wolfenden, and we were sorry to lose his guidance on educational programmes, dating back to his pioneer work on the Schools Advisory Committee in 1957, when Rediffusion Television introduced the first television programmes for schools. Succeeding him as another non-executive independent director we are fortunate to have the services and experience of the distinguished film and television producer, Lord Brabourne.

The collaboration between Bryan Cowgill and our Director of Programmes, Jeremy Isaacs, is already producing new ideas, new programmes and new ways of extending our public service. At the time of Mr Cowgill’s appointment, the Board also made other changes to the senior management. Ian Scott became Director of Administration and Finance, with Jim Shaw continuing as Director of Sales and Marketing. A new senior management team was formed to work alongside the four executive Board members: Muir Sutherland, Managing Director of Thames Television International; Bob Godfrey, technical and Engineering Director; John Hambley, Planning and Development Director; and John O’Keefe, Industrial Relations Director, with Ben Marr continuing as Company Secretary.

All the promotions involved in these moves, and those immediately resulting from them, are internal appointments from among our existing management. At the same time, we have begun to make structural changes to our departmental system where we think them necessary. Current Affairs and Documentaries have now been split, for example, into two different departments under Mike Wooller and Peter Pagnamenta. Further changes will follow, including the establishment of the ambitious Regional News Unit about which the Managing Director writes elsewhere.

NEW POLICIES ARE EMERGING at Thames, for example, in relation to sport and to filmed programmes. When Rediffusion Television, the pioneer London weekday contractor, was merged by the Authority with ABC Television, the weekend contractor for the North and Midlands, then dominating the Saturday/Sunday afternoon audiences, LWT took over ABC’s World of Sport with outstanding success; but no longer can ITV sport be concentrated into the weekend. With such international sports specialists as Bryan Cowgill, Managing Director of Thames, and Paul Fox, Managing Director of Yorkshire, recruited into the Independent Network, there should now be vigorous competition with the BBC on weekday sports coverage and commentaries.

In terms of filmed programmes, and with all the studios of Thames Television now overflowing with both live and videotaped programmes, this company must turn increasingly to the medium of film to augment its programme output. The international success of Sweeney!, in the cinema as well as on television, has proved that British drama series of the highest quality can be filmed entirely on location, and therefore Thames’ subsidiary film company, Euston Films, will extend its production.

Benefiting by all the expertise which has been gained by this company over its busy seven years, Thames Television will now take the further step of making a series of full-length feature films for television. It is hoped to revive and refurbish the reputation of British feature films at their very best, except that these films will not be produced for the cinema, hut for today’s greater audience television.

To the makers of our past and future programmes, and to every member of the staff of Thames Television, I express thanks for a highly successful year, and look forward to another period of exciting progress.

The post Chairman’s statement appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.