Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1960)

MOVING DAY SOON AT THE BBC New $45 million Television Centre near completion; will have seven tv studios Collins, deputy chairman, Associated Television of London, resigned as tv head of BBC in 1950 to spearhead the campaign which finally brought commercial tv to Britain, objected to the use of the word "sponsorship" in connection with English tv. He wanted to see television in the hands of professional tv people, with no control by the makers and sellers of soap, cigarettes, automobiles and other commercial products, he stated; and to follow the newspaper practice of separation of advertising from editorial material designed to inform or entertain. So he did not object when the law authorizing commercial tv expressly forbade sponsorship. "No English agency is demanding sponsorship," he said, adding that sponsorship in the U.S. is also dead and has been from the first moment that alternate or multiple sponsorship was admitted. As to global tv, Mr. Collins said that his company is doing its best to help bring it about. ATV is producing one series in Canada and another in Australia. He said both will be shown in the U.S. as well as the British Commonwealth. ATV has entered into a 5050 production-distribution arrangement with a U.S. company (Jack Wrather organization) to keep it from being exclusively a Commonwealth affair. In answer to a question about residual payments, Mr. Collins said that after three years of negotiations an agreement has been reached on residual payments for writers and actors in British tv films. He noted that this will probably restrict the sale of English programs to some of the smaller stations in the Commonwealth, who will have to take U.S. shows instead. Television abroad is today in the same position that it was in America a deacde ago, Howard Meighan, president, Videotape Productions of New York, told the forum. It has got a foothold and is now ready for a period of major expansion which in the next three years will more than quadruple the number of tv receivers everywhere in the world except the U.S. and Canada. Mr. Meighan, who is chairman of the tv advisory committee to the U.S. Information Agency, said the latest USIA statistics show 32.2 million tv sets outside of the U.S. and Canada, 27.1 million sets in the free world, 5.1 million in iron curtain countries. By 1963, he predicted, this number will have mushroomed to 138 million tv receivers, of which 114 million will be serving 500 million people in non-communist countries. In making programs for use abroad on film or tape, Mr. Meighan urged that producers remember their responsibility to think in terms of the kind of U.S. image we want to present abroad. The BBC is getting ready to move into its new $45 million Television Centre in June. Gerald Beadle, director of the BBC television service, expects the first of seven studios to be finished then. The move from present quarters will be completed in stages. The new BBC Television Centre, occupying 13 acres in London, is planned as the largest in the world. Mr. Beadle, making an annual visit to the United States, said at a New York news conference that as the video tape conversion process is perfected he expects BBC program exports to take "an enormous leap forward." Film sales to U.S. tv so far have been negligible, he said, because his network emphasizes live and tape programming. The U.S. fares better in the export picture, accounting for much of the 10% of the schedule the BBC doesn't fill itself. On the question of competitive service, Mr. Beadle said, "After nearly AVi years of competition from commercial tv, more viewers turn to the BBC network each day than to the advertising network." The government network estimates that more than 16 million people tune BBC each day for one or more shows, compared with 14.5 million for the commercial channel. (BBC station coverage at 98.5%, has an edge on commercial coverage which he puts at 92%, Mr. Beadle noted.) Referring to the 16 million daily rating, Mr. Beadle said, "We're not going out of our way to maintain that figure." He explained that the program policy for prime time is roughly 50% entertainment and 50% programs of information, thought, ideas and important artistic productions. "The BBC would be ready to see its audience go down, rather than lower its professional standards or reduce its high proportion of intelligent programs," the network chief asserted. Bringing up the sensitive point of program control, Mr. Beadle emphasized that his program chiefs have complete responsibility and have not deviated from the BBC's strong tradition of independence and impartiality. To illustrate, he offered the grant of equal time given the Labor Party to answer the Prime Minister during the Suez crisis. The BBC's gross income from annual receiver fees is running at $87 million. Mr. Beadle expects income to reach a maximum of $120 million in four or five years. This would be for Getting there • The BBC will start ities for three radio networks and quar moving into its new home next June, ters for more than 16,000 BBC em The Television Centre will cost $45 ployes. It also will house the Continen million, housing seven tv studios, facil tal Control Point for Eurovision. 90 (INTERNATIONAL) BROADCASTING, February 1, 1960