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LEGISLATE CREATIVITY?
. . . People Determine Their Needs
By OLIVER TREYZ President, ABC Television
IT IS impossible to legislate excellence in legislative activity. In the recent flood of discussion about television, I have yet to see anyone explain why the American people — who have always been trusted with political and religious democracy — must somehow be regarded as children when it comes to cultural democracy and told what is "good" or "bad" for them.
In a dictatorship, the dictator believes that he can choose for the people better than they can for themselves. But who in America honestly believes he can set himself up as the sole judge of the people?
The basic question, I believe, is, what is a good television program — and how do we know we have it? In a dictatorship, a program is good which serves the interest of the state. The entire cultural product is imposed on the tastes of the people, not determined by them. By direct contrast this helps us define what we mean by a good program in America.
A good program is one which directly serves the interest and interests of the viewer rather than the government or an elite power group. And in a iiee society, these interests must be determined by the people, not for the people.
It is, I believe, impossible to legislate excellence in creative activity. Therefore we must be aware of and avoid any controls — whether in the form of legislation or regulation, or even in the form of pressure too heavily applied — which might cripple or retard television's growth and its ability to experiment.
Can we believe that television should diminish its basic freedoms of thought and speech while our newspapers and schools do not, simply because of a purely technological difference which calls for the federal licensing of television and not of the press or our schools? If we are to actively believe and live the concepts of democratic freedom in America, I think not. Television is already regulated by the most demanding judge of all — the audience.
In television, if you do not please, the people do not watch. The viewer turns the dial off and television ceases to exist. Yet in some circles, an effort to please television's audience is the equivalent of a crime.
The ABC-TV attitude here has been and always will be that we are convinced the people set the standards for programming. The people determine their needs.
The validity of this is amply demonstrated by the growth of ABC Television, youngest of the three networks; in seven years, ABC-TV has passed one network and is crowding on the heels of the other in the national ratings.
This was not accomplished by jamming preconceived programming concepts down the throats of the public. On the contrary, the public has gone to its voting booths, elected what it wants, and ABC-TV has made it available.
To keep the votes which the viewing audience has been giving to ABC Television in growing numbers, we have a fine slate of "candidates" for the 1960-61 season.
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