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THE WEEK i» TVA-SHINGTON
AS VIEWED BY OUR WASHINGTON NEWS BUREAU
Interested legislators who are prodded by letters from parents and PTA's, educators and. church and civic groups make up the interested groups.
The blame has consistently fallen heavily on the networks, sometimes for program choices they could have helped — sometimes for reruns of old and gory melodrama long since discarded.
Networks have two solid arguments ; one against any form of censorship, and the other against self-inflicted revenue loss. As free enterprise, they rightly argue that they must win advertiser revenue, which means wide audience acceptance for programing in prime time.
Diversity is the answer suggested by FCC commissioner Lee Loevinger, and network study director Ashbrook Bryant, but the routes differ. Loevinger wants the conpetitive diversity of many outlets on many channels by many and diverse owners. Bryant would have diversity of program sources and "more competent decisional talent in program production."
Speaking for himself, Bryant told this reporter he feels that program production restricted to "too few hands" constitutes a real censorship,
Bryant acknowledges the basic industiy dilemma of money versus art. "This problem has always been present in creative art designed for mass consumption. Because of tv's impact, there is a real social problem— and at the same time, there are real money problems involved for the industry. The networks would put on all -Shakespeare shows in a minute if it would bring in revenue. But it can't — and never will."
On the subject of setting up "standards" for "good" programing, the student of a decade of network practices bluntly rejects the idea.
"The last thing I would ever want to see is a decisional function put into the hands of the government. A lot of very responsible people who wanted to inprove tv programing quality told us during the I96O hearings that the FCC ought to set up some kind of standards — but no one has ever made it clear how this could come within the FCC's jurisdiction,"
Like commissioners Loevinger and Rosel Hyde, Bryant holds the FCC can
act only under strict statutory law. Regulation does not go beyond matters
of obscenity, blaspheiry and lottery. Only Congress could set up any additional program surveillance.
Bryant would like to see industry give the creative writers a "fair shake — more voice in the programing." He believes the mangle of "committee" decisions among various echelons kills creativity. He mentioned testimony to writer predicament in Merle Miller's "Only You, Dick Darling," and "Tv Viewing," written in I962 by Columbia University's Eric Barnouw.
Both writers were graduates of the committee decision maze for television scripters.
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