One of the clichés that comes most readily to mind when we look back over 50 years of BBC TV is “changed days”. It’s hard to believe now, but in those early days the service ran on an even flimsier shoestring than it has ever since.
Famous stars and artistes were just too expensive – even if they could be persuaded to have anything to do with the new fangled contraption. Performing on the wireless was alright. The huge radio audience could not see them, and their appetites would be whetted (the theory ran) to go and see their favourites in the theatres and music halls, which was where they made their money.
So it was up to the producers to build their own vehicles to carry the popular entertainer of the day. Television’s founding producer, Cecil Madden, did it with his pre-War Picture Page, and the tradition continued with shows such as Café Continental, Rooftop Rendezvous, Quite Contrary and many others. It was those programmes which spawned many of television’s first home-grown stars.
Many of those first television performers weren’t there for the money. Television was just something new to experience. Radio was still king with its huge audiences. Besides, why should you pay so much when viewers were only seeing a nine inch piece of the performing cow.
But the television audience did grow and the shape of television entertainment developed quickly. In 1946 came Alan Melville’s Goodnight Ladies, the forerunner of the phenomenally successful series The Good Old Days. At the same time Variety found a partner in the situation comedy Family Affairs, which began during this time.
Panel shows soon made an impact too. Freddie Grisewood was running quiz shows as early as 1938, but it was What’s My Line which made the first big national impact in 1951.
Two years later came those stalwarts This Is Your Life and The Good Old Days. But that year saw an event which turned television’s fortunes: the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The coverage was such a triumph that the trickle of people buying television sets turned into a torrent.
Then came ITV in 1955. Independent television’s emphasis on entertainment brought about a reinforcement in the BBC’s thinking that quality entertainment was vital in the new competitive scenario. It reacted by investing more financial resources into the whole entertainment field. That was the time of Ronnie Waldman, then head of light entertainment in BBC television.
People, particularly the artists, were taking television seriously at last. For the first time you could earn a living from the new medium.
But success has its problems. As soon as a writer or artist finds success on television, vested interests queue up for his services along with rival entertainment organisations. When success has rung the bell, the artists tend to make the phone calls and we do the running.
We have to learn not to resent that success and to face the challenge of keeping those top names in public service broadcasting. We have a responsibility to nurture talent, at the risk of losing the artist to a commercial concern able to pay bigger money, as well as discovering new shining lights. And the 1960s was a great era for the latter.
It was a period which saw the arrival of the new breed of situation comedy, the beginnings of a fine BBC television tradition now recognised and appreciated around the world. Those early successes, such as The Rag Trade, Steptoe and Son and The Likely Lads, delighted a whole generation.
One of the most attractive reasons for working with BBC Television is that the programmes always come first. We do sell a lot of entertainment programmes around the world, but we don’t make them for that reason.
Take the development of situation comedy over recent years. What happened in the late Sixties can only be explained when good comedy scripts and good actors came together. And once that partnership started getting other good writers wanting to write for those actors and, vice versa, good actors wanting to work for better writers. And so it went on. The result is that today the great bulk of situation comedy could be based on a quality of writing and cast which you would get for a top class drama. The only difference is that the actors are doing something which is playing more directly to the audience.
The other key point is that BBC Television always maintains the writer’s integrity. When a writer has written as much as he says he can, the series dies. We wouldn’t pressurise him to do more. Some commercial concerns in other countries may take a writer’s idea and put a pool of 20 writers on it, turning out 56 episodes a year. Fortunately we are not under such commercial pressures so we are able to maintain standards and, hopefully, still please the audience.
Those same rules apply to all forms of entertainment. There is a lifespan of all entertainment programming. Those classic satirical shows of the late Sixties all had their day before handing over to the next genre. That Was The Week That Was, Not So Much A Programme More A Way Of Life, Not Only… But Also, Frost Over England and so on until more recent shows such as Not The Nine O’Clock News.
Broadcasting organisations determine the viability of a new comedy series, in the not too distant future perhaps ABC, People’s League and Python’s Flying Circus, The Goodies and The Last Of The Summer Wine. But what they don’t realise is that many such shows were not instant hits with the public.
As a large public-funded, yet independent, broadcasting service, we can back our judgement by giving a new idea the chance to develop. We have to make economic use of our resources, but if we feel something needs time to grow, we can allow that. How many entertainment programmes might never have succeeded but for that special protected environment within BBC Television?
And here I have to confess that when the writer David Croft, with such successes as Are You Being Served?, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and ’Allo ’Allo, mentioned his idea for Dad’s Army, I told him that a series about the Home Guard had no chance at all.
But that’s the nature of entertainment. I could go on listing our great successes over the years, but I don’t think anyone involved in entertainment at the BBC could tell you where the next generation of successful programmes and artists are coming from. What I can say is that when they do appear, BBC Television, with its 50 year tradition of nurturing and presenting British entertainment, will be ready.
Source: Broadcast: 50 Years of Television