From the early rumblings that a general election could be imminent to the climax of all the gee-whizzery of 21st century computer graphics, (although we’re not as ‘gee-whizzed’ as we once were), the screen on the wall or on the TV unit – and now our many mobile devices – bombards us ad nauseum with the twists and turns, the scandals and the stories and the general hullabaloo of the event. Each general election attracts even more coverage, reporters scrambling over each other, shouting, “What have you got to say about ‘X’ (add your own question), Prime Minister?” But it was not always like this. To the viewer of 1958, that was alien country.

Let me take you back, Tardis-like, to that year. Coordinates set, we materialise into a dull, wet Lancashire evening in the mill town of Rochdale in the north west of England. It’s Wednesday, 12 February and the last few voters turn up at the polling stations at the by-election for the parliamentary seat of Rochdale that has unexpectedly been made vacant following the death of Lt.-Col Wentworth Schofield, the last Conservative MP to date that Rochdale has ever had.

The election officials check their watches to the second and doors are firmly slammed shut and locked at 10.00pm precisely and the polling staff begin their journey to the count with their battered black metal ballot boxes secured with padlocks, white cotton tape and red sealing wax to protect their valuable contents. The count is taking place at the grim, Gothic-revival styled (and now Grade I Listed) Town Hall, built in 1886 and blackened by years of smoke from factories, cotton mills and coal-fired house-chimneys, although 2023, years ahead, will see it sitting on a pleasant esplanade after much renovation, a clean-up, tour guides and (naturally) virtual tours bookable ‘online’ – a phrase yet to be coined.

Rochdale’s claim to fame is that it’s the birthplace of Gracie Fields, the actress, singer and ENSA entertainer. She was born over her grandmother’s fish and chip shop in Molesworth Street, although by now she had already made her home on the island of Capri, no longer a British citizen having given that up for love when she married Italian director Monty Banks. The town is also where the modern Co-operative Movement was born in 1844 – originally the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society – (thank them for your ‘divi’). The Society was to be a worldwide concept and became the largest consumer in the world known now as the ‘Co-operative Group’.

Additionally, the parliamentary constituency of Rochdale was later held for two decades by the larger than life but posthumously-disgraced Liberal, Cyril Smith, but that is a whole separate story and one that is unconnected to to this piece.

But a further claim to fame and one to which this piece is dedicated (although one that is now perhaps forgotten by most except the most hardy psephologists and TV historians) is that it made history by becoming the first town in Britain whose by-election was formally covered by television. The company that arguably forged the way for all election coverage that followed was Granada TV Network, the contractor appointed by the Independent Television Authority for weekdays in the north of England.

Granada was barely 20 months old but already its roots in flagship journalism and current affairs that culminated in the birth of World in Action in 1963 were being firmly established as a benchmark in television reportage. It was under this mindset that the decision was made by Granada executives in mid-January to cover the by-election. There was no time to lose.

To its credit, the BBC had covered general election results in the early 1950s (‘50, ‘51 and ‘55) with continually improved presentation and graphics (often painted on boards by white-coated artists whose skills and pace must have been tested considerably). The BBC’s coverage, nevertheless, was not so much the path towards the elections, but more the aftermath and results after polling station doors were locked.

Associated-Rediffusion and Associated TeleVision, the first ITV contractors in London on weekdays and weekends, weren’t on air until September 1955, so missed the May 1955 general election by four months. Granada Television followed with its opening night on 3 May 1956. The next general election was October 1959, so ‘Rochdale’ in February 1958 was an unexpected gift to Granada, albeit one that arose from the demise of a sitting MP.

But how to achieve this in such a short time? How would television affect the poll, the turnout, the reaction of the candidates? It must surely be fair to all, but the regulations surrounding covering an election process by television, whilst already in place, the ink was barely dry. The Television Act of 1954 however demanded that any news given in ‘programmes (in whatever form) [are] presented with due accuracy and impartiality and that… due impartiality is preserved on the part of the persons providing the programmes as respects matters of political or industrial controversy or relating to current public policy’.

On 22 January talks were instigated by Granada with local party agents and provisional plans were drawn up. It was decided that there would be five broadcasts covering the lead-up to election day and of the count itself at the Town Hall and of course, the declaration of the result.

Two weeks before polling day therefore, the first programme – 30 minutes in length – would be aired, with all three candidates – Jack McCann (Labour), John E Parkinson (Conservative) and Ludovic Kennedy (Liberal, and also one of the original ITN newscasters), being ‘grilled’ by a chairman in the shape of Irish-born journalist Brian Inglis of The Spectator and later Granada’s All Our Yesterdays and What the Papers Say. The first programme would also include film inserts about Rochdale and various elector-in-the-street ‘vox pops’.

Programme number two was planned to air one week before polling day – again for half an hour and this was to be a public meeting with the candidates. A fifteen-minute programme would be broadcast just two days before polling day which would be a press conference with the chance for local newspapermen to ask questions and the national press would be catered for in a fourth programme. The fifth and final airing would cover the count and subsequent declaration at the Town Hall.

There followed a great interest in Granada’s Rochdale plans, even though the ITA had yet to add its blessing to the venture, however unlikely it would interfere, other than to tweak and consolidate the contractor’s intended coverage. The News Chronicle, since absorbed into the Daily Mail, having picked up the story, heralded the headline ‘Rochdale may be the first TV election’, even though the programmes would be unlikely to be seen by viewers outside of Granada’s area. The BBC seemed neither bothered or impressed and said it ‘did not intend to depart from our usual practice in by-elections that we do not influence voters nor report the campaigns in news bulletins’. However, research shows that the BBC did in fact interview many voters, although full scale coverage it was not. It is likely that they had second thoughts when Granada’s intentions were made public.

So with the local political parties in general agreement, the ITA when told of the plans felt that the arrangements were in line with ITA policy and Sir Robert Fraser, Australian-born Director General of the Authority since it was created four years previously, said the ITA would support Granada in its plans and that ‘Rochdale’ might be ‘useful as a pilot for bigger things’. Upon agreement, the ITA informed the Government Whip’s Office of Granada’s intentions.

So far, so good – but almost immediately the question of the allocation of time to each party candidate came up, with the Conservative and Labour party agents maintaining that, as they were the major parties, they should have a greater share of screen time. Granada executives however, told them that for the 15-minute programmes with the local and national press present, there would be no rigid checks on time but the chairman would ensure that the time was equally divided. The share of time for the half-hour shows though, was to be discussed with the ITA. The Conservative and Labour agents accepted the proposals but the Liberal agent, understandably, was not as happy. However, a 2:2:1 ratio in the half hour programmes was eventually agreed.

By 24 January, it was starting to sink in with party heads in London that Granada’s operations were now actively in hand – and there began some heated exchanges between them and the Granada executives. Morgan Phillips, Labour Party General Secretary, was less than happy that Granada hadn’t consulted party HQ in London first, rather than just the local party offices in Rochdale. It was Granada’s view that local associations should have been left to consult their own head offices for any advice or instructions, and was no business of theirs. Phillips, somewhat contrarily, asked Granada whether they had ‘studied the legal aspects’ of election law in programmes to which the reply was that the ITA saw no legal barriers whatsoever in the plans.

On Monday 27 January the first programme was to go ahead but at the eleventh hour, the local Conservative Association in Rochdale pulled out as it was unable to get the final green flag from London, even though the local Labour and Liberal parties and their London HQs were in agreement with Granada’s plans. Programme One was postponed.

The next day, there followed much to-ing and fro-ing. The political correspondent of The Times had cast doubts on Granada’s impartiality – citing Granada founder Sidney Bernstein’s Labour Party membership and Granada’s left-wing leanings as good enough evidence of bias in favour of Labour. ‘Election Television in Doubt’ ran its headline. The Conservative and Labour parties were still cautious and were taking legal advice, being anxious not to contravene the 1949 Representation of the People Act and the Television Act of 1954. Having been originally suspicious, the Liberal Party under Jo Grimond embraced the whole Granada project, although they preferred equal time for all. Further, the ITA, having supported Granada’s plans, felt there was no danger of any infringement of the 1949 Act and was frankly puzzled by any suggestion that there would have been. It rightly believed that the programmes were not designed to promote any one candidate – expressly forbidden by the Act – but that the programmes would consist of fair and balanced treatment for all three candidates.

Two days later on 28 January, Granada was advised by Sir Robert Frazer that, finally, all three candidates were happy to go ahead although the Macmillan Conservative government was still in consultation with the Law Officers to ensure the Representation of the People Act would not be in any way infringed.

The newspapers by now were naturally on the case, and we have already seen that The Times wasn’t fully keen on the ‘television election’. The Telegraph indicated that Granada was being permitted to pick and choose as to what by-elections it wanted to cover. The Daily Mirror in its editorial shouted, ‘Set TV Free and Let the People See’. It said the government had been thrown into a state of ‘ludicrous dither by ITV’s bright idea’. The Express noted that Conservative Central Office had sent one of its ‘TV experts’ to groom its candidate Mr Parkinson ‘for possible stardom’. You have to wonder I suppose what her advice was… maybe, (and here I muse), no dandruff on the collar? check one’s trouser buttons always? Or, (dare I suggest), never answer a question with an answer? The Express’s George Gale further said in a ‘gay, knock-about piece’ (as my 1961 source calls it), quoting the Conservative candidate Joe Parkinson that ‘all along’ he had ‘wanted to go on with this television’ [the first programme] but was ‘stopped by a ruling from London’. The Manchester Guardian supported Granada fully: ‘Granada has put forward an excellent plan for broadcasting the Rochdale by-election… There is no unfairness in it, no bias and no risk of corruption’.

Everybody had their say. Lord Hailsham, Chairman of the Conservative Party, said the issue was of great importance and that it should be confronted by all parties at national level, the BBC and ITA. The dithering over the allotted time also continued and eventually, the 2:2:1 ratio was abandoned in favour of equal time for all. The Liberals naturally supported the decision, the Labour Party seemed happy, the Conservatives non-committal.

Whilst it was agreed by the Law Officers that there would be no contravention of the Representation of the People Act, the Television Act of 1954 posed something of a problem. It permitted ‘Party Political Broadcasts’, shared out meticulously between the parties and ‘properly balanced debates and discussions’ but there was no freedom for such pieces as interviews with voters as they could not be counted as ‘properly balanced debates’ – and Granada’s plans already were to go out on the streets of Rochdale for voters’ opinions. Similarly, a press conference where only members of the press could ask questions did not fall under the remit of the Act.

More followed, and after adjustments to the planned programmes (that were in reality quite minor), and revised plans were sent to the three parties, it finally looked as the show was on the road. A week before polling day, even though the date of the first programme still hadn’t been fixed, the Granada entourage trundled its way to Rochdale.

On Sunday 2 February, technicians descended on the Town Hall, the Gothic building from which all the programmes would be broadcast. This was going to be an OB like no other for Granada. The council chamber itself was transformed into what was effectively a TV studio. The lights were hauled up, the cables, cameras and monitors were set up and the staff kitchen became a running buffet. But not only Granada personnel were present. This had attracted reporters and television men and women from all corners of the United kingdom, from France, Sweden – and even a film crew from CBS in America – arrived to film parts of the programmes that Granada was to air.

The production team went ahead with some filming after it met at Rochdale’s Wellington Hotel for lunch. There was a producer and director from Manchester, another producer, interviewer and and assistants had flown in from London and the camera crew for the filmed vox pops, were mainly from Independent Television News who drove across from Snowdonia after their last assignment. Lunch over, the team headed out into the cold Rochdale air, filming the back streets, yet to be depicted in ‘Florizel Street’ and also the shopping centre and post-war housing estates. The fire brigade agreed to provide a 120-foot turntable ladder to get pictures of the Town Hall and even the traffic stopped.

The sound camera for street interviews was set up and Manchester-born Bill Grundy, (later of Thames Television’s Today but well known to Granada viewers from People and Places, Scene at 6.30, Northern Newscast, and Granada in The North) ventured out along with Canadian broadcaster Elaine Grand, now with Granada but who remained an occasional contributor to CBC of her birth country. As with Grundy, Grand also became the presenter of a Thames show Afternoon Plus and was a trailblazer for women and daytime television in the UK.

A diverse cross-section of Rochdale’s residents were caught on the camera. From the mill workers to retired elderly ladies out for shopping, the bus conductor to the travelling salesman – all were interviewed. Some, like the old man, just ‘didn’t want to know’ and Bill would no doubt have been given short shrift from some of the more gritty, Rochdalian die-hards. Miss Grand, in her fur coat and with her Canadian lilt probably fared much better with the gentlemen…

The vox pop packages complete, the film was rushed off for processing.

All seemed ‘good to go’ – but then yet another spanner was thrown into the works before the Wednesday Programme One could be aired. This time, it was from the Liberal camp. Candidate Ludovic Kennedy felt that he had been given Granada’s revised plans ‘rather too late’ to fit into his campaign schedule. After discussions and probably some persuasion, Kennedy was 95% certain he would be available for the Wednesday show at least, but he wanted discussions with the other two candidates about the remaining programmes.

On the Tuesday (4 February) the candidates all met, together with their agents, to discuss the (now revised) planned schedule of programmes. After the meeting, the News Chronicle secured an interview with the parties and reported that Mr Parkinson the Conservative candidate was ‘prepared to do the lot’ – but said that the meeting was instigated by the Liberals. The Labour candidate Mr McCann was not happy about the proposed press conference with local newspaper men as he said that no-one had defined what the local press would be. Kennedy only wanted fairness to candidates and the electorate, but was reported as saying that TV was ‘extraneous to the election’.

In the end the candidates agreed that they would appear on the Wednesday show the following day. They then agreed to appear on the press conference based programme on the following Tuesday and following the close of the poll, they would support the televising of the count. The plans for five shows was whittled down to these three but Granada executives could do no more – if even one candidate pulled out of their plans, there could be no show at all.

Preparations continued at the Town Hall on 4 February in preparation for the first programme. Equipment was fired up in readiness to put Rochdale in contact with Manchester’s control studio and with the Winter Hill and Emley Moor ITA transmitters in Lancashire and Yorkshire respectively. With the benefit of hindsight, this was to become one of Granada’s finest moments. In fact, at an address to the Manchester University Liberal Society, the Joint Treasurer of the Liberal Party, Philip Fothergill, told delegates, ‘It [the TV election coverage] will do freedom-loving eggheads no harm to give credit where credit is due. In this case, we raise a cheer for Independent Television’.

All was set. After doubts from Labour party officials, Tory misgivings and dithering by the Liberal candidate, agreement finally ensued with the first programme less than 24 hours away. It’s hard to imagine in the 21st century media world the wranglings that took place in 1958 but new ground is never broken easily.

Granada employed a crew of thirty and there were six vehicles all parked up outside the Town Hall, cables draping through windows, snaking across the floors to the heavy, turret cameras on tripods and wheeled bogies. Booms and lights were set up and boards mounted on easels were readied for front and end-cap graphics and idents. On the night, the three candidates and their agents and producers made use of the Wellington Hotel (which by now must have been making a bob or two) for an early meal to discuss the shape of the programme but by 6.30, it was off to the Town Hall to face the cameras at seven sharp.

Brian Inglis, the ‘anchor man’ sat at a wooden table procured from the council chamber itself – the type that even now can be seen in some less progressive Town Halls. His notes and scribbles were laid out in front of him and the scene must have looked almost like a headmaster speaking to three boys who’d been called up before ‘the beak’ in true ‘Bunter’ style. A monitor was positioned to his left, out of shot and a microphone boom was above him and ready to swing round from Inglis to the three men who were sat opposite, ready for interrogation. Ashtrays on pedestals were positioned in front of the men, should any other them feel the need to smoke cigarettes. A camera behind Inglis pointed above his head at the candidates, its turret lenses ready to be switched to close ups or general views of the three contenders. Two more cameras were positioned back towards the oak-panelled walls and to the right of the candidates, one precariously on a tressle table and behind the cameras but looking on, were guest journalists, party chiefs, being told ‘please don’t talk’. This was an incredible stage, part Gothic, part evolutionary but one thing was absolutely certain. The politicians were taking to this likes ducks to water and the future was being sculpted right there in that dark, dank night in Rochdale.

A short test of sound and cameras was undertaken and with the party chiefs’ stop watches at the ready to ensure their ‘man’ was treated equally as promised. Indeed Brian Inglis said ‘We know that during the next half hour we shall be setting a precedent of importance. We shall do our utmost to give a fair, impartial and useful report’. Mr Inglis produced a paper bag to draw lots to determine the order of speaking and told the gentlemen, ‘Don’t look when you are doing so… Who’s number one?’

Programme One finally went on air. Probably only then did the candidates fully realise that whatever they said, whatever their answers to Inglis’s interrogations, could make or break their chances of success at the following week’s election. The electors of Rochdale, courtesy of their regional commercial television contractor could be swayed, or not, by what these three men uttered as they sat at home, in the working mens’ clubs or the smoke rooms of The Eagle, The Prince Albert or The Bull’s Head on the Oldham Road.

And before you could say, ‘put wood in th’ hole’, the just-less-than-30 minute show was over.

Ludovic Kennedy, the ‘professional’ of the three men seemed the least enthusiastic. It is possible that he felt his experience might have disadvantaged his two opponents. Conservative candidate John Parkinson said he loved every minute of it and called it ‘a tremendous experience’, although he admitted to some nerves waiting for the show to go on air. He also said that the hand-signalling showing he had fifteen seconds to go of his allotted time was his main problem, being aware neither to ‘over shoot’ or waste a few valuable seconds. Jack McCann also enjoyed the TV experience but earnestly hoped that the personal touch would never be lost in politics.

But what of the people of Rochdale? What was their verdict? It was reported that they thought the candidates – particularly their favourite ‘came across well’. They generally did not however, approve of the filmed inserts of street interviews, pre-introduced by the more ‘seamier’ scenes of ‘ginnels’ and back-to-backs, with references to clogs, shawls and cobbles which did not go down too well with some viewers. It is said that one elderly gent, in a bar containing half of Fleet Street and Granada people after the show, gathered people around him to give his views. Clutching his pint, he seethed, ‘not cobbles, SETTS!’

The next day, February 6th, the papers were full of it. ‘Millions see TV make poll history’ ran the Mirror. ‘Candidates on television – Rochdale sets precedent’ said The Times. ‘Rochdale politics takes to TV’ read the Manchester Guardian, but its TV critic reported on page 2 that ‘Granada’s precedent proves cold politics’. The Daily Herald sighed, ‘TV election was oh, so dull!’ but then it added, – ‘till Jack [McCann] came’, referring to the Labour candidate.

The candidates themselves aired their own views of Programme One in a Mirror piece: ‘In a programme like this, everyone starts off equally’ said Ludovic Kennedy. Jack McCann said he was ‘frightened to death at the start, but afterwards, I was so busy thinking what to say, I did not worry’. John Parkinson less dramatically said, ‘Once I got going, I forgot the cameras.’

The Mirror talked also to the Rochdale people: ‘The best thing is that you can listen to what a man has to say without his speech being drowned by hecklers’; ‘It’s just the sort of thing that makes people who don’t normally bother about politics really think’. A man named Walter Jackson said, ‘My mind is made up and no television programme of any kind could alter my views’. The News Chronicle, in a piece penned by David Willis who spoke to a Rochdale woman, reported that she said in true Lancashire style, ‘Well, it’s a lot better than opening the door on a dark night and talking to a shadow’.

Other newspaper reports generally praised Granada – ‘It [Programme One] was a privilege no other area of the land has yet enjoyed’… ‘Political history flashed on to a million northern TV screens tonight’. Roland Hurman, under the dateline, ‘The Fireside Front, Rochdale, Wednesday’ said that McCann ‘appeared in control’… of Parkinson, that he ‘looked as if he was enjoying it.’ and of Kennedy, ‘Newscasting is a very different proposition from being under fire, but Kennedy showed that he is learning his political craft fast’. The Daily Sketch wondered whether ‘this is a monster which should be put back in the bottle’. And George Gale for the Express who was in a pub during the broadcast quoted one old Rochdalian, contemplating the arguments about the H-Bomb, who said, ‘Well, you must have a detergent, even if we don’t use it!’

By Sunday 9 February plans for Programme Two on the eve of the poll went ahead and the press was still reporting the Programme One broadcast with differing views. Under the headline ‘What is Duller than Politics?’, Maurice Wiggin of the Sunday Times said that the ‘first by-election broadcast… was a feeble anti-climax’. He went on to say that it might have had some local interest to northerners but that southerners should ‘not feel deprived’. The Observer’s Maurice Richardson however said it made ‘lively television’ and that all candidates are advised to brush up on their television techniques or the electorate may vote with their bedroom slippers. For the Sunday Pictorial, curmudgeon Malcolm Muggeridge called television ‘A soapbox with knobs on’. But somewhat prophetically added that he foresaw the hustings in future invading the screen in a very big way, ending with, ‘In the end, who knows? Parliament itself may be televised’.

The Neilsen Television Index (pre-JICTAR and BARB) published that after the first programme, 42% of the possible audience (i.e. homes with two channels) watched the first fifteen minutes of the programme with 40% remaining to watch the second fifteen minutes. To summarise the findings, it said that the number of homes which actually tuned in to the show was about 680,000. Most did not switch off or were bored enough to ‘switch over’ to Tonight on BBC Television. It also reported that percentage-wise, the show was quite successful in that its ratings were higher than for Under Fire, Youth Wants to Know and What The Papers Say.

By Tuesday 11 February preparation was in hand for the Programme Two eve-of-poll programme and for the second time, the paraphernalia of television was rolled out within the venerable oak-panelled room of the council chamber at the Town Hall. This was to be the press conference-designed show and whilst there seemed to be a marked lack of enthusiasm by some of the newspapermen, Norman Shrapnel writing afterwards, felt that ‘The prospect of three orthodox would-be politicians – right, left and centre – having stock cross-bench questions shot at them by three newspapermen – left, centre and right – was not easily going to fire our hearts or stir our political consciences’. He followed up however by saying that in fact, the ‘biggest eve-of-poll meeting ever held’ turned out to be quite exciting television and it was not only the candidates who thought so.

The three lucky press men were Gerald Fay from the Manchester Guardian, Frank Machin of the Daily Herald and Roland Hurman of the Daily Mail. Before the show went on air, all were jokey as cigarettes were smoked by the three candidates and there was a fear that this might be turning into an ‘old pals act’ after all the legal wrangling of the last week or so but nothing was further than the truth. Programme Two was indeed going to be very different from the first show, with Brian Inglis at times almost having to call order. (‘I’m here to see fair play’).

Waiting for the deadline to air, Mr McCann smoothed his hair, taking a moment out from scribbling notes. Mr Kennedy, used to an on-air presence from his ITN experience, was unruffled by the make up girl dabbing his cheeks and brow. Norman Shrapnel, reporting on the events said McCann was ‘technically fascinated’ and Mr Parkinson seemed ‘coy’. A short rehearsal to check everything was in place and one impatient American press man with others behind the cameras shouted, ‘When does the shooting start?’

The show got under way and the ‘old pals act’ suddenly ceased under the watchful eye of Inglis. One wonders now could anyone of the time been a better referee. But Inglis was a professional and whilst he had no red or yellow cards in his shirt pocket, calm demeanour and professionalism were his craft.

Hotly debated were subjects such as the abolition of the death penalty and whether it really did act as a deterrent for murder. The Rent Act and the cotton industry – all important issues of the time – came under scrutiny and at times, there was furious sparring amongst the candidates and extracts from ‘the tape recording’ clearly show this:

Parkinson: ‘As far as insanity is proved, well that is a different matter entirely. But I want to see the death penalty revert back to its previous system. I want to divorce this from a political issue’.
McCann: ‘Oh no’.
Parkinson: ‘Of course I want to divorce this from a political issue. It’s a conscience matter’.

[There followed more argument – and no-one could hear what was said]

Kennedy [to Parkinson]: There’s one question I want to ask you. What evidence have you got that the death penalty is a deterrent more than imprisonment?’
Parkinson: ‘Well, of course, look at the increases in the…’
Kennedy: ‘What evidence have you got?’
Parkinson: ‘Well, you have seen…’
Kennedy: ‘What evidence have you got?’

The onlooking journalists behind the cameras were relishing the heated exchanges, even though at times there was so much snarling that the essence of the debate was quite lost in the general fury. Inglis, professional as he was, had both hands full in controlling the situation, decided to move things along with, ‘Let’s switch to another subject’.

But as the curtain came down on Programme Two and the cameras and lighting were switched off, as in many television debates since, the three protagonists became jolly good chaps again and all agreed that it was en enjoyable experience. Ludovic Kennedy, after having reservations following Programme One said that it [Programme Two] was ‘much more exciting’. No one had quite walked off the ‘set’ and all had got very hot under their proverbial collars but at the end of the day, to both the producer’s terror and joy, it was damned good television and for statisticians reading this, it was calculated that Mr McCann ‘won’ by eight seconds.

The dawn broke on Polling Day Thursday 13 February with the wind blowing across the Pennines and a temperature of 6°C. There was even a touch of thunder according to one historical weather source. Cold it might have been but the temperature was rising for both candidates and Granada Television as the doors of polling stations opened in the church halls, schools and clubs of Milnrow, Wardle, Heywood, Middleton and of course within the town itself and elsewhere across the constituency.

It was to be the television franchisee’s big day – or rather, night – as the coverage could only cover the counting of the votes and could do nothing that might jeopardise the secrecy of the vote or even report on ‘how the day was going’ with respect to turnout. It was made absolutely clear that no camera must show a picture of any ballot paper and that the secrecy of the vote must be preserved at all times. All thirty Granada crews members had to be “sworn in” before the Town Clerk – a formality that is no longer undertaken – these days, you are merely given the ‘thou shalt not’ requirements on paper and informed of the penalties for contravention of the secrecy regulations.

Cameras were positioned outside as well as in the Town Hall for the ballot paper count, with cameras and equipment to one side of the hall, away from anything but general shots of the counting process. There were smaller areas where interviews could to take place of the candidates, their wives and party delegates, and as the ballot boxes were returned to the Town Hall, the atmosphere grew tense as Programme Three, the final show, went on the air.

The election officials, the counters with banker’s ‘thumbs’, the party workers who patrol the desks where the mounds of ballot papers lay (‘that one’s in the wrong pile!’) all added to the drama of the occasion, although the real players where the candidates and their wives, ready to be encouraged before the cameras to answer to the inevitable questions. Mr McCann seemed confident as his row of counted ballots grew, and yet so did Mr Parkinson, even though his fortunes seemed to be less sizeable and Mr Kennedy looked slightly worried and yet his own personal success in the election could not be understated. The wives were brought before the cameras for interview during the count – notably Moira Shearer, who married Kennedy in 1950. She was the famed Scottish ballet dancer, actress and film star (The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffman, and, even later in the 70s, the BBC’s chosen presenter of the Eurovision Song Contest when it was staged in Edinburgh in 1972).

The theatre of the occasion was enhanced by an almost comical episode when the Mayor of Rochdale, as Returning Officer, appeared to be ready to announce the result announce the result at a surprising early stage in the proceedings. Rising to his feet and clearing his throat, it looked as though the announcement was imminent – then he sank back into his chair after officials hurriedly whispered that it was a false alarm.

When the result finally came, the Mayor ‘in the flattest voice’ read out the losers and winner in alphabetical order as they would have appeared on the ballot paper, so Kennedy the Liberal’s votes came first (17,603) – amid loud cheers. If Hughie Green’s clapometer had been invented then, Mr Kennedy would have been back next week. But Mr McCann’s majority was clear at 4,530 votes (22,133) and Mr Parkinson’s smile, always there throughout the campaign, suddenly disappeared as the split vote caused by Kennedy dashed his hopes of following in Wentworth Schofield’s footsteps at Westminster. He polled 9,872 votes and his downfall, it would appear, was telling the cotton traders what he thought of them (which was not much). He was greeted with boos as he stood on that balcony with his two protagonists, one who now was about the lead the constituency for Labour in Westminster.

The speeches from the balcony over, where once Miss Gracie Fields’ voice had echoed over the cobbles – or setts – of the square below, the Granada team had already started rolling in the cables, dismantling the cameras and all the other paraphernalia that goes with a television outside broadcast. Brian Inglis spoke to the viewers at home in his signing-off with, “That’s all from Rochdale. McCann goes to Westminster and we go home to bed.”

The hubbub died away, the night was suddenly calm again as reporters, columnists, observers, journalists and foreign camera units faded into the cold, Rochdale night air.

The TV critic at the Manchester Guardian praised the Granada initiative in following this by-election, although he recognised that some of the early stages of the on-screen election had been arguably ‘lifeless’ but added that ‘the excitement at the end was undeniable’. He went on, ‘Television is superb when it shows a thing actually happening: the Mayor in his chain of office reading out the … official declaration: the candidate’s kiss for his wife, the smile of the victor…’ The Daily Mail considered the reason for Mr Kennedy’s ‘spectacular’ success as runner up and answered simply “Television, which was allowed to report the by-election for the first time, may have played a decisive role.” Kenneth Allsop, who reported for Tonight and presented 24 Hours in the 1960s, reported for the Mail that ‘…the televoter is born… television is established as the new hub of the hustings.’ The Manchester Evening News said that viewers had a perfect ringside seat at the climax of the Rochdale election” and that “…Granada deserved praise for their pioneering work”.

The candidates themselves gave their own verdicts on the ‘TV Election’: Jack McCann believed that the high poll (80%) was in some way due to the fact that interest had been stimulated by TV and that ‘political parties cannot afford to ignore it.’ John Parkinson felt that there had been enormous interest created by the Granada’s coverage and that had been proved by the high poll. ‘It gives every candidate every chance to get his policy into the maximum number of homes and to the maximum number of voters.’ He was doubtful nonetheless as to whether it [television] influenced people to vote one way or another. Ludovic Kennedy was ‘fundamentally in favour of having television in an election’ although he added ‘a lot more should be done in the way of reporting’. He too, agreed with Mr Parkinson in that he didn’t think it altered the way people are going to vote, but that also it makes people conscious of their responsibility to vote.

The three shows totalled just two hours and five minutes of broadcasting. Compared to today, that is hardly a toe being dipped into water. As this piece is written, the next parliamentary general election is no more than two years away (January 2025). We will be bombarded – make no mistake – with almost round the clock coverage on the rolling news channels of the BBC, Sky, LBC, Talk TV and mainstream channels’ own news programmes. Bradby, Peston, Kuenssberg, Edwards, Mason, Marr and Ferrari et al will be in fifth gear. Vine will no doubt stride once again across digitally created graphics and even Bob McKenzie may turn in his grave, his swingometer poised.

And all due in no small part, although few will realise it, to the now almost-forgotten days of Granada TV’s ground breaking project of February 1958 in Rochdale where really, it all began.

★ Pete Singleton is a Transdiffusion staff editor.

The post Granada goes to Rochdale appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

TELEVISION is making politics history. For, thanks to ITV, this is the first general election in which it is playing a major role.

The story of the campaign is being chronicled day by day in the news bulletins. Special programmes are being shown, which not only bring viewers face to face with the arguments and the personalities but also show how an election works and so help stimulate public interest.

What effect is all this having on voters? To what extent will people be influenced by what they have heard and seen over their TV sets when they go to the polls on October 8?

These are highly-important questions. The answers are eagerly awaited by the leaders of the political parties, for whom television is still something of an unknown factor, and by the TV executives, who are responsible for the special programmes that are being televised during the period of the election.

To find these answers – and find them quickly – a team of research workers who are making a special survey of TV and the election have called in the help of an electronic brain which they have named Lucifer.

This giant – £100,000-worth of winking lights, whirring wheels and miles of multi-coloured wires which link its thousands of brain cells – can work out in hours a mass of complicated statistics that would otherwise take a lifetime to compile.

Head of the survey is Joseph Trenaman, who recently took up the newly-created post of Granada Television Fellow at Leeds University after a mammoth four year task at Oxford analysing viewing habits for the Nuffield Foundation.

He told me: “Television is obviously having a greater effect on the voter than ever before. At the last general election, only 40 per cent of the population had a TV set. Now the figure is 70 per cent.

“Our purpose in the survey that is now under way is to discover how far the political broadcasts help and influence a person’s decision to vote and the way he votes. We want to find out what opinions they have of the political leaders they see talking to them from their TV screens.

“And, to learn how effective television is in putting over the Party line, we want to find out what people know and understand of the election issues.”

The survey, which is intended to show the effectiveness of TV electioneering in a general sense, is in fact being conducted in two Yorkshire constituencies. One is West Leeds; the other, Pudsey.

They have not been picked merely because of their nearness to Leeds University, headquarters of the survey. Said Joseph Trenaman: “There are several very good reasons why we chose them. For one thing, we wanted constituencies where there is a very close fight, which means a great deal of local political activity.

“In both constituencies the majority in previous elections has been about 5,000, with electorates of between 50,000 and 60,000. One had a Labour majority; the other a Conservative majority. And in both cases there are also Liberal candidates.

“Another reason is that at the last general election the proportion of the votes for the main parties in the two constituencies was roughly the same as in the national figure.”

One thousand people are being questioned during the survey. Their names are taken from the electoral register – one name is picked out of every 125 in the list – and each is the subject of a 15-minute interview. From each set of answers up to 40 independent facts are taken for feeding fito the electronic brain.

To see the brain in action I called on Dr A. S. Douglas, director of Leeds University electronic computing laboratory.

I found him in an old black-stone building with a high vaulted ceiling that was once a Baptist chapel. Sunlight filtered through the windows, only to be overpowered by batteries of fluorescent lamps that lit up the austere laboratory.

Where once stood rows of pews, now squatted steel-grey cabinets containing the brain’s intricate memory patterns. To a perpetual humming sound, green pinpoints of light flashed on the face of monitor screens on the control desk as reel after reel of punched tape were fed into the machine.

When the survey is over there will be more than 40,000 facts to be “swallowed” by the brain, converted into electrical charges and then to travel along the fine tracery of wires to be digested, analysed, compared and rejected … and finally produce masses of widely-assorted facts about TV and the election.

But the brain is not only being used to sort out the answers. It sets the questions, too!

Said Joseph Trenaman: “In fact, we could not have done without it. We started off with a preliminary survey to find out what questions we ought to ask. Instead of sitting in our office and thinking up what we regarded as the right questions, we invited groups of people – as many as 60 at a time – to watch telerecordings of party political broadcasts, and talked to them afterwards.

“What we learned was fed into the machine – and then it was left to work out the most acceptable questions.

“The brain works at the rate of 1,000 operations a minute, and it took just an hour to give us the list of questions. Without its help, we would not have been ready in time and this survey, which we think as of tremendous importance, would never have taken place.”

The post Lucifer throws a light on TV electioneering appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

A FIRST REPORT

on Constituency Television in a General Election

Granada’s Election Marathon was an experiment.

Its aim was to give every voter in Granada’s Northern region the chance to see and hear, in his own home, all the candidates for his constituency.

Marathon presented 229 parliamentary candidates contesting 100 Northern constituencies. Many thousands of the electors in those 100 constituences never saw any of their candidates except in Marathon. For the candidates it was an opportunity to speak directly to the electors whose votes they were seeking, and to reply to points made by their opponents, who appeared with them. Of the 229 candidates taking part, 98 were Conservative, 100 Labour, 25 Liberal, 3 were Welsh Nationalists, 2 Communists and 1 Lancastrian; for the minority candidates, it was a rare opportunity of equality in political broadcasting.

Here is the story of this unprecedented experiment in constituency television.

The post Election Marathon: an introduction appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

1. There are programmes for which the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Independent Television Authority, with the programme companies, are responsible: these are such programmes as the BBC’s Who Goes Home? or The Week in Westminster and ATV’s Free Speech, and, of course, the routine news coverage of party conferences and other political events.
2. There are the “party political broadcasts” for which the political parties themselves are responsible, both during and between elections, in time allocated by agreement between them and the broadcasting authorities.

No British election has ever been covered so fully on television as the General Election of 1959. Television itself had grown enormously since the last election, in 1955. In that year, only million TV sets were in use in Britain: by 1959 there were 9 million sets, some two-thirds of the adult population were fairly frequent viewers, and it was said that, in a single TV appearance, a party leader could speak directly to more of the electors than Gladstone could have in the whole of his life. So potent and widespread a means of access to the electorate could not be ignored by the politicians; for some time before the 1959 election both the major parties — and, to a lesser extent, the Liberals — were preparing to use it more extensively than ever before.

But it was not only the party political broadcasts that were more numerous during this election. The biggest change from previous practice was in the BBC and ITA programmes. During earlier elections there had been a complete shut-down on political discussion and comment in BBC programmes. (Independent television did not begin until after the 1955 election.) Only in the “party politicals” were the election issues set before viewers and listeners — and, since each party separately presented its own case or attacked its opponents, there was no real clash.

This muted handling of a major event in the life of a democratic nation no longer seemed necessary or reasonable in 1959. Millions of viewers who had got used to watching serious TV discussions, young people who knew little about politics, “floating voters” — all were entitled to expect a full and independent coverage of the Election, with fairly balanced but free argument.

Already there had been some cautious relaxation of the strict rules that governed political broadcasting, even between elections. The “14-day rule” — under which nothing could be discussed on TV or radio if it was to be debated in Parliament in the coming fortnight — was dropped. The most important advance, however, was the coverage by Granada TV of the Rochdale by-election in February, 1958. This experiment was agreed to by the parties with some misgivings, and they watched it anxiously. Whether or not it contributed to the remarkably high poll (80.19 per cent.), the general verdict was that it had helped to stimulate public awareness of what was going on. Had the Rochdale experiment failed, it seems likely that there would have been less TV during the General Election itself.

The post Election Marathon: background to an idea appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

Granada had already begun to think about the type of programmes it would propose. Two weeks earlier, on March 5th, the general idea of Marathon had been tentatively discussed. (The date is important, for Granada’s intentions in putting forward the idea were later misrepresented.)

By March 18th the constituencies technically in the Granada Northern region had been defined. After some deliberation it was decided to propose this scheme to all constituencies in Granada’s primary- and secondary-signal areas except where a secondary-area constituency overlapped with the primary area of another programme company, then the constituency would be excluded.

Granada arranged interviews at the various party headquarters so that all the proposals for election programmes might be presented. These interviews took place on April 2nd. Granada representatives went to the headquarters of the three parties in London; the ITA were also kept informed. The Election Marathon was proposed in this form:

Candidates will appear constituency by constituency and each candidate will make a brief election address without debate or discussion. There will be four minutes for each candidate and Marathon will be broadcast continuously for five days from noon to 4 p.m., a total of 24 hours’ broadcasting time.

At the Liberal Party headquarters the Liberal Press Officer, Miss Phyllis Preston, raised no objections. She said she would refer the proposals to the Liberal Campaign Committee.

At the Labour Party headquarters the Granada producers met Mr. Morgan Phillips, the Labour Party Secretary. He accepted Marathon. His only doubts were: Could Granada organise it, and would the Conservative Party agree? At by-elections about this time at East Harrow, South-West Norfolk, and Galloway the Conservative candidates had refused to appear on television and so, under the law, their opponents had been barred from appearing.

The answer to the second of these questions was learned by other Granada executives simultaneously visiting the Conservative Party headquarters across from Transport House in Smith Square. The Conservative representatives did not commit the party. Their view was that they must consult the Party Chairman, Lord Hailsham, but they thought the idea “imaginative” and their questions were not on points of principle.

They raised one legal point. They wondered how Granada press advertisements of candidates to appear in Marathon would be affected by the limitation of candidates’ election expenses in the Representation of the People Act. The feeling was that an advertisement naming no candidates but referring to all of them would not be a breach of the Act.

Granada now released its proposals to the Press.

First Press Reactions

Marathon interested the newspapers.

“Granada offers TV Election” said the News Chronicle headline.

“Election TV Surprise” said the Daily Mirror (the reporter called the Marathon proposals “revolutionary”).

The Daily Mail reported that party legal experts would study the proposals and added: “Party chiefs are hoping they will give the go-ahead to this history-making scheme — individual candidates have never before been screened in an election.”

The Times political correspondent observed: “Granada, from the beginning the most politically conscious and sociologically experimental of television producers, have certainly set a hot pace to other programme companies and the BBC by making these proposals. . . .  The first reaction of rank and file politicians will be of gratitude, but the party headquarters will have their moments when they will look the gift horse sourly in the mouth”. However he entered one caveat on behalf of viewers: “Twenty-four hours of solid local television hustings, often featuring candidates with no skill in the art, and sometimes candidates who are not particularly articulate, is an awesome prospect”. (As it turned out, no candidate was, in fact, stuck for words.)

The Sunday Dispatch complained that Marathon was too fair: “That benevolent Socialist Mr. Sidney Bernstein who runs Granada TV is prepared to be fair to the point of idiocy. Every candidate in his area will get equal treatment. What nonsense this is!”

The Yorkshire Post political correspondent said: “These proposals will alleviate the fears of many MPs without television experience that they would not be given a fair crack of the whip”. The Yorkshire Post also reported that Mr. Donald Kaberry, MP for NW Leeds and Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party, “liked very much the idea of a straight speech by candidates within a limited period” — apparently because of the difficulties of achieving proper balance otherwise.

In fact, straight speeches alone were not to prove possible under the Television Act.

The Hand of the Law

For Marathon’s proposals now precipitated a complex debate in press and Parliament on television and the election law.

Even politicians cannot break the laws which they have helped to make.

Whatever arrangements were made for broadcasting the 1959 election had to be legal, and clearly seen to be legal, under two Acts of Parliament: the Representation of the People Act, 1949, which ensures fair play for all candidates, and the Television Act, 1954, which governs independent television.

The proposal that the Election Marathon should consist of a series of direct election addresses by each candidate in turn was at first felt by Granada to be not inconsistent with section 3 of the Television Act, which lays it down that, apart from party political broadcasts, all political broadcasts are to be in the form of “properly balanced discussions or debates”. After further consideration, however, and on advice from several quarters, it was decided to change the series of addresses into short debates between candidates.

More complex was the interpretation of section 63 of the Representation of the People Act. The problem can be stated thus:

1. Should a candidate appearing on television have to include the cost of his appearance in his election expenses? These expenses are strictly limited by the Representation of the People Act, on pain of disqualification. Obviously, if a candidate had to include the expense it would severely affect his ability and willingness to appear on television.
2. On the other hand, if the broadcasting authority pays for the cost of the programme, would the authority be liable for prosecution for promoting or procuring the candidate’s election? The Act says that apart from the agent or candidate or persons authorised by him, it is a corrupt practice for anyone to present the candidate or his views to the electors. Newspapers are specifically exempted from this ban. But the Act was passed in 1949, and television is not mentioned in it.

Granada’s own view was that since it was proposing equal time for all candidates in a constituency it could hardly be said to be promoting the election of any one of them. It was on this agreed reasoning that Granada had been able to broadcast the Rochdale by-election programmes a year before.

Mr. Morgan Phillips agreed that Marathon was legal. The Daily Mail, on April 4th, reported him saying: “We welcome the Granada plan; it is a very good idea. There is nothing illegal about it provided there is equal representation of candidates.”

A Conservative party spokesman was quoted: “From our point of view one thing is quite definite: it is up to individual candidates to decide whether they want to go on TV. If a particular candidate decided against it I cannot see how his opponent — even if wishing to do so — could take part.”

But the Mail also reported that “some leading politicians” were against the idea. The ITA comment, reported in the Mail, was: “Consultations will take place before the full implications of these rather dramatic proposals are known.”

In the next few weeks the air was heavy with legal opinions. Five days after the Marathon proposals were made public, Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke QC MP published a trenchant legal analysis in the Daily Telegraph of April 8th.

Yes, said Mr. Fletcher-Cooke, Granada’s Election Marathon was legal, but it was the only proposed election programme that was. The BBC’s plan to screen “selected” candidates was illegal, said Mr. Fletcher-Cooke.

Even party political broadcasts were illegal, said Mr. Fletcher-Cooke, unless any company giving 10 minutes to a Minister gave exactly the same time to all the other candidates in his constituency “however crack-pot, however obscure.”

Why? Because, said Mr. Fletcher-Cooke, if only one candidate in any constituency were given screen-time the broadcasting authority would be preferring his election in that constituency and thereby guilty of a corrupt practice. It did not matter that the authority was giving equal time to an opposing candidate from another constituency. British law did not recognise parties, only individuals and constituencies.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke suggested that Granada had really “blown the gaff” about the March 18th agreement between the parties, the ITA, and the BBC, to screen regional election programmes.

Granada, said Mr. Fletcher-Cooke, had seen the illegality of the BBC proposal to screen “selected” candidates, announced at the time of the new agreement, and had then decided not to “play along”. By proposing to screen every candidate, Granada, he said, had spotlighted the legal flaw in the plans of the BBC and other programme companies.

In fact, as has been emphasised, Marathon had first been thought of on March 5th, two weeks before the BBC announced its plan to televise selected candidates. Granada had not devised Marathon with the intention of embarrassing anybody. (That it had was a rumour to which the Daily Mail also gave currency: it reported that BBC and Independent programme-company heads were “very bitter about this Bernstein bombshell”. The only quote reported from the BBC was: “No comment”.)

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke’s opinion made front-page headlines.

The Daily Mail said that both Crown and BBC lawyers had now ruled the BBC programmes with selected candidates a breach of the electoral law. All candidates must be given equal time. The Mail added that a Speaker’s Conference to revise the law was possible.

“TV Election Tangle probed by Cabinet”, said the Daily Mirror headline.

“New Law for Election TV?” said the News Chronicle.

The Daily Telegraph political correspondent declared that Marathon did not comply with the law: “The problem cannot be solved by ensuring that all the candidates in a constituency are given equal time on television. On a meticulous view of the law each would still be liable for a share of the expenses involved.”

The Daily Telegraph, like other newspapers, reported that back-bench MPs thought legislation was needed before the election to safeguard the position of candidates invited to appear on Marathon. The opinion, it seemed, was that the exemption accorded to newspapers in the Representation of the People Act should be extended to television.

The Daily Telegraph political correspondent hinted that the party leaders “may agree on a policy of masterly inactivity leaving it to some aggrieved candidate to raise a test case and thus obtain a judicial interpretation of the Act”.

The Manchester Guardian was tart about the fuss. The confusion over the rights of television companies had now reached “absurd proportions”. A test case would “let the politicians off too lightly”. The Guardian urged rebellion: “One would like to see the two television authorities stand on the letter of the law and refuse all part in the election until the law is amended to secure for them the full freedom of reporting enjoyed by newspapers.”

The Daily Mirror agreed: “How ridiculous!” In a belligerent editorial headlined “This Muddle is Dangerous”, the Mirror said “It is vital that TV should be given fair elbow room to report elections. These muddles should be straightened out — now. The law must be brought up to date — now”. The Mirror also made this point: “Candidates do not have to pay for newspaper reports of their speeches. Why should they have to pay for television appearances?”

The Times political correspondent referred to the Act’s “extraordinary oversight” on the position of television. But the party leaders, he said, did not think that there was enough confusion to make radical rationalisation necessary.

Two days later the newspapers reported that the problem had indeed been shelved. The parties, they said, had agreed not to bring test legal actions against each other. The Daily Telegraph summed up: “The attitude of both parties is that there is a case for revising the 1949 Act, especially on the question of expenses, but that it should be left for the next Parliament to tackle”.

This, however, did not clear the way for Marathon in the forthcoming election. The BBC, too, announced that it was revising its plans. It would not screen the “selected” candidates as candidates from individual constituencies. It would screen them as regional spokesmen for the party.

The Manchester Guardian was scornful of this solution. In a biting editorial on April 18th, headlined “TV in Chains”, the Guardian said: “When is a candidate not a candidate? The answer we are now asked to believe is: when he appears in a BBC election broadcast. This prize bit of humbug is the latest attempt to find a way out of the stranglehold of our archaic election laws…. This solution does not overcome the other impediment to free television reporting; the right of the parties to veto programmes is kept intact”.

On the same day, in Parliament, Mr. R. A. Butler said: “There is nothing more abstruse, except medieval theology, than the general rules covering political broadcasts”.

In a confused situation, Granada made its own position clear on April 20th by saying: “We have had no objection to the scheme from the three main political parties or from the ITA and as far as we know no-one else has raised any serious objection”.

The issue was given a final airing in the Commons on April 24th. Doubts about the legal position were expressed by Mr. Gaitskell, and Mr. Shinwell asked for an inquiry. Mr. Butler replied that the ITA was taking legal advice on Marathon. Until the ITA view, based on legal advice, was received, “we cannot make any progress on that”. He added: “But it would be right for me to keep in touch with the Leader of the Opposition and with members, so that if a statement was necessary it could be made to alleviate fears about the possible operation of the Representation of the People Act in relation to these proposals”.

The prospect of a spring election faded. Granada continued to plan for Marathon in a possible autumn election. Their own legal advisers had already said that, in their opinion, Marathon was not a breach of the Representation of the People Act, and could certainly, with some adjustment, be made to conform with the Television Act.

The ITA, however, now told Granada that it seemed doubtful, on preliminary legal advice, whether any programme featuring candidates as such would be legal.

A few weeks later the ITA discovered another snag. The ITA’s legal advice was that the provision of the Television Act on political programmes, other than the set party political broadcasts, must be in the form of “properly balanced discussions or debates” would rule out a series of election addresses as proposed in Marathon, even if a programme in that form could be devised to comply with the Representation of the People Act.

Granada was, of course, prepared to modify Marathon so that it became a series of balanced debates in conformity with the Television Act. But now the parties began to have doubts. Mr. Morgan Phillips wondered how easy it would be to secure balance between, say, three candidates in a short discussion programme. Moreover, there still remained the uncertainties of the Representation of the People Act, and the programme-planners’ problem of screening Marathon in Granada’s permitted hours.

Voice of Authority

At this point it seemed necessary to take independent and authoritative advice. Granada’s own counsel had already advised that, in his opinion. Marathon was not a breach of the Representation of the People Act, and could be made to conform with the Television Act with the slight adjustment suggested by the ITA. But, even though a revised Marathon might not be declared illegal by the ITA or by the parties, there might be a massive reluctance to take part unless Marathon was clearly and indisputably seen to be legal. Candidates of the main parties might still fear that an independent candidate might bring an action to invalidate the result in a constituency in which all the candidates had taken part in Marathon.

Accordingly, on August 11th, Granada invited Sir Ivor Jennings, Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to give an opinion on Marathon’s legality. On August 20th, less than three weeks before the Prime Minister announced the date of the election, Sir Ivor gave his opinion on Marathon. It was favourable.

Marathon, he said, was legal under the Representation of the People Act. He concluded his analysis: “The expenditure incurred in a broadcast by Bill Bloggs, candidate for Loamshire, is not a corrupt practice so long as it is not incurred with a view to (i.e. with the object of) his election for Loamshire. The evidence that it is not so incurred is that John Moggs and Jack Coggs, the other candidates, have also broadcast”.

Sir Ivor recommended that:

1. No candidate should appear on television unless all the other candidates in his constituency are prepared to appear;
2. All such candidates should appear in the same programme, each of them speaking for x minutes in an order determined by lot;
3. Candidates should be instructed that they must speak judiciously about the “issues” of the election which appear to them to be important on the national plane, and must not address their constituents direct; and
4. Granada should make it plain, preferably through the announcer at the beginning of each session, that the candidates are explaining their opinions to viewers generally, because it is just as important to have good back-benchers as it is to have good front-benchers.

On the Television Act, Sir Ivor said Section 3 was not to be interpreted as a legally enforceable set of duties but rather as a code of behaviour.

Thus reassured about the Representation of the People Act, Granada decided to change the form of the Election Marathon to a series of short debates between candidates. This would remove any possibility of contravening the Television Act.

Hardly had this been done, when the Prime Minister announced the Dissolution of Parliament. The revised Election Marathon proposal was speedily approved by the Independent Television Authority. On September 10th it was put before the parties, this time simultaneously to Northern party officials and to the party headquarters in London. All agreed to it.

The legal bogeys had been laid; official approval was secured; and the way was clear for the candidates themselves to accept or reject Granada’s offer.

The post Election Marathon: the idea mooted appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

Dear …,

You have probably read in the newspapers of Granada’s plan to offer all candidates in the North of England a chance to address their electors on television.

This is our invitation to your candidate to take part.

The programme is entitled “The Election Marathon”, and this is how it will work. The length of time on the air for a constituency with three candidates will not be less than six minutes. Candidates will ballot for the order of speaking. When their turn comes to appear on the air the chairman will introduce them — naming the constituency, each candidate and the party he represents. The candidates will then speak in the order of ballot for one minute each. Then the chairman will conduct a short debate in which each candidate will have a chance to deal with any points that the other speakers have raised. Each candidate will have an equal time on the air.

No constituency debate can be included in the programme unless all the nominated candidates agree to appear; it would be infringing the Television Act 1954 to present, say, only two out of three candidates.

We have taken leading legal opinion. We are assured that the Marathon programme does not infringe the terms of the Representation of the People Act.

We will arrange transport to and from the studio. For constituencies west of the Pennines the studio will be at the Granada Television Centre in Manchester. For constituencies east of the Pennines the studio will be in the Granada offices in Leeds.

There are details to be worked out as this is a complex television operation. We will be getting in touch with you again but in the meantime we would be grateful if you could let us know if your candidate will be able to take part. Would you please make a transfer charge telephone call to us at Granada, Manchester, Deansgate 7211, and ask for the Election Desk.

We would be grateful for a quick decision, because it will help us in making our plans.

Yours sincerely,

for GRANADA TV NETWORK LIMITED

By next morning one thing was sure: candidates wanted to appear on Marathon. All that day the four telephone lines to Granada’s Election Desk were ringing continuously, with acceptances in principle. In the morning there was a queue of calls from Nantwich, Bolton, Knutsford, Oldham, Leeds, Keighley, Barrow.

But before Marathon could go on the air all the candidates in a constituency had to accept; all had to agree to the same time and date.

Each candidate accepting was given a provisional time and date for broadcasting. Acceptances were marked on a wall chart of constituencies.

At 10.30 a.m. the first direct refusal came by telephone from Yorkshire. Mr. Paul Bryan, the Conservative candidate for Howden, regretted he could not accept the invitation. This meant that the Labour candidate, who had already accepted, would not be able to appear. Howden was marked off the constituency list. The Labour candidate was informed that Granada could not televise him.

The second refusal came at 12.30 p.m. It was from Mrs. Bessie Braddock who said she was against television appearances. So Liverpool Exchange came off the list, too.

But by this time individual acceptances had built up a strong lead and slowly whole constituencies began to be lined up. The first complete constituency, oddly enough, was Rochdale, where eighteen months earlier Granada had televised the by-election: Mr. Jack McCann (Labour) accepted at noon, then Mr. Tom Normanton, the Conservative, and finally, later in the day, Mr. Ludovic Kennedy for the Liberals.

By 6 p.m. on September 22nd, six days after the invitations had gone out, the candidates in 100 constituencies out of 153 had provisionally accepted.

About half the candidates accepting were also able to agree to the provisional times and dates offered by Granada. For the others new times and dates had to be worked out, and agreed by all of them.

Granada’s operations sheet for a difficult constituency went like this:

10 a.m. The Labour candidate says he cannot accept a Tuesday evening broadcast: he has a meeting a long way off. He suggests Wednesday or Thursday evening.

10.12 a.m. Granada phones the Conservative and Liberal agents, who have already accepted Tuesday. They say they will consult their candidates and ring back in the afternoon. They do.

The Conservative can manage Thursday evening but not the afternoon: he is due at an old people’s tea party. The Liberal agent says the candidate can appear on Wednesday afternoon but he must be away by 4.45 p.m. for another meeting. Can Granada arrange that? Yes, but now the more important question is can the Liberal appear Thursday evening? The agent says he will see.

3.30 p.m. Granada re-checks the Marathon schedule. The constituency can be televised on the Thursday evening if they all agree. Granada rings the Labour candidate. He is out with a canvassing team. A message is left.

3.50 p.m. Now the Liberal candidate rings back. Yes, Thursday evening is all right for him, provided transport can be arranged both ways. It can; he agrees.

4.15 p.m. Granada tries the Labour committee rooms again, but the candidate is not back yet. Five minutes later he is on the telephone. He will be agreeable to re-arranging Thursday evening’s engagements, but he cannot be in the studio until 10.45 p.m.

4.45 p.m. Granada writes to all the parties. The local Granada news correspondent is asked to arrange transport for the Liberal.

So one more constituency is scheduled.

One candidate was unduly optimistic. He wrote: “I understand you pay your usual fee to those taking part in this broadcast”. Granada replied: “We feel we perform a public service in this broadcast and therefore we do not propose a fee”. The candidate then accepted graciously; but, because his opponent refused the invitation, he did not in fact appear.

The final figures were:

In the constituencies some strong things were being said about candidates unable to appear — and about television.

Mr. Geoffrey Hirst, Conservative candidate for Shipley, who declined the invitation, was reported in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus to have said that, the whole policy of televising the election had been grossly overdone. In any case, he thought that his own programme was far too busy for him to go careering about adding to the saturation. His Labour opponent retorted that he was “undemocratic”.

The newspapers had already reported the invitations (“350 can climb on the TV Soapbox” was the Daily Herald’s headline). Now the refusals made news.

The Daily Mirror, in a bold editorial headlined “This Gag is Not Funny”, said: “Any one candidate can gag his opponents. This smothering of election politics on TV is insane. TV goes into more than 9 million homes. It should play a vital part in getting everyone steamed up about the General Election…”

The Mirror concluded: “Granada is courageous but hampered by screen-shy candidates. One thing is clear. The winning parly on October 8th must make sure that TV is never gagged like this again”.

There was a rash of Marathon headlines in the local newspapers: “Colonel Refutes Debate Smear” (Manchester Evening Chronicle); “A Socialist Refuses One TV Minute” (Yorkshire Post); “Television Not Our Line, say Local Tories” (Crewe Chronicle); “TV Election Clash at Shipley” (Bradford Telegraph and Argus); “Candidate Sorry Opponent Won’t Join TV Debate” (Sheffield Star).

The Manchester Guardian said that in Bradford Marathon had become “the first issue to disturb a quiet contest”; and the Sunday Dispatch reported a crisp bit of cross-talk from Liverpool Exchange where, it said, Mrs. Braddock’s refusal to appear on Marathon with stockbroker Mr. Tom Beattie-Edwards (Conservative) had livened up a cold election.

The dialogue, said the Sunday Dispatch, went something like this:

Bessie: I have no objection to you going on TV. They can give you an hour for all I care.

Tom: Thanks, I’ll tell Granada.

Bessie: The longer you speak on TV, the less notice they’ll take of you.

Tom: You might get a big shock on October 8th.

Bessie: If we lose Exchange we might as well pack up altogether . . .

(Mr. Edwards did tell Granada about Mrs. Braddock’s willingness to let him appear — but under the law Granada could not screen only one candidate.)

Plain Ties Preferred

In Manchester and Leeds, meanwhile, preparations were pushed ahead for televising candidates who had accepted (now they included Mr. Gaitskell, Labour candidate for Leeds South, who had agreed to appear from Leeds on Marathon despite a full diary: he said he did not want to deprive his opponents of their chance).

At Leeds a Granada office had been converted into a studio and the Travelling Eye units had moved in. The broadcasting times had been confirmed with the candidates and advertisements prepared for the press in every constituency.

The RAC had signposted routes to the studios. Granada had sent every candidate a map and asked its news correspondents on the spot to help if they could.

Since most of the candidates were about to face television cameras for the first time, Granada sent them these hints:

These Notes May Help You

1. What you wear is not of critical importance, but it would help your appearance on television if you wear a blue or light green shirt — which transmit best.
2. Plain ties look better than striped.
3. If you wish, wear your rosettes, but avoid things that shine. Badges and metal pen tops reflect light and do not help your picture.
4. You will be called upon to speak, in the first instance, for one minute, and then, the second time round, you will be given a chance to reply to your rivals for another minute. You might care to work out the points you want to make in your first minute.
5. After you have been speaking for 45 seconds a light, in front of you, will start to flash. This will continue until your minute is up. When this light starts to flash you should wind up your speech so that you are not cut off by the independent chairman. If you finish in under a minute, do not worry — the camera will cut back to the Chairman so that you are not left in mid-air. Your speech will go out as a finished piece, even if you are under the minute.
6. If you are used to talking to large audiences remember that television is a very intimate medium. Big oratorical speeches and gestures are not successful. They often seem pompous. Experts say it is an advantage to try to project your talk to just one person — say a friend sitting at home.
7. There will, as usual, be movement in the studio — technicians working and people moving into place. Ignore all this, for you are on the air. Concentrate on the camera in front of you and nothing else.
8. Where should you train your eyes? Right on the lens at the bottom left of the camera — this is the one that counts . . . RELAX . . . and be yourself.

September 28th was Nomination Day — and Marathon Day. There was only one last-minute crisis: Bolton West and Bolton East were scheduled for Marathon’s first day and last-minute nominations looked likely (Granada’s news correspondents had been asked to advise of any). A Liberal announced his intention of standing in Bolton East against a Conservative, and a Conservative hastened from London to fight the Liberal in Bolton West. Granada stood by on Nomination Day to take them both into the scheduled programmes if they agreed to appear — and to cancel both Bolton constituencies altogether if they refused.

But the Liberal stayed at home all day, and the Conservative, un-nominated, went back to London.

At 4.47 p.m. in Leeds and at 4.52 p.m. in Manchester, Marathon was on the air.

The post Election Marathon: organising Election Marathon appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

They drank tea and broke biscuits together in a room away from the studio which was to be the scene of their ordeal and their opportunity. The Liberal Agent for Blackpool, in the manner of a trainer with an overweight boxer, declared he had got his candidate down to 55 seconds. A Conservative knight went off into one comer with his notes and pencil. In the centre of the room a big man with a rosette quietened a nervous conversation about television: “We’re going to win anyway; we’re not worried”.

All the candidates had been given caption cards to identify them and their parties for the viewers. They had balloted for order of speaking. They had been asked, too, to study a memorandum from Granada about television and the law, which said among other things: “There must not be any appeals to vote as such, and there must not be any offensive representation of or reference to a living person”.

It seemed to be narrowing politics a bit. Nobody, it is true, looked as if they would like to make offensive representations, though a production assistant was saying to a meek-enough candidate: “If you are going to say something rude you should say it through the chair”.

The candidates were assured that they need not worry that they might be cut off in mid-adjective — but, said the producer, “when the light goes steady, you must quit”.

At 4.38 the first three groups were taken to the studio. The three candidates for Birkenhead, the first to go on the air, took their places and sat stiffly side by side. They had no notes, but their eyes had a withdrawn look that suggested that well-rehearsed words were passing before them.

There was not much of an audience for them — just the usual technicians, a producer and a pressman. In the constituencies their appearances would bring smiles, handshakes, applause — anything, perhaps, but the busy silence they now faced as they waited for the starter’s signal and the 60-second sprint.

The other candidates sat around behind the cameras and the cables, clutching their name-cards. Make-up girls descended on them with brushes and powder-puffs (“just to take the shine off”). Mrs. Barbara Castle took her place with 10 minutes to go, and asked for a cushion. She explained: “You can see more of him than me”.

“Three minutes to go”, said the floor-manager, and there was silence.

“One minute” . . . “30 seconds” … A hand sawed sharply down and Mr. Graham Routledge was on. He is a 32-year-old bachelor and a barrister. He had been sitting upright like a guardsman. He spoke in a homely, straightforward, slightly formal way: “I am privileged to be the Conservative candidate for Birkenhead. I was born in Higher Tranmere. I went to school there, I live there. Probably I have met you. Consequently I am myself aware of the benefits many of you have received from the increased prosperity of the last few years …”

So they were off into the land of summits and price indices, pension tables and balance-of-payments crises, with not yet much of a smile or a spark to keep the viewers awake. But it was a fair start, and as the Birkenhead three went stealthily out of the studio to make room for the Blackpool North trio, Mrs. Castle could be heard talking about oysters and caviar for the few, and her opponent replying with wage statistics, and Marathon was well on its way.

It was all quite polite, so far . . . Mrs. Castle had to be interrupted by the chairman when she was going past the 60-second mark at Flying Scot speed: she gave way with a smile. The Labour candidate for Blackpool South said that his opponent had been a good MP: the MP said that he appreciated such kind personal remarks.

Not until the last constituency on Monday, Bolton West, was there any smell of gunpowder. The Labour man attacked the Conservative-Liberal pact he said existed there. The third seat in the studio was empty because of phoney politics, he declared, staring angrily ahead. But the Liberal turned his wrath elegantly aside, gave a neat puff for his own election meeting that night — and finished under time.

Over to Yorkshire

Marathon was being broadcast from Leeds as well as Manchester to save the time of candidates and of television. A crew of 35 and four Granada Travelling Eye vehicles had moved in to do the job.

On the day the invitations went out for Marathon, work had started to turn a 3rd-floor Granada office in the Headrow into a television studio. Cables were passed from the street vehicles through a 3rd-floor window. Noise had been the biggest problem, for the Headrow is a busy road; but that had been overcome by curtaining the office walls.

Extra telephones and lighting had been arranged and other Granada offices converted. One had become a make-up room. Another two became studio waiting-rooms, with water carafes, where it was thought the candidates might like to pace and declaim their speeches. Despite the preliminary warning against the declamatory manner, they did.

A night in Leeds went like this:

At 10.10 p.m. the camera crews begin to arrive in the studio for 11.30 transmission. They switch on the cameras to warm up. Outside in Wormald Street the director and sound and vision engineers take their positions in the Control Van and tune in to Manchester. They have three stop-watches to time the candidates’ speeches.

In the reception rooms the first two candidates have arrived — from Rotherham tonight, 60 miles away. The producer briefs them: ‘‘You are free to use your hands and you can read notes if you want to. The camera will not see them…. If you want to show anything like a poster you can, but the camera will not move for them. If we allowed production techniques for one, we must allow them to all”.

Someone asks the Labour man about his 11,500 majority in Rotherham. He recites the oldest safe-seat joke: “We don’t count the votes there, we put ’em on the scales and weigh ’em.” The Conservative, by diplomacy or accident, thinks the conversation is about weight and talks about slimming: they are both heavyweights.

At 11 p.m., with half an hour to go, they are waiting only for the Conservative candidate from York. One or two people begin to look anxious. Ten minutes later he comes in from the night with a flurry of party workers. He has been delayed by a car crash.

With 20 minutes to go they all troop off to the studio on the 3rd floor. The candidates are powdered, their eyebrows brushed, their ties straightened. They take the floor.

Ten minutes to Marathon and the chairman runs through his opening speech. The candidates put on their poker faces.

The producer sits behind a partition with a monitor set, and another stop-watch. Earphones connect him to the director in the control van outside. The producer will flash the studio light that tells a speaker he must come to an end. Elaborate precautions have been made against overrunning. A big card marked “I” stands ready for the producer to wave at the chairman if he wants him to intervene between two candidates, and another marked “F” which means that, as a desperate last resort, he is going to fade out the programme.

Then the cue comes, the Conservative smiles into the camera, speaks and takes his signal to close. The Labour man calls him “Ron” as they debate steel nationalisation and the Conservative starts back, “Let’s be fair about this, Jack”.

Now their minutes have gone and it is the York candidates who are sparring, with milder blows: “Sometimes, you know, I couldn’t agree with you less”. When the York candidate says that Socialism is “pie in the sky” the Rotherham Labour man looks as if he will break in. But he doesn’t, and the broadcast ends on time and in good temper.

The Labour man from Rotherham sums up the amiability of it all: “These fellows are all right on their own. It’s when you get dozens of them it’s different”.

The post Election Marathon: Marathon goes on the air appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

Northern organisers of political parties on both sides of the Pennines seem agreed on Marathon. They liked it.

These were some of their comments:

Mr. Arthur N. Banks, Secretary of the N.W. Provincial Area of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations: “The Granada Election Marathon was a great, helpful and revealing pioneer effort in television electioneering. It succeeded in bringing candidates of all parties into the homes of many thousands of electors who do not attend meetings or get the opportunity of seeing their candidates face to face. I thought the presentation of Marathon was completely fair, most interesting, and admirably executed”.

Mr. Reg Wallis, North-West Regional Organiser of the Labour Party: “Marathon proved of very real interest to large numbers of electors and contributed to the interest in the Election, which led to a higher poll than 1955. Electors were not only interested in their own candidates, but in comparing them with those from other constituencies. A programme well worth reproduction.”

Mr. Albert Ingham, Chief Agent of the Liberal Party and Secretary of the Yorkshire Liberal Federation: “The idea of Marathon was a most effective and practical contribution to the General Election. Naturally there was a bit of repetition from candidates quoting policy and giving facts and figures, but all that made the vast television election audience General Election conscious. The times of the broadcasts could, perhaps, have been better selected, perhaps just after the evening news. The absence of an audience with its background of an odd heckler or two left Marathon a little lacking in colour, but, of course, time was the major, vital factor. All candidates in all parties had a fair crack of the whip and Granada did a first-class job…. Marathon was a success”.

What the Papers Said

Whatever their critics might think of it, the newspapers treated Marathon as news.

The nationals reported after the first day:

“Marathon Gets Off to No-Hitch Start” (News Chronicle).

“Barbara (on TV) Attacks ‘Bubbly Boom'” (Daily Express).

“Labour Daubs Tory TV Whitewash” (Daily Herald).

“That certain Smile Steals TV Marathon” (Daily Mail).

The Mail story began: “Is a good TV smile a vote winner? Every party will be pondering that one today after the hit success of Mrs. Barbara Garden, a Conservative candidate who stole the Granada election marathon”.

The Express gave a column to the first show. It reported that after it Mrs. Barbara Castle said: “Electors can see their candidates but there isn’t enough time to impress them either with personality or argument”.

The Express did a survey of reactions, but apparently it had difficulty finding anyone who watched:

“I would have like to have looked in but it was rather a difficult time — I was getting my husband’s dinner ready” — Mrs. Catherine Farr, Blackburn.

The Express also reported: A snap check on five homes in Bolsover revealed that only one family watched.

The Daily Herald, dabbling in metaphor, reported: “Granada’s TV Election programme Marathon started last night with a dreary procession of Tory candidates — each armed with whitewash”.

The local papers told their readers what their candidates said on Marathon:

“Tory and Socialist fight it out on TV Marathon” (Oldham Evening Chronicle).

“Hull’s Lively Eight on TV” (Hull Daily Mail).

“Clash on TV Over Schools” (Keighley News).

“That Pension Quote Comes Up on TV” (Lincolnshire Echo).

“Blackpool Candidates Make History on Television” (Blackpool Gazette. The Gazette gave the candidates’ remarks in full.)

In Sheffield what happened on Marathon rumbled in the headlines for several days afterwards — and came back on Marathon. The argument was about newspaper articles the Labour candidate for Attercliffe, Mr. J. B. Hynd, produced on the show. “Look at these headings in the Tory press — ‘Redundancy is feared at English Steel Corporation’ and ‘Longer Dole Queues’,” said Mr. Hynd.

“Outside the studio”, reported the Sheffield Star, “the real row started when Mr. Hynd showed Sir Peter Roberts the copy of the Star he had produced. Indignantly Sir Robert pointed out: ‘But look at the date, that was in November last year . . . Bad show that, John, to produce an old copy of the Star. Just not cricket.’ Mr. Hynd: ‘But unemployment still exists’.” Two days later on Marathon another Conservative candidate criticised Mr. Hynd for displaying the newspaper — and the Labour candidate hotly defended him.

In Chorley, the Evening Telegraph reported that the Labour candidate had challenged his opponent to debate nationalisation after something said on Marathon. In Blackpool the Gazette reported that the Conservatives were “indignant” at a statement about evictions a Labour candidate made on Marathon. The Yorkshire Post gave half a column to the debate between Mr. Gaitskell and his Leeds South Conservative opponent, Mr. J. Addey.

“Hot Studio with Cool Atmosphere: Sharp TV Answer for Mr. Gaitskell” was the Yorkshire Post‘s headline for the last day of the Election Marathon.

Some of the critics tended to treat the Election Marathon simply as entertainment.

Richard O’Sullivan of the Daily Express thought Marathon too fast: “The programme was a flier — but not a flop, though it was too fast to have much impact”.

The Manchester Guardian, however, thought differently. It said: “A marathon of a minute”.

“One minute,” wrote Guardian critic W. J. Weatherby, “can still be a long time”. He found Marathon without much profit in political argument, psychological case-study, or visual entertainment. He wrote: “Perhaps some of the candidates would not have been so eager [to appear] if they could have seen themselves as we have seen them. A few of those minutes have already seemed even longer than 60 seconds….”

It was, of course, a conscientious public-spirited offer on Granada’s part, but a minute’s sober and cynical reflection might have suggested what the result was going to be for the poor viewer. Face after face like election posters or pictures of wanted men, have devoted their minutes laboriously and dogmatically to such topics as Suez or old age pensions or themselves. The result has been as boring as watching every lap of a real marathon race’’.

Nor did this critic like the camera staying focused on the candidate full-face (the idea had been that an unchanged picture was the fairest for all), or the chairman’s “poker-face throughout, as if he is afraid that the slightest change of expression might lead to charges of favouritism”.

It was, however, this scrupulous impartiality that most favourably impressed Maurice Richardson in the Observer.

He thought that Marathon was conducted “with impeccable fairness”. But he, too, was worried about those faces: “the production was strikingly like the Police Gazette’s ‘Wanted Men’ photographs”.

T. F. Lindsay in an article in the Daily Telegraph “’Prentice Hands at the TV Hustings” took the same view as the Guardian: “Granada’s Marathon may have been imaginative but it has not made enough allowance for human weakness. Very few candidates have stood up to the test of the unforgiving minute without taking on the appearance of ruffled and harassed parrots”.

Peter Black, in the Daily Mail, analysed the assumption that an inexpert performance would harm a candidate. He wrote: “The job is so big, involving so many different candidates, that the bogy of partiality has been dealt a severe blow which may, with luck, prove fatal. It is obvious that if there is partiality it can come only from the comparative merits of the candidates which are bound to even themselves out. And are these merits as unmistakable as some observers think? Candidate A talks on TV as confidently as though it owed him money. Candidate B is nervous as though the camera were his old headmaster. It is usually assumed that A will impress more than B, but why should he ? Why should not people be as impressed by diffidence as by confidence? In fact, we know that in real life they are equally impressed in roughly equal numbers”.

Marathon was too tame for Jon Akass, the Daily Herald columnist. He wrote: “The idea is to give all candidates in the area a chance to show their face on the telly for an equal length of time. Most of the candidates also say something, probably because they feel foolish just sitting there…. It doesn’t much matter what they say because the whole thing is so hemmed in by statutes that any sort of live controversy would be like dancing the can-can in a minefield … I don’t like this sort of caper. It might be very British and gentlemanly but I don’t like it. Elections get really interesting when the candidates begin to get on each other’s nerves”.

Norman Hare agreed, at the end of his account in the News Chronicle: “Only the children were likely to be upset by the start of Marathon. It delayed Popeye’s appearance on the screens in Northern homes for 25 minutes”.

The northern press notices were equally mixed.

After four days of Marathon, the Yorkshire Post critic, Peter Jackson, said: “Granada have fulfilled their obligations towards the electorate with Marathon. It is bound to stimulate interest in itself and the speakers we have seen so far have, for the most part, broken away from party politics and discussed the problems of their own constituencies. The initiative taken by Granada may mark the beginning of an entirely new form of electioneering … but I cannot help feeling that a great deal would be lost in the way of interchange of ideas if the personal touch were to go”.

The Liverpool Echo thought Marathon too long: the Bradford Telegraph thought it too short. The Bradford Telegraph critic was angry about the brevity of Marathon: “Nine West Riding candidates were shot through in almost as many minutes last night and at a time when most people would be on the bus going home or having tea….” There was a glimpse, said the critic, of the Prime Minister’s son, but “for any expression of policy or even collected thought the time available was farcical and produced some irritating results with the would-be MPs being cut off abruptly in the middle of a sentence”.

To the Blackburn Evening Telegraph critic this was not the point: “What they said is relatively unimportant. What matters is that they accepted the challenge to appear on television in front of people whose only chance to see them this would be…. Even in three minutes the cameras can say a good deal more than words”.

What the Candidates Said

Finally, those most concerned personally — the candidates: How did they react to the experience, often their first time before the cameras? Did the programme help them at all in their campaigning? What kind of reaction did it bring in the constituency?

Granada invited the candidates and their agents to give their opinions on Marathon, for this was an experiment as new to Granada as to those taking part.

This is a summary of their reactions:

81 letters have been received from MPs and ex-candidates. 41 commented on the favourable reception of Marathon in their constituencies. 32 felt the time allotted had been too short. 26 said the hours of transmission had been unsuitable. 13 praised Marathon for giving viewers the chance of seeing their candidates. 10 were surprised at the wide coverage of the programme. 8 thought the programme had been well worth doing. 7 were amazed at how much could in fact be said in one minute. 6 said the programme was boring and that there had been too much repetition. 4 were convinced Marathon had increased public interest in the election. 3 complained of uncomfortable seating. 3 complained of bad make-up and lighting — said they were made to look old. 3 felt there should have been a different system for the order of speaking; the last person to speak having a distinct advantage. 3 said Marathon was of no benefit to those who had already been MPs: it gave their opponents an advantage in getting themselves known. 2 felt that advance publicity had not been good enough: they would have liked to include times of appearance in election addresses; only Marathon was mentioned in TV Times, not the names of the constituencies and candidates. 2 would have liked a rehearsal. One would have liked a clock with seconds hand. One complained that the Chairman did nothing but keep time. One would have liked a drink of water or preferably something stronger, before and after the programme.

Some of these points are enlarged on in extracts from letters printed hereafter.

Those Who Were For

By no means every candidate thinks more time is needed. Mr. Peter Cameron (Labour, Bolton West): “General opinion seems to be that a brief appearance on television is a good idea, and people seem happier watching a large number of candidates making short speeches than they do listening to one long-drawn-out lecture …. From the number of people who have commented on Monday’s broadcast, it can be assumed that we had a fairly large audience in Bolton.”

Two candidates said they had changed their opinion about Marathon, in its favour.

Col. Douglas Glover (Conservative, Ormskirk) says: “I am going to be quite honest and say that my original view of this programme was that it was a waste of time and after the first performances I was rather confirmed in my opinion. However, as I see the programme unfolding, I believe that the final conclusion will be that it has served a very valuable purpose”.

Sir Roland Robinson (Conservative, Blackpool South) says: “It was the first time I had appeared in a television programme in this country and I had serious doubts as to whether it was possible to make an effective contribution in the short space of one minute. Now that it is over my doubts have resolved themselves, and I feel that you have a very interesting programme which gave a fair chance to all…. Obviously all members and candidates would like to have more time, but if we get down to it, it is possible to say something useful in a short time. The broadcast seems to have been well received in Blackpool. A great many people seem to have listened to it, and I get very favourable comments about it when I am out canvassing”.

Indeed, “I saw you on the telly” seems to have been said to a number of candidates on their canvassing rounds.

From Huyton, Mr. Ben Woolfenden says this: “We were overwhelmed with messages from constituents who stayed up to see the programme. My personal reaction is that the programme enabled me to be seen by many thousands of electors, who otherwise would never have been able to see me. I admit that before attending your studios I had some doubts about the value of accepting your invitation, but now I am delighted I accepted…. Quite apart from the residents in the houses I visited yesterday I was hailed by many people such as a coalman and a milkman who called across the street to me something like ‘Saw you on telly last night, mate’.”

And from Westhoughton, Lt. Col. John E. Gouldbourn: “All sorts of people I speak to in the streets say ‘I saw you on the telly’. And this remark is said with a smile and obvious pleasure”.

When the Conservative candidate for Wrexham went on Marathon, his agent had an inspection panel of supporters (“specially selected to criticise”) waiting in Wrexham. He sends Granada this report:

“The immediate reaction from the panel was that Mr. Pierce had scored heavily for the following reasons: though his opening speech had been carefully rehearsed — again before a panel of three with a tape recorder and a final rehearsal of 21 hours — it seemed spontaneous. He had an intimate approach from the commencement…. His final remarks caused a laugh, which was considered to be effective…. He appeared alive throughout”.

And the reaction in Wrexham generally. “Though the broadcast was at a bad time for maximum appeal, within an hour people in Wrexham were heard talking about it. The discussion on the programme was at a peak on Saturday mid-day (shoppers, etc.) and in the evening, too, frequent references to the broadcast were heard. Mr. Pierce walking with the agent in Wrexham on Saturday evening was stopped several times: ‘Weren’t you on TV last night 7’ And we heard talk, ‘That’s the man who was on TV last night*.”

That seems to have been the main favourable impression of candidates who liked Marathon: it introduced them to the voters.

Mr. Frank Pearson (Conservative, Clitheroe) reports: “I have found in this constituency that my appearance was of the very greatest value, particularly in that as a new candidate it served to introduce me for the first time to many of my constituents”.

And Alderman J. E. McColl (Labour, Widnes), though he was not a new candidate: ‘‘I found the television appearance very unnerving, but appreciate the chance it gave me. My impression from canvassing here and from the comments of election workers is that a large number of people watched the programme and expressed their satisfaction that at least they knew what their candidate looked like”.

Miss Pat O’Gara, who fought Manchester (Cheetham) and lost, sums it up thus: ‘‘When all came to all, I didn’t feel nervous on Marathon…. I’m dying for the next election now”.

Those Who Were For (With Reservations)

The cameras owe an apology, it seems, to Mrs. Lewis Carter-Jones. She did not appear on Marathon, but her husband did and he writes: ‘‘My wife did not recognise me!” Apparently, Dr. Edith Summerskill’s husband had moments of doubt, too, for she writes: ‘‘So far as the make-up is concerned, although I realise that the lights are pretty cruel, I think in the future I shall appear with my own face! My husband found it difficult to recognise me…. I have had the most encouraging reports on the Election Marathon”.

Strangely enough, Dr. Edith’s opponent in Warrington, Mr. Frank Stansfield, had reports that he didn’t look well. He writes: “From what lots of people have told me here my effort was a great success, the only criticism being that I appeared to look ill. Perhaps this was due to the lighting. Anyway, it is a comparatively unimportant point compared with the main issue”.

But Mr. Carter-Jones, despite his disconcerting domestic experience, found that “one minute certainly tends to condense the mind”.

Of reaction in the constituency he says: “It was quite varied. Most people thought the time permitted was all too short… Again most people seemed pleased that their constituency had at least been represented in Marathon, and that they had been given an opportunity of seeing and hearing their candidates”.

Unknown to Granada there was apparently another distraction, revealed by Mr. Frank McManus (Labour, Morecambe): “Rather a lot of people here told me they weren’t free to see the broadcast. One said it clashed with Mrs. Dale’s Diary”. Mr. McManus, however, also writes: “I think Marathon was a splendid idea. Limiting the speeches to one minute made the event less of an ordeal for us newcomers. Most of those who saw the programme say they liked it”.

One or two other candidates comment on the experience of going before the camera. Mr. David Crouch (Conservative, Leeds West): “It is a nerve-racking experience to sit before the camera knowing you have only 60 seconds, no time to waste and no time for mistakes…. I think your staff in Leeds where I was televised were excellent in somehow managing to create the atmosphere ‘don’t worry, it’s all great fun’.”

Mr. Crouch says that he watched Marathon before he went on “and must say I got a bit bored with it. It was a case of ‘one damn candidate’ after another. Potted politics of this sort are somewhat boring. On the other hand, I did find that my own constituents, the people who were personally interested in me, were interested in the few minutes we were on…. I think that is the way the programme should be judged. It was an opportunity for reaching probably more of one’s constituents in a few minutes than one could meet in the whole of an election campaign. I certainly found that a lot of people I canvassed had seen me on TV”.

Criticisms from Mr. Crouch are that the time for speaking was too short and more advance publicity was needed. But he takes this look into the future of TV electioneering: “I welcome your innovation…. Another time it might even be a good thing if the candidates were to publicise their television appearance in their own election literature. I think that the time should be used to put over personality rather than politics which, after all, is what we are trying to do when one goes canvassing”.

Or as Mr. Walter Clegg (Conservative, Ince) put it: “I am convinced the experiment was worth trying — it blooded many of us in the new art and even a candidate in a difficult seat hopes one day he may be a by-election star”.

Several candidates make good-humoured points about the production itself. For instance, Mr. John Price (Labour, Westhoughton): “The seating of the ‘pugilists’ is rather crude, and is too far from the bench on which any notes may have to be placed, causing a tendency which I felt throughout my couple of minutes to lean forward, as one does in a pulpit…. I suppose that would be all wrong from the point of view of the cameras, but that was my impression”. He adds: “I have made door-to-door tours of my constituency during the past two days in widely scattered areas and was astonished at the number of people who have made reference to the programme in complimentary terms”….

Nor is Mr. Robert Sheldon (Labour, Withington) entirely happy about how the candidates looked to the voters: “One change I would urge: instead of the candidates appearing as members of a panel they should sit round a chairman with more informality… This would give the viewer a look at the whole candidate and present something more than an animated police photograph”.

But Mr. Sheldon considers Marathon, on the whole, worthwhile: “It is very easy to criticise Marathon because of the obvious defects due to shortage of time and the number of candidates who had to take part. On the whole I think you did a splendid job in bringing some of the electors their first sight of their candidates contesting the General Election. For this you deserve high praise for a sense of social responsibility unique in independent television companies”.

Or as Mr. Horrocks (Conservative, Ashton-under-Lyne) puts it: “It would seem that the minute allowed was, of course, hardly sufficient to allow a reasonable line of political approach…. But it did at least allow the dog to see the rabbits”.

Mr. W. S. Shepherd (Conservative, Cheadle) suggests three minutes to a candidate might be reasonable, and he also has this to say about going on the air: “The physical and psychological conditions within the studio are bad, as you will appreciate. It is not perhaps quite so bad for those who have some little experience of the medium, but it must be pretty terrifying to the man who is a complete newcomer”.

Mr. Shepherd adds: “Some screening between groups of candidates might help in this respect”. (Mr. Tony Leavey, Conservative, Heywood and Royton, confirms that he found it unnerving to be in the same studio with other candidates: “It is an alarming experience when the little red light is upon you for the first time”).

Those Who Were Against

The commonest complaint from the candidates about Marathon was that it was too short; and few liked the afternoon and late-night viewing times.

The strongest criticism came from Mr. Ludovic Kennedy, himself a television personality, who appeared on Marathon as the Liberal candidate for Rochdale. But it was not the time that worried Mr. Kennedy. He didn’t like the whole experiment.

His forthright letter touches on many points: “As a viewer on the nights preceding my own participation, I found the whole thing a colossal bore, and for two reasons: First, to talk to a television camera well is something that requires not weeks but months of experience. Nine-tenths of those taking part had no such experience, and so were totally unable to communicate. Instead of what the participants had to say being communicated in a relaxed intimate sort of way, we were treated to a succession of wooden statements, most of them either learned by heart or read from a script”.

Mr. Kennedy goes on to give the second reason why he found Marathon “a bore”:

“I was not a voter in any of the constituencies and so did not have the interest an elector might have of seeing and summing up his own candidate. While the parading of them before the public in this way was obviously a public service on behalf of Granada (most of any electorate never set eyes on their candidates), I doubt whether it would make much difference to the voting one way or the other. (My own view on all political broadcasts during the election was that if we had never had any of them the result would have been just the same).”

Mr. Kennedy then discusses his own night on Marathon when he appeared with Mr. Jack McCann (Labour) and Mr. Tom Normanton (Conservative):

“I have two comments. The first is that one minute is ample time to make one or two good points, providing one talks and doesn’t recite. My second comment is that I did my best to answer Mr. Normanton’s first statement and Mr. McCann did his best to answer mine. But Mr. Normanton merely recited a second prepared statement which bore absolutely no relevance to what either Mr. McCann or I had been saying. This was not only avoiding awkward questions on his part but very poor television.”

Finally: “This applied on other occasions, too, when I was looking in — people just would not or could not reply (the actual word in Granada’s instructions) to what their opponents said. Next time I hope you’ll make them.

“Apart from all this, thanks for asking me. I enjoyed it”.

Mr. Bernard Taylor (Labour, Mansfield) summed up the criticisms that Marathon was too short: “I think it was a waste of time travelling 120 miles away from home for two minutes”. He adds, however: “Personally I enjoyed it…. I am not complaining for I appreciate you were anxious to afford the facility to everyone”.

Two candidates said they found Marathon made no impact. From Chester, Mr. Jack Temple (Conservative) wrote: “So far the television programme does not appear to have made such impact on the City of Chester constituency”.

And Mr. W. Geraint Morgan (Conservative and National Liberal, Denbigh): “In such a widespread constituency as this it is very difficult to assess the effect of my brief appearance on the television screen. Not many of our viewers are looking in at 4.15 p.m. and I cannot report any positive reaction”.

The post Election Marathon: the verdict appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

Some, like Sir Roland Robinson (Conservative, Blackpool South) took the whole of their first minute to put themselves over: “It is now 24 years since you first returned me…. I was a young man then, a Blackpool boy, and I was so proud of the confidence you placed in me . . .”

Others mixed it. Like Mr. Griffith H. Pierce of Wrexham, nodding into the camera as a how-d’ye-do and beaming a big smile: “Sorry if I’m breaking into your meal, your tea. You know I’m the sort of fellow the Socialists say doesn’t exist, a working man who won a scholarship to a grammar school. …I’ve worn out a pair of shoes walking round the council houses built since the Tories came in…”

Or like Dr. Edith Summerskill: “I came into the Labour Party because I saw disease and poverty. In the thirties I was one of a small group of Socialist doctors who helped plan the National Health Service…. Give us another chance to improve it”.

There was plenty, of course, about local issues. The mills in Accrington. The fish in Fleetwood. The jobs on Hull docks. Hill-farming in Staffordshire. Steel in Sheffield. Council house rents in Huyton. Schools in Middleton. Slum houses in Manchester Exchange. Pits in Wigan. And Derbyshire’s cricketing record.

How They Debated

Some candidates on Marathon were shy of debate. “I have no time in 60 seconds”, said one, “to reply to the views of my opponent. I have formed my opinion of them and I dare say you have, so I’ll let it go at that…”

But there were genuine clashes.

The Northwich Conservative candidate, a legal expert, said the threat of nationalisation still hung over ICI Northwich. The Labour man, slowly and decisively, as if reading a summons, said that this was a deliberate lie. The Conservative looked angry, and repeated the statement — adding that his opponent was afraid of the issue . . .

Sometimes it was first names: “Now look here, Harold, we know practically everyone in the world believes we were right about Suez”. Sometimes the language was not parliamentary — such as the Liberal young woman from Skipton: “With all due respect to my political opponents, both of whom I like, they don’t belong to Skipton. My two opponents, with all due respect, are nothing better than brain-washed party hacks”. They took it with a smile.

And then there were the minority candidates. What would they be like, these fierce young men from Wales under the flying banner of Plaid Cymru? All the Denbigh and West Flint candidates, not to be outdone, spoke a few words in Welsh. Wrexham’s was one of the best debates, with the handsome Nationalist with tumbling black hair one minute proclaiming “we will not cease in our fight” and the next, as if in a cosy discussion in a pub, referring to “my friend Idwal Jones”.

There was even a “Lancastrian” candidate, from Nelson and Colne, who told us that he supported “the Lancashire Development Bill and the United Nations”.

How They Came Over

This was the politics of the split second and the mercurial tongue. The wise ones started off like sprinters. Mr. Tom Brown from Ince had a page of notes on the history of National Insurance but the light flashed when he had only got to 1949. He made up for it next time round.

We had the courtly and the chummy, the aggressive and the submissive; those who prescribed like well-mannered family doctors, those who had the evangelistic manner of the pulpit (“my friends, you do not want a society based on greed”), those who talked like economists or company chairmen, the boardroom (“there are only 18 operatives in the mill under 32 years of age”).

There were Kitcheneresque apostrophes with pointing finger; and the less dramatic view of a bald head bent forward to read. Some stuck to their scripts and lost all contact with the viewers — particularly when the speech had phrases like “his/or her job”. Some read and spoke their messages as if they were telegrams, in words of one syllable. There were livelier passages, too, such as the comment of the Wigan Labour candidate: “My Communist opponent is a follower of Karl Marx, who was a 19th-century philosopher; my Conservative opponent is a follower of Mr. Macmillan, who has a 19th-century mind”.

Or Mr. Ludovic Kennedy on the Summit: “It doesn’t matter whether Mr. Macmillan or Mr. Gaitskell or whether the Mayor of Rochdale goes to the Summit, and on the whole I’d prefer the Mayor of Rochdale”.

Altogether it was a torrent of political truth and platitude, economic argument, and family detail, a deluge of promises and exhortation.

It was politics as varied in character as the north-country voters to whom it was addressed.

The post Election Marathon: what they talked about appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

Marathon was designed as an information programme. It was directed at a series of particular constituencies. It was advertised in 31 newspapers at a cost of some thousands of pounds. Its aim was to link candidate and constituent, nothing more. On that basis, Granada did not expect a wide audience for any one Marathon programme (directed at, say, five constituencies with an average electorate of 60,000). Nor did Granada know to what extent constituents being addressed would find Marathon a useful service.

The broad answer has been given by Television Audience Measurement (TAM), a marketing research organisation which records audience sizes for ITV. Granada thought these TAM figures encouraging, for they showed that on average more than

200.000 homes were watching Marathon, and at times at least a million people were viewing.

Marathon was on the air a total of 11 hours 41 minutes — in Lancashire 6 hours 3 minutes, and 5 hours 38 minutes in Yorkshire. The biggest audience for any one programme was 332,000 homes in Lancashire on Marathon’s first night, when an average of 24% of the homes were tuned in. In Yorkshire the biggest audience was also on the first night, when 141,000 homes, or 14% tuned in.

The TAM figures also show:

1. despite the off-peak hours many of the series were viewed by more people than watched the party political broadcast screened in the region earlier in the evening (at 10 p.m.).
2. every afternoon Marathon programme drew more viewers as it continued. For instance, on Monday Oct. 5 in Lancashire, 4% of the homes were tuned in for the first ten minutes, and 17% for the last four minutes.
3. except for the first night, the numbers viewing the late night Marathon dropped as the programme continued. Presumably people switched off and went to bed after they had seen their own candidates (BBC had shut down, so there was no alternative programme for viewers to switch to). Never more than 10% switched off — and on Oct. 2 the numbers viewing (15% of the homes at the start, 11.31 p.m.) had fallen by only 2% at the end of the programme, 11.40 p.m.
4. during the period of Election Marathon, the weekday audience in the Northern region for all party political broadcasts was well above the national average. This suggests tha tpeople in the North, perhaps stimulated by Marathon, may have been taking a greater interest in the General Election.

These TAM figures do not, of course, show the effects of Marathon in any one constituency. So Granada asked Research Services Ltd. to prepare a more detailed selective report. A further report and analysis is being prepared.

AN ONLOOKER’S VIEW

‘I do not know the results of Granada’s ‘Operation, Marathon’, but anyone deeply concerned with the relationship between television and the continuation of democratic processes must applaud the effort to prevent political television from becoming too big — from concentrating too much on the national political figures”. — Edward R. Murrow, the world-famous American television reporter, in the second of the British Association Granada lectures at Guildhall, London, on October 19th, 1959.

The post Election Marathon: how many viewed appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

WHO would have foreseen, a few years ago, the part which television would come to play in people’s lives? Here, suddenly, is a medium which appears to have cut right across the different levels, prejudices and customs of the country. People who do not take the same newspapers, go to the same cinemas or theatres, or read the same books, have found an unexpected point of contact. Since the introduction of television millions of people discuss the same thing each day: in its own way it has made an unexplosive but profound revolution in the national life.

The coming of Independent Television to England didn’t alter the medium, it merely made it more competitive, unpredictable and exciting. With so new a vehicle of communication the problems facing all its innovators have been much the same; for this reason we thought it might be interesting and enlightening to record the early experiences of one British independent television programme company.

This small book is about the first year of Granada TV Network Limited, which is the Company allotted the job of giving television on weekdays to a large area of the North of England. In terms of the short life-story of television to date, what it records is already ancient history. Granada has since celebrated a second birthday. The reason for the delay in putting it out has been honest doubt. On balance we have decided it may interest or amuse a sufficient number of people, if only as a museum-piece. The material in the Reference Section may also retain some curiosity value in the same sort of way as a superannuated Whitaker.

This is certainly not a history, in the sense of being either comprehensive or conclusive. Really it is no more than a brief, light-hearted description — seen through various pairs of eyes — of the early struggles of a new company with a still adolescent medium. Bear in mind in reading it that most of it was written many months ago, which is why some of what it says may already carry bygone echoes. One day this account may well seem as strange, remote and slightly comical as pictures of the Wright Brothers’ aeroplane seem to us today.

June 1, 1958

FOREWORD

By Sir Kenneth Clark, KCB
Sometime Chairman of the Independent Television Authority
Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain

WHEN the Independent Television Authority appointed Granada to the Northern Station we had no doubt that they would give us lively and intelligent programmes. But we did not quite foresee how much Granada would develop a character which distinguishes it most markedly from the other programme companies and from the BBC. This character may be described as immediacy. Granada believes in today. It looks at the problems of modern life, to which middle-aged people try to close their eyes; it recognizes that a new world is being born which must speak its mind and if necessary shake its fist at the old one. Lively-minded people want to question the established order at any time; but for us, who are two-thirds the way through a great social revolution, it is a necessity to ‘try all things’. Granada puts ideas and institutions to the test in its discussions and eager questionings, and it forces us to examine our assumptions by its admirable productions of plays by Arthur Miller and other vital dramatists.

In addition to all this it discharges the first function of Television, to entertain us intelligently.

THE FIRST YEAR

INDEPENDENT television in Britain began in a hurry. From the first, it was criticized for its preoccupation — vital, indeed, to its existence — with a mass audience, and for finding in too much ‘light entertainment’ the easiest way of attracting and holding such an audience.

Granada TV Network began to broadcast seven months after the start of independent television. It thus had the advantage of watching, and learning something from, the experience of other programme-companies.

It also had one disadvantage. Because independent television was criticized for excessive ‘lightness’ and so for failing to provide (as the Television Act required) balanced programmes, its spokesmen, including the Chairman of the Independent Television Authority himself, claimed that the balance of the programmes could be judged fairly only when a full national network was in operation and openly looked to Granada, in advance, to provide the balance required.

Therefore, it was assumed by some that the Granada programmes would be predominantly ‘highbrow’ in character — ‘ITV’s Third Programme’, as one critic put it.

This is a fundamental misconception of Granada’s aim and method. Granada is concerned simply to try to ensure that every one of its programmes, whatever its kind, should be good of that kind.

It has indeed broadcast a number of programmes, unlike anything done in British television before, which have been praised by the serious reviews: two examples of this sort of programme are Under Fire and What the Papers Say. But the important difference between such programmes and broadcasts deliberately directed (like some items in the BBC’s Third Programme) to small specialist minorities, is that these programmes, often dealing as they do with serious subjects, have proved their power to interest ordinary non-specialist viewers — the readers of the News Chronicle or the Daily Mirror as well as the readers of the Manchester Guardian.

Such programmes can legitimately be called experimental; and Granada, like television itself, is still very much in its experimental stage. It has certain principles, certain standards of quality; and these are applied at every ‘level’, from a new quiz game to drama.

In short, Granada seeks always to avoid the shoddy and hackneyed, to encourage and explore the fresh and genuine. It has an appetite for new ideas and new talent — and for the best of the old, too: television has shown that millions of people who had hardly heard of Ibsen or Strindberg, and had never been to a living theatre to see a play on some such controversial theme as the colour bar, can be attracted by serious drama as well as by light variety.

It is hardly too pretentious to claim, then, that television at its best can be an educative force, not a social evil; not a mere escape from reality but a release into wider reality and more abundant imaginative life; not an anaesthetic but a stimulant.

How far Granada has succeeded, in its first year, in beginning to realize its aims can hardly be judged by those within the Granada organization: that is why this series consists mainly of the views of others.

The post An introduction to Granada appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THE habit of identifying persons, organizations, products, ranks and honours by groups of initial letters has become so common today that a question on the subject is a stock feature of the general paper in most examinations.

There are so many initials in the world of films, radio and television that it is very pleasant to come upon a proper name, particularly such a gracious name as Granada. The attention is at once arrested. There is an immediate sense of personality and colour. Granada, one feels, is an individual, whereas ITA remains a dim authority. What is this Granada? people want to know. What does it stand for? What is the history behind its enterprising television programmes? Has it been interested in theatre, films and music before?

I have known Granada for more than a quarter of a century, and should like to answer some of these questions. I want to tell you something about the Company’s tradition, and suggest one or two reasons why the Independent Television Authority, when allotting geographical regions to the various programme contractors, had no hesitation in giving Granada the coveted Northern area for which it had applied.

The application in itself is interesting, and shows the way the minds behind the company work. There is no Granada cinema north of a line between Shrewsbury and Oswestry. But when the moment for television came, ringing with it new, wider possibilities for good music, theatre, ballet, children’s programmes, it was decided to strike north into fresh territory, where the population is dense and homogeneous, and enthusiasm for culture high.

Here, in the South, we have long known the Granada group as a body whose force is out of all proportion to its comparatively small stature. The first Granada theatre opened in Dover at the beginning of 1930. The latest opened in Brixton at the beginning of 1957. There are now sixty theatres in the circuit, and each is a personality in its own neighbourhood. Its programmes are not quite like other programmes.

They run popular films against all the regular pattern of release. The King and I, for instance, was not shipped off the screen after six days, but was allowed to take its full course, like a stage production, in all theatres. It ran five weeks, for instance, at the Granada, Hounslow, breaking all records for a suburban release house.

There is no film of quality, long or short, that Granada won’t play, no matter how cold the shoulder turned on it by bigger circuits. So we had, through Granada, the first real introduction to Eartha Kitt in the film New Faces. We had Ed Murrow’s African Conflict, made for American television. We had a chance to look again at Thursday’s Children, our own touching documentary about the training of deaf-and-dumb children, which seemed to have disappeared without trace after its first west-end showing. We had a circuit release of Time Out of War, a wonderful little film about a human interlude on a hot summer’s afternoon during the Scarlett O’Hara war, which was awarded one of the most coveted prestige prizes at the Edinburgh Festival. We saw all these things because the people behind the Granada group have a fixed notion that audiences are a lot more grown-up than they are generally supposed to be.

The choice of the name ‘Granada’ has no particular significance. It was the result of a haphazard whim, sprung from a natural dislike of cold initials and affectionate memories of holidays spent in that pleasant old Spanish town. Once upon a time, I remember, the opening of a new Granada theatre was accompanied by an injunction to patrons to pronounce the name ‘Grar-nar-dar’ and not to rhyme with Canada.

From the beginning the Granada group has set out to be selective. It brought into theatre design such artists as Komisarjevsky, Frank Dobson, Roger Furse, Vladimir Polunin. It brought over Rene Clair’s Le Million from Paris to London. It showed the abstract films of Len Lye a full quarter of a century before the highbrows began to rave about Norman McLaren’s witty little firecrackers.

It was the first group, starting in 1925, to put on stage plays, ballets, opera, ice-shows and pantomime, and to present concerts both classical and popular. It was also the first group to give special matinees for children. As I write I have in front of me a glossy little throwaway, dated 1927, headed ‘At Last!’ and continuing: ‘To Parents and Teachers. We know that you do not really like the idea of your children going to see all the “grown-up” pictures, so we have decided to give Special Programmes for Children starting on Saturday morning. You can rest assured that we shall show your children pictures that will really teach them something as well as entertain them—clean and healthy pictures that will do them nothing but good.’

Later on, of course, other theatre circuits took up the idea of Saturday morning shows, until now they are a normal feature of cinema life. But Granada has always watched over its children’s programmes with a special care, inviting comments from school teachers and commissioning reports by psychiatrists. Children, it is argued, do not live in an ivory tower. If the pattern of their home and school life is normal, Saturday morning at the pictures is only a part, a continuation of their week. A grave responsibility falls on the provider of entertainment, whether on the cinema screen or on the television screen, to fit wholesomely and constructively into that pattern.

Another feature of Granada Theatres is the information given to the public. It is a ‘must’ to display in every foyer a full cast-list of the pictures showing, with credits to director, writer and leading technicians. Regularly, every week, the Manager of a Granada writes an informal letter to the Managing Director, describing every incident, no matter how trivial; the comments he has overheard, the remarks made to him by patrons, the ‘feeling’ of the house, the proportion of carriage trade to casual trade, the number of laughs and coughs, the hundred little oddities that go to make up a manager’s week.

Regularly too, each week, a letter is sent from Head Office to the managers, telling them exactly what the group is doing, not only in films but in television. Every week prizes are awarded to managers for good ideas in exploitation. The number of these prizes is unlimited. There are as many prizes as there are good ideas. Since there is no competition, there is no jealousy, only a stimulus to originality and enterprise. There is also a fair amount of friendly chaff, of good-natured give-and-take, the sort of congenial exchange that is only to be found in relatively small and happy companies.

Professionally speaking, film critics don’t have favourite theatres. They go, in honour bound, wherever the new films take them. It may be to a west-end palais-de-luxe, or to some small, specialized hall with a bad rake, cramped seats and inadequate smoke extraction.

But even film critics have a private life, and when they are not on duty choose their pleasures as they please. I live in an outer London suburb, where there are at least half-a-dozen cinemas within reach.

Of these half-dozen our Granada is the furthest off. But through the years, as the result of experience, I and my family have become Granada fans. What’s on at the Granada this week? is the first thing we ask when anyone opens the local paper at the entertainments page. We’d rather go to the Granada.

Miss C. A. Lejeune is Film Critic of The Observer

The post The Granada Theatres appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THE creation of a large organization is usually a slow evolutionary process. Small beginnings are nurtured by experience, guided by precedent and enlarged by expansion or acquisition. This is true of the industrial complex, the machine of government, the voluntary organization, and the commercial enterprise. It is not true, however, of the establishment of Granada tv Network.

In May 1954, Granada Television consisted merely of a decision. This decision was that Granada Theatres should enter television, and it was taken when the Television Bill, which was to embody in statute the scope, the duties, function and methods of Independent Television, was still being debated and amended in the House of Commons. The Bill did not become law until July 1954.

In May 1955, one year later, the contract was signed which laid on Granada the responsibility for providing a weekday television service for the North of England. At this stage, apart from a contractual obligation, Granada TV consisted of little more than a general idea of what the new television service should seek to attain. There were no tools with which to carry out this idea: no studio, no electronic equipment, not a single camera; no directors, electricians, camera-men, sound and vision mixers, typists, or designers. The craftsmen, technologists, administrators and creative workers who were to create Granada Television were working at other jobs in Manchester, Toronto, London, Liverpool and New York, many of them unaware that their future lay in television.

Just a year after the contract was signed, the first Granada transmission went on the air from the most modern television centre in Europe — a building which is eight months had risen on a waste plot of ground in Quay Street, Manchester, the first building in Britain expressly designed for television. It was bright, spanking and shiny new, from the electric control lighting panel to the ash-trays; from the unique lighting grid in the studio (festoons of lamps hung on telescopic battens) to the smallest valve in the master control-room.

This year of construction and creation had been hard and difficult. The Quay Street site was bought in May 1955. It was 4½ acres in size. Only half an acre was needed for the first stages of building, but the plan was to build a compact, comprehensive television centre embodying studios and workshops and offices. The first problem was to build the first section of this centre on the half-acre site, and to build it to a tight schedule during the winter months of bad weather, when it rained for days on end and the ground was churned into a muddy morass.

The first thing built was a wooden hut: in this the newly appointed Northern Administrator of Granada set up office with a secretary, a desk, and a couple of chairs. Then the skeleton of the building began to rise under the direction and drive of the building foreman, an Irishman who hustled, cajoled, and struggled to keep to the time-table despite occasional setbacks.

As the building took shape the staff grew. Instead of the hut a warehouse opposite, with 30,000 square feet of floor space, was taken over to be turned into offices. The whole building had to be gutted and rebuilt inside; at first the only offices were on the third floor, where a handful of people coped with a hundred jobs.

More formidable even than the physical problem of building were the problems of public relations: Granada TV, itself a new community, had to be established, even before opening day, as a recognized feature of Northern life; public authorities, prominent citizens of the North, and the Press had to be contacted and their support — or at least their friendly interest — secured.

The background to all this was a somewhat confused general public reaction to independent television. The new services had opened in London in September 1955, and in the Midlands in February 1956. Many viewers were eager and receptive. Some sections of the Press were hostile. Advertisers, after the first few months, had begun to approach the new medium more cautiously. Rumours were publicized about losses suffered by the companies already operating; there were newspaper criticisms of extravagance. It was assiduously suggested in some quarters that independent television was a gamble without a future. All this shook confidence, and did not make it easy to work creatively on the myriad problems of planning, building, and establishing a new service in the North. But enthusiasm grew as the organization began to take shape. Programme planning went ahead; there were difficult and even tense negotiations for the networking of programmes with the companies already operating; and actual Granada programmes were scripted, rehearsed, and tested.

Granada’s policy was, and still is, not to publish a mass of advance information about the content of new programmes. Before opening day both the Press and the advertisers were persistent in their demands to know what was being planned. Rumour and speculation spread, but Granada insisted that realization was better than anticipation, and that the new service would speak for itself and must be judged by results not blurbs.

At the same time people had to be recruited and trained. Above all, methods, drills and systems had to be worked out, tried and rehearsed; for television is an association between technology and the creative arts, dovetailed and timed to a second.

When the day’s transmission starts, there are 25,200 seconds to go before the signing-off signal; for time, in television, is measured in seconds rather than in minutes or hours. The immediacy of the medium means that the instant an image is received by the camera it is seen on the screen in the home. There is no time for revision or second thoughts. In newspaper production or moviemaking. the finished product is seen by its creator before it is seen by its consumer. In television, creator and consumer receive an identical image at the same moment. If an actor fails his cue, five million viewers see him fail. If a scene-shifter drops a chair, millions of people hear it fall. The producers and technicians cannot say: ‘Stop. Now do it again.’

So the essence of television is pre-planning, the perfection of split-second drills so that everyone knows where he is, what he is to do, and why — and what to do in an emergency. In devising a technique and method of this fine degree of accuracy, there was relatively little experience and precedent to go by. It was not possible to create a system simply by adopting or copying rules and formulae well-tried elsewhere. So to the problem of recruitment was added that of training, and then that of coordination, of fitting the units into an effective whole.

The method followed was to decide, in outline, the various departmental responsibilities and functions, and then to engage for each department at least one expert whose job it was to recruit and train his staff and evolve the systems and methods by which they would work. The departments, roughed out in this way, were: Programming, Production, Engineering, Sales and Advertising, Film Operations, Network Operation, and Press and Publicity; managerial departments were responsible for Accounts, Personnel and General Administration. A short description of the main departments will give some idea of how a television service works; but the departments cannot be arranged in any order of priority, because each is integrally dependent on the others. It is simplest, therefore, to trace a new programme through its earlier stages.

The creative centre of a television company is its Programmme Department. Here ideas are conceived, shaped and developed into programmes by producers, directors and writers.

When a programme begins to take definite form, a period of rehearsal and experiment follows. A script is prepared and details of cast, costume, scenery, make-up and music worked out. At this stage, the Production Department adds its services to those of the Programme Planners and Directors. In co-operation with the Programme Department the Production Department is responsible for scheduling and equipping a programme for the cameras. This department organizes the construction of sets and provision of properties, wardrobe and make-up, and allocates studio space for rehearsals and final performance.

Even when a series programme is scripted, cast, clothed and rehearsed, it is still some way from transmission. Next comes a phase of assessment and appraisal. The Engineering Department transmits the programme on a closed circuit, so that it can be seen by executives as it may later be seen in millions of homes. The decisions made at this stage determine the future of the programme.

If it turns out to be altogether below standard, it will be scrapped or sent back for improvement.

If it seems right in content, casting and direction, it will be shown. This, however, is not just a matter of fixing a day and time and leaving it at that. The new programme, or series, will have to be fitted into the complex jigsaw of a programme schedule—and the details of this are arranged by another department, the Network Operations Department.

The programmes fed from the Manchester TV Centre to the transmitters at Winter Hill in Lancashire and Emley Moor in Yorkshire, come from several sources. Live broadcasts come, in the main, from the Granada Studios or from the Granada Travelling Eyes. Other live programmes come on network from the studios of other programme companies. National and international news comes from the studios of Independent Television News, a company owned collectively by all the programme companies. Local news comes from the Granada studios in Manchester. Film — which may either be a feature film, one of a series, a filmed advertisement, or an interview or exterior shot in a play or documentary — is prepared by the Film Operations Department and transmitted by the Telecine Department.

The Network Operations Department controls and co-ordinates all this material. This involves both technical and administrative work, the linking of one source with another — Granada studios with the network studios, with Telecine, and with Travelling Eye — and the preparation of precise time-tables.

The Film Operations Department is another important part of the machine. It collects the various film items from advertisers, film studios and film libraries, checks them for quality, content and length, and makes them up into continuous runs of film ready for transmission. Again, as throughout all television, timing is by the fraction of the second.

In one year this whole organization was devised, recruited, trained and set to creative work. Special training was needed in all departments. Eighty per cent of the engineers had never even been in a television studio before: they came from the workshops and assembly-lines of industry, from recording studios and from sound-broadcasting studios and control rooms. Production staff came from films, sound-radio and stage. It was not enough to tell these new-comers to follow instructions automatically. They had to learn to understand and appreciate the work of all the departments — the others as well as their own. They had to be as adaptable and flexible as the medium itself.

Studios in London, normally used for testing television equipment, were taken over by Granada for a nine-week training course which started in January 1956, fourteen weeks before the opening. Here operational studio conditions were simulated to give authenticity to training. Lectures were given on engineering and production problems. Trainees were taught the principles of lighting, scripting, designing, casting, programme-building, floor-planning, staging and the use of film and music. Then came the practical exercise: teams, each consisting of director, floor-manager and production-secretary, prepared and presented short plays, panel-games, musical programmes and interviews.

Camera-men were trained. Vision-control engineers mastered their new machinery and then studied the more personal task of making a good picture on the screen. Not one experienced microphone-operator was available: sound-crews were selected and trained to follow the sound action smoothly while keeping microphones and boom-shadows out of camera range. Vision-mixer/gramophone-operators learned their craft by constant exercise and practice.

At the end of the nine weeks, the trainees designed and produced their own original programmes and transmitted them on a closed circuit.

Meanwhile the Travelling Eye teams were being assembled and trained. Two units were designed and built for Granada. They were, in effect, studios on wheels, complete with cameras and microphones and linked to the transmitters by radio and visual lines of communication. They had also to be serviced by mobile power generators for occasions when it would not be possible to use the normal power supply.

The Travelling Eye teams were first trained in London in the techniques of handling and maintaining their equipment. After one month of this basic training they moved north to transmit ‘dummy’ outside broadcasts, from Manchester, Liverpool, Preston and Wigan, from outdoor sites and from inside buildings, practising in every sort of situation which they would be likely to meet once Granada transmission started.

On May 3, 1956, only a few weeks after the course had finished, these newly graduated trainees brought Independent Television for the first time to the people of the North.

The post A TV service is born appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

TWELVE months before Granada went on the air, work started on the design of the new building for the TV Centre — twelve months which were to be anxious and hectic but stimulating and enjoyable. For the complexity of the problems, this gave a very short time. It was immediately decided, therefore, that the Centre would have to be developed in carefully programmed phases, building just what was essential to provide an efficient working unit by the fateful date of May 3, 1956, at the same time having a Master Plan for the development of the site as a whole.

It was important that the first stage should not prejudice a fine grouping of buildings in the completed scheme — if it can be said that building for such a new and developing thing as television is ever completed. Indeed, from the purely architectural point of view, one of the major problems is to prepare a design which, at each stage of its development, will be visually satisfying.

It is usually found that the architecture we like best has a basic simplicity; and this applies to the new architecture we build today as much as to the historic buildings of the past. So it is the aim that the tv Centre, as it grows, shall always retain a noble simplicity, so far as this is possible. The main buildings will thus be kept simple in outline and will rely for their effect on the subtlety of their proportions and the texture of their walls.

But though the architectural form may be simple, it should not be forgotten that these walls enclose the most complex processes.

Before the first sketch designs were prepared, a careful study had to be made of all the activities for which it was necessary to plan, and these activities were very varying in nature. In one part of the building carpenters would be hard at work with their sawmills preparing the sets, in another actors would be preparing for their appearance in their dressing-rooms and make-up rooms; control suites were required for the studios and rooms to house the electronic apparatus and to maintain this infinitely complex equipment; and then the studios themselves presented many problems which needed to be carefully analysed before their design was finally completed.

In addition, however, to consideration of the technical problems of those working in the building, much thought has been given to quite a different aspect of the TV Centre. How could provision be made for the people of Manchester to come within its walls and see the fascinating process of producing Television programmes? It was felt that the Centre should be a place in which members of the public should be welcome and that facilities should be provided for them to view the whole of the process, both creative and technical, which goes on in the Centre, while, at the same time, not disturbing its efficient operation. This added a complicated element to the planning problems. But, although it was not possible to carry this idea into effect in the first phase already built, the plans for future development include this special provision for the public. A large foyer with a buffet on the first floor will have windows into the new large studio and public galleries will run around the studio with glazed walls giving a full view of the studio and control rooms. In this way, whoever wishes to do so will be able to get an insight into the inner workings of television and will be able to visit the Centre as a welcome guest.

But from thoughts of the future plans, let us return to the construction of the first building and to August 1955 when the contractor first started work on the site. Only seven months were available before the completed building was to be handed over to the electronic engineers for them to instal their equipment—and these were winter months which we did not know at the start were going to be some of the coldest on record! Large pre-cast concrete units were designed to form the main frame of the building as these could be made away from the site and delivered for immediate erection as soon as the foundations were ready. The days had to be lengthened with floodlights and the cold was a severe handicap. However, the difficulties were overcome and the building was completed on time.

Building work has continued; the third phase is in construction. This time far larger structures will be rising on the site which I hope may not only efficiently serve their technical purpose, but by their simplicity of form, richness of tone and texture and relation one to another may also give to all who pass a sense of visual delight and a thrill of pleasure.

The post The building of the Manchester TV centre appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

ON May 3, 1956, at 7.30 p.m., Granada TV Network went on the air with this opening announcement: ‘From the North, this is Granada — on Channel 9. A year ago Granada was a blue-print, a promise. Tonight the North has a new television service created by the devotion and hard work of thousands of Northerners and friends from all over the world. Come with us now — to meet the people.’

This expressed the mood of Granada’s approach. The new service was for the people — and so Granada’s first programme featured the people. Quentin Reynolds, the American writer, known to millions in Britain for his wartime broadcasts, introduced some of the people who had worked behind the scenes to put Granada on the air — the building foreman, the architect, a telephone operator and an engineer, for example. Then he introduced the Lord Mayor of Manchester (Alderman Tom Regan) and the Chairman of the Independent Television Authority (Sir Kenneth Clark). Jack Hylton and Gracie Fields brought the friendly greetings of people in show business. But there was no long, pretentious inaugural ceremony.

Granada then presented a typical evening’s viewing — the aim being to show viewers what they could normally expect to see rather than to raise false hopes by the presentation of the extravagant and the spectacular. The evening’s viewing included a variety programme, ‘London salutes Lancashire’, featuring Arthur Askey, Bob Monkhouse and Dennis Goodwin, Pat Kirkwood and Lena Horne.

At the end of the evening, Granada presented ‘Tribute to the BBC’. This was an acknowledgment of the debt which television in Britain and the world owes to the pioneers who at Alexandra Palace initiated and evolved public-service television. This programme was produced by the BBC and compered by Aidan Crawley. Among those taking part were Sir George Barnes, then head of BBC Television, Gilbert Harding, and Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

‘For most of you tonight’, said an announcer, ‘Independent Television has been a new experience.That evening, too, Granada faced its most controversial task — the presentation of advertising to people who had never before seen it on television: on their approval or disapproval hung the future of the new service.

‘We have brought advertisements to your television screens at home. We think you will like them, not only because they are entertaining but because they are informative. Products and services, whose names you will be seeing, are a guide to sensible buying and will help you to get value for your money. Television advertisers have faith and pride in what they offer. Granada stands behind them and their statements. We hope their names will become as familiar to you as the names of your friends and neighbours. You can use Granada advertisements as a trustworthy guide to wise spending.

‘Wise spending eventually saves money. And savings can help deal with one aspect of our country’s economic problems. So before we shop let us say to ourselves “is it essential?” If it is let us buy the best we can afford, if it is not essential can we save? Save not only for a rainy day but also to make sure that tomorrow and the day after will be sunny.’

Finally there was a word on behalf of those for whom this evening had been the first big test:

‘This has been opening night. We have all been working around the clock for months to make it possible, and we have all been nervous and tense. If we slipped here and there during this evening’s transmission, we hope you will forgive us… and now, goodnight all, goodnight.’ After the big night came the reaction from the North. Here is the comment of the Manchester Evening News:

‘It was altogether a more imaginative opening night than the first night in London or Birmingham. The idea of informally introducing a variety of men who had contributed to the delivery of Granada was good. So was the notion of a tribute to the BBC…. Serious in mood, entertaining to the eye, this was television interviewing at its best. Nothing extravagant, nothing boastful. There are other improvements to report. The breaks before and after a group of advertisements are well defined. They are presented more smoothly. And Granada’s programmes were better controlled than those on the first nights in London and the Midlands.’

And here are some immediate comments by viewers reported next day in the newspapers: ‘It’s so slick’, ‘superb entertainment’, ‘better than the BBC’, ‘wonderful reception’.

That, then, was the start—direct and down-to-earth, as is appropriate in a service for the people of the North. This was Granada — from the North.

The post The Big Night appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

BEFORE it is possible to make any sort of assessment of Granada’s contribution to the Drama, it is essential, I think, to recognize the nature of television itself.

Television is a means of dissemination, of, quite literally, broadcasting. What it broadcasts is a sort of film. The basic material of the medium, the picture on the screen, is exactly the same as in the cinema. It is also, of course, a method of production for film which has the advantages of speed and cheapness. Once these truisms are honestly acknowledged it becomes easier to see what it can do best, how it can speak most potently. First, it has a sense of intimacy unrivalled in any other field of entertainment. With this intimacy goes a ruthless concentration. In every home the little screen can be flicked off with the turn of a knob. In this lies the real challenge to every production company, to rivet the amorphous polyglot audience from the distractions of its own home, or from the cumulative tedium of an evening’s programmes. In the answer to this lay Granada’s choice of Look Back in Anger, their first major production, and, to a large extent, their whole dramatic policy.

When Granada first considered the production of Look Back in Anger it was the most controversial play in England. The first reviews of it in the theatre had quickly written it off with calm superiority as a piece of jejune unpleasantness. Only the Observer and the Sunday Times originally recognized it as the work of a major new English dramatist. Despite its successful run, however, it had not penetrated beyond a fairly specialized audience. The insulation of the English theatre from life, from real people and from real issues, had accounted for its original reception. Here was a play speaking from a particular and very passionate point of view. It was just this passion, this arrogance if you like, that not only made it controversial but made it speak to the wider audience — an audience that does not normally find its way into the theatres. Granada had learnt a lesson that the American cinema, amongst others, has taught over and over again — that controversy of any sort can be one of the most potent attractions in entertainment. If an audience can be stirred or angered, it cannot dismiss. This pursuit of controversy has outlined nearly all the Granada productions. Shooting Star was a story of corruption in the football industry; Home of the Brave was a study of the colour problem. Significantly, when it was a question of presenting Ibsen, Granada plumped for An Enemy of the People, where again the issue is social — a single man who for the sake of his conscience fights and opposes a whole community.

No less than the themes of the individual plays themselves, Granada’s sense of the controversial has been reflected in its choice of writers. Besides John Osborne, it chose Arthur Miller’s adaptation of An Enemy of the People and presented the first English production of Another Part of the Forest, a study in Southern corruption and decay by the important American dramatist Lilian Heilman.

It would, of course, be foolish to say that the level of all Granada productions has been the same. It is noticeable, though, that Granada’s greatest successes as measured by any standards, press reception or viewing figures, have been in the production of the more significant and controversial plays. Granada’s failures have been in the occasional attempt to transfer from stage to screen the conventional play or the stage comedy with its highly artificial laws, manner, and stereotypes.

The problem, however, of finding original writers for television is one which it has not yet begun to tackle. This is absolutely vital. Television’s greatest success in America has been when it has used its own talents like Paddy Chayefsky and Reginald Rose. English writers must be discovered — not geniuses, not the exceptional talent, but honest solid professionals.

Similarly, with directors, undoubtedly the most important and the most ably professional work in television has been done in North America. Granada rightly brought directors from Canada to Britain and they have set a standard easily surpassing the BBC and Granada’s commercial competitors. For the future it is necessary that lively new directors should be discovered and developed in an organization which gives them both scope and support.

Here perhaps I may be allowed a personal digression. When Granada first asked me to direct Look Back in Anger on television I thought of it as primarily a technical assignment. I had already staged the play in the theatre, and I had re-rehearsed several replacements in the cast. For television it would be a question, I imagined, of planning the shots, arranging the cameras, composing sequences. When I began to replot the play for the cameras, however, I found just the contrary — a quite exceptional sense of freedom. Technically, I hardly had to think consciously about it at all. More than any other television show I had directed, technical questions became almost irrelevant; problems were solved even before they were posed; form became completely dominated by content. It was a question merely of bringing out this moment, underlining that value. The result was a production liberated from the orthodox conventions of television grammar.

Every medium must, of course, have a grammar even if it only acts as a safeguard. The grammar of television is based on that of the film: long shot, medium shot and close-up are the standard relationships for both. Necessarily, though, the emphasis in television is always on the closer shot because of the size of the screen itself. These easily acceptable transitions, valuable as they are as a stand-by for all visual story telling, can however — and often do — become something of a tyranny. The smoothness can kill real texture and punch. You can, however, only break the rules if the material you are presenting is absolutely mastered.

Now, to know a play, for instance, as thoroughly as this is not usually possible with television. It has to be rehearsed in three weeks. In such a short time it is hardly ever possible for a director not only to create the play, the performances, the camera script, but when he is in the control room to know, inside-out, the very essences and subtleties of those performances, the tiny pauses, the fractional speeds that can make, in cutting, for the polish of a production. It is impossible too for the actors to create richly enough under such conditions. In the theatre the final shape of a production is hardly ever certain until after its opening; in the movies the pattern can be dictated absolutely by the editor; but in television there is only one opportunity to capture each moment. Ideally, perhaps, a major television outfit would have a live theatre attached. A play could then be rehearsed, played and transferred later, by the same director, to the screen. The gain in quality would be staggering. Economically, however, it is impossible in the foreseeable future.

But to return to our main theme: the most hopeful and the most tremendous thing about all Granada output is that there has been any policy at all. This, for a television company, is quite revolutionary. None of the others can present a list of such consistency. This same conviction is apparent, too, in some of Granada’s other programmes in which there is a similar emphasis on controversy. They have shown that here is an organization aware, despite the compromises necessary in a popular medium, of its social responsibilities. In presenting these programmes, Granada is fulfilling some of its responsibilities and attempting to reveal and assess some of the problems that are facing the society that it is serving.

Tony Richardson was Assistant Artistic Director of the English Stage Company at the time this article was written. Born in 1928 in the West Riding, he excelled at school and at university, becoming President of both the Oxford University Dramatic Society and the Experimental Theatre Club. From there he went on to direct for theatre and film, winning two Academy Awards for the latter. He was married to Vanessa Redgrave from 1962 to 1967 and they had two daughters, the actors Natasha and Joely Richardson. He left Redgrave for actor Jeanne Moreau, and while with her fathered a daughter, Katherine, with Grizelda Grimond, the daughter of the then-Liberal Party leader. He died in 1991 from complications due to AIDS.

The post Granada and the Drama appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

WHEN ITV was a-borning I remember my friend Mr Aidan Crawley, who was in charge of inaugurating Independent Television News programmes, speaking to me with immense enthusiasm of the wonderful new techniques whereby the news would be presented pictorially on the screen. He particularly stressed that still pictures would never be shown; everything would be live. I remember that I was very sceptical of these possibilities. It is true that in the United States TV is becoming so powerful that it can almost dictate to politicians, diplomats and sportsmen the hours at which they shall conduct their major activities and compel them to suit their timing to the requirements of the companies. We have not yet reached that stage in this country and I trust we never shall.

In consequence the major news events of the day can very seldom be directly reproduced and there must sometimes be much delay in getting a filmed recording on to The screen. Moreover the main news may originate in Parliament or the Foreign Office or the White House or the Quai d’Orsay and it is obviously technically impossible at this stage to produce a picture justifying the news. Consequently the ITN news programmes, like those of the BBC, consist very largely of a smooth young gentleman in front of the camera reading from notes or a teleprompter news which can be received and digested far more quickly over steam radio.

None the less TV has an immense future in some fields of pictorial journalism. Though the straight news can best be handled by the press and by radio, TV has the unique power to bring before its cameras in a few hours the people who have been making the news. It can interrogate them at close quarters and it can produce in vivid fashion key representatives in any current controversy and vividly portray the issues involved through the leading personalities of the day. But it must be recognized that this is ‘Features’ rather than ‘hard news’.

This is the field which I think Granada can claim that it has experimented with more imaginatively than have any of its competitors. Northern Comment seemed to me a particularly promising feature. Immediately after any party political broadcast two or three commentators were put on to discuss what had just gone before. This was first resisted by the Tories who obtusely insisted on an interval of three hours between their own programme and the comment. All three political parties have now agreed that the criticism should be allowed to follow immediately. I am sure that this is not only in the public interest but also in the interest of the political parties. It is very difficult to get people in this country interested in politics; and lively discussion will tend to get a wider audience for what were previously ex parte statements.

Three other programmes of Granada’s first year which attracted wide attention were Under Fire, What the Papers Say and Youth Is Asking. Many TV discussion programmes suffer from a sweetly reasonable debate between two or more experts. The Chairman often concludes by attempting to show the large measure of agreement between the two sides. (Granada’s ‘Row of the Year’ between Jack Jones, MP, and Hugh Scanlon was a noteworthy exception.) But many questions of the day are controversial and do engender strong feelings. Why not let them be expressed?

Under Fire, presented by Granada, provided one of TV’s most enjoyable features. This was a ‘no holds barred’ programme between a Northern audience and experts in London. On many occasions the atmosphere engendered approached that of a lively political meeting. But Under Fire was not confined to political questions: the cost of bread, design in the home, smog as well as Suez and the Trade Unions are some of the topics this series has covered.

I take a great interest in the press of this country and have consequently looked at a good number of programmes of the feature What the Papers Say. This programme, it seems to me, could be more lively and controversial. I would myself leave one man to do the whole job rather than have a somewhat scrappy discussion introduced half-way through.

Finally Youth Is Asking. This also seems to me a particularly promising programme. It is of interest to people of all ages and should serve to attract youthful minds not only towards television but also to a growing comprehension of current events and current problems.

I am sure that we are only in the very early days of these discussion programmes and my main criticism of them all in general — and I am speaking not only of the three Granada programmes to which I referred above — is that for fear of being thought one-sided there is an exaggerated desire to introduce too many different points of view. Of course this is desirable when it is a discussion, but if there is merely to be a five or ten minute feature commenting on some aspect of the news, I should have thought that one critic or commentator was enough at a time. It should be very easy to hold the balance fairly by inviting personalities of varied outlook and party allegiance from week to week. I think it is unreasonable for anyone to insist that the balance should be held exactly even each week; and any imbalance in one week’s programme could easily be redressed the following week.

I am sure that in these discussions and critiques TV would be well advised to resist the feeble-minded temptation to be ‘all things to all men’.

One of TV’s greatest dangers is to degenerate into undue frivolity. I have seen a good deal of the young men who are building up Granada. They passionately believe that if a serious programme is presented well enough, people will want to look at it, however serious the topic is. If they are correct in their view, TV may yet perform great services to the nation.

The post Television and visual journalism appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

NEWSPAPERS report events after they have happened, and after the story has been written, edited and printed. But television can show the news as it happens and can project it into millions of living-rooms.

This is the story of three reports by television. Today they are something to note; tomorrow, as television develops, such reports will be a routine part of a lively television service.

On March 14, 1957, a Viscount aircraft coming in to land at Ringway Airport, Manchester, crashed on a housing estate at the end of the runway. This happened at 1.46 p.m. At 2.10 p.m., 24 minutes later, news of the crash reached the Granada TV Centre in Manchester. It was immediately decided to send out the Travelling Eyes to give a direct report of the rescue work on television screens.

Everything seemed to be against Granada’s technicians and reporters. The weather was dull and cloudy; the Travelling Eye units were dismantled and under maintenance; the crash had occurred in a Corporation housing estate on the edge of the airport, and the layout of the estate made it difficult to deploy vehicles and to obtain adequate fields of vision for cameras. The mobile telescopic aerial tower which forms part of the unit could not be raised to its full height because of the nearness to the airport. Moreover, some of the equipment and most of the members of the Travelling Eye teams were busy in the studios screening an experimental transmission of a new programme.

None the less, all resources were diverted to the story — and, in the event, Granada gave the earliest and most comprehensive reports of the crash, and also set up a new record for speed in TV reporting. Previously this record had been held by the BBC: within 9½ hours of information being received, an outside broadcast had been on the air.

This Granada broadcast was being seen by Northern viewers 7 hours after the first information had been received.

It was 2.40 p.m. when one of Granada’s research and reporting teams arrived at the scene of the crash: they saw firemen trying to clear a 20-foot-high heap of rubble and blazing wreckage; they learned that no one had been rescued from the plane or the houses into which it had crashed. Within ten minutes the story had been telephoned to Granada’s News Editor, and cine-photographers had left by car for Ringway. At the same time instructions were given to scrap the experimental programme —then ready to start — even though it was an important one and the product of many weeks of hard work.

While the Travelling Eye moved out to Ringway, Granada reporters were tape-recording reports and interviews with eye-witnesses, standing in a garden only ten yards from the wreckage. The first news-flash report was transmitted from the studios at 4.45 p.m. The programme was interrupted again at 5.18 p.m. as further dramatic news came from Ringway. At 5.45 p.m., the film taken by the Granada camera-men went out over the whole Independent Television network. Such was the speed of these events that there was no time to edit the film or to rehearse the accompanying programme of interviews and reports. The actual script, and the timing and order of the interviews, were still being worked out when the newscast went on the air.

While the newscast was being filmed and prepared, the Travelling Eye and its tender, carrying all the cables, the links-truck, the mobile telescopic aerial and the Land Rover, left the Granada TV Centre to mount the on-the-spot outside broadcast of the crash scene. As there was no time to link up with the normal electricity supply the unit took three mobile generators with it.

A producer and a director were assigned to the job; with other assistant directors they were taken straight to the scene of the crash. When they arrived they found the approaches packed with ambulances and fire-engines. The Land Rover towing the generator was lifted on to a grass verge so that clear access could be left for the fire-engines, and the other vehicles were pushed into position. Quickly the cameras were mounted on the 9-foot-high roofs of wash-houses, and cables were fitted to them from a row of houses opposite. By this time it was growing dark, so lamps were mounted to floodlight the scene. The Granada lighting equipment was functioning well before the Fire Brigade’s floodlights.

Manchester’s Fire Chief, Commander Hoare, said later: ‘Granada had some very fine floodlights which were of great assistance to us. I did not realize they were television lights until I saw the cameras. I must say the Granada electricians got them up very quickly and they were extremely efficient.’

By 6 o’clock the director ’phoned Granada to say that the cameras were working and showing pictures. But the sound engineers were meeting with considerable difficulty. Sound is normally carried by GPO line to the TV Centre, but as there was no time to lay a line, for this operation the engineers had to establish a radio link. Eventually, a sound route was established from the link-truck to Didsbury, and from there by a land-line to Granada.

At 9 o’clock it was decided to break into normal programmes in the North with the Travelling Eye report. A staff commentator interviewed two eye-witnesses and the Fire Chief, one camera using a zoom lens covering one side of the wreckage while another, at right-angles to it, covered the interviews and showed a close shot of the twisted propeller lying in front of the wreckage. A third camera, on the roof of the Travelling Eye, gave a general view. This transmission successfully completed, the Editor-in-Chief of Independent Television News was asked if he would like a further live report fed into London to follow ITN’s 10.54 p.m. bulletin. The offer was immediately accepted. Another programme was planned with a further series of interviews and more views of the wreckage and damage.

In this operation all outside broadcast records were broken. Granada reported to Britain, on the spot and while it was happening, what the newspapers could not tell until the following morning.

This was not the first demonstration of Granada’s quickness to seize such an opportunity. As early as May 7, 1956 — only three operating days after Granada had opened — another difficult technical challenge had been met.

On Saturday, May 5, 1956, Manchester City won the Cup Final at Wembley. The football club and civic authorities decided on Sunday that on Monday, May 7, the team should drive in triumph from the railway station to be welcomed by the Lord Mayor on the steps of Manchester Town Hall. By mid-day on Monday it became clear that this was going to be a big news story, for the cup fever which had gripped Manchester and Lancashire showed no sign of declining after the victory. Manchester prepared a dramatic welcome for its team.

At mid-day on Monday, then — five hours and fifty minutes before the train carrying the team was due to arrive — Granada decided to report the welcome by television.

To screen a television report like this is a complex undertaking. It is no mere matter of sending a man with a notebook and a man with a camera to the scene of the story. It is a matter of moving a television studio on wheels, including three cameras, and microphones mounted in four or five vehicles. The cameras have to be mounted and rigged, GPO lines have to be booked, microphones have to be sited, all the various electronic bits and pieces have to be fitted together to send picture and sound to the transmitters. Two days’ hard work is usually needed to prepare the equipment for the transmission of a Travelling Eye programme. But the technicians of Granada, starting at noon, had to compress all this siting, rigging and testing into under three hours.

Because, in a television service, most of the equipment is in use all the time, Granada had no spare team to send to the site. One Travelling Eye team was already out at an old people’s home in Didsbury, ready to transmit a documentary programme later the same day; the other team was at Fallowfield Stadium preparing a programme for the next day.

Cameras, crews and their vehicles, sound-engineers and their microphones were withdrawn from both these programmes and told to report as quickly as possible to Albert Square, Manchester. When they arrived on the site they had to get ready for transmission, racing, as it were, against a train which had already left London. Cameras were unloaded, carried up a winding staircase, and rigged in the best available position, the window of a club which gave a view of the Square and of the road along which the coach carrying the team was to travel. Hundreds of yards of wire and cable were unrolled to connect the cameras to the transmitting van parked outside.

The next and biggest problem was to bring the sound from the Town Hall steps across sixty yards of open space, already crowded with traffic and soon to be filled with tens of thousands of football fans.

There seemed no way of bridging this gap until one of the technicians spotted a Manchester Corporation transport department line-maintenance lorry mounted with a telescopic platform. The driver agreed to elevate the platform of his lorry and carry the cable across the Square, over the tops of the buses, to a microphone in front of the Town Hall.

By 5.20 p.m., thirty minutes before the train was due to arrive, vision and sound were connected, everything was working, and clear pictures of the crowds gathering in the Square could be seen on the monitor screens.

Soon the long zoom lens was picking up a picture of the coach and the Cup as it came down the road. Another camera was showing the faces of the crowds as they cheered. Without a breakdown, without a hitch, the programme went on the air.

This kind of Travelling Eye report must inevitably be rare at the present stage of development of television. The necessary combination of circumstances — a major news story within close range of the Travelling Eye base — does not often occur.

In its first year Granada experimented with other new techniques in television reporting — for example, in the ‘Budget Day Special’, televised on April 9, 1957. In this programme Granada presented to viewers both the Chancellor’s Budget proposals and public comment upon them, all within minutes of the Chancellor’s speech in the House of Commons.

One of the Travelling Eye vans was stationed in the road between the Manchester Central Library and Manchester Town Hall. The van was in wireless contact with London and, as the Chancellor spoke, details of his Budget were passed over this link to two members of the Granada news staff sitting in the van.

They wrote the news-flashes on message forms which were then taken by runners to the garage of the Central Library. Here another member of the team cut the messages down to headlines. The caption artist then painted these on caption cards, which were mounted on a board in public view outside the Library — thus:

‘TV Licences up to £4 on August 1.’

‘Entertainments tax: Tax on live theatre and sport to be abolished.’

‘Petrol: A bob off.’

As these and other budget changes were displayed, members of the public were invited to comment on them before the Travelling Eye cameras and microphones. These impromptu interviews were then televised to the North through the Granada tv Network. Thus viewers were given not only a running commentary on the Budget, but some immediate public reactions.

Throughout the year the Travelling Eyes initiated ninety-five other outside broadcasts. In all, they provided ninety-seven hours of television — and, in doing so, travelled by car the equivalent of one-and-a-half times round the world. During the earlier months of Granada TV Network, indeed, the Travelling Eyes were actually responsible for more programme-hours from the North than all the BBC outside broadcast units together.

Viewers were shown life on a farm, a gypsy encampment and a school for deaf children; they saw people at work in a newspaper office, a fire station and a cheese factory; they saw places such as Wigan, York and the Lancashire seaside resorts. They went to horse shows, pigeon races, the Liverpool Show, and the Royal Lancashire Show.

Another series consisted of straight sports coverage — cricket between Lancashire and Australia and Lancashire and Worcestershire, baseball at Burtonwood, American football, International cycling at Fallowfield Stadium, and the football match of the year between Manchester United and Real Madrid.

A series called ‘While the City Sleeps’ showed the night-time activities of a great city — hospital, railway marshalling yards, telephone exchange, transport cafe, police headquarters, airfield, Salvation Army hostel, colliery.

The significance of these outside broadcasts is not only in their variety and scope, not only in their record-breaking speed, but in their essential contribution to the true nature of television: here indeed it is doing something which cannot be done, with comparable immediacy and impact, in any other medium.

The post Reporting by television appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

A TELEVISION network must serve the tastes of many kinds of viewers. There must be light entertainment as well as serious drama, popular music and variety as well as news, information and discussion.

Some of television’s most difficult problems have arisen in providing light entertainment which is original, fresh and suitable to the medium.

The music-hall, the ‘straight’ theatre, the cinema and the kerb-side busker have evolved patterns of light entertainment that can be traced back to the Commedia dell’ Arte. The range is wide and well-established, from the red-nosed dialect comedian to the sophisticated satirist in the topical revue; from the broad music-hall sketch with collapsing honeymoon beds and nagging mothers-in-law to the acidulated intellectual skit. By means of varying formulae, sometimes traditional, sometimes based on American models, sometimes new and indigenous, the media of light entertainment have striven to excite the belly-laugh, or the civilized chuckle.

Today television is the major medium of light entertainment, and it sets a fast pace. An old-time comic could tour the halls for a couple of years with the same opening gag, the same patter, the same sentimental songs, the same exit line. Transpose him to television and he must create his act anew with each appearance: every night is opening night; indeed, for television programme-planners, every night can be the opening nights of half-a-dozen half-hours to be filled with fresh entertainment.

Even in the pioneering days it became clear that it was not enough merely to put the stage performer before the camera and leave him to go through his act as in the theatre. There is a place for this kind of entertainment in television — in the straightforward music-hall programme before a live audience, for example — but it is not original television. It is music-hall photographed for TV—a kind of outside broadcast.

So far, four main distinct types of television light entertainment have been evolved; the situation comedy, the viewer participation programme, the ‘series’ programme, and the personality programme.

It is, perhaps, not too fanciful to relate the popularity of some at least of these four kinds of programme to the intensely domestic nature of the medium. Television is part of modern family life: ‘going to a show’ is an occasional family event—or, more often, something that individual members of the family do on their own, or with friends.

The appeal of the situation comedy is based on the regular presentation of a group of characters who are, in time, thought of almost as intimates of the family. The situations in which they are involved are not impossibly remote from the viewers’ own family experience, but everyday life is transmitted in them by comic exaggeration. Granada’s most successful essay in this field was My Wife’s Sister, featuring Eleanor Summerfield — a series considered by some critics equal to the most popular American situation comedies.

Quizzes and panel-games give the viewer, vicariously or in person, some degree of participation. When the quiz or panel-game involves the questioning of experts on their own subjects, viewer-participation is almost entirely vicarious. Most viewers cannot themselves know most of the answers, but they identify themselves intensely with the studio contestants: they share their delight in winning and their despondency in defeat—and take pride in their sportsmanship in accepting the toughest challenges.

The sense of participation is keener in the type of quiz and panel-game requiring an average standard of general knowledge and experience. Here the viewer is on the same level as the studio contestant or panel. He can pit his wits against the programme in competition with the contestants. It has been Granada’s policy to produce shows of this type, such as ‘Spot the Tune’, ‘Make Up Your Mind’ and ‘Black and White’, rather than the more limited and expert type of panel and quiz programme.

The ‘series’ programmes — sometimes semi-documentary in character — consist either of short self-contained playlets featuring regular characters or of ‘continued-in-our-next’ serials which seek to create suspense by melodramatic plot-structure.

With the exception of the music-hall show, the personality programme is perhaps the least intrinsically televised form of light entertainment on tv. It consists, basically, of a sketch or recital built round a popular comedian or singer, and is really an offshoot of the stage revue. In television, however, this type of programme can sometimes have a more immediate impact on the audience than is possible in even an intimate living theatre.

Television cannot be static. Its enormous consumption of material and the developing tastes of viewers demand constant experiments not least in light entertainment. On first nights, every night, every week, this will always be a major challenge to television producers and artists.

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