THE young Army lieutenant took no notice of what was happening on the screen. Instead he watched a girl two rows in front of him.

His chances seemed remote. She was the sergeant-major’s daughter and he was a poor subaltern. But today Northern TV personality Mike Scott is married to Sylvia, the girl he saw in the two-and-ninepennies.

On Friday, he takes over the commentator’s chair in Cinema, and that early real life cinema drama sticks in his memory.

It happened in 1952 when the then 20-year-old Scott was on National Service with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, at Bicester, Oxfordshire.

“At first,” Mike recalled, “it seemed I could never bridge those two rows between us. Then a mutual friend introduced us.

“All went well until I fell foul of the Army authorities some months later in that same cinema.

“I was orderly officer, and rather foolishly slipped off to take Sylvia to the pictures. There was a disturbance on camp and I was caught red-faced holding hands in the back row.”

Mike and Sylvia were married in 1956 and have a five-year old daughter, Julia. Scott is 6 ft. 2in. tall, angular, with classic features and has a humorous outlook on life. He’s a popular fellow, drives a 1932 vintage Lagonda, has done a “ton” in a Mini Cooper, and believes that cars are for driving and not just looking at.

Born in Earls Court, London, he has a flat in Kensington, but lives in Bowden, Cheshire. “I came North eight years ago and I love it,” he said.

“After public school I worked as a film extra while waiting for a production side union card which I never got. I wanted to be a film editor. I knew that most of the creative work was there and assumed I would rise to director.”

Mike worked for Rank for a spell and joined Granada ITV in 1956, working up to programme director within a year.

He made his screen debut on Scene at 6.30 in 1963, and made a big impact in the recent series, A Slight White Paper on Love.

Of his new charge he says: “I have been eyeing Cinema for some time. Like the previous presenters, Bamber Gascoigne and Derek Granger, I shall write my own scripts.

“I am not interested in being just a front man. My taste in films? I love Gene Kelly musicals, suspense films of ‘The Wages of Fear’ calibre, and colourful epics in the ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ mould.

“The essential thing in Cinema is dramatic entity. It’s no use showing a clip which doesn’t resolve itself. If it ends before the climax of the scene it merely frustrates people.”

I asked Scott if he would like to see any radical changes in the modem cinema. “Yes,” he said. “I’d like to see more leg room for people like me.”

The post Love in the two-and-ninepennies appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

Mr Norman Somers, of 3, Craven Place, Hopwood Lane, Halifax, has been appointed senior staff announcer of the Granada TV network, which opens in the North to-morrow, and is based on Manchester.

The network provides the Monday to Friday programmes for Northern commercial TV and Mr. Somers’s will be the first voice heard when the station opens.

Mr. Somers, a London man, has lived in Halifax since 1939 and has been prominently associated with Halifax Thespians as actor and producer. He played a big part in the establishment of the Playhouse, as chairman of the reconstruction committee. He has taken part in 750 broadcasts for the B.B.C. in plays and variety, including “Have a Go.” “Club Night” and “Over the Garden Wall ”

His duties for the Granada network will include outside broadcasts, commentating and interviewing. He will, however, continue to do sound broadcasting for the B.B.C.

The post Halifax man’s post with commercial TV network appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

This week in television the focus is on the North. Commercial TV, already serving London and the Midlands, now begins to cater for one third of the population in a vast new area. TV MIRROR brings you an exclusive interview…

SIDNEY BERNSTEIN, Head of Granada Television, talks to Geoffrey Kino and says, “There’s a local pride which I want to satisfy with regional programmes”

“GRANADA chose the North of England. It was the region we most wanted.” Mr. Bernstein impressed this on me after I’d been with him a very few minutes. “I doubt if we’d have got London even if we’d wanted it, but I want to make it perfectly clear that Lancashire and Yorkshire were our first choice.”

By then I had got used to his manner. Mr. Sidney Bernstein is a perfectionist; he is also just about the hardest man to see in television today. This is not only because he is extremely busy as Head of Granada Television but because he does everything himself. He wants to know exactly what is happening and to keep his finger on every nerve of his organisation.

When I arrived, he had to keep me waiting and I sat in his ante-room viewing a bronze bust of him. His secretary had warned me how busy he was and had asked me how much of his time I would occupy. Tentatively I said I would like about half-an-hour. Actually I was with him for more than an hour.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said as he ushered me in. “Now make yourself at home and tell me why you’ve come to see me?”

“TV Mirror wants to know how you intend to entertain the North of England,” I said. “We know you have very definite ideas and we want to know how you’re going to put them into operation.”

Slowly and deliberately, his voice keeping time with his pacing between desk and fireplace, he began to tell me about himself. He told me how he had gleaned his knowledge of Show Business; how as a young man he had travelled back and forth to America; about the films he had made with Hitchcock.

Settling at his desk, he said: “I’ve painted in my background so that you can see that I have at least a superficial knowledge about television.” It was then he told me that he’d chosen the North of England.

“There are thirteen million people in our viewing area — as many as in the London area. There is more civic pride in the North than anywhere else in England. Dad will march his son round the town when he is just old enough to walk and show him the Town Hall and the football ground and the War Memorial. That won’t happen in London. And have you studied the rainfall maps? Need I tell you the advantages of wet evenings as far as TV is concerned?

“The North appreciate the value of money and there’s more money up there to be spent sensibly — Advertisers appreciate this.”

Another interesting piece of information Sidney Bernstein had gleaned was that Monday night was peak viewing in the North — with a viewer figure of 81 per cent and Tuesday followed closely with 80 per cent.

This is a reversal of viewing figures down South where Fridays and Sundays are the accepted peaks.

I asked him if he could tell me about some of his programmes.

“It isn’t all planned yet. I want plenty of elasticity so that I can use television properly. I’ve got two OB units made specially to our own requirements by Pye. I believe in TV as a means of communication and I’ve got crews manning these that can put them up in a very short time. Wherever something is happening Granada OBs will be there. I believe the essence of TV is the outside broadcast. Again my programmes must be right for the North. Let me give you an example of what I mean. The whole country watches the Grove Family but if I gave the Groves a Wigan accent and set the action in that town, I’ll bet all the North would tune in to that programme instead of the Groves.

“Now that couldn’t happen in London. You could set it in Woolwich or Acton and no one would know which borough it was in. That’s what I mean about regional programmes and that is what I’m interested in putting out. This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe some of the programmes now showing I shan’t want for the North — I think some of them will be first-class up there.

“Variety is a big problem”

“Dragnet is fine; Gun Law first-class. I think I Love Lucy will be popular anywhere and I am sure Liberace will be as much appreciated in Manchester as he has been in London, Birmingham and New York.

“I like panel games and quiz shows provided the latter never try to make the human being lose his dignity. I wouldn’t have that sort of show, but those that dwell on general knowledge questions are excellent and I love watching them myself.”

I pointed out that he had left out light entertainment and told him that I had noticed that most of the performers were under contract to other companies and that Granada had even lost most of the shows from Blackpool this year.

“I didn’t want them,” was his reply. “Variety is a big problem over here — same acts repeated too often. In America there is only one top-flight variety show and that is the Ed Sullivan one. His deadpan manner is tremendously effective and then, over here, you can’t do what they can in America and get politicians to appear in light entertainment programmes to have fun poked at them and to be attacked. So over here we have to fall back on the same pattern and that pattern is becoming a bore.

“Then again it is only on Sundays that the best artists are available and I don’t have to worry about Sundays — as for the rest of the stuff I don’t think it’s very good. Believe me when something good comes along, that is something good for the North, I’ll take it. I see no point in competing with first-class stuff owned by other contractors — I shall want to buy that. When Hugh Beaumont has a suitable play for the North I shall want to screen it.

“We’ve got Sir Thomas Beecham under contract, as you know.”

I interrupted here saying that ARTV’s experiments with the Hallé Orchestra hadn’t been all that successful and that TV didn’t seem the best medium for serious music.

“It depends how it is presented,” Mr. Bernstein retorted. “Now this is how we’re going to do it. On a Monday for instance our cameras would take you to meet Sir Thomas at home where he’ll introduce himself to you and talk about the concert you’ll be hearing on Wednesday. He may stroll over to the piano and play a few bars to illustrate what he means. Then, on the Tuesday night, we shall take viewers to watch a rehearsal and to see how Sir Thomas works, and what it means being a conductor and what different interpretations mean. So that by the Wednesday, the night of the concert, viewers will have a feeling of anticipation.”

I acknowledged the novelty of this and wished the venture luck but I wanted to know more — more of these regional programmes.

“Let me put it this way,” Mr. Bernstein parried. “If I told you we had a panel game where a person came in and waved his arms about and then was asked questions as to what those signals meant you would say that it sounded a bit dull. Yet that formula is known now as “What’s My Line?” He sat back: “Wait and see some of our shows and then judge them and talk about them.”

I pursued this regional attitude on another tack — namely that of costs and advertising. Surely, I asked him, networking was the way in which profits were made — to stand aloof from it would be ruinous.

Mr. Bernstein smiled: “Don’t get the idea that money doesn’t interest us.

“Indeed we’re a small company and not half as rich as some of the others. We’ve got to make money unless we are going to die. But I want to put on my shows and I hope, and believe, people will come to us and ask for them.

“As for the advertiser, I feel sure that once he sees what we are doing and how we are going about entertaining the public, then he will come in and devise a method of advertising to coincide with our method of entertaining. It is possible that the advertising in the North will be quite different from that in the South; alternatively it may be the same. But one thing I do know. The Advertising agent is a sensible quick thinking chap who’ll adapt himself and his commodity to the right method of sale quickly, once we’ve proved that what we’re doing is right.”

Until I had had this conversation with Mr. Bernstein, I had felt, like so many other people in television, that the secrecy that surrounded his activities meant that he had nothing and that Granada were not prepared. Now I am sure there is plenty up Mr. Bernstein’s capacious sleeve.

The post This is THE NORTH: Here Are My Plans appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

PRESENTING a new face of Mike Sarne. Smeared with shaving lather as he is here, is not exactly the face mean.

I’m talking about Sarne the photographer. There is little difference between the new Sarne and Sarne the actor, author, journalist, quizmaster, pop singer, poetry enthusiast, and former student at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

Except, perhaps, that here he is a little more curious. Look at our pictures again. These were taken, believe it or not, by our specially commissioned photographer, Mike Sarne.

The portrait of the artist as a young man with a camera strung round his neck was accomplished by the grace of what is known in dark-room vernacular as a “mirror.”

The picture of Mike “through the looking glass” was a little more difficult. No mirror was used, but it required a delayed-action exposure, and a deft fleetness of foot to get round the other side of the lens and into position before the thing went off.

He is certainly a keen cameraman — with an eye for the colourful as well as the unusual. Mike helps control a fashion photography studio in Chiswick.

Apart from regularly compering Junior Criss Cross Quiz on Thursdays, he has recently finished making a film. “Everyday’s a Holiday” — which is now on release.

The post Meet the new Mike Sarne appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

WITH some people, it’s first editions. With others, it’s stamps, or match boxes or cigarette cards.

With Johnny Hamp [sic], host and producer of Granada’s Wednesday Pop Scene, in the Scene at 6.30 programme, it’s television debuts.

As pop-chief of Scene At 6.30 he has assembled a bundle of them since the programme was launched 14 months ago.

“When we decided we needed a pop musical item in the show every night, we had a problem,” said Johnny, behind a desk covered with new record releases.

“Most of the big names launched their records in London.

“We decided that if we were going to get the teenage audiences we wanted, we would have to start scooping the London shows.

“That didn’t only mean getting established names to come to Manchester first with their records.

“It meant digging out new talent before it had been fully recognised elsewhere.”

One of the first charttopping groups to make a television debut on Scene was Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas.

“That was a relatively straightforward deal — a straight recommendation and transaction with the Epstein stable,” said Johnny.

But a much more zany new talent hit the television public for the first time on the programme a few weeks later — Mr. Freddie Garrity and The Dreamers.

“I was invited to see them playing at a Manchester club,” said Johnny.

“I thought their act was killingly funny. They threw everything into it in those days — including dust-bin lids and bicycle frames!

“Funny thing is, Freddie and the lads had been auditioned by Granada only 12 months before and had been thrown out on their ears because their act was considered absurd and stupid.”

The Dreamers have never forgotten their first television break. And they still launch all their new releases through the show.

About the same time, another crazy crew turned up at the studios for a first television appearance — The Hollies.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw them,” grinned Johnny. “They were dressed in jeans and shirts that didn’t match, and they looked more like rough kids than musicians.

“But we put them on, because they had a new kind of talent, and they never looked back.

“I still think they’re one of the greatest groups to come out of the North.

“When The Mindbenders did their first television stint,” said Johnny, “they were directed by Silvio Narrizano – who had just finished the award-winning production of War and Peace!

“Dave Berry? The first time I saw him I thought that he was wasted on television — and I still do.

“He thrives on audiences. He can work them up into a frenzy of excitement.”

The complete opposite, in fact, of those two cool kittens of British show-business — The Caravelles. Who very nearly didn’t make their television debut on the night they were booked to appear on Scene.

“They arrived at the studio at six o’clock and went in front of their first television cameras without any rehearsal,” Johnny explained. They missed their plane from London, and had to take one to Liverpool. We rushed a car to Merseyside to get them, but by the time they got to the studios there wasn’t time for a run through.

“You’d think if anyone could catch a plane it would be them, wouldn’t you — with a name like The Caravelles.”

The problems of producing nightly musical items for Scene have been magnified ten fold with Wednesday’s Pop Scene.

“On the new show we are trying to feature stars who are in the hit parade that week.” Johnny explained.

The performance of a new record usually coincides with the disc’s general release.

But occasionally, Pop Scene jumps the gun even on this.

“Take Millicent Martin,” said Johnny, “we had her on the show singing ‘Nothing But The Best’ three weeks ago. And the disc only goes on sale this week.”

Four scalps that don’t hang from Johnny the Collector’s belt are those of The Beatles.

“But there is some connection,” said Johnny. “They made their television debut in People and Places — the programme from which Scene sprang — on October 17, 1962. They have appeared in Scene a number of times — and we expect to feature them with their new releases in the months to come.”

The post Pop collector No. 1 appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THE basic aim and concept of all Denis Mitchell’s unique television documentary work — Chicago, The Intruders, Morning in the Streets, Grass Roots — has been to get as close to real life as possible.

With The Entertainers (Wednesday, 9.40 p.m.) the first of two consecutive programmes for Granada, he may have got closer still with a study of the private lives and problems of club entertainers in the North of England for two reasons:

☆ He used a mobile videotape installed in a Travelling Eye vehicle (instant vision and sound recorded on tape) to get a direct transcript of events as they happened. This is the first time that this method has been used to obtain a continuous record for TV documentary purposes.

☆ The whole story was shot entirely “off the cuff” and unplanned, in an empty house specially rented for the purpose.

Let Denis Mitchell himself explain: “The behind-the-scenes lives of club entertainers, their struggles, their day-to-day life, their relations with each other and their background, is a subject that has always had a great fascination for me.

“But I could never quite see how to get to grips with it the way I wanted — truthfully and genuinely — until I had this idea, about the house.

“Yes, I thought. Get a house. Then get a half-dozen or so entertainers, put them in the house, and see what happens.

“No plan, no script. Just turn on the cameras, and let the videotape take over. Let the machines record life exactly as it unfolds.

“And that’s the way it was. It wasn’t quite a simple as that, but it worked.”

The house was in Whalley Range, not far from Manchester’s city centre.

He went on: “I got the design department of Granada to furnish it in the style of a decayed boarding-house — the regular background of the people whose lives I wanted to explore.

“Then I did a round of the Lancashire clubs to find the types I wanted. The idea fascinated them as much as it did me. They moved in, bringing their essentials with them. If they wanted, they could sleep in the house. Sometimes they did.

“There was Archie Tower, 60 years old, an old-style comedian — one of those who’d always just missed the big time. Shirley, 22, a professional singer for only a year. There was Bridgette, a strip dancer. She was married, and brought her baby along.

“Arlette was a strip dancer, too. She’d been taking a degree course in English literature at Manchester’s College of Commerce when the club offer came along. She’d settled for the cash.

“There were Bob and Dave, two boys from Openshaw, with their guitars and their dreams. And there was Johnnie Kennedy, 24 years old and a singer, with ambition bursting out of him. Always, there was Johnnie.

“In the film, you can see how he gets an audition — in an empty Manchester club — and how this leads to a booking at a leading London night spot. This is the way it happened. No fake.

“Naturally, I had to compress the action. The way I’ve told the stories of these young people (and Archie) is by showing a typical 24 hours in their lives.

“Their day really begins in the afternoon. so I started from there. Often, they sleep until 3 p.m. (They usually work until around 3 a.m.)

“You see them shaving, gossiping, cooking, dressmaking, phoning their agents, making tea. Just as it happened. Then the videotape follows them to their evening engagements in, the clubs.

“The story ends in the morning. Actually, it ended with a party which came about in the house, at mid-day.”

Cheshire-born Denis Mitchell is 52, and made his first TV film, On The Threshold, 12 years ago.

Since then, for his varied, but always highly individualistic work, he has received the Prix Italia (1959) for Morning in the Streets (his own personal favourite), and the Vancouver Award for Main Street, South Africa, and Soho Story.

He is a man who thinks entirely in terms of television; believes that the medium holds endless possibilities for development.

In the presentation of his subjects, his approach is invariably laconic — letting the facts and the pictures speak for themselves. Nevertheless, he stresses that, if you look for a social commentary, you will always find it.

“I am disturbed by poverty, loneliness, old age, people in the backwaters of life,” he says frankly. “If I have pictured these things in the North of England mainly, it is because that is my background. and that is what I understand best.”

Before making TV films, Denis Mitchell spent many years in South Africa. He went there at the age of 20 and worked as bank clerk, cheese salesman, cattle hand, and journalist, “remarkably badly,’’ he says.

But while there he got the job of chief script writer for the South African Broadcasting Corporation. Returning to England, he finally joined the BBC’s staff as a radio features producer based in Manchester. There he made his mark with “People Talking”, which developed an entirely new kind of interview technique.

The post Life behind the lights appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

PEOPLE who know how long I’ve known Bill Grundy often ask me what the man is really like.

Has he always been as aggressive and dogmatic as he is in front of the television camera, they want to know. Is that hard-bitten exterior something that has grown on him in recent years? And does a heart of gold beat under it?

Well, a heart of gold he may have. But Grundy doesn’t change much, on or off the screen. He’s been that way ever since I first met him 15 years ago. And I expect he always will be.

It’s fatal, for instance, to be in a car with him.

If you’re driving, I’ll guarantee your driving will disintegrate within minutes. He won’t say anything. He’ll just sit there, watching you. He has a naturally critical presence, I suppose.

It’s even worse when he’s driving — if you’re one of those normal, sane, sensitive souls who hates scenes that is. He’s a good driver, but there’s nothing he enjoys more than a raucous argument with another driver in the middle of a traffic jam.

Just let someone turn right without giving a signal, or stop without warning, or cut in front of him! Down goes the window, and within seconds Grundy is in full flood.

Dinner with Grundy is another perilous experience. He’s an expert on wine, you sec. Pity the wine-waiter who doesn’t know his wine when he’s dealing with Grundy! He’ll argue for hours about it, completely oblivious to your rapidly cooling dinner. I think he would rather argue about it than drink it.

He’s mean, too.

Not about big things, of course. He will spend pounds buying a present for someone, but he can get positively delirious with delight if he thinks he’s got something twopence cheaper than the market price.

And then, of course, there are the children. He has five — four boys and a girl.

They all adore him. I can’t think why. He’s a real Victorian father to them.

I think he gets round them by taking them for long walks, and telling them about soil and things. That’s one advantage of being a geologist, I suppose.

He buys them things, too. He bought eight-year-old Nicholas a microscope the other day. Poor Nicholas. I could have told him what would happen. Now he can’t get near the thing when his father’s around.

I shudder to think what’s going to happen when he buys them the electric train set he is promising them this Christmas. I expect that within minutes of its assembly, the household will be subjected to dissertations on railway technique by Station Master Grundy.

He’s hopeless around the house, by the way.

He won’t admit it, but he is. His family don’t bother asking him to do odd jobs any more. Get him to knock a nail in the wall? Bill will be happy to do it. But no one can guarantee the result.

Shattered plaster, bent nails, bruised thumbs and frayed tempers — take your pick. They’re all equally likely. And whose fault do you think it will be that things go wrong?

You’ve guessed it. The children’s, or the manufacturers of “inferior” nails. Even the hammer isn’t above reproach.

Mending the fuse is a positive adventure with him. He understands the mechanics of the thing, of course. He does with most things.

But he’ll probably lose the screws, and everyone within range will be enlisted to crawl round the floor looking for them. Never mention wallpaper to him. He’s liable to be rude.

He decided to paper his own bathroom some time ago, you see. He got four lengths on the walls, and then found that he couldn’t match them up.

He wouldn’t admit defeat, needless to say. He spent 12 months pretending to his friends that he hadn’t time to get down to the job, before finally getting a professional decorator in to finish it off.

All the handywork around his house is done by his father, the older Bill, who carries it out with a sort of scornful Grundy-like urbanity which must annoy Bill considerably.

It was Bill’s father, for instance, who turned the tennis court at the back of the Grundy home into a miniature football pitch. As soon as the work was done, the young Bill took charge of it.

Now, every Sunday, he organises a football match with the children.

He’s captain, of course, and he refuses to play in goal. He used to play on the wing for the Navy and for Manchester University, you know, and he insists on playing in that position now. He fancies himself as a sort of latter-day Bobby Charlton, I suppose.

Yes. Grundy’s pretty insufferable, on and off television. And what makes it worse is that he is really quite soft underneath it all.

You have to know what makes Bill tick, you see. Argument is a disease with him.

He’ll argue about anything. He’ll even argue when he knows he’s wrong — just for the hell of it.

I think I’ve got the best way to deal with the man when he gets like that, though, I just put out my tongue at him. It works like a charm.

Still, I suppose that tf anyone ought to know how to deflate the man, I should — for my name is Grundy, too — Jean Grundy.

I’ve been happily married to Bill for 15 years.

The post Grundy by name… appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THERE is no place like the North for plain speaking. Argument thrives here as it has always done. Can it be something in the air?

I ask because the top brass of the BBC, who but for the flick of a switch would be called “tycoons”, seem to find it particularly heady.

It begins to loosen their tongues as soon as they step off the Pullman from London.

This is quite understandable, of course. They are never here long enough to get used to breathing it as the rest of us are. Nevertheless, we at Granada are still sometimes surprised at the things they say.

There was, for example, that remarkable speech by Mr. Hugh Carleton Greene, the BBC’s Director General, when he paid one of his infrequent visits.

What else but the Manchester air could be blamed for his unhappy attempt to prove that only the BBC can provide worthwhile regional broadcasting in the North — when all the evidence pointed in the exactly opposite direction?

We do not mind being attacked by the BBC, but we believe that deliberate distortion of the facts should not be shrugged off. Television is at too crucial a stage in its development for misinformed comment to be left unanswered.

The BBC television service claims to be regional, but their vast acreage at Shepherd’s Bush is evidence of an overwhelming focus of effort and resources in London.

In fact, their headquarters in this part of the world are a somewhat cramped studio in a back-street — a converted church.

Recently, Mr. Greene’s programme controller, Mr. Stuart Hood, told a Manchester audience: “Britain is not centred on London, but has strong local life.” How right he is!

But if he really wants to be regional, he should try to get the BBC’s architects on his side and divert some of the bricks and mortar from London to the North.

For the truth is that their paper plans for building new television studios in the North have remained — on paper. Granada, in contrast, has cut away from the South and built all its new studios here.

Does it make much difference where a television company has its studios? Of course it does!

The first essential of good regional television is an iden tity of interests between the people producing the programmes and the people who watch them. The programmes acquire a natural and sustained vigour from this.

But how can that kind of identification be achieved if the studios and the audience are separated by a gap of hundreds of miles and several counties? Could Coronation Street have been produced by Granada from the South? Or People and Places?

Isn’t it significant that the BBC did no Northern news bulletins and Northern sports programmes on television until Granada led the way?

Of course, most Granada programmes are seen all over the country, just as we here in the North see programmes produced from other companies. This is called networking.

But our five acre TV Centre in Manchester is the focus of many more programmes designed for the North alone. We believe we have now become part of the life of the North, and our TV Centre is tangible evidence of our honouring the original concept of independent television.

Derek Meakin writes…

ONE observation made by Mr. Stuart Hood, in the speech referred to by Mr. Bernstein, has become a top talking point among BBC and ITV personnel in the North.

He said: “In regional terms we give insufficient attention, and insufficient time, to the coverage of local affairs, which is, I believe, the field in which regional television has still got a long way to go.”

The general reaction to this remark was summed up for me by a man who has worked for both channels — Ronnie Taylor, now ABC Television’s Head of Light Entertainment, who started with the BBC in 1949 and moved to ABC two years ago.

He told me: “This is an unexpected admission by a member of the BBC hierarchy. As far as the North — which is the largest region of all — is concerned, it has taken them 11 years to get around to this way of thinking.

“I well remember the unique opportunity the BBC had to pioneer regional television when the North’s first TV transmitter was opened at Holme Moss in 1951.

“But what happened? The transmitter became little more than an automatic relay station re-broadcasting programmes received from London.

“Then, when ITV began in the North just six years ago, we all expected that the BBC would react to competition by giving a fair measure of autonomy to its Northern operation.

“But the grand hopes held by Northerners working for the BBC were not to be realised. In fact, they have continually met with frustration and opposition.

“People at the London end of the BBC have gone out of their way to see that the regions have not had the chance to develop.

“ABC and the other regional companies are in business to provide regional television. And this is why I am now so happy working for ABC.”

According to Mr. Hood, local affairs is the field “in which regional television has still a long way to go.”

But it has gone far already — on the independent channel. The facts speak for themselves.

For instance. Granada pioneered regional news bulletins and now gives two every weekday. With its Saturday-night Northern News Desk ABC is the first company to provide a regional weekend news bulletin.

In People and Places, Granada brings before the cameras a constant stream of interesting personalities who belong to the North or who are visiting the region.

ABC at Large is regularly praised by the authorities for its courageous treatment of regional problems.

That viewers like these programmes is graphically shown by audience figures.

People and Places is seen in 671,250 more Northern homes than its BBC equivalent, Tonight. And ABC at Large, although it is shown very late in the evening, attracts a Northern audience that is greater by 242,000 houses than the one that watches the BBC’s peak-hour Panorama.

The post Plain speaking appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

A TELEVISION studio is the crossroads of the world — a meeting point of people from every nation. Here, for instance, Chinese, Indians and Africans meet to life and movement to the sets of Skyport and Knight Errant ’59.

They have no lines to speak, these silent part-time actors.

They earn the £3-a-day fee by merely hovering in the background or pacing unobtrusively across the set, giving the show the all-important stamp of a authenticity.

The task of finding them falls to Jose Scott, assistant to Margaret Morris, who is head of Granada’s casting department in Manchester.

Said Jose: “Some of the people I find are professionals, but many are part-timers specially engaged at short notice. I get them through an agent or our contacts in various schools and colleges.

“There are plenty of professionals available who have the facial characteristics of Europeans and most other whit-skinned foreigners.

“But when we need coloured people we run into difficulty in the North, because normally we can get hold of only a handful. Recently we needed 30 coloured men and women for a play. In desperation I rang Manchester University and asked them to put up a notice saying that any interested students should contact us.

“We didn’t have to wait long. Soon the phone was ringing — and it went on ringing and ringing and ringing. We had more than needed in the end.

“When we met them in the reception lounge, we found some of the men who had promised to come had brought their wives, too. And a woman who could not turn up at the last moment sent along her next-door neighbour.

“Although they speak English, many have a strong accent which we had difficulty in understanding and caused chaos when it came to getting their names correct.

“And when we asked them to write down their names, we couldn’t read their handwriting. But we got it sorted out eventually.”

Researchers for Granada’s People And Places magazine programme often provide leads to foreigners available for walk-on parts “And,” Jose told me, “once someone has made an appearance, he usually says ‘I have a friend who would be able to help…’ So the whole business works on a sort of snowball principle.

We have never been asked to find a Japanese, an Eskimo or a dwarf, but I’m sure we could. In the case of an Eskimo, we probably use a person with similar features, then dress them up. It’s amazing what a few clothes will do.”

Talking of clothes reminded Jose of an incident during rehearsals for a play. A group of Indians wearing saris were told the producer to turn up the next day in their “everyday” clothes.

So the next day they left their best saris at home and arrived on the set in their week-day saris! They didn’t that they were meant to wear Western dress.

At the studios, everybody speaks highly of the co-operation and friendliness of future doctors, lawyers, secretaries, teachers and engineers.

Said Jose: “The students are able to get a couple of days off without much difficulty, and they are always glad to do this sort of work. They have a reputation for being conscientious and hardworking.”

Akitoye Akiwumi, 24-year-old engineering student from Sierra Leone and Ali Mazrui, who has come from Kenya to study philosophy and politics, both appeared in a Granada play.

Said Akitoye: “We spent three days at the studio and found it very interesting to see things from the other side of the camera.” Ali told me: “I have done radio broadcasts in Mombasa, but this was he first time I had been inside a TV studio, a thrilling experience.”

Clarice Boyle, who is 25, and 22-year-old Marjorie During, both from Sierra Leone, got time off from their secretarial studies to become Skyport “travellers.”

When Jose was asked to find a Chinese family for Skyport, she called on a Chinese couple who run a Manchester restaurant, Maw Man and his wife Ah Sing. But their children, Ken, 13, and Linda, 12, were not able to appear because of restrictions concerning the employment of child actors. So Jose asked a London agency for two Chinese children.

When Ah Sing and her husband met the children from London in the studio, they discovered they were their niece and nephew — children of Maw’s elder brother.

The post The Silent Shadows appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.