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

A FAVOURITE occupation as the year bows itself out is looking back over what has happened since January 1. And what a year this has been!

So spare some thought for the task facing producer David Plowright and his What The Papers Say team as they get down to preparing their annual end-of-the-year awards list.

This time they won’t need a newspaper file to remind them of the big stories of the year. They really have been big.

Choosing the outstanding features of the year’s Press, David and his collaborators will be working while they eat … for a dinner has been arranged “somewhere in London”

“It is over the dinner table that we shall go through the list and make our decisions,” said David.

“We all have our nominations to put forward, and our task certainly isn’t going to be easy.”

Dining with David will be Brian Inglis, Bernard Levin, Michael Frayn and Harold Evans. They have all been prominent in the programme, and they will all have ideas on who or what merits an award.

None of them may be expected to give way to a rival claimant without a struggle. They are an argumentative lot, especially on their favourite subject, newspapers.

Over dinner they will be sorting out the best cartoon, columnist, scoop, news reporting, background story and the best newspaper.

“Yes, it has been an amazing year for news,” said David. “You have only to think back to the beginning of January, then let your mind run over what has happened since. At home the year, of course, has been dominated by one big story — the Profumo affair, with all its implications and ramifications.

“Linked with that, you have the shake-up on the political front, the departure of Mr. Harold Macmillan to make way for Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and the death of Mr. GaitskelL

“With so little time left before the year ends we have another staggering change in the international scene with the assassination of President Kennedy.

David added: “Most of the events which have been big news in the year have been shared by every newspaper and every other news medium, but there is always ample scope for individual talent to reveal itself and win an award.

“In the sports field there have been racing and football scandals and the lighter side of our national life has brought us the Beatles, a great source of news stories and likely to hold their place on the front page for a long time yet.”

Brian Inglis said that, for him, the West Indians role in leading a real revival of interesting cricket was perhaps one of the brightest features of the year.

“It is particularly cheering to look at the cricket field when so much else in the sporting world goes on under a cloud,” he said.

“I am thinking of racing and the doping scandals, and of football with its rowdiness and vandalism, and the effects on the game of increased gambling.

“For the New Year we are looking with interest to the constitution of the new Press Council and wondering if it is going to be more effective than the old one.”

Michael Frayn put his finger on a trend which has become more apparent as the months have gone by.

“In a year when the papers have been almost overwhelmed by the volume of news, they have found themselves being outstripped by rumour,” he said.

“That is what happened in the Profumo affair, in the crisis over the Conservative leadership. It even happened in the assassination of Kennedy.

“I ask you, how did you hear of the death of Kennedy? Through the papers? Through television? Or did somebody tell you? Many people I know say ‘Somebody told me’.”

Harold Evans barely repressed a shudder when I asked him to look back on the last 12 months. “Newspapers,” he said, “have never had a year like this. I hope they never have another.

“There has been high farce — a Great Train Robbery and a Tory leadership mumbo-jumbo.

“There have been successes — the nuclear test-ban treaty was one of them.

“But it has been a tragic year with the death of Kennedy and Gaitskell.

“And it has been a squalid year with Profumo, Keeler, and Vassall. A busy year.” He added: “Our eyes have been on the stars and our feet iIn the mud.”

Last year the What The Papers Say awards went to: Picture – Daily Mirror (taken by a reader, Jim Meeds of Hutfield, Herts.); columnist -Peter Simple, Daily Telegraph; scoop — Walter Terry, Daily Mail (Cabinet changes); behind the news — Roy Jenkins and The Observer (I.C.I. — Courtaulds story); news reporting — Clare Hollingworth, The Guardian (from Algiers); paper of the year – Sunday Times colour supplement; cartoon — no award.

This year’s awards will be announced by Brian Inglis in a special edition of What The Papers Say on Boxing Day.

The post Choosing what the papers said BEST appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

NEWSPAPER editor Alastair Dunnett stood at the window of his New York skyscraper hotel, looking over towards the Manhattan waterfront.

A mile away clouds of oily black smoke billowed up from a dockland fire. Flames ripped through the packed floors of giant warehouses.

Forty-nine-year-old Dunnett, who presents Granada’s What the Papers Say this Thursday, turned from the window, walked across the bedroom, and switched on a coin-in-the-slot TV set.

“What came over was the most thrilling television I have ever seen,” he told me. “The station had scrapped its scheduled programme. Every available outside-broadcast camera had been rushed to the docks to cover the blaze. Cameramen were as close in as the firemen fighting the flames. Commentators were everywhere.

“Smoke-blackened and dazed workmen were interviewed as they staggered from the blazing store sheds — even before ambulance men could give them first-aid. It was enthralling. Anybody who saw that fire on TV would read a very pale version of it in his newspaper later.”

I asked Dunnett, if, as a newspaperman, he considered TV a rival. “I think TV and newspapers are complementary to each other,” he said. “There is room for both. One does some things better than the other.

“News coverage, for instance. If a TV camera can be on the spot when a big story breaks — like that New York docks fire — then it scoops the newspaper.

“But TV’s advantage — on-the-spot immediacy — can also be a disadvantage. If the viewer sees it, all well and good. But it is over in a second. If the viewer has missed it, that’s too bad. Television is a matter of time. You must take it when it is there for you to see. A newspaper is always at your elbow. The printed word is with you for all time. If you haven’t time to read a story in your paper, you can fold it up and slip it into your pocket to read on the bus on the way to work.

“But I’m convinced that newspapers must change their techniques to meet the challenge of TV. They must become more interpretive of the news than descriptive. They will have to tell their readers why certain things happened, not just describe them.”

Can What the Papers Say criticism be damaging to newspapers? “They can take it!” said Dunnett. “It certainly is easy to criticise a newspaper. I’m an editor, and I have to do it every day.

“It is easy to forget what a tremendous technical achievement a newspaper is. You start off with, say, 16 blank pages, and they must be filled to the last quarter-inch. Everything you have done before just doesn’t matter. This must be new.

“It is so terribly easy to say next morning ‘I would have played up this story in a big way. I would have put that picture there.’ But somebody has worked through the night, making sudden decisions and spot judgments to produce it. A remarkable performance, a newspaper.”

Dunnett started his working life in a bank. “I did, in fact, take my professional bankers’ examinations. But I had always been interested in journalism. Even while still at school. I had written for newspapers. I eventually left the bank and moved into journalism.

“During the war I moved to London to be Press officer to Tom Johnston, then Secretary of State for Scotland.”

Dunnett was for 10 years editor of the Glasgow Daily Record before becoming editor of The Scotsman three years ago.

The post A newspaper man’s view of television appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THE trim, white-painted motor cruiser chugged in from the open sea and made for its home buoy. When it had been safely tied up, its owner, tanned and weather-beaten as from a lifetime in the open air, disappeared down the hatch.

Minutes later he was back on deck, his shorts replaced by a well pressed suit. Shore was only a few powerful oar-strokes away, and soon he was in his car and starting on the 85-mile trip to Manchester.

The purpose of his journey was to go in front of a television camera and tell viewers how to make friends with their ulcers.

The boat’s owner was the People and Places doctor, whose homely chats about the more popular aches and pains are becoming a regular feature of the programme.

Because of the BMA restrictions on publicity, the name of this twinkling-eyed doctor with the manner so suited to television cannot be given.

He is a 42-year-old general practitioner with a bigger-than-average practice, a wife and two children (a third expected in November).

He is a keen believer in as much outdoor life as possible. In the summer he captains his local cricket team. His winter sport is golf (he has a handicap of four) and he likes to sail the boat he keeps moored beneath the ancient walls of Conway Castle.

It was during his summer holiday that he drove to Manchester to give his talk on ulcers — and he went off to Wales again as soon as he could. The 30ft Bendigo, which was a Rhyl pilot boat before he bought her four years ago, gives him the holiday relaxation his busy life demands — far from the incessant ringing of the telephone, from the midnight knocks on the door.

And a holiday afloat is a natural choice, for he is no stranger to the sea. Before the last war, as a 17-year-old waiting to go into medical school, he became a deckhand in a Hull trawler and knew the sea in its wildest moods while riding out gales in the Icelandic fishing grounds. During the war he served in the Mediterranean in a luxury liner which had been turned into a hospital ship.

His breezy television approach to medicine has developed from his earlier appearances in Granada’s People and Places, when it was a late-night show.

“Who,” the doctor asked himself, “is going to sit up and listen to a public health lecture at 11 o’clock at night?”

Now he makes a practice of treating his subject in the most lighthearted way possible. He says: “I don’t believe illness is necessarily a matter for solemn faces. Everyone is concerned about health in one way or another and I try to talk about different aspects of it in a way that is easily understandable.

“The fact that it’s a serious subject doesn’t mean it has to be dull. For instance, when I discussed disabilities I thought it interesting to instance famous athletes, among them Olympic gold medallists, whose disabilities did not prevent them from making great physical efforts.”

The doctor had his TV baptism in an interview with Douglas Warth in Granada’s Sharp at Four nearly four years ago. A doctor was needed who was capable of standing up to Warth’s hard-hitting arguments, and this general practitioner, former president of Manchester University Union and a noted debater, was picked for the verbal battle.

“It very nearly developed into a standup fight,” he recalls, “but it was great fun.”

Since then he has been called on to appear in This Week, What the Papers Say and Under Fire. It was in the last that he led the doctors’ protests about their promised pay increases.

“The MP I was attacking said it was most unfair of me to accuse the Government of delaying tactics and assured us that there was going to be no delay at all in doing something about our pay. That was more than three years ago, and it is only now that we are going to get our increases.”

How does the doctor’s family view his TV appearances?

“My four-year-old boy saw me in one programme recently,” he says, “and when I got home he told me he liked Yogi Bear better. I must say that is a point of view with which I have every sympathy.”

The post The sailing doctor makes it breezy 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.