Richard Hoggart and Pilkington
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Julian Petley ed Kingdom by the BBC and the ITA’ and ‘to recommend whether additional services should be provided by any other organisation’ (HMSO 1962: 1). It was chaired by the industrialist Sir Harry Pilkington, but the key member of the committee was undoubtedly Richard Hoggart, who had recently written an influential article for Encounter entitled ‘The uses of television’ (Hoggart 1970: 152-162). The report was commissioned for four reasons. Firstly, ITV had been introduced in 1954 for only a ten year ‘experimental’ period, mainly Richard Hoggart and because of Labour Party hostility to commer- cial television, and this would soon be drawing Pilkington: Populism to a close. Second, the channel was attracting and public service mounting criticism from those who believed that the ITV companies were making unaccept- broadcasting ably large profits from poor quality program- ming. Third, there was the looming question of In 1962 the Pilkington Committee, of which whether there should be a third television chan- Richard Hoggart was a highly influential mem- nel, and if so, to whom it should be allotted. ber, produced a report which was highly criti- And fourth, the BBC Charter was due to expire cal of ITV and its regulator the Independent in 1962. However, the resultant report, which Television Authority. It recommended that was produced in June 1962, went far beyond the third television channel be allocated to addressing these specific issues and although, the BBC, and that the authority, once armed as we shall see, its main recommendations for with greater seriousness of purpose, should restructuring ITV were rejected, in 1977 the both plan the ITV schedules and sell advertis- Annan Committee were able to claim convinc- ing time, thus greatly reducing the power of ingly that ‘the Pilkington Report transformed the advertisers over the programme mak- the face of ITV’ (p. 146), whilst Jeffrey Milland ers and schedulers within the companies. The has argued that ‘broadcasting in Britain con- government baulked at the proposals for ITV tinued to be based on Pilkingtonian principles but, nonetheless, the ensuing 1964 Televi- for forty years, establishing criteria for judging sion Act strengthened the powers of the ITA the performance of broadcasters which few and allotted the third channel to the BBC. The challenged, at least until the 1980s’ (2009: 95). report was bitterly attacked by most national For others, the Pilkington Report had an impor- newspapers, several of which had substantial tance that stretched even beyond broadcasting. holdings in ITV companies, and which saw the Thus, as Jean Seaton puts it: ‘The committee report’s strictures on populism in television had been asked to review the development of programming as an implicit critique of their television. In fact, they did much more, produc- own journalistic standards and as a threat to ing a report which judged the nation’s culture’ press freedom. This paper examines the press (quoted in Freedman 2003: 31), and Michael critique of the Pilkington Report, and suggests Bailey, Ben Clarke and John Walton claim that that it prefigures later press interventions in ‘insofar as the final report concerned itself with the broadcasting sphere, as well as press reac- the philosophy of “good broadcasting” and tions to the Leveson Inquiry. British culture more generally, one could argue that its many appraisals and accompanying Keywords: Richard Hoggart, Pilkington, popu- proposals belong as much to the “condition of lism, ITV, ITA England” tradition as they do to broadcasting history’ (2012: 139). Equally, Hoggart himself Introduction stated that the report presented an argument On 13 July 1960, the Conservative government not simply about broadcasting but about… of Harold Macmillan established a committee under the chairmanship of the industrialist … freedom and responsibility within com- Sir Harry Pilkington ‘to consider the future of mercialised democracies. It touched on the broadcasting services in the United Kingdom’ interrelations between cash, power and the and, more specifically, ‘to advise on the services organs for intellectual debate; it had to do which should in future be provided in the Unit- with a society which is changing rapidly and 4 Copyright 2015-1. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 12, No 1 2015 ICE CONFERENCE SPECIAL doesn’t understand its own changes; it had because it was a private enterprise, a rival to to do with the adequacy of our assumptions the BBC (which many Tories, then as now, dis- and vocabulary to many current social issues liked because it was a public corporation, and (1970: 189). one which they perceived to have a liberal bias), and provided freedom of choice in viewing, but The main purpose of this paper is to examine others disliked what they saw as its commercial the report’s attacks on populism in broadcast- values. On the other side of the political divide, ing, and particularly in ITV programming, and Labour had at one time pledged to abolish ITV, then to analyse the populist counter-attack on but dropped this idea before the 1959 General the report in significant sections of the national Election. Many Labour supporters may have press. But first it is necessary to sketch in some- disliked its commercialism, but, equally, others thing of the context in which the report was wanted a stake in the burgeoning consumer commissioned and published. society and saw nothing amiss in ITV’s adver- tisements and quiz show programmes with CONFERENCE ITV: Profit and populism their tempting prizes. PAPERS By the late 1950s ITV was becoming increas- ingly popular – and profitable. By concentrat- When the report was published in June 1962, ing increasingly on the most watched kinds the Pilkington Committee made it abundantly of programmes, ITV companies were making clear that, in its view, commercial values had an average annual pre-tax profit of 130 per exerted a largely negative pressure on tele- cent. It was at this point that Roy Thomson, of vision broadcasting. The BBC was given a Scottish Television, coined, extremely unwise- relatively clean bill of health, but ITV and its ly, the phrase about owning an ITV franchise regulator the Independent Television Author- being a ‘licence to print money’. ATV’s profits ity (ITA) were very heavily criticised. However, increased from less than £450,000 to more than even though the ITA was excoriated for fail- £4m between 1957 and 1958, and the shares ing to recognise what the committee saw as of its deputy chairman, Norman Collins, leapt television’s immense power to damage society, in value from £2,000 to £500,000. Within three the report nonetheless recommended that in months of ITV’s opening night, the control- future the authority, once armed with greater ler of programmes for Associated-Rediffusion, seriousness of purpose, should both plan the which owned one of the two franchises for Lon- schedules and sell advertising time, thus greatly don, was perfectly blunt about his intention to reducing the power of the advertisers over the change the schedules: ‘Let’s face it once and programme makers and schedulers within the for all, the public likes girls, wrestling, bright companies. The report also recommended that musicals, quiz shows and real-life drama. We the third channel be awarded to the BBC. gave them the Hallé Orchestra, Foreign Press Club, floodlit football and visits to the local ‘A candy-floss world’ fire station. From now on, what the public Before I go on to examine, and indeed defend, wants, it’s going to get’ (quoted in Sendall what the report had to say specifically about 1982: 328). For this he was admonished mildly populism, I do, however, want to acknowledge by ITA director-general Sir Ronald Fraser, who that aspects of its approach to broadcasting are responded: ‘A television company must have as likely to evoke as much hostility today within a policy of its own, and that policy must be media and cultural studies circles as they did something more than “giving the public what in the case of its many critics at the time of its it wants” unless we are prepared to say that publication. For example, it pinned its colours we no more respond to the social significance firmly to the ‘effects’ mast1: ‘Broadcasters must of television than to the social significance of recognise that television affects moral stan- toffee’ (quoted in ibid: 139). However, by 1960 dards by the constant repetition of the values Fraser had changed his tune, averring that: ‘If it shows, and by the assumptions underlying its you decide to have a system of people’s televi- programmes generally. They must remember, sion, then people’s television you must expect it too, that their audiences at almost all times to be, and it will reflect their likes and dislikes, include a great many children’ (HMSO 1962: their tastes and aversions, what they can com- 28). It also noted that ‘we strongly refute the prehend and what is beyond them’ (quoted in argument that because an effect has not been Milland 2004: 81). conclusively proved the broadcasting authori- ties need not concern themselves with it’ (ibid: The Conservatives were divided in their atti- 15). One of the report’s particular bugbears was tude to ITV, as they had been since even before ‘triviality’, which it appeared to think of as an its birth. There were those who supported it inherent quality of television: ICE CONFERENCE SPECIAL Copyright 2015-1. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 12, No 1 2015 5 Julian Petley Programmes which exemplified emotional ing the values and moral standards of our soci- tawdriness and mental timidity helped to ety’, so ‘by its nature broadcasting must be in cheapen both emotional and intellectual val- a constant and sensitive relationship with the ues.