Educating Auntie.
I have in front of me a copy of the Radio Times, dated 31 August-6 September 1974 – yes, almost exactly forty years ago. The front cover is a mock-up of a police photo-fit image featuring the face of Norman Stanley Fletcher, for this was the week the first series of ‘Porridge’ aired. But however intriguingly nostalgic the programme listings inside are, the centre pages provide the most striking contrast between television then and television now, for they contain a four-page guide to that autumn’s educational schedule across BBC TV and radio.
And the variety on offer in this schedule is all the more eye-opening because these series are all primarily aimed at adults; there isn’t even room for cataloguing the myriad of programmes produced for schools during this period. Got kids? Watch ‘Parents and Children’ on BBC1; like football? Listen to ‘Behind the Goals’ on Radio 3; just qualified as a social-worker? Watch ‘Developments in Social Work’ on BBC2; interested in ‘news-making, decision-making and forms of loyalty’? Watch ‘Focus’ on BBC1 – and that’s not the flute-based, yodelling Dutch prog-rock band, despite ‘House of the King’ being used as the theme tune to numerous educational programmes in the 1970s. You can learn to speak German, Spanish, Russian and Welsh, learn to become a mountaineer, rugby player and gardener, learn how to understand economics, the National Health and local government, not to mention ‘systematic thinking in action’! Arts, sciences, languages, the community, home and leisure, work and industry, teaching – all fall under the umbrella of public service broadcasting in 1974. Despite his reservations over the one-eyed monster, no doubt Lord Reith would have been proud his original remit remained relatively intact.
Today, what used to be viewed as television down-time is filled during the day with cheap and cheerful antiques/cookery/house-buying and selling/quiz show formulas and late at night with rolling news, interactive game shows and repeats of daytime fodder with a man in the corner of the screen working out the best way to translate the primeval grunts of ‘The Jeremy Kyle Show’ into the most appropriate sign-language. In retrospect, it’s amazing how a TV landscape that switched-off around midnight seemed to cram more into its limited broadcasting hours than one that never sleeps. The adult education programmes described above could usually be found hidden away last thing at night or presented together in a large chunk on a Sunday morning, sandwiched between a religious service and farming news; space in the listings may have been at a precious premium, but the schedulers always found a space to educate and inform as well as entertain.
Then of course, there were the twilight hours that were occupied by hirsute men in spectacles with little or no evident experience in front of a camera – the Open University. A 1977 edition of the Radio Times gives us the kind of OU timeslot we still associate the institution with today: on Monday 2 May, both BBC1 and BBC2 have Open University programmes transmitted between 6.40-7.55am, though over on the senior BBC channel, the RT listings specify ‘UHF ONLY’! There are more on BBC2 between 4.55-7.00pm; and within a year or two, the OU would also claim the post-closedown BBC2 slot, with that eerie, unnerving jingle jolting the armchair snoozer back to life far more effectively than a car alarm would do today.
And how could we forget programmes for schools and colleges? For anyone who was of school age in the 60s, 70s or 80s, they were amongst the few breathers from the classroom tedium on offer. What a ritual that was, being ushered into the library and watching the teacher wheel-in a huge telly, waiting for what felt like an aeon for the machine to warm-up, and then being greeted by some unsettling Radiophonic Workshop ditty accompanying a pulsating diamond or a circle of disappearing dots before the actual programme began. It’s worth bearing in mind just how many hours were given over to schools broadcasts as well. An average BBC1 week during term-time would begin around 9.38am and would sign-off not long after midday; following a dinner-break for the test card, the news, ‘Pebble Mill at One’ and ‘Watch with Mother’, schools TV would open its gates again for another hour or so at the precise time of 2.2pm. That’s not even including BBC schools broadcasts on the radio, when the VHF wavelength on Radio 4 would be used exclusively for them between 10.00 in the morning and 3.00 in the afternoon.
We should also remember that ITV – yes! ITV! – played its part in the television education of the nation’s children as well. Even though commercial considerations freed them from a less rigid public service commitment than the Beeb, their weekday schedule ran from 9.30-12.00 and produced some of the most memorable schools programmes of them all. There was even an advertising armistice during these transmissions; the nearest the viewer saw to an ad between schools programmes on ITV would be a public information film about fireworks in the run-up to November 5. Calculate just how much of pre-24 hour TV on both sides of the British broadcasting divide was given over to educational programming and it’d be pretty impressive. It’s indisputable that many were cheaply-made on shoestring budgets, especially the Open University broadcasts; and some were uniquely dull in a manner that elevated visual boredom to a level that now seems quite radical, on a par with the worst Warhol movies or a contemporary art installation. Indeed, these were brilliantly parodied in the first series of ‘Look around You’ in 2002, spoofed with the correct mix of exasperation and affection.
Noble ventures are not something one would now really associate with British television. Most 21st century TV execs would probably regard ‘Comic Relief’ or ‘Children in Need’ as such, and in their own way, they are. But annual or bi-annual telethons, when the normal schedule is set aside for one night only to accommodate a good deed, are different to the noble venture that was educational television. It was a product of a period in which the people who ran television regarded it as a tool of communication that amounted to more than a ratings-chasing commercial cash-cow or a daytime sedative. Much like the internet is today, TV then was viewed as a multi-purpose medium capable of all that life can afford.
So, where did it go? Firstly, the advent of the VCR hailed the death-knell of schools programming in its traditional slot; secondly, in the mid-80s BBC TV schools programmes were shunted over to BBC2 in preparation for the launch of daytime BBC1 and the arrival of cosy sofa chinwags about child abuse and the menstrual cycle. Not long after, ITV transferred their schools schedule to Channel 4 in order that Richard and Judy could do likewise, paving the way for menopausal gobshites and underclass-baiting bullies. It is ironic that a slot once reserved for mind-expansion is now reserved for the gradual erosion of the brain cells, like a dying Einstein naming Arthur Mullard as his intellectual heir.
I’m not saying ‘Telly were better in my day’ at all; but it does seem a shame that the increase in broadcasting hours doesn’t seem to be able to embrace the same breadth of broadcasting available when less was more. Anyway, I’m off to log-in to You Tube. I’ve just found an edition of ‘Zarabanda’ from 1975 and I need to brush-up on my Spanish.
Petunia Winegum
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August 20, 2014 at 10:53 am -
When I discovered the wonderful world of ‘illegal downloads’ back in about 2004, the very first things i downloaded was not the porn of my adolescence -where women had shoulder pads, big hair and pubic hair to match- but BBC’s various series about the BBC Micro/ Home Computing…where every presenter had to have a “Joy Of Sex” beard (admit it, you know what I’m talking about!). The quality was appalling , having been ‘ripped’ off well loved VHS but they are still among my more treasured possessions.
Now excuse me while I go sooth my 80s hacker soul by watching an episode of Richard Griffiths in “Bird Of Prey”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72BeosFHRbI-
August 20, 2014 at 12:24 pm -
Remember ‘UK Gold’ on satellite TV? Ahhh, good times. Why don’t we have something like that available today?
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August 20, 2014 at 11:05 am -
Ditto! And nuff said, as they say…
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August 20, 2014 at 11:20 am -
Thanks for the memories, Petunia.
Broadcast TV has seen a seismic shift in its available audience. No longer having the moving-image monopoly in the home; and, individuals watching what they want when they want to.
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August 20, 2014 at 12:23 pm -
“..it does seem a shame that the increase in broadcasting hours doesn’t seem to be able to embrace the same breadth of broadcasting available when less was more.”
TV panders to its audience. Of courtse it’s changed. Look how the audience has changed.
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August 20, 2014 at 12:58 pm -
Maybe some of them have changed BECAUSE of what’s on the goggle-box. Feed the ignorant with dumbed-down rubbish, and they’ll stay ignorant.
Maybe that’s the plan…………………..oh, look over there; it’s a shape-shifting lizard!
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August 20, 2014 at 1:07 pm -
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August 20, 2014 at 3:01 pm -
Maybe I shouldn’t be so tongue-in-cheek.
The interwebs seem to be rather infested by people who believe in conspiracy theories. You know, the world is being run by the New World Order (whoever they are), Bilderburgers, banksters, the Jews (what – all of ’em?), Tesco, David Icke and his shape-shifting lizards – you name it. They don’t seem to realise, or want to realise, that there are an awful lot of people in the world, and since no two of them think exactly alike, the world is a very messy place. What governments and organisations – commercial, public, national, international – there are, tend to be rather imperfect as a result.
The BBC set out many moons ago with Reithian intent to inform, educate and entertain. Over the last three decades or so, it’s rather slipped from that high intent. There are probably all sorts of reasons for this – a burgeoning bureacracy running it, no need to compete for an income, so no need to provide what the customer will pay for, the rise of a left-leaning Establishment replacing the post-war Right-leaning one, too many people involved in any decision-making, whatever. (From experience of working in a large organisation, I’d suggest that the more decision-makers a bureaucracy has, the less capable it is of making a decision.)
Whatever the reason for the BBC’s decline in quality, it certainly isn’t a defined plan. I’m very suspicious of conspiracy theory, but long experience in industry leads me to believe wholeheartedly in cock-up theory.
“Maybe that’s the plan…etc” was my tongue in cheek comment about conspiracy loons and their analysis of – well, virtually everything, but the BBC specifically, in this case.
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August 20, 2014 at 3:30 pm -
I thought the whole point of the intraweb *was* to watch videos of shape shifting lizards or piano playing cats in tutus? That’s why I asked for the link. Can’t miss a daily dose of MUST SEE THIS videos…gotta keep up to date with what is happening in the world. This morning I watched a video of a squirrel trying to clamber up the pole of a bird feeder that had been covered in vaseline. THATS the sort of informative video, a celluloid segment of burning importance, our kids need to see…. not ‘How We Used To Live’ (the History TV Program I recall watching on that wheel-in TV).
(http://www.tastefullyoffensive.com/2014/08/vaseline-hilariously-prevents-squirrel.html in case anyone is interested)
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August 20, 2014 at 4:06 pm -
Oh dear. I’ve upset a conspiracy loon.
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August 20, 2014 at 5:28 pm -
On second thoughts, maybe calling you a ‘conspiracy loon’ is a tad harsh. However, I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. Could you be a little more clear, please?
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August 20, 2014 at 7:17 pm -
I wasn’t trying to make a point. I was just confirming your original diagnosis about society being dumbed down….now excuse me, apparently there is a video of a man calling after his dog on Spewtube that I simply *must* see. I mean, it’s sad and all about that yank reporter who got himself beheaded ….but there’s a film of this bloke shouting for his dog, and get this like- THE DOG WON’T COME BACK TO HIM! How can those hindus chopping off people’s heads in KooWait or wherever compete, like?
BeeEEEEEEENTooNNNN!
(and don’t worry about calling me any kind of loon. I’m very hard to offend.)
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August 20, 2014 at 7:43 pm -
I’m not sure that society in general IS dumbed down (though some parts of it always have been, and always will be). Television is, though, compared to a couple of decades ago. Thus, television is ceasing to be a force for good. By pandering to the lowest mores of the dumbed down part of society, they aren’t doing much to help it improve.
PS Watching Youtube videos isn’t compulsory, either. Even the better ones.
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August 20, 2014 at 10:06 pm -
The customers on other channels are adverts paying for complete dreck there too, so I don’t think that’s an issue. The BBC could use its income in a more educational way, but that might shrink it’s audience somewhat and certainly wouldn’t pander to those who say the BBC must give people what they want. What do you know, most people want the Sun newspaper.
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August 20, 2014 at 10:16 pm -
The other channels are not funded through a legally-enforced Licence Fee, though.
Most people don’t buy The Sun. Their circulation is about 2 million in a nation of 62 million. (Though to be fair, their circulation is larger than any other newspaper. Of the ‘quality’ press, the Telegraph tops the table at about 900,000; the Guardian manages about 200,000. Conclusion – most people don’t buy newspapers, though some who don’t may read them online.)
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August 21, 2014 at 9:24 am -
We have always had perpetual shelf stackers, dockers and street sweepers.
The trouble now, is that they have access to T.V on a much larger scale than ever before, (EVEN Bru scroungers can afford one!) , and can, therfore become the “majority audience.”
Worse still, they are allowed internet access.
It is the first time in history, whereby the pub nutter can have an international stage.
You get a million idiots You tubing the last Jeremey Kyle show they missed, then look at the “popularity” of Jeremy Kyle on Google.
Therefore, due to “statistics” the internet is dumbed down as well, because they “Do what the customer wants.” Or, “Follow the money” in other words.
Nope. T.V has changed because of the cabbages, and the internet to some extent, as well.
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August 21, 2014 at 12:52 pm -
“The trouble now, is that they have access to T.V on a much larger scale than ever before, (EVEN Bru scroungers can afford one!) , and can, therfore become the “majority audience.”
Worse still, they are allowed internet access.”
Bloody scum. They should know their place, eh? Keep quiet, speak when spoken to. They’re just like children after all.
Ye gods.
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August 21, 2014 at 2:14 pm -
EXACTLY!
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August 20, 2014 at 12:23 pm -
You could look at this through the other end of the telescope and come to the conclusion that British broadcasting in the 1970s anticipated uncannily well the coming of the internet some 20 years later…
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August 20, 2014 at 12:52 pm -
“I’m not saying, “Telly were better in my day” at all.”
Well, I am.
I got rid of my telly a couple of years ago when I realised I was paying £145 a year or whatever to watch the Six Nations rugby and Dad’s Army repeats. There was nothing else I was remotely bothered with. I used to enjoy the Test Match cricket when I could get to see it – sound turned down on the telly, and the commentary from Test Match Special on the Radio. I can’t recall any recent family entertainment to match All Creatures Great and Small – though to be fair, authors as good as James Herriot only come along very occaaisonally. Comedy? What’s about these days that’s even close to the quality of Open All Hours, Jasper Carrott or Dave Allen (the latter in particular is timeless – plenty on Youtube). Science and technology? Dumbed down patronising rubbish – and not very impartial, either – climate science, anyone? News reporting and comment? Why do you think I read blogs like this one? True, the BBC still covers major events like Royal Weddings, but it only does that because it’s obliged to.
It’s not just because I’m older and grumpier; though that’s obviously a factor. Most modern television is dumbed down rubbish, quantity over quality.
It’s time to ditch your tellies and live life in the real world. Read books, newspapers, blogs. Talk to people. Savour the simple things, like making a meal, growing some vegetables or flowers, develop a skill. Leave the ‘meeja’ to slowly whither away and disappear up their own ‘relevance’.
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August 20, 2014 at 1:20 pm -
I’m in my tenth year without a licence. Saved well over £1,000, but prob. paid that for DVDs. I had been considering doing it for years, what with the contempt for the average viewer: like increasingly vulgar language, political bias and the dumbing down thing.
See what I mean? I used “thing” as a noun rather than “agenda” which is what it is.
I recall two BBC video clips on blogs or ‘news’paper websites about same-sex ‘marriage’. One was from Newsnight and Paxo treated the man who was opposed to it with complete contempt, even contorting his face in disgust to add extra ‘evidence’ for the viewing cattle what a weirdo this person must be. Nearly two-thirds opposed SSM in the Scottish ‘Governments’ consultation, so there must be a lot of weirdos in Scotland. Alex Salmond’s junta is going ahead with it anyway, as they had already decided to do before the ‘consultation’. And they want ‘independence’ (direct rule from Brussels, cutting out the Westminster middlemen) to make us more ‘democratic’!
The other video was Andrew Neil interviewing Nigel Farage. It was supposed to be a general tête-à-tête, but Neil spent 90% of the time lambasting Farage about UKIP not going along with SSM like the LibLabCon subverters.
Makes me all the more glad I no longer pay for these creeps’ overblown salaries.
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August 20, 2014 at 1:23 pm -
“What a ritual that was, being ushered into the library and watching the teacher wheel-in a huge telly, waiting for what felt like an aeon for the machine to warm-up, and then being greeted by some unsettling Radiophonic Workshop ditty accompanying a pulsating diamond or a circle of disappearing dots before the actual programme began.”
What a perfect description. That brings it all back. I seem to remember a group of us sitting on the floor to see “Playschool”, with Floella Benjamin and her polo mint earrings, and us all yelling “round window! round window!”, or was it “square window”? , can’t remember, but we all favoured a particular shape and got terribly excited at the point when it was time to go through a window that day.“cosy sofa chinwags about child abuse and the menstrual cycle. Not long after, ITV transferred their schools schedule to Channel 4 in order that Richard and Judy could do likewise, paving the way for menopausal gobshites and underclass-baiting bullies”
The 1980s definitely seems to have spawned a perch on the sofa and talk down to the viewers approach. But with R&J I always thought part of the entertainment was their interaction and found Richard’s willingness to empathise and commiserate in female subjects quite endearing.-
August 20, 2014 at 6:39 pm -
Taking it a little further back in time into the 60’s, the telly was encased in wood and on a high wheeled stand; the speaker having its own separate grille perched on top of the wooden box and the whole thing closed off from the eyes of the viewer by a pair of doors that seemed to have a mind of their own as to how long they stayed open without adjustment……
You were right about the time it took to warm up and then there was the “no picture” ritual that seemed to need the attention of the Head or one of his mildy junior underlings to fiddle about with the aerial lead and the control panel at the back in an attempt to get simultaneous sound and vision of a more or less understandable form. Rural mid wales at that time had a less than perfect coverage even with the old VHF 405 line transmissions
So now the transmission and display side is a galaxy away from then and the content is……. disappointing…
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August 20, 2014 at 2:13 pm -
I seem to remember some decades ago the mere mention of Muffin the Mule in beer soaked company caused huge mirth.
Now we’re grown up we can still listen selectively to R4Ex; there must be a Round the Horne I’ve missed. Please.
But poor old BBC.
I’m sure it’s better than a lot of others, but it’s all just become so trivial & forgettable.
Surely we could live with a bare bones national media broadcaster, reporting, not trying to influence; and put the rest on subscription? -
August 20, 2014 at 2:41 pm -
An interesting critique Ms Winegum —and supports an opinion I have formed that the populace of the UK (and beyond) is polarising or being polarised into two or possibly more distinct groups —those who are simply passive recipients of entertainment interspersed with ‘news’ that amounts to propaganda or ‘public information’ and those who are increasingly sceptical and bored by ‘prole feed’ or ‘infotainment’ .Whilst I am not sure I quite buy in to 1970s /1980s ‘education’ by unbiased television quite as strongly as you express it since I think it was selective but at least there was some attempt —some shame if you like — in not telling people what to think.
I watch probably less than an hour of television a day catching just the news late at night but very much more importantly on reflection whilst my children were growing up I doubt they watched more than a couple of hours of tele a week and probably watch even less now. They are of the new internet generation some probably many of which are hugely better informed and educated than I was —-but naaahhh my children weren’t home and switch on the computer rather we would dine as a family every evening and talk and then use the computer after as a resource for information.
I tend to see people as thinking /talking about A) Themselves B) Other People C) Events D) Abstract notions that influence A) B) C) —-to some lesser or greater extent we all move between all four but modern television rarely moves into the realms of D) placing emphasis on A)B) and C) save on rare occasions with the Curtis documentaries such as the ‘Power of Nightmares’ or ‘The Mayfair Set’.
I am not sure where what I see as this polarisation ending up (save the lives of those who accept prole feed getting intellectually poorer and the internet empowering the other group beyond what one could have imagined when I was younger) but I do see it as a real worry for the future —perhaps a return to the huge divisions —of ‘class’ in the not so distant past —-but based now on something different which one might term culture or education (as distinct from training) ?-
August 20, 2014 at 3:44 pm -
Two further afterthought
Mainstream television is increasingly inaccurate about B) &C) and increasingly flattering about the importance of A)
Secondly should one care ? For reasons that I am not sure of I find I do —one worries that the uninformed have equal political weight as the informed but that is less important then thinking of lives wasted and stupidity perpetuated –could that be construed as telling people what they should think? Possibly but actually its an attempt at a rather different point namely that people should think and reason rather than be passive recipients —and perhaps there is a duty particularly on a public service broadcaster (though on any broadcaster) to encourage that since I think it might be difficult to argue to the contrary
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August 20, 2014 at 2:55 pm -
It’s an ever-increasing drop towards America, and they have used Television to do it. There’s a clip on YouTube of ‘Keith Moon’s last interview’ and it’s of an inebriated Keith Moon and Pete Townshend in August 1978 running rings around a gormless square-jawed American interviewer (Bill Turnbull’s biological father?) on ‘Good Morning America’ who doesn’t understand humour or irony. And right there is the blueprint for the TV we in the UK have now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLJYPIXT1kc
In my experience it is very hard to pull people away from junk TV to something better – even those who agree that watch they watching is crap. They become stuck in a rut where this crap becomes something their social lives centre around – ‘reality TV’ in place of ‘real life’.
Yes we can switch it off and I have, by and large – limiting my viewing to BBC4 as that is really all I want to see, rarely do I watch anything else. The problem is how many women, and thus families, have the television on more or less all the time, constantly conditioning and brainwashing. Therefore you end up effectively ostracised from ‘the mainstream’ and the Gulf, as it so clearly has, widens. And widens. Until you wake up one and find that in 20 years you have gone from being pretty much ‘ordinary’ and surrounded by similar-minded peers (and indeed, watching a fair bit of enjoyable mainstream TV), to a stranger in a strange land. -
August 20, 2014 at 5:33 pm -
We had a TV at school but it was never used, except by the sixth form during Wimbledon.
Our teachers said that TV took too long to get the message across. They were probably right, watch any documentary and you will see the same graphic/animation repeated again and again and by the end of the programme you realise that most of the ‘information’ was delivered by the sub-heading, (bit like the BBC’s web page items). -
August 20, 2014 at 6:22 pm -
Such a pleasure to have my memory prompted.
In the mid 1970’s whilst in my late 20’s I spent all my time working either at work or on the home. Television (we had a very small one) tended to be used as a 30 minute wind down during the transition from work tempo to bed, mostly forgotten within 10 minutes of watching. It was a great help to bring on a sufficiently comatose tendency to bring about sleep, thank heavens.
Fully 40 years later I am happy to report that I have not watched television nor had one for 5 years. I suppose that makes me uniquely unqualified to comment on it’s content, then or now.
That makes me feel satisfied rather than deprived.
Perhaps I have it wrong, given that I am possibly part of a minority, it seems inevitable. -
August 20, 2014 at 7:10 pm -
It all started going mammories skywards when Uncle Rupert discovered the TV satellite. Then the Mad Handbag became obsessed with things washing their face, and finally the internet destroyed every media business model there was. The media are sh*t because they’re in the sh*t – serve them right.
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/just-when-you-think-the-media-have-hit-rock-bottom-you-realise-theyre-merely-wading-about-in-deep-shit/-
August 20, 2014 at 7:53 pm -
Yep. If only Uncle Rupert had left the print media alone, it would still be run by the print unions (Sogat and NatSoper – remember them?) and things would have been so much better – not. As for the Mad Handbagbeing obsessed with things washing their face, what other option was there? Who was going to pay? Top rate of income tax still at 83% and tax on investments still at 98% would be a fine stimulus to the economy – not.
The internet has it’s dangers, and it’s dark side. But it does bring forth opportunities; such as your right to blog your opinions, and my right to disagree with them.
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August 21, 2014 at 1:56 pm -
” … would have been so much better – not. ” ” … would be a fine stimulus to the economy – not. ” As funny as Ian Hislop – not.
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August 21, 2014 at 11:13 pm -
OK. Would things have been better if the print unions still had their stranglehold on Fleet Street? Would things be better if the public purse (and where does that get it’s money from?) was still subsidising dead industries producing second-rate stuff nobody at prices nobody would pay?
Wise up a bit….
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August 22, 2014 at 1:34 pm -
Print unions did not decide what news was or was not printed – they had no say in editorial policy. Yes, they were using dubious working practices to earn as much money as possible. (Maybe that’s where today’s moneysuckers learnt their lessons.) But that is not the discussion we are having here, is it?
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August 22, 2014 at 3:14 pm -
I think you understate the influence of the print unions on Fleet Street in the 1970s. It was Murdoch who broke their stranglehold, by quietly setting up a print works in Wapping staffed by (if memory serves) EETPU members, and transferring operations suddenly one night. Journalists arriving for work at the Fleet Street office the following day were told to travel immediately to the new Wapping office, and the whole lot never went back. The non-Murdoch press followed suit very shortly after.
Hard on the Fleet Street print workers? They only had their Unions to blame. You can only take the p!ss for so long – then you may well get it back. They got it back.
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August 22, 2014 at 3:18 pm -
Which illuminates my point. It was about working practices, not editorial policies, which is what we are discussing.
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August 22, 2014 at 3:51 pm -
They sometimes refused to print if they didn’t like what was written. They exercised considerable control of information flow into newsrooms. Not to mention all the usual ‘Spanish’ practices. They were pandered to for too long, and ended up grossly overplaying their hand.
Murdoch may have his downside, but in breaking their stranglehold he did the country a big favour.
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August 20, 2014 at 7:55 pm -
6 September 1974? Unless I am mistaken, the day I came home with a new baby – to a cuboid TV that was so old it only picked up BBC1…
We made do…
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August 20, 2014 at 7:58 pm -
August 20, 2014 at 8:30 pm -
Does anyone know the proportion of people who do not watch television? The number of refuseniks must be increasing. People are amazed when I ask ‘and who is x’, to which they say, ‘don’t you have a telly?’ The answer is ‘no’ and neither do I in any sense miss it. Most telly was trash – about the standard of a quote quickie – and I was refusing – got offered televisions twice – to have one even back in August 1974, the month in which it rained solid for two weeks non-stop – does anyone remember that? I was once romantically linked with a television news reporter – you know the usual ‘this is Felicity Ffidget standing outside the Peruvian Embassy [closed down for night and everyone went home hours ago] and now back to you Jon (or was it Jeremy). Pointless overpaid occupation but well suited to the pretentious new Oxbridge graduate who had just spent three years filling her head full of Shakespeare and Marx (0r whatever) without so far having adequately digested either of them and thus desperately pretentious – not that that was my interest in her. I wish I had gone into meeja.
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August 21, 2014 at 1:18 am -
I did not have a TV, by choice for years – ’81 – ’92 then was left with a 1975 colour TV that proved unsafe for a friend’s kids to stuff cornflakes into the back of (as though there is another type that is!) and a wire coathanger…which I hardly ever bothered to watch. The dodgy condenser finally gave up the ghost in 2006 (it was recycled to – AT TV COMPANY as a prop!) and I pulled a far newer one out of a skip. In preparation for digital TV I got a cheap satellite dish and watched it non-stop for 2 years (a “novelty thang”)…and now, despite having pulled enough sat boxes and flatscreen TVs from skips to have one in every room but the loo hardly ever turn any of them on…two weeks ago I had to cut 4 feet of buddleia away from the dish. I hadn’t even noticed…
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August 20, 2014 at 8:59 pm -
TV programs are ‘saturated fat’ for the brain and as a result should be avoided.
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August 20, 2014 at 9:01 pm -
A couple of years back a change at work meant I was back commuting on public transport in a morning. The same bus delivered kids to two schools (one decent and one bog standard) and so most mornings unless I put my headphones on I was surrounded by teenage chatter. Now I used to take a bus to school back in the 80s and spent the time nattering to my mates. Mostly we talked about who we fancied but after that we talked about what we had seen on TV the night before , we even memorized vast chunks of Blackadder. But skip forward to 2014 and I find teenage conversations involve who they fancy , football (my mates were never that bothered about that to be honest) , music and if lads then computer games. TV just wasn’t mentioned , in fact its almost as though it wasn’t there. Now I notice the apprentices at work (17 to 21 year old) never mention TV either. I have come to the conclusion that its a dead media walking. No doubt the TV execs know this as well but they just need to drag things out long enough to top up their pensions.
It gives me hope for the future.
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August 29, 2014 at 11:40 pm -
1974, university and all only caught up with a bit of tv during vacation and the occasional visit to the college tv room, telly was never much of a conversation piece for me and contemporaries during the 70s. Further back it was only the occasional programme like monty python that found their way to teenage chatter in my neck of the woods. Nowadays my 15yo son and mates (like me at standard comprehensive school) apparently have as little regard for tv related chat, football is about the same just more up to date with news, computer games rather than music but conversations not as different as it may seem to oldies who spend little time with young people. Funnily enough my son has just discovered ‘yes prime minister’ reruns which seem to have caught his imagination, about the only bbc production that has this year apart from doctor who (which he sagely informs me is going downhill). From personal observation it seems neither more or less dead media, not so much has changed about mainstream tv relevance to teenagers over 50 years, even down to a small minority of kids with opinionated parents who don’t allow a tv in the house.
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August 20, 2014 at 9:33 pm -
“Fings ain’t wot they used ter be.” It has now been 16 or 17 years since I watched TV, of any nation, and that suits me just fine.
I was 11 years old before electrification reached my remote valley in NI, so of course we had no telly. The “townies” did, but we didn’t suffer from our inability to chat about “Dallas” in the old schoolyard, because guess what? Telly was n’t the glue which held our society, such as it was, together. When I went to Univee on the “Mainland”, I was astonished by how English students found common ground by having telly conversations – oooh, remember Floella, ooh “Jackanory”. I didn’t knock them for it – I just assumed that was what the English did when they wanted to strike up a conversation. Like talking about the weather. Cultural difference.
However, I am going to give all sorts of credit to BBC NI Children’s Programming in the 70s and early 80s. Which is where a lot of us first encountered the magic lantern show. They did a superlative job of producing kiddie drama history programmes and documentaries about our own fool-driven land, which concentrated on what both sides had in common, without proselytising for any political outcome. Some of our most outstanding playwrights cut their teeth on 20 minute shows for kids which featured – would you believe it? – the likes of a very young Liam Neeson and Stephen Rea, who have since gone on to stellar careers.
That things are not worse than they are and in fact a great deal better than we had any cause to expect then had an enormous amount to do with the people behind BBC NI Children’s Programming.
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August 20, 2014 at 11:25 pm -
Anyone who thinks our TV is bad (UK or Ireland) should watch a week of Swiss TV!
There is a form of torture called “schlager” which, loosely, involves the broadcast of a veritable army of Daniel O’Donnell clones singing a variety of unnecessary things in (mercifully) German. In 1999 the program scheduling was fairly…ECCENTRIC…and if they left too big a gap they tended to chuck in an unscheduled old British comedy with German subtitles.
It would make you BEG to be allowed to watch a loop tape of the “Late Late”.
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August 20, 2014 at 10:40 pm -
Yeah – but now we have SHOPPING CHANNELS !!!!!!!!!
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August 20, 2014 at 11:02 pm -
What wonderful post!!!
I can remember all of the above from the late 70’s and early 80’s, but there are a few things that spring to the fore……
Public Info Films: I used to dread the advert breaks on a Saturday morning,even more so on the run up bonfire night or Christmas. Since those heady days, I’ve become some what of a fan of these messages of doom brought to us by Harold Wilson’s nanny state. Look up on You-tube, classics like ‘Dark and Lonely Waters’, ‘Play Safe’, ‘Think Bike’, or the horror that is ‘Rabies Means Death’……..
There is one that even now I can’t watch called ‘Blind Child’- spooky music, creepy kids standing on hillside, blind kid turning towards camera….if somebody can watch it for me, and tell me if its still has the ability to make me run out of the room, then let me know.
BBC Radiophonic Workshop: It is whispered in hushed tone’s that the BBC had there very own female version of Karl Heinze Stockhausen.
Her name is Delia Ann Derbyshire.
Without her and her friends, the wonderful music from so many BBC’s classics, including Dr Who, would not have been made. The BBC Radiophonic workshop has such an impact on modern popular culture, that many artists and bands are directly influenced by them, including cutting edge electronic producers Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada and Autechre.
Ahh nostalgia,it almost takes me back to 1977, hearing David Bowie ‘Sound and Vision’ on medium wave radio, driving round with my Dad rainy, bombed out Croydon, wishing for a better future that Kraftwerk were promising………
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August 21, 2014 at 12:04 am -
Yes, they had wonderfully idiosyncratic programmes in those days: I remember the bizarrerie of “Sapphire and Steel” which I became obsessed with at just the point we got TV. Interrupted by a long strike, IIRC. Existentialism for kiddies.
The major benefit I derived from TV in those years wasa passing acquaintance with the old Hollywood pictures they showed to fill up Saturday afternoons on BBC2, which fascinated me in their sheer absurdity. I had no idea a nostalgia industry had already developed around them or that there were considered to be great cultural artifacts. They weren’t and they aren’t. But it did help me to understand the US media I read later on.
The second (and I hate to sound like a precocious moppet) was the European films shown on BBC 2 and Channel 4. Watching “Andrei Rublev” at the age of 15 was a liberating experience. There are fields outside our British/Irish prisons of povincialism, I realised. Not better, not worse. But something else.
Something else.
Nowadays we are told we have endless choice. This TV package over that TV package: and do you know what? It’s 57 varieties of shite. That’s your choice.
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August 21, 2014 at 12:07 am -
Off Topic Footnote:
If anyone is floating around twitter and has nothing better to do check out #jamesfoley.I can’t make myself watch the videos, but from the stills in the mainstream the dignity that he managed to preserve facing a horrible death at the hands of a London yob (because that is what the little git is) is unforgettable.
There is another hashtag #ISISMediaBlackout I know there are arguments against censoring them, but for me, let nobody ever again have to face a death like that thinking it will be all over facebook and twitter within the hour.
It is “Lord of the Flies” come to life.
Apparently the yob who killed him has been identified and will be charged with murder if he ever returns to the UK. Cold comfort for the family who loved him.
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August 21, 2014 at 12:18 am -
I haven’t watched it either. Doing so is giving in to what they want and adds further insult to the victim.
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August 21, 2014 at 12:31 am -
Won’t watch it. Can’t watch it.
Seen enough of this in my own little patch over the last 40 years. Only they didn’t have social media in those days. Some of them would have too much sense ever to commit what they did to film, and that was not their strategy anyway, but others would have jumped at it. In fact they did, with the cumbersome technology then available to them. I will leave you to guess whom.
We are living in the propaganda age. Propaganda has become thoroughly democratised: something Goebbels for all his cleverness couldn’t have anticipated, or even Louis Bernays, whom we are now told was the founding father of everything, thanks to a popular Internet documentary. Is anyone at all surprised that Islamic State chooses Youtube as their platform?
The Government is now telling us it s a Terrorist Offence to even watch the video. Well so what ? Believe you me, some people won’t be horrified by the video at all. And many of them will have no political views whatsoever. “Cool kill, bro”.
You just go ahead and prosecute, Cameron.
This is where we are now. Interesting times, as the Chinese are supposed to say and probably never did.
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August 21, 2014 at 12:58 am -
Of course it is all predictable…but that doesn’t mean we just have to go with the tide. Of course there is still a 10% chance the whole thing is a US propaganda fiction too…
Wouldn’t be anything new if it was…
…but…
…we can choose to be the ones who would never, EVER watch and say:
“Cool kill, bro”
…even if that is all we can do.
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August 21, 2014 at 1:38 am -
Who would, GD?
I was 40 years old before I watched “The Exorcist”. It wasn’t the business with the crucifix which disturbed me so much as the crab-walk, upside down.
When I was ten, I helped my father scrub blood out of a car where someone, I am not saying who, had been brought somewhere after being shot – by the British Army. None of this surprises me. BTW – my family and I were and are opposed to all violence and support no one, no one at all, who kills. Simple as that.
That is why, having observed all these killers for a very long time in my little goose-grass patch, I say “Killing will only get you more killing”.
We are in MENA for the long haul. Because there is oil.
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August 21, 2014 at 1:56 am -
You got that last right…
Years ago I used understand ME politics better than the European kind, but I lost touch since…even so, it was ALWAYS about the oil.
No point in me trying to scrub anybody’s blood out of anything…I’d only pass out
It is the weirdest thing that I can always look at that photograph of dead sex workers in Iraq and feel only anger and sorrow, no revulsion at all, except for the b*stards who did it, I am usually so squeamish about blood, death and head wounds…I haven’t watched the Exorcist yet…everything I hear about green vomit puts me off.
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August 21, 2014 at 2:27 am -
Well you’ re missing nothing about MENA or The Exorcist.
Green vomit is what it amounts to.
If we are 100% honest with ourselves, who amongst us had heard of this poor man, James Foley, before he was done to death and shown to us on the BBC?
Only a handful of MENA anoraks, camp=followers, “experts” and etc.
There was no “Yellow Ribbon ” campaign for the unfortunate man, such as I remember for John McCarthy and Brian Keenan in the early 90s. Why was there none? Ask yourself. He was more important in death than life, it seems.
Look, every man’s death diminishes me. I sincerely wish James Foley were alive and nowhere this horror. two years in captivity with his killers: I have no words for it. But I could show you pictures from the Russian media of what is being done to citizens of Donbass , we could look at Somalia, we could turn our attention to any point in the globe and see terrible brutal murders. by states and warlords.
Now some of these murders – because that is what they are – are more important than others. More important than the lives of the murdered ever were.
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August 21, 2014 at 2:44 am -
Somalia? Killing is practically the traditional national sport there…they had something akin to the Aztec “flowery wars” at least until recently.
It is not his death that is so shocking to me, I had honestly never heard of him, it is the courage and dignity with which he tried to face it. To me that beggars belief, he obviously tried not to even show fear. What kind of strength and courage must that have taken? That was the message he chose to use his last minutes to send. (Remember he was a media photographer, he understood imagery and how to use it.) The least we can do is absorb it, let it change us for the better and personalise every other death in that nightmare.
We owe it to James Foley to *WORK* his death for all we are worth while we have the chance.
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August 21, 2014 at 3:01 am -
But GD, that is the whole point.
This is a geo-political struggle over oil, resources and the threat to the petro-dollar posed by the BRICS and all sides are “working” every death, until they find a new one to work.
Pile martyr on martyr.
The Islamists have their “martyrs” too. I believe that is what they call themselves. They are into it, big time. Their media, and don’t you know they have it, really does “dignity in the face of Kuffr aggression” and tra-la-la. We all do it. Difference is, we have the attention of goldfish and forget in five seconds about our dignified martyrs. They can keep it for very much longer. You are talking to someone who lived through the Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland. That was game-changing. And yes, they showed great courage and dignity. Not that that meant one single thing to the UK government. Courage and dignity is in the eye of the beholder. Wouldn’t and couldn’t happen now. Thank God.
I guarantee you – I will put the house on it – in six months time, it will be as if James Foley never was. Come and collect if I am wrong
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August 21, 2014 at 3:13 pm -
The hunger strikers were just kids, young fellas, like the spoiled little gits who flock to the desert for a “licence to kill”, but with one vital difference. Any damn fool can go out on a tidal wave of adrenaline yelling:
“RUBBA DINGHY RAPIDS!”…but it takes a real hero to make a decision walk slowly and steadily to his own death, without imposing harm on anyone who does not choose to love them, and then stick to that decision.
There was one hell of a splash of the same cologne on James Foley on his last day. The stills in the mainstream show him as the most magnificent thing I have seen against a desert sky since Peter O’Toole danced along a train. I like to think that was the effect he was going for.
Whatever anyone else does, I will never forget him.
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August 21, 2014 at 11:29 am -
I can remember being at primary school in the late thirties and forties. At some time in the morning on certain mornings a nice lady on the BBC would put is through our motions in the school assembly area. Skip, jump, run carefully. Sit down and have a little rest. Be implored to think kindly and do good. Up again, and hop, skip and jump. The good old BBC doing what it was contracted to do in public broadcasting. Foster good health and a kindly way of thinking, from very young. What we have now is a far cry from what was intended. There were very bad things going on at that time too, don’t forget. Now we have anti semitism back on our doorstep. Spy helicopters circling over head, spawned by the BBC. Police destroying the privacy of innocent respected citizens by raiding their houses. As though they had done the most horrendous crimes. Police admitting they are trawling for ‘similar fact evidence’ that can be hatched via collusion on the internet. After all that is how all this nonsense was started on friends reunited. Gossip,finger pointing and rumour are now more important than justice truth, integrity and forgiveness. Smear, smear and smear again seems to be the order of the day.
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August 22, 2014 at 12:30 am -
Regarding Friends Reunited – they were at one time owned by a husband and wife team who ran it out of their spare bedroom. They then sold out to the same folks who bring you Beano the comic book, and I believe this was around the time that all the Duncroft business started up for real. There was an almost inactive page there, I think opened in 2001 or thereabouts, and there were maybe 10 people in all there, all from the 60s era. Nobody was talking about Jimmy Savile needless to say. I lost interest in it not long after, and it wasn’t until I was alerted to the famous “Fiona/this is our last chance” message around 2011, same time that GD received her email direct from the Witchfinder General. However, there was also a fair amount of trawling on the Voy site as well, which is where Karin was doing most of her “Please contact me, I’m doing a book but I need help because I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH.” Anyhoo, on the sunny side, the husband and wife have bought Friends Reunited back. Probably not running it from the spare room these days, but they had a certain style which went by the wayside when the larger commercial interests took over. I bet they were quite shocked when their pleasant site for reuniting old school friends suddenly turned into Fiends Reunited thanks to Karin Ward and a few other lovelies.
It is the weirdest thing that I can always look at that photograph of dead sex workers in Iraq and feel only anger and sorrow, no revulsion at all, except for the b*stards who did it, I am usually so squeamish about blood, death and head wounds…
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