'The BBC informs, educates and entertains – but in what order?' diff viewer (0/1)

This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on July 01, 2014 06:36 (UTC). It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/01/bbc-inform-educate-entertain-order

The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Previous version 1 Next version

Previous version 1 Next version

Version 0	Version 1
The BBC informs, educates and entertains – but in what order?	The BBC informs, educates and entertains – but in what order?
2014-07-01 06:40:31 UTC	2014-08-21 12:35:38 UTC (about 2 months later)
In the early years of the 1930s, the sculptor Eric Gill was commissioned to carve an imageof a sower for the entrance hall of Broadcasting House. “Broadcast” is the old word for scattering seed: you cast it far and wide and good things grow. As a preacher stands in the pulpit and hopes that the congregation will be improved by the word of God, so John Reith the minister’s son cast the seeds of virtue into Britain. The BBC was to “inform, educate and entertain”: Reith carefully placed the words in that order. The Latin inscription in the hallway of Old Broadcasting House, through which workers still hurry to their offices at Radios 3 and 4, translates like this: “This temple of the arts and muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first Governors in the year of our Lord 1931, John Reith being director-general. And they pray that good seed sown may bring forth good harvest, and that all things foul or hostile to peace may be banished thence, and that the people inclining their ear to whatsoever things are lovely and honest, whatsoever things are of good report, may tread the path of virtue and wisdom.”	In the early years of the 1930s, the sculptor Eric Gill was commissioned to carve an imageof a sower for the entrance hall of Broadcasting House. “Broadcast” is the old word for scattering seed: you cast it far and wide and good things grow. As a preacher stands in the pulpit and hopes that the congregation will be improved by the word of God, so John Reith the minister’s son cast the seeds of virtue into Britain. The BBC was to “inform, educate and entertain”: Reith carefully placed the words in that order. The Latin inscription in the hallway of Old Broadcasting House, through which workers still hurry to their offices at Radios 3 and 4, translates like this: “This temple of the arts and muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first Governors in the year of our Lord 1931, John Reith being director-general. And they pray that good seed sown may bring forth good harvest, and that all things foul or hostile to peace may be banished thence, and that the people inclining their ear to whatsoever things are lovely and honest, whatsoever things are of good report, may tread the path of virtue and wisdom.”
But what lovely things are to be scattered? Those you desire already, or those the corporation thinks will improve you? Reith was conservative and traditionalist in his own taste, but from its earliest days the BBC was a culturally polyglot organisation, a clash of aesthetic tones. Hilda Matheson, the first BBC director of talks in the 1920s, veered culturally towards modernism: she broadcast James Joyce reading from work-in-progress – not at all to the taste of Reith. “It would be idle to pretend everybody liked them or understood [the readings],” she acknowledged in her book, Broadcasting (1933). “Difficult, obscure, experimental literature … is unlikely to make a wide appeal.” And yet it had been important to broadcast them. She wrote to her lover, Vita Sackville-West, of her out-of-jointness with Reith’s cultural prejudices. “He tends to regard as controversial and partisan, and therefore inadmissable, a talk about which any of his business magnates complain or disagree, eg [poet, critic and modern-art patron] Osbert Sitwell, because his views on art were objectionable and because all modern art is objectionable [in Reith’s view].”	But what lovely things are to be scattered? Those you desire already, or those the corporation thinks will improve you? Reith was conservative and traditionalist in his own taste, but from its earliest days the BBC was a culturally polyglot organisation, a clash of aesthetic tones. Hilda Matheson, the first BBC director of talks in the 1920s, veered culturally towards modernism: she broadcast James Joyce reading from work-in-progress – not at all to the taste of Reith. “It would be idle to pretend everybody liked them or understood [the readings],” she acknowledged in her book, Broadcasting (1933). “Difficult, obscure, experimental literature … is unlikely to make a wide appeal.” And yet it had been important to broadcast them. She wrote to her lover, Vita Sackville-West, of her out-of-jointness with Reith’s cultural prejudices. “He tends to regard as controversial and partisan, and therefore inadmissable, a talk about which any of his business magnates complain or disagree, eg [poet, critic and modern-art patron] Osbert Sitwell, because his views on art were objectionable and because all modern art is objectionable [in Reith’s view].”
‘Reith’s head is made entirely of bone’	‘Reith’s head is made entirely of bone’
Harold Nicolson, Sackville-West’s husband, confided to his diary similar complaints about Reith. They had been discussing a series of talks on modern literature he was to give, commissioned by Matheson. “The man’s head is made entirely of bone … [He] tries to induce me to modify my talks in such a way as to induce the illiterate members of the population to read Milton instead of going on bicycle excursions. I tell him that as my talk series centres upon literature of the last 10 years it would be a little difficult to say anything about Milton.”	Harold Nicolson, Sackville-West’s husband, confided to his diary similar complaints about Reith. They had been discussing a series of talks on modern literature he was to give, commissioned by Matheson. “The man’s head is made entirely of bone … [He] tries to induce me to modify my talks in such a way as to induce the illiterate members of the population to read Milton instead of going on bicycle excursions. I tell him that as my talk series centres upon literature of the last 10 years it would be a little difficult to say anything about Milton.”
From the earliest days of the BBC, the balance between the popular and the niche has been fiercely contested. “To have exploited so great a scientific invention for the purpose and pursuit of ‘entertainment’ alone would have been a prostitution of its powers and an insult to the character and intelligence of the people,” wrote Reith in his 1924 book Broadcast Over Britain. Some listeners took a different view. In the first issue of the Radio Times, 28 September 1923, a reader’s letter ran: “Frankly, it seems to me that the BBC are mainly catering for the ‘listeners’ who … pretend to appreciate only and understand only highbrow music and educational and ‘sob’ stuff. Surely, like a theatre manager, they must put up programmes which will appeal to the majority and must remember that it is the latter who provide the main bulk of their income.” Similar debates persist today. Why does the BBC bother with niche culture, to be enjoyed only by a few, some ask. Others wonder why it promulgates mass culture which, they argue, the market could provide.	From the earliest days of the BBC, the balance between the popular and the niche has been fiercely contested. “To have exploited so great a scientific invention for the purpose and pursuit of ‘entertainment’ alone would have been a prostitution of its powers and an insult to the character and intelligence of the people,” wrote Reith in his 1924 book Broadcast Over Britain. Some listeners took a different view. In the first issue of the Radio Times, 28 September 1923, a reader’s letter ran: “Frankly, it seems to me that the BBC are mainly catering for the ‘listeners’ who … pretend to appreciate only and understand only highbrow music and educational and ‘sob’ stuff. Surely, like a theatre manager, they must put up programmes which will appeal to the majority and must remember that it is the latter who provide the main bulk of their income.” Similar debates persist today. Why does the BBC bother with niche culture, to be enjoyed only by a few, some ask. Others wonder why it promulgates mass culture which, they argue, the market could provide.
Arguably, though, it is precisely the noisy jumble of cultures within the BBC that has been one of its strongest and most exciting characteristics. In 1935, the pioneering documentary maker John Grierson made a film for the GPO called BBC: The Voice of Britain. The two musical stars of the film were Adrian Boult, the great conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the toe-tappingly brilliant Henry Hall, band leader of the BBC Dance Orchestra. Between them they represented the extreme edges of rarefied and populist culture then projected by the BBC. There is a similar bifurcation in drama: while the film shows the delightfully homemade sound effects being created for a broadcast of Macbeth, the lighter end of theatre is represented by Eric Maschwitz, the debonair head of variety, seen urging a producer to make sure a music-hall act’s jokes are cleaned up (“It won’t get by for a moment, old boy”).	Arguably, though, it is precisely the noisy jumble of cultures within the BBC that has been one of its strongest and most exciting characteristics. In 1935, the pioneering documentary maker John Grierson made a film for the GPO called BBC: The Voice of Britain. The two musical stars of the film were Adrian Boult, the great conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the toe-tappingly brilliant Henry Hall, band leader of the BBC Dance Orchestra. Between them they represented the extreme edges of rarefied and populist culture then projected by the BBC. There is a similar bifurcation in drama: while the film shows the delightfully homemade sound effects being created for a broadcast of Macbeth, the lighter end of theatre is represented by Eric Maschwitz, the debonair head of variety, seen urging a producer to make sure a music-hall act’s jokes are cleaned up (“It won’t get by for a moment, old boy”).
Anarchic environs of Savoy Hill	Anarchic environs of Savoy Hill
Maschwitz eventually followed the siren call of Hollywood, but back in 1926 he was at the BBC’s headquarters at Savoy Hill, which “had at one time been a slightly risque block of flats where I had attended my first theatrical party in 1917”. Savoy Hill was pretty dingy (“I remember killing a rat in one of the corridors – by the simple method of flattening it with a volume of Who’s Who,” he recalled in his memoir). But it was exciting, and it was full of talented, adventurous young people. Reith’s personal discomfort with Maschwitz’s brand of entertainment was evident: he would turn up to rehearsals “at which he loomed over the awe-struck performers like an anxious pike in a tank filled with tropical fish”. Maschwitz remembered how anarchic it was. Reith, “his dour handsome face scarred like that of a villain in a melodrama”, was “a strange shepherd for such a mixed, bohemian flock … he had under his aegis a bevy of ex-soldiers, ex-actors, ex-adventurers which … even a Dartmoor prison governor might have had difficulty in controlling”.	Maschwitz eventually followed the siren call of Hollywood, but back in 1926 he was at the BBC’s headquarters at Savoy Hill, which “had at one time been a slightly risque block of flats where I had attended my first theatrical party in 1917”. Savoy Hill was pretty dingy (“I remember killing a rat in one of the corridors – by the simple method of flattening it with a volume of Who’s Who,” he recalled in his memoir). But it was exciting, and it was full of talented, adventurous young people. Reith’s personal discomfort with Maschwitz’s brand of entertainment was evident: he would turn up to rehearsals “at which he loomed over the awe-struck performers like an anxious pike in a tank filled with tropical fish”. Maschwitz remembered how anarchic it was. Reith, “his dour handsome face scarred like that of a villain in a melodrama”, was “a strange shepherd for such a mixed, bohemian flock … he had under his aegis a bevy of ex-soldiers, ex-actors, ex-adventurers which … even a Dartmoor prison governor might have had difficulty in controlling”.
It was an intensely inventive time. Art forms were being transformed to suit the new medium. Under Val Gielgud, brother of John, radio drama was developing as a form. It was “finding wings; like the cinema before it, it was on its way to escaping from the limitations of theatre”, recalled Maschwitz. Rather wonderfully, makers of the earliest radio drama written specially for the medium, Richard Hughes’ A Comedy of Danger (1924), were so anxious about the visual limitations of the medium that it was set in the pitch-blackness of a coal mine. Arthur Burrows, the BBC’s first director of programmes, remembered: “I think all who heard this first attempt at building up a really dramatic situation entirely by sound effects will admit that it was very thrilling, and opened up a wide range of possibilities.” BBC radio is now the biggest single commissioner of plays in the world, according to the director general, Tony Hall; an artery in the great body of British theatre.	It was an intensely inventive time. Art forms were being transformed to suit the new medium. Under Val Gielgud, brother of John, radio drama was developing as a form. It was “finding wings; like the cinema before it, it was on its way to escaping from the limitations of theatre”, recalled Maschwitz. Rather wonderfully, makers of the earliest radio drama written specially for the medium, Richard Hughes’ A Comedy of Danger (1924), were so anxious about the visual limitations of the medium that it was set in the pitch-blackness of a coal mine. Arthur Burrows, the BBC’s first director of programmes, remembered: “I think all who heard this first attempt at building up a really dramatic situation entirely by sound effects will admit that it was very thrilling, and opened up a wide range of possibilities.” BBC radio is now the biggest single commissioner of plays in the world, according to the director general, Tony Hall; an artery in the great body of British theatre.
The previous year, one of the earliest outside broadcasts of opera had taken place. Burrows’ colleague Cecil Lewis, a former fighter pilot and author of Sagittarius Rising, gave a vivid account of its impact. He and others had assembled in Marconi House, the BBC headquarters, to listen. “Our excitement was immense. The broadcasting of opera was an assured success – that could be said after listening for a few moments. The sound of the great orchestras contrasted so forcibly with our little band of seven in the studio that it came as a revelation of what the future of broadcasting might be …” As for the listeners: “Many people imagining opera to be a dull and dreary thing were converted in an evening; many others who had never heard or expected to hear opera as long as they lived had it brought to their hospital or bedside.” In a time when we can access any music with a mere flick of a mouse, it is hard to imagine just how extraordinary this access to the sequestered sounds of Covent Garden must have been.	The previous year, one of the earliest outside broadcasts of opera had taken place. Burrows’ colleague Cecil Lewis, a former fighter pilot and author of Sagittarius Rising, gave a vivid account of its impact. He and others had assembled in Marconi House, the BBC headquarters, to listen. “Our excitement was immense. The broadcasting of opera was an assured success – that could be said after listening for a few moments. The sound of the great orchestras contrasted so forcibly with our little band of seven in the studio that it came as a revelation of what the future of broadcasting might be …” As for the listeners: “Many people imagining opera to be a dull and dreary thing were converted in an evening; many others who had never heard or expected to hear opera as long as they lived had it brought to their hospital or bedside.” In a time when we can access any music with a mere flick of a mouse, it is hard to imagine just how extraordinary this access to the sequestered sounds of Covent Garden must have been.
While Maschwitz presided over such acts as the Dancing Daughters – a troupe of teenage tapdancers, costumed skimpily in the studio “to get the atmosphere” despite being invisible to the audience – another figure, whose name is now almost lost to public memory, was moulding the BBC’s multifarious cultural mix.	While Maschwitz presided over such acts as the Dancing Daughters – a troupe of teenage tapdancers, costumed skimpily in the studio “to get the atmosphere” despite being invisible to the audience – another figure, whose name is now almost lost to public memory, was moulding the BBC’s multifarious cultural mix.
The BBC’s maestro of music	The BBC’s maestro of music
Edward Clark, who worked at the BBC between 1924 and 1936, was the son of a Newcastle coal exporter. Obsessed with music, he persuaded his father to let him study abroad as a prelude to becoming (so the family hoped) a banker. In 1907 he set forth to Paris, then Vienna and Berlin, to learn the art of conducting. The crucial meeting of his life was with Arnold Schoenberg. “As he talked he looked through you, incinerating your doubts or hesitations, making equivocation impossible,” Clark recalled in 1952.	Edward Clark, who worked at the BBC between 1924 and 1936, was the son of a Newcastle coal exporter. Obsessed with music, he persuaded his father to let him study abroad as a prelude to becoming (so the family hoped) a banker. In 1907 he set forth to Paris, then Vienna and Berlin, to learn the art of conducting. The crucial meeting of his life was with Arnold Schoenberg. “As he talked he looked through you, incinerating your doubts or hesitations, making equivocation impossible,” Clark recalled in 1952.
Clark helped the composer move to Berlin from Vienna, where his career as artist and composer was failing. In his turn Schoenberg, in a diary entry of 1912, noted of Clark: “Remarkable; he knows no Wagner operas nothing by Mozart, nothing by Beethoven. But he wants to be a conductor!! And he has often seen [Strauss’s] Elektra! … He blames it on musical conditions in England.”	Clark helped the composer move to Berlin from Vienna, where his career as artist and composer was failing. In his turn Schoenberg, in a diary entry of 1912, noted of Clark: “Remarkable; he knows no Wagner operas nothing by Mozart, nothing by Beethoven. But he wants to be a conductor!! And he has often seen [Strauss’s] Elektra! … He blames it on musical conditions in England.”
Clark was interned in Germany through the first world war; afterwards, returning to Britain, he joined the BBC’s regional service at Newcastle as a conductor, then moved to London in 1927 as a programme planner. Along with Boult, he became a crucially important carrier of the avant-garde music of continental Europe into British homes, and a force in changing those “musical conditions in England”. He devised the idea of the BBC Symphony Orchestra – a group of committed, salaried players instead of the normal shifting cast of freelance players, which, along with the other four BBC orchestras, is still an important mainstay of British cultural life, and the backbone of the BBC Proms since its formation. (The Proms, founded in 1895 by Sir Henry Wood, were taken over by the BBC in 1927 after they lost financial support from the music publisher Chappell.)	Clark was interned in Germany through the first world war; afterwards, returning to Britain, he joined the BBC’s regional service at Newcastle as a conductor, then moved to London in 1927 as a programme planner. Along with Boult, he became a crucially important carrier of the avant-garde music of continental Europe into British homes, and a force in changing those “musical conditions in England”. He devised the idea of the BBC Symphony Orchestra – a group of committed, salaried players instead of the normal shifting cast of freelance players, which, along with the other four BBC orchestras, is still an important mainstay of British cultural life, and the backbone of the BBC Proms since its formation. (The Proms, founded in 1895 by Sir Henry Wood, were taken over by the BBC in 1927 after they lost financial support from the music publisher Chappell.)
The tall, striking, glamorous Clark – an habitué of the Prada Italian restaurant on the Euston Road, where he would meet his bohemian friends for alcohol-fuelled lunches – had Anton Webern over to conduct his Five Movements for String Orchestra for broadcast; invited Igor Stravinsky to perform his own piano concerto on air, and Paul Hindemith his own viola concerto. In 1934 he broadcast a complete performance of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, no easy listen. In 1933 a writer for the Sunday Express wrote of him thus: “Think of him as the perpetrator and prime promoter of all the Hindemith, Schoenberg and Stravinsky that you hear (or don’t hear – I’ve often wondered) and you will want to throw a brick. Meet him, and you will immediately be charmed … Talks well, knows the best and cheapest restaurants and a good wine.”	The tall, striking, glamorous Clark – an habitué of the Prada Italian restaurant on the Euston Road, where he would meet his bohemian friends for alcohol-fuelled lunches – had Anton Webern over to conduct his Five Movements for String Orchestra for broadcast; invited Igor Stravinsky to perform his own piano concerto on air, and Paul Hindemith his own viola concerto. In 1934 he broadcast a complete performance of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, no easy listen. In 1933 a writer for the Sunday Express wrote of him thus: “Think of him as the perpetrator and prime promoter of all the Hindemith, Schoenberg and Stravinsky that you hear (or don’t hear – I’ve often wondered) and you will want to throw a brick. Meet him, and you will immediately be charmed … Talks well, knows the best and cheapest restaurants and a good wine.”
His second wife, the composer Elisabeth Lutyens (his first wife Dolly later married Peter Eckersley, the BBC’s first chief engineer, and fell into the thrall of Nazi politics), wrote of Clark’s vast influence on British musical taste. He “had a mind and outlook that expanded the narrow confines of music in England at that time”. But he was not a man suited, perhaps, to institutional life. He resigned in an expenses scandal, and Lutyens remembered that before they met he would think little of taking not one but two girlfriends on a continental jaunt, at the BBC’s expense.	His second wife, the composer Elisabeth Lutyens (his first wife Dolly later married Peter Eckersley, the BBC’s first chief engineer, and fell into the thrall of Nazi politics), wrote of Clark’s vast influence on British musical taste. He “had a mind and outlook that expanded the narrow confines of music in England at that time”. But he was not a man suited, perhaps, to institutional life. He resigned in an expenses scandal, and Lutyens remembered that before they met he would think little of taking not one but two girlfriends on a continental jaunt, at the BBC’s expense.
Huw Wheldon – D-day war hero and founder, in 1958, of the first TV arts programme Monitor, nursery of Ken Russell, John Schlesinger, Humphrey Burton and Melvyn Bragg – invented a ringing phrase to describe the BBC’s cultural mission. It was about making “the good popular and the popular good”. But doing so has never been as simple or as uncontested as his neatly balanced chiasmus implies. Within the BBC, the politics of inform, educate and entertain have been fought over, the Reithian inheritance ferociously debated and subjected to widely differing interpretations. In the BBC that Wheldon worked in, music programmer William Glock was taking forward Clark’s inheritance and introducing listeners of the Third Programme (renamed Radio 3 in 1967) to a new generation of the European avant-garde. Now audiences could hear music by composers such as Pierre Boulez, who would become the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor from 1971-5. Glock took the view, he remembered in his memoir, that “to try to give the public ‘what it wants’ inevitably means falling below its potential standards and appetites”.	Huw Wheldon – D-day war hero and founder, in 1958, of the first TV arts programme Monitor, nursery of Ken Russell, John Schlesinger, Humphrey Burton and Melvyn Bragg – invented a ringing phrase to describe the BBC’s cultural mission. It was about making “the good popular and the popular good”. But doing so has never been as simple or as uncontested as his neatly balanced chiasmus implies. Within the BBC, the politics of inform, educate and entertain have been fought over, the Reithian inheritance ferociously debated and subjected to widely differing interpretations. In the BBC that Wheldon worked in, music programmer William Glock was taking forward Clark’s inheritance and introducing listeners of the Third Programme (renamed Radio 3 in 1967) to a new generation of the European avant-garde. Now audiences could hear music by composers such as Pierre Boulez, who would become the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor from 1971-5. Glock took the view, he remembered in his memoir, that “to try to give the public ‘what it wants’ inevitably means falling below its potential standards and appetites”.
Bill Cotton – TV pioneer	Bill Cotton – TV pioneer
Over in television, Bill Cotton, the man who would become the head of light entertainment at the BBC in 1970, and later managing director of television in the 1980s, had a different slant on the relative importance of inform, educate and entertain. He and Wheldon, he remembered in his autobiography, “both believed that the BBC’s core duty was to entertain the public, for the simple reason that unless listeners and viewers found a programme agreeable they wouldn’t stay with it long enough to be educated or informed”.	Over in television, Bill Cotton, the man who would become the head of light entertainment at the BBC in 1970, and later managing director of television in the 1980s, had a different slant on the relative importance of inform, educate and entertain. He and Wheldon, he remembered in his autobiography, “both believed that the BBC’s core duty was to entertain the public, for the simple reason that unless listeners and viewers found a programme agreeable they wouldn’t stay with it long enough to be educated or informed”.
Cotton, the son of the wildly popular band leader Billy Cotton, himself a fixture on postwar BBC television, described himself as representing the “vulgar end of the market”. In an age of ratings battles with ITV, he invented Top of the Pops, and had the idea of a show for Jimmy Savile called Jim’ll Fix It. (“Jim,” he recalled in his memoir, in what now seems ominous phrasing, “could get kids to do anything.”) He brought Morecambe and Wise into the BBC, had the idea of asking Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker to form a double act, and, borrowing the format from a Dutch show, devised the hugely popular Generation Game, which ran from 1971-1982 and was revived in the 1990s.	Cotton, the son of the wildly popular band leader Billy Cotton, himself a fixture on postwar BBC television, described himself as representing the “vulgar end of the market”. In an age of ratings battles with ITV, he invented Top of the Pops, and had the idea of a show for Jimmy Savile called Jim’ll Fix It. (“Jim,” he recalled in his memoir, in what now seems ominous phrasing, “could get kids to do anything.”) He brought Morecambe and Wise into the BBC, had the idea of asking Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker to form a double act, and, borrowing the format from a Dutch show, devised the hugely popular Generation Game, which ran from 1971-1982 and was revived in the 1990s.
Cotton, steeped in showbusiness, came from a different world from that of most of the decorously educated, solidly middle-class executives at the BBC. So did his protege, Michael Grade, now Lord Grade. He was also the scion of an entertainment dynasty. His father, Leslie, and uncles, Bernie and Lew, were impresarios, agents and theatre owners, who began in variety and moved into commercial television. Michael Grade ran BBC1 in the 1980s and eventually became the BBC’s chairman (2004-6).	Cotton, steeped in showbusiness, came from a different world from that of most of the decorously educated, solidly middle-class executives at the BBC. So did his protege, Michael Grade, now Lord Grade. He was also the scion of an entertainment dynasty. His father, Leslie, and uncles, Bernie and Lew, were impresarios, agents and theatre owners, who began in variety and moved into commercial television. Michael Grade ran BBC1 in the 1980s and eventually became the BBC’s chairman (2004-6).
Lew, Leslie and Bernie were born the Winogradskys, sons of a family who had emigrated from Ukraine in 1905 to two rooms over a shoe shop in Brick Lane, east London. As a lad working in a clothing factory, Lew liked to dance at the East Ham Palais. He learned how to do the charleston, and got up an act. At 27, his knees were already giving out, and he decided to become an agent. The Grade family story is in itself a powerful metaphor of the manner in which popular British entertainment shifted from the stage to small screen – and a reminder of how important the impresarios of popular entertainment were within in the BBC, especially one competing with ITV for eyes on screen.	Lew, Leslie and Bernie were born the Winogradskys, sons of a family who had emigrated from Ukraine in 1905 to two rooms over a shoe shop in Brick Lane, east London. As a lad working in a clothing factory, Lew liked to dance at the East Ham Palais. He learned how to do the charleston, and got up an act. At 27, his knees were already giving out, and he decided to become an agent. The Grade family story is in itself a powerful metaphor of the manner in which popular British entertainment shifted from the stage to small screen – and a reminder of how important the impresarios of popular entertainment were within in the BBC, especially one competing with ITV for eyes on screen.
When the writer Dennis Potter was asked about television for The New Priesthood (1970), a volume on television Joan Bakewell co-edited, he told her: “The main criticism with television is that it just seems an endlessly grinding thing – a burning monk, an advertisement, and Harold Wilson, and a pop show, and Jimmy Savile, all seem the same sort of experience.” But on the other hand, compared with the “middle-class privilege of the theatre, only television is classless, multiple, and, of course, people will switch on and people will choose. [But] It’s the biggest platform in the world’s history, and writers who don’t want to kick and elbow their way onto it must be disowning something in themselves.” The BBC, he said, “does genuinely give one the chance to create … I think it’s a federation, really, of various pressure groups. The Wednesday Play as a unit became, as it were, its own little force within this huge stadium called the BBC.”	When the writer Dennis Potter was asked about television for The New Priesthood (1970), a volume on television Joan Bakewell co-edited, he told her: “The main criticism with television is that it just seems an endlessly grinding thing – a burning monk, an advertisement, and Harold Wilson, and a pop show, and Jimmy Savile, all seem the same sort of experience.” But on the other hand, compared with the “middle-class privilege of the theatre, only television is classless, multiple, and, of course, people will switch on and people will choose. [But] It’s the biggest platform in the world’s history, and writers who don’t want to kick and elbow their way onto it must be disowning something in themselves.” The BBC, he said, “does genuinely give one the chance to create … I think it’s a federation, really, of various pressure groups. The Wednesday Play as a unit became, as it were, its own little force within this huge stadium called the BBC.”
In the 1960s, the Wednesday Play put out Ken Loach films such as Cathy Come Home, and Potter’s own Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton. It was a purple patch in the BBC’s cultural history: a time when the right people and the right conditions for making great art collided. Stephen Frears, now best known for feature films, directed in the BBC in the 1970s, often working on Alan Bennett’s TV plays, starting with A Day Out (1972). He was operating in Loach’s slipstream. Loach had, he said, “just invented television films. I mean he literally invented them.”	In the 1960s, the Wednesday Play put out Ken Loach films such as Cathy Come Home, and Potter’s own Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton. It was a purple patch in the BBC’s cultural history: a time when the right people and the right conditions for making great art collided. Stephen Frears, now best known for feature films, directed in the BBC in the 1970s, often working on Alan Bennett’s TV plays, starting with A Day Out (1972). He was operating in Loach’s slipstream. Loach had, he said, “just invented television films. I mean he literally invented them.”
Absorbing the influence of the Italian neorealists and Czech cinema, “he had stumbled on a whole new story of Britain which had never really been told”, said Frears. “The BBC had a great subject: working-class, postwar Britain was being revealed.” Frears, a great crumpled bear of a man whom I met at his regular cafe in Notting Hill, said: “I tell you what: it’s really the growth of management you should be writing about. One man ran the drama department. You fitted into a process that was a perfectly intelligent process, and you were working with the best writers, it seemed to me, in the country. I could see if you weren’t one of the writers they were interested in you wouldn’t agree with me but – Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Adrian Mitchell. What are you supposed to do? Complain?” Bright people were lurking down every corridor “and it sort of rubbed off on you. It was a very creative time.”	Absorbing the influence of the Italian neorealists and Czech cinema, “he had stumbled on a whole new story of Britain which had never really been told”, said Frears. “The BBC had a great subject: working-class, postwar Britain was being revealed.” Frears, a great crumpled bear of a man whom I met at his regular cafe in Notting Hill, said: “I tell you what: it’s really the growth of management you should be writing about. One man ran the drama department. You fitted into a process that was a perfectly intelligent process, and you were working with the best writers, it seemed to me, in the country. I could see if you weren’t one of the writers they were interested in you wouldn’t agree with me but – Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Adrian Mitchell. What are you supposed to do? Complain?” Bright people were lurking down every corridor “and it sort of rubbed off on you. It was a very creative time.”
It is dangerous to look back to the BBC’s past and identify golden ages (and a flick through back issues of the Radio Times puts paid to such notions: there has always been plenty of forgettable or mediocre programming among the wonderful stuff). In truth, there have been moments when artists and the times aligned and wonderful things were created: one thinks of Monty Python and its successors, or the emergence of the alternative comedians of the 1980s such as French and Saunders, Rory Bremner and Victoria Wood, figures whom the then head of light entertainment, Jim Moir, deliberately sought out to give comedy on BBC2 a different flavour from that of its sister channel.	It is dangerous to look back to the BBC’s past and identify golden ages (and a flick through back issues of the Radio Times puts paid to such notions: there has always been plenty of forgettable or mediocre programming among the wonderful stuff). In truth, there have been moments when artists and the times aligned and wonderful things were created: one thinks of Monty Python and its successors, or the emergence of the alternative comedians of the 1980s such as French and Saunders, Rory Bremner and Victoria Wood, figures whom the then head of light entertainment, Jim Moir, deliberately sought out to give comedy on BBC2 a different flavour from that of its sister channel.
Ask those involved in these moments of creative blooming, and they will often tell you much the same thing: “management” was discreet and enabling; artists were free to experiment; commissioning was not mired in lengthy bureaucracy; the stakes were relatively low and ambition high; failure was an option. Some argue that those conditions are in much shorter supply now. The often-expressed tension between “creatives” and “managers” has always been there. Hilda Matheson wrote: “There is a constant pull between the claims of administration and creation. Under what conditions shall the creative worker serve? Ideally he needs quiet, freedom from routine, time in which to lie fallow after a big piece of work, time to go to and fro seeking inspiration. Such behaviour may seem another name for idling to the rigid administrator.”	Ask those involved in these moments of creative blooming, and they will often tell you much the same thing: “management” was discreet and enabling; artists were free to experiment; commissioning was not mired in lengthy bureaucracy; the stakes were relatively low and ambition high; failure was an option. Some argue that those conditions are in much shorter supply now. The often-expressed tension between “creatives” and “managers” has always been there. Hilda Matheson wrote: “There is a constant pull between the claims of administration and creation. Under what conditions shall the creative worker serve? Ideally he needs quiet, freedom from routine, time in which to lie fallow after a big piece of work, time to go to and fro seeking inspiration. Such behaviour may seem another name for idling to the rigid administrator.”
A distinct sister channel	A distinct sister channel
Sir David Attenborough’s career has spanned both creative work and administration. He was the second controller of BBC2, which launched in 1964, from 1965-9. At the beginning, only a handful of people had the new sets capable of receiving the service, and at first it was available only in the south-east. We talked in his new library, built onto the house in Richmond where he has lived since the 1950s: a galleried, toplit space with a grand piano in its centre, Haydn sonatas on the stand, and set about with African sculptures and his collection of modern British studio pottery. The walls are lined with thousands of art books, all neatly arranged by type from Aegean art to Indian sculpture. The natural history library, presumably even more vast, was elsewhere.	Sir David Attenborough’s career has spanned both creative work and administration. He was the second controller of BBC2, which launched in 1964, from 1965-9. At the beginning, only a handful of people had the new sets capable of receiving the service, and at first it was available only in the south-east. We talked in his new library, built onto the house in Richmond where he has lived since the 1950s: a galleried, toplit space with a grand piano in its centre, Haydn sonatas on the stand, and set about with African sculptures and his collection of modern British studio pottery. The walls are lined with thousands of art books, all neatly arranged by type from Aegean art to Indian sculpture. The natural history library, presumably even more vast, was elsewhere.
The idea of BBC2 was that it should be not be higher brow than BBC1, but distinct from it. “The idea that you could do it by height of brow was nonsense. I mean there are plenty of people who like string quartets and plenty of people who like football, and plenty of people who like both, and so just to put on chamber music opposite football was irrelevant.” At the same time, “it felt very free, creatively free, because you couldn’t use the normal statistics, because the audience was changing all the time, because the coverage [of the transmitters] was changing all the time. I mean it was a doddle of a job. I was shielded from the pressures that BBC1 was taking.” He added: “Occasionally I get nice compliments for inventing [Kenneth Clark’s series on western art] Civilisation. They say, ‘How brave.’ It wasn’t in the least brave. It was just that I thought it was a good idea. And there was nobody with a big stick saying: ‘Naughty, naughty, you didn’t get 3 million viewers, you only got 2.5 [million].’ And that was why it was the dream job, running BBC2. A paradisiacal job.”	The idea of BBC2 was that it should be not be higher brow than BBC1, but distinct from it. “The idea that you could do it by height of brow was nonsense. I mean there are plenty of people who like string quartets and plenty of people who like football, and plenty of people who like both, and so just to put on chamber music opposite football was irrelevant.” At the same time, “it felt very free, creatively free, because you couldn’t use the normal statistics, because the audience was changing all the time, because the coverage [of the transmitters] was changing all the time. I mean it was a doddle of a job. I was shielded from the pressures that BBC1 was taking.” He added: “Occasionally I get nice compliments for inventing [Kenneth Clark’s series on western art] Civilisation. They say, ‘How brave.’ It wasn’t in the least brave. It was just that I thought it was a good idea. And there was nobody with a big stick saying: ‘Naughty, naughty, you didn’t get 3 million viewers, you only got 2.5 [million].’ And that was why it was the dream job, running BBC2. A paradisiacal job.”
Civilisation had endured as a classic series, he argued, because of its great writing, the power of Clark as an intellect and a communicator. Attenborough despaired of some of its successors. He picked out as typical a programme that had been aired just before we met: Apples, Pears and Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting. “It had a typical crappy kind of sense of ‘Oh we can’t have a mandarin point of view, so what you will do is to get 10 different people, we’ll interview them and then we’ll just sling little slices of it together.’ And so there’s no thesis, there’s no continuity, there’s no central thought … it was exasperating, empty-headed. The trouble is that we live in a populist culture where we can’t accept that there’s anybody who actually knows more about things than you do.” Broadcasting, he said, “should be the cream of thinkers in society who have been given by the BBC a platform on which they may speak. But the BBC doesn’t believe that now.”	Civilisation had endured as a classic series, he argued, because of its great writing, the power of Clark as an intellect and a communicator. Attenborough despaired of some of its successors. He picked out as typical a programme that had been aired just before we met: Apples, Pears and Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting. “It had a typical crappy kind of sense of ‘Oh we can’t have a mandarin point of view, so what you will do is to get 10 different people, we’ll interview them and then we’ll just sling little slices of it together.’ And so there’s no thesis, there’s no continuity, there’s no central thought … it was exasperating, empty-headed. The trouble is that we live in a populist culture where we can’t accept that there’s anybody who actually knows more about things than you do.” Broadcasting, he said, “should be the cream of thinkers in society who have been given by the BBC a platform on which they may speak. But the BBC doesn’t believe that now.”
An early programme on BBC2, commissioned by Attenborough’s predecessor, Michael Peacock, was The Great War. Marking 50 years since the war began, it mixed archive footage with testimony from survivors, and was the first of the great blockbuster history series on television. The idea for it came from producers Antony Jay and Alasdair Milne, who had been working on the adventurous current affairs show Tonight. The importance of The Great War was that it gave voice to the everyday veterans of the conflict – the producers actually turned down an offer by Montgomery to be interviewed. Despite its shortcomings (it had little time for women) it was intensely true to the possibilities of television as a form. It gave voice to ordinary people, captured evanescent human experience. It was ahead of academia, yet to embrace oral history. It showed that television could act as a nation’s generous and reflective memory bank, drawing in the breath of lived lives and projecting them back into people’s homes. Its title sequence might have come from a Bergman film: a cross is bleakly silhouetted against a grey sky; then the camera pans down to the base of a trench, where a corpse lies, horribly contorted. This against an intense score by Wilfred Josephs. The ambition was both epic and deeply humane.	An early programme on BBC2, commissioned by Attenborough’s predecessor, Michael Peacock, was The Great War. Marking 50 years since the war began, it mixed archive footage with testimony from survivors, and was the first of the great blockbuster history series on television. The idea for it came from producers Antony Jay and Alasdair Milne, who had been working on the adventurous current affairs show Tonight. The importance of The Great War was that it gave voice to the everyday veterans of the conflict – the producers actually turned down an offer by Montgomery to be interviewed. Despite its shortcomings (it had little time for women) it was intensely true to the possibilities of television as a form. It gave voice to ordinary people, captured evanescent human experience. It was ahead of academia, yet to embrace oral history. It showed that television could act as a nation’s generous and reflective memory bank, drawing in the breath of lived lives and projecting them back into people’s homes. Its title sequence might have come from a Bergman film: a cross is bleakly silhouetted against a grey sky; then the camera pans down to the base of a trench, where a corpse lies, horribly contorted. This against an intense score by Wilfred Josephs. The ambition was both epic and deeply humane.
BBC2 in its early days put out a show called Late-Night Line-up, from which The Old Grey Whistle-test was spun off. Bakewell was a presenter (footage of her interviewing her then lover, Harold Pinter, is alas lost). Its purpose was to critique television; in reality it provided a much broader stream of social commentary. “David [Attenborough] called us his guerrilla fighters,” she remembered, “because he saw that things [in British society] needed examining and changing”. The programme was an offshoot of the presentation department – the outfit in charge of continuity – and occupied a spare weather studio. The show was incredibly cheap to run, and more than faintly anarchic. Its major expense, she recalled, was the drinks trolley “and every night we demolished it”. She is resolutely not golden-ageist about it – “a lot of our programmes were amazingly boring. I mean I often thank God that there isn’t a trace of them.”	BBC2 in its early days put out a show called Late-Night Line-up, from which The Old Grey Whistle-test was spun off. Bakewell was a presenter (footage of her interviewing her then lover, Harold Pinter, is alas lost). Its purpose was to critique television; in reality it provided a much broader stream of social commentary. “David [Attenborough] called us his guerrilla fighters,” she remembered, “because he saw that things [in British society] needed examining and changing”. The programme was an offshoot of the presentation department – the outfit in charge of continuity – and occupied a spare weather studio. The show was incredibly cheap to run, and more than faintly anarchic. Its major expense, she recalled, was the drinks trolley “and every night we demolished it”. She is resolutely not golden-ageist about it – “a lot of our programmes were amazingly boring. I mean I often thank God that there isn’t a trace of them.”
She also recalled what are now deeply alien sexual politics: “I dare say I was recruited by the editor of Late Night Line-up because I was pretty. I know that he fancied me, he made one or two little forays when I was doing the job.” She recalled a BBC where women “were sexually alert to the fact that we were in a man’s world: you were automatically wary of how you moved through that world, because you’d get tapped and pinched or stroked or nudged”. Nonetheless, Late Night Line-up represented a kind of creative freedom: “I mean people wanted opportunities to be creative, and we wanted television to be better, we wanted the standards to be high, we wanted ideas to circulate.”	She also recalled what are now deeply alien sexual politics: “I dare say I was recruited by the editor of Late Night Line-up because I was pretty. I know that he fancied me, he made one or two little forays when I was doing the job.” She recalled a BBC where women “were sexually alert to the fact that we were in a man’s world: you were automatically wary of how you moved through that world, because you’d get tapped and pinched or stroked or nudged”. Nonetheless, Late Night Line-up represented a kind of creative freedom: “I mean people wanted opportunities to be creative, and we wanted television to be better, we wanted the standards to be high, we wanted ideas to circulate.”
Mixing the serious and the silly	Mixing the serious and the silly
At its best, the important thing about the BBC has always been its cultural heterogeneity; the fact that it is a cheerful gallimaufry of the high and the low, the serious and the silly. Television has been the perfect medium for reflecting what BBC documentary maker Adam Curtis called “the libertarian revolution that’s happened in this country: the breaking down of cultural barriers, the breaking down of social barriers. The mixture that the BBC invented – trash shows, and posh, clever high-end shows – has been appropriate to its time.”	At its best, the important thing about the BBC has always been its cultural heterogeneity; the fact that it is a cheerful gallimaufry of the high and the low, the serious and the silly. Television has been the perfect medium for reflecting what BBC documentary maker Adam Curtis called “the libertarian revolution that’s happened in this country: the breaking down of cultural barriers, the breaking down of social barriers. The mixture that the BBC invented – trash shows, and posh, clever high-end shows – has been appropriate to its time.”
As a young man, he was a researcher on the popular consumer programme That’s Life! under Esther Rantzen, which mixed campaigning investigative journalism with joke items on talking dogs and curiously shaped vegetables. Now he is known for highly wrought political documentaries, such as Pandora’s Box (1992) and The Power of Nightmares (2004) – which he said he made cheaply by “swimming between the cracks”: improvising, borrowing and making do within the “chaotic” structures of the BBC. But he uses what he learned from Rantzen: she taught him, he said somewhat self-deprecatingly, the “tricks of trash journalism. I took them and bolted them on to high-end meta-tosh.”	As a young man, he was a researcher on the popular consumer programme That’s Life! under Esther Rantzen, which mixed campaigning investigative journalism with joke items on talking dogs and curiously shaped vegetables. Now he is known for highly wrought political documentaries, such as Pandora’s Box (1992) and The Power of Nightmares (2004) – which he said he made cheaply by “swimming between the cracks”: improvising, borrowing and making do within the “chaotic” structures of the BBC. But he uses what he learned from Rantzen: she taught him, he said somewhat self-deprecatingly, the “tricks of trash journalism. I took them and bolted them on to high-end meta-tosh.”