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READING UNIVERSITY 5th -
3rd APRIL 1998
I am, of course, unqualified to get this show on the road.
Having had my head down, ploughing my own furrow over the
decades - what do I know? IÕve been too busy, too pre-occupied,
too obsessed, to have an overview. When I first met
Michael Jackson, I wasnÕt shocked by his youth (in our business
the transition from enfant terrible to eminence grise can
take only five years). I was shocked that he knew more even
about my own life - than I did. He reminded me of things
I had forgotten. At this moment I am being judged by a whole
conference full of Michael Jacksons and each of you know
more about dramatic fiction on British Television than I
do.
A weekend conference like
this would have been inconceivable 30 odd years ago.
Richard Hoggart had influenced us all with "Uses
of Literacy", certainly, and Raymond Williams, lonely
among the Leavisites, was in Cambridge arguing that there
was more to culture than Eng. Lit. Ń which itself had
been an upstart academic discipline just a couple of
generations before.
But there was not a hint of
the explosion of media and cultural studies which was
to accelerate and gather momentum Ń especially in the
last few years. You seem to be for the 90s what sociology
was for the 60s. And you know what happened to sociology.
I look on it all with disbelief, coming from a generation
which wasnÕt allowed to study someoneÕs work until after
they had been dead for a decent interval.
What emerged at that time
came out of a different climate. There was optimism in
the air, particularly on the left. The privations of
the post war years, and the conformity of the 50s, were
giving way to a new energy and openness. We were the
best fed working class generation ever Ń a result, paradoxically,
of war-time rationing. We were the Beveridge kids. ButlerÕs Ō44
Education Act had selected us, and grants paid for us,
to be the first working class generation to attend University
in any numbers. There was full employment. BBC was recruiting
for BBC2 and ITV was booming. Harold MacMillan told us
weÕd never had it so good.
Of all the possibilities,
why did so many of us go into television Ń and insist
on working in mainstream popular television? Not get
into Parliament, not stay in academic life, not even
work in the theatre.
Because it was the most exciting
place to be. There were just two channels, but the whole
nation, it seems, was watching and talking about it the
next day. For some of us it was political. Our families
didnÕt go to the theatre Ń except the Christmas panto.
British cinema was dead in the water. We wanted to occupy
that screen to show the Britain we knew, to incite,
to express our anger. Angry young men. Very few women,
you will notice. There was some self-righteousness in
it, as we constructed middle class lives out of dramatising
working class experience. So if it is to be understood,
the work must be placed in its wider social and political
context. Political radicalism, alas, seldom comes out
of hard times and defeat, but in times of prosperity
and security. I might be best employed tonight if I concentrate
on the changing circumstances of our work; how we have
got from then to now, as it were. There have been 3 main
changes in the last 30 years Ń structural; the move from
studio to location; and the centralisation of decision
making. I shall deal briefly with them in turn, and reveal
a shift in the locus of power, which has had a profound
effect on what we make.
But because all that past
work doesnÕt really interest me, I would then like to
take a look at the political and technological realities
facing us now Ń because the present does interest me.
I learned in Hollwood that
every movie has a power centre Ń often a star, sometimes
a director, or a producer or an agent. Usually a studio
executive. The same is true in television drama. The
power centre is located in different places at any one
time because of strengths of personality and reputation,
but there are clearly identifiable general historical
shifts.
In the early days, before
my time, drama got made on a more ad hoc basis. Then
Sydney Newman, like Caesar with Gaul, divided BBC Drama
Group into three parts - Plays, Series and Serials. Looking
forward to an expanding income from colour Licenses and
the start of BBC2, he felt the need for specialist departmental
heads to help him handle the increased output. In those
days, even though the Controllers had the power of the
purse, Group Heads were their equal in the BBC hierarchy.
No Controller had come up through Drama. No doubt there
was much discussion about individual productions and
even more about strands and when they should be scheduled.
But all drama went through one man. The Controllers could
negotiate with no-one but him. Lip service was paid to
the regions, but in practice the Head of Drama Group
in London ruled absolutely. He visited the regions like
a pro-consul.
Sydney protected his people
from interference. The BBC was feudal. If the Controller
was King of the Channel, then programme output heads
were very powerful barons.
The separation of the roles
of producer and director, and the allocation of resources
to strands, or runs or blocks of air time Ń whether of
individual dramas in an anthology, or series or serials
- created a power shift towards the producer. Having
been a producer, Sydney believed in them. For maybe 20
years the broadcasters actually practised as well as
preached producer power. Of course the best producers
behaved in a collegiate way, not only holding the ring
between the writers and directors, but forging an open
collaboration between the writer, director and everyone
else.
The producer was in the driving
seat. Any higher in the formal hierarchy and youÕre in
management, removed from the creative work. If IÕd wanted
to go into management IÕd have joined Shell. Any lower
and youÕre waiting on the end of a Ōphone, unable to
initiate anything. IÕd had enough of that as an actor.
If you think of our work as divided into the what question,
the who question and the how question I knew, the way
t.v. was then organised, that as a Producer I could decide
the what question Ń what shall we make?
I could decide the who will be the main
people involved. And, through careful selection, have
a big influence on the how question. But it wasnÕt to
last.
We all have an infantile tendency
to think that the universe revolves around us. IÕm told
that the writer in the theatre is contractually in the
ascendant Ń which maybe is why overweening directors
prefer to muck about with the classics, where they can
be the centre of attention and do what they like. In
the cinema, art film directors are encouraged to believe
that they are the authors Ń the French have a lot to
answer for. In the movies a star actor sometimes calls
the shots.
In British T.V. drama it is
now not so clear cut. Everybody complains about
being usurped. The move to location film shifted the
power from writer to director, or so the writers say;
the producers have turned directors into bus drivers
- they are given the responsibility of driving it, but
others have specified the route, the passengers, the
stops, and how long it is to take from Acton to Piccadilly.
ThatÕs what directors say. The more controllers and commissioning
editors involve themselves in the creative process the
more producers are marginalised and treated as nuts and
bolts operatives, or so the producers say.
Much depends on the model
you carry in your head. One such model goes like this:
all worthwhile work is the voice of a single writer.
Everyone involved is at the service of that voice and
must work to produce its expression on the screen. You
will notice that if you replace the word "writer" with
the word "director" then you have the model
for the cinema, the auteur. ItÕs a struggle for signature
rights and possessory credits. ItÕs also about power.
Writers like television drama
to be "by" them, just as every kid out of film
school likes the phrase "Ōun film de"Õ Personally
I like the custom of everybody just sticking their names
next to their jobs.
But this one-artist-with-a-vision
model is not the only one, because making dramatic fiction
for the screen is a collaborative, social activity (unlike
a novel or a painting). Some of the best work emerges
from the hammering out of a shared vision, where youÕre
too immersed in the moment to moment creation of the
stuff to care whose it is. Afterwards the press will
pick on somebody (usually the best known) but thatÕs
just to put a convenient handle on it.
Why shouldnÕt good
work come out of this process? In my experience the writer
is usually primus inter pares, but so many are at their
best when under scrutiny, and in the rough and tumble
of collaboration. Too many do their worst when they become
so grand that their word is law. Similarly, puffed up
directors, producers and actors.
ThereÕs a controversial element
missing, of course. The script editor. Very important
people Ń which is why, perversely, too often itÕs a starter
job given to some kid straight out of college. The pain
inflicted on writers by the casual destructiveness of
arrogant and ignorant script editors, innocent of what
they do, cries out down the years. With apologies to
Sartre, one could say that writers are condemned to be
edited, in perpetual anguish.
But if it is done well writers
grow and drama is enhanced. It is a craft and an art
in itself in my shop, no untrained kid is unleashed on
a writer, and even the experienced script editors work
under close supervision.
There is one person who is
seminal to much of the work you are considering this
weekend. Roger Smith. He twisted my arm till I gave up
acting to be his assistant. He persuaded Ken Trodd to
give up academic life. AcademiaÕs loss was Dennis PotterÕs
gain. He persuaded Dennis to write for television and
commissioned him. As he did many other writers. His job
at the time? Script Editor.
Trying to rise above these
subjective responses, it is clear that the writer did
give ground when the single studio play was replaced
by the single location film, when anthology drama more
or less disappeared. It is also clear that the separation
of Producer and Director gave more power to the Producer
at the expense of the Director. And that the recent centralisation
of decision making has eroded the power and creative
clout of the Producer.
They talk about creative freedom
but actually run a command economy. It reminds me of
DruckerÕ s story about listening to an executive at General
MotorsÕ Detroit headquarters going on about the "beatitudes
of decentralisation", when the teleprinter noisily
coughed up a message. "Pay no attention," the
executive said, "ItÕs only the Kansas City plant
manager letting me know heÕs going to lunch."
I donÕt see anything to threaten
the present balance of power. A lucky group of directors
will make films on more or less their own terms, thanks
to the lottery money and the traditions of the European
art cinema; and what the Americans call a "show
runner", that is a Producer/Lead Writer, may become
more of a presence and a creative force over here. But
the present settlement looks fixed. The only thing which
might disturb it, at the margin, is if some of the talent
behind the camera becomes in such demand that it is able
to bid up control as well as price, like some on screen
talent does. But this wonÕt be open to many.
In the wider economy there
has been a general shift from a Producer interest society
to a Consumer interest society. The shift wrong-footed
the Left. The organised working class had been considered
by its leaders to be have-nots who produced goods and
services for the haves to consume. But in the post-war
Keynsian boom these producers during the day became consumers
during the evening and the weekend, and whilst they wished
to preserve their restrictive practices, poor customer
service and general bloody-mindedness in their own work,
increasingly demanded prompt, customer sensitive value
for money outside their work.
The merits of this shift and
the damage it has caused are not the business of this
conference, but the business of Television has been affected
by it. The producers (I use the word in its widest sense,
the creators) have given ground to the consumer, the
viewer. This might be beneficial if it forced us to strive
more humbly to connect, to reach our audience; in Huw
WeldonÕs phrase, to make the good popular and the popular
good; to sweep away the cultural snobbery which believes
that work must be inaccessible and obscure to be any
good. But of course, it might also be used to stifle
innovation, coarsen and reduce aspiration and narrow
what is possible. Just as the market, that great allocator,
is not enough, neither are crude ratings.
A balance has to be struck
between the inner and the outer, between the rights of
the individual imagination and the duty to connect with
others. The tension between the two is painful but it
is our job to live it.
The push to commodify our
work, alienate us from it and use us for the single purpose
of making profits for large corporations, enriches a
few but ultimately impoverishes everyone else. This is
a political battle Ń a battle for an ecology of television
which facilitates and insists upon that creative tension
between the producer and the consumer. If it is lost,
then popular culture in Britain will finally become just
a branch of manufacturing. Alienated work mocks human
capacity. Because T.V. drama doesnÕt get made in isolation,
as a result of some artistic impulse pulled from the
ether.
And it is not just a question
of what at a particular juncture will be allowed on the
screen. It is a question of what it is possible to imagine
at a particular juncture. Who could doubt that the smashing
of the trade unions and the managementÕs assertion of
the right to manage - the Thatcher settlement - have
affected the content of the work, not just working conditions?
The generation coming through
in this decade - with a few exceptions - lacks attitude,
hasnÕt found its voice. Too often it tries to reach the
broadcaster rather like a frightened schoolchild trying
to see by the teacherÕs face what the "right" answer
is. These young people should be bursting to express
what is inside them rather than just responding to external
stimuli. But their stance is understandable. Power is
centralised and used prescriptively, the industry is
atomised, a foothold is difficult to get and easily lost.
It is urgently the task of some of us, who enjoyed luckier
times when we were finding our voice, to seek out kindred
spirits, to link arms with them and help them to speak.
It has been suggested to me
that I wonÕt get out of here alive if I donÕt stand up
to be counted - and possibly shot down - on two questions.
Firstly, the destruction of the studio play and secondly,
the Golden Age.
Lip to the middle 60s location
shooting was a small part of the work Ń the taxi draws
up to the house, a woman emerges, pays and goes up to
her front door Ń linking scenes, often devoid of dramatic
content. The real work was done multi-camera on three
sided sets in a studio. A whole aesthetic had been invented
to justify or glorify this way of making drama, but I
thought it was crap then and I think itÕs crap now. It
was a bastard child of 2 forms, the theatre (continuous
performance) and cinema (various lengths of lens affording
different p.o.v and size of image). Far from constituting
an exciting new form, it seemed to me to have the disadvantages
and none of the advantages of its parents. The criterial
attribute of the theatre is immediate physical presence Ń a
group of people occupy the same space to take part in
an unrepeatable event. On each occasion spectators and
performers come together in time and space to create
something unique.
But with T.V. drama the audience
is miles away and mediated by the technology; 5 or 6
cameras were deployed around the studio trying to catch
the action whilst the whole thing was being simultaneously
edited. Cinema on the run.
This was the glory, the adrenalin
rush of live T.V. drama. There were some wizards at the
game and amazing work was achieved. But the aesthetic
was a phoney. It was all based on necessity. The performances
were continuous because the transmissions were live Ń recording
had not been invented, and when it was, efficient editing
was impossible; and when they finally got both together
they were expensive of equipment and time. So the aesthetic
which glorified the continuous, multi-camera studio "as
if live" play was very convenient to management.
And even after stop-start
shooting and editing became the norm, there were people
pining for the old days. Some still are. Well, why not?
T.V. ought to be big and diverse enough to include every
way of telling stories and exploring character. Any chance
of it happening? Work which did not rely on naturalistic
sets and prop dressing, which focused on language and
the intensity of performance, might make a low cost per
hour case to present management. A certain kind of actor
would relish the chance, and be available. Some writers
would welcome the challenge. There may be a shortage
of the technical skills now, but they can be learned
afresh; the studios are still there. An anthology series
made the way all drama was made 35 years ago? Fine, providing
I donÕt have to work on it.
IÕm exploring this issue in
this company because you know that I stand accused of
having killed the traditional studio play in favour of
the move to location filming.
ItÕs true that I fought a
bloody battle with the BBC. Even Film Group at Ealing,
the people with the most to gain, were against me. The
reason? We wanted to use the new, blimped 16mm cameras,
light enough to carry on the shoulder. Ealing management
were horrified. 16 was for news, not drama. They wanted
us to use 35. In the end, with some reluctance,
Michael Peacock and Sydney Newman sanctioned a couple
of films (10% had to be done in the studio because of
the current Equity agreement - so we shot single camera
and cut the horrible telecine in to the rest of the film).
Michael Peacock (the Channel Controller) was reluctant
because he was afraid he would be exchanging high quality
studio drama for "B" movies. Some of you may
think he was prescient. Sydney, because I had promised
to deliver them very cheaply, just asked me why I wanted
to die so young.
All I wanted was for us to
go out into the world, where we could capture the physical
conditions of peopleÕs lives, how people actually lived;
bring that material back and create a dramatic document.
The drive was political as much as aesthetic: so contemptuous
was I of so much of what passed for serious T.V. drama
at the time, I would have denied any distinction between
the two. But we (that is, a handful of like-minded people)
were ploughing our own furrow, we had no agenda for T.
V. drama in general - we just wanted to do our stuff
in our way. It never occurred to me that others would
want to leave the studio and follow us out into the world.
I was not a pied piper. I didnÕt see myself as leading
a movement. I only had control of a few hours of screen
time.
But a trickle soon turned
into a tidal wave. It was creatively led - by writers,
as much as directors. Many old school producers would
rather have stuck with their comfortable ways, sitting
in the warm overseeing everything Ń and not have to visit
a shoot in Scunthorpe where it was cold and there were
no restaurants. It certainly wasnÕt management driven.
They were tearing their hair out, and told me so, threateningly.
TheyÕd just put up those expensively equipped studios
in White City and the regions Ń and one of their main
clients, drama, increasingly wouldnÕt be seen dead in
them. For some years people were forced to use
them.
Knee jerk "blame the
management" is politically infantile and stalls
any serious analysis. You might hear talk of the Golden
Age of the 60s - remember the 60s didnÕt really get under
way till Ō63 and continued into the early Ō70s, maybe
till the first Opec crisis. You might also hear sighs
of despair about the present - conditions are impossible,
prospective good work is hunted down and strangled at
birth, the climate is so oppressive that there is an
institutional bias towards mindless, unchallenging pap Ń the
opium of the masses revisited.
Well, that would all be very
satisfying. Nothing like a self-righteous, paranoid Potteresque
rant to get the juices flowing. The trouble is, the useful
truths of the matter are more complicated.
There was never a Golden Age.
Good work was done before the Wednesday Play - in Armchair
Theatre, for instance Ń and afterwards, even recently
by people too young to even recognise the name Sydney
Newman. Those who believe in the Golden Age have conveniently
filtered out the dull and the crap which haunted the
screen then as much as now. Little of it would stand
up today Ń we would all cringe in embarrassment at most
of it.
People who the world has left
behind believe in a Golden Age, people who have a personal
investment in nostalgia for a world which never existed.
Do some of you think there
was no political censorship in the 60s? Do you think
the BBC even under Greene was some hippy love-in where
the English language could be used on the screen as freely
as people used it off the screen (like the Controller
who told me "If you think you can say ŌfuckÕ on
my channel you can fucking think again), and where sexuality
could be freely and joyfully explored? Do you think the
violence lurking in all of us could be displayed realistically?
Did I imagine Mary Whitehouse, my old adversary? Did
she not fight us every inch of the way? Have we forgotten
the man from MI5 in Broadcasting House who put little
Christmas trees on our file? I havenÕt.
IÕll tell you about him. Twice
we went to the wire - once on my contract renewal, and
then when they refused to hire Roland Joffe, my choice
to direct "The Spongers". Only after I threatened
a public row did Alastair Mime, the Director of Television,
to his credit, order RolandÕs contract through. I know,
I was there when he did it.
People talk now as though
the men who owned commercial T.V. were highly cultivated
patrons of the arts devoting their lives selflessly to
encouraging risk taking talent. Funny. I thought they
were a bunch of capitalists just like the present buggers.
A licence to print money. Do you think the men who ran
Scottish T.V. for Lord Thompson were any less exploiters
of labour or less profit driven or less generally philistine
than those who run it now? What kind of selective, sepia
tinted, re-writing of history is this? Let old people
have their memories, even if they have made them up.
But it doesnÕt help the present fight to live in the
past - study it, by all means, but donÕt live in it.
Life is not a Hovis ad.
Most of my working life IÕve
been hearing that drama was in a crisis. Leaving aside
the misuse of the word crisis, the doomsters always claim
that there is a secret plan by senior management to confiscate
air time from anything serious in favour of "a mindless
pursuit of ratings". The trouble with attacking
the bosses Ń and I speak as a lifelong practitioner Ń is
that it can so easily become a means of avoiding selfcriticism.
If we can blame them for everything, we are all off the
hook. You know the first assault on the very existence
of the single, stand alone, anthology drama Ń what used
to be called the "single play"? Ń 1964. Why?
Because Donald Baverstock, Controller of BBC1, thought
they were expensive and couldnÕt deliver the ratings.
Sound familiar? Baverstock wanted to divert money to
Elwyn Jones, who ran the Series Department, those long
running, 1 hour, renewable dramas which are now being
accused of swamping the schedule and dumbing down television.
(By the way, have you noticed that T.V. and psycho-analysts
have something in common? Their hour is only 50 minutes.)
So what were these mindless, ratings chasing vulgar series
at the expense of the high minded single play? Well,
one of them was called Z Cars.
In the event Sydney Newman
beat Baverstock and the series of singles we had been
preparing went out on Wednesday nights. But if we had
failed to find and keep an audience, who knows?
So the battles had to be fought
even then. There have been losses Ń not surprising when
you consider the wider depredations of the last 20 years.
The loss of regular anthology drama is one. Perhaps another
is even more important. The erosion of stable creative
environments in which talent can learn and grow.
What of the future of T.V.
drama? That is largely predicated on politics and in
particular, on the future of the BBC and Channel 4. ITV
will be in a dog fight for share as Channel 5 and the
digital expansion eat away its audience. But popular
drama, some of it very fine, will be made for ITV. Audiences
like drama ų and despite the cultural snobbery which
pollutes these matters Ń attracting a large audience
isnÕt an automatic sign of frivolity.
Single films will be made
in some quantity, at the lower end of the budget scale.
They will be financed by a combination of Lottery, private
investment, direct T.V. investment (like Film on 4),
or indirect (anticipating future T.V. sales). Their makers
will have dreams of success in the cinema, or at least
their vanity being massaged at film festivals Ń and because
every city in the world now has one, thereÕll be an award
waiting for everybody. Most of these films will not be
distributed in cinemas Ń many wonÕt even open. But most
will be shown on T.V.
As for the multi-channel digital
paradise - well, it will bring many exciting things but
more original T.V. drama isnÕt one of them.
So weÕre back to the Beeb
and Channel 4. It is very important for the ecology of
broadcasting, both politically and culturally, that Channel
4 survives as an independent, non-profit company. Privatisation
has receded as a threat, but I donÕt believe it has gone
away.
The Beeb is even more important,
clearly. Setting aside what I think of the internal changes
of the last 10 years Ń I talked about this on another
occasion and donÕt want to repeat myselfŃ what of the
future? Is it being set up for privatisation? I donÕt
think so. Is it being set up as a publisher broadcaster
retaining its own core news and current affairs capacity?
Possibly. Would that matter? Not as much as 2 other things.
Political independence and finance.
The BBC has traded rather smugly
on its reputation for political independence but we know
it is a fraud. Reith set the standard in the General
Strike and you saw it in the minersÕ strike Ń when it
really matters, the Beeb caves in. Thames TV showed more
courage by standing up to Thatcher over "Death on
the Rock", and we know what happened to Thames.
3 things need to be said in
defense of the Beeb. The first is that its very stance
of independence (although hypocritical), and the fact
that the Government of the day may be the Opposition
the day after tomorrow, gives it room to manoeuvre. The
second is that although it in the end always takes a
great and the good, mandarin view of things, that is
very much better than a multi-national corporation view
of things.
The third is that Government
renews the Charter periodically, and fixes the license
fee, and neither are automatic. Being on your knees begging
for your life, is not the most dignified way of asserting
your independence.
ItÕs interesting that the
most recent lease of life renewed the Charter for rather
longer than the license fee.
How long can the license fee
survive? As long as the public tolerates it. My Sky subscription
is three times the license fee Ń and soon IÕll be paying
even more for the
digital expansion. So the
Beeb is clearly good value. But it wouldnÕt take many
people complaining to their NIPs about having to buy
a license whether they watch the Beeb or not, for the
very financial base of the Beeb to be called into question.
Which brings us to BBC1 and
competitive scheduling and the fight for market share.
If BBC faded against ITV, its main competitor, then its
whole legitimacy would be called into question. IÕm not
sure how far it would have to sink, but you can forget
BBC2, forget even the radio in this argument (because
the whole of BBC radio takes such a small percentage
of the license fee). There would be an unstoppable movement.
People would just refuse.
Remember the reaction to that
other poll tax. So many of my left and liberal friends
find no contradiction in opposing one poll tax on housing
and defending another on television. They are often the
same people who are virulent against the Common Agricultural
Policy but very much in favour of European subsidies
for the Film Industry. I wonder why.
So those who want to preserve
the license fee but donÕt want the Beeb to fight an increasingly
desperate ITV for audience share have some questions
to answer.
Because on this reckoning
the most important BBC show, the show on which public
service broadcasting depends for its survival, is a show
which holds up the schedule 3 nights a week Ń "EastEnders".
It may be that the only way
of preserving the license fee is to turn BBC1 into a
general entertainment channel. Is it a price worth paying?
What are the alternatives?
Would people pay a graduated
subscription for all, or bits of, the BBC menu? Probably,
particularly as payment systems become simple and subscription
for other services more the norm.
Desirable? Yes, if it were
part of a re-born BBC structured in a way which would
guarantee political independence, be a platform for the
diverse voices in our society, be a great cultural and
artistic patron and be publicly accountable Ń all the
things some people fear they donÕt see in the present
Beeb. It would have a direct contract with its audience
and be punished by it if contact was lost. The churn
rate (those subscribers who donÕt renew each month) would
be watched more closely than the ratings.
This is a big question, bringing
with it issues like the right to cultural access and
the differences a multi-channel environment will make.
But donÕt bank on that quaint
British custom the license fee surviving beyond the medium
term.
Huw Weldon used to say that
the joy and the duty of the Beeb (although he called
it the Corporation) was to make and schedule a mix of
programmes so juxtaposed that one might come across something
as a result of watching something else Ń and that new something
would expand the range of oneÕs taste. After all, we
donÕt know what we want till we are offered it.
There was idealism and nobility
in that aspiration, but it wonÕt survive the digital
revolution, which will move towards niche channels. Although
the main network channels will survive Ń and robustly
if the American experience is repeated Ń they will become
relentlessly mainstream. Even the news will become infotainment.
It wonÕt be all bad Ń this is where in America you can
find, ER, Bochko and Frasier. The different, the difficult,
may find itself in a low budget ghetto.
The BBC is attacked for embracing
the new technologies and expanding into them. These critics
are facing the wrong target. The Luddites set a poor
example.
The real battle is for the
BBCÕs soul.
Throughout history, people
like us have had to use existing structures and make
them work for us as best we can. If forced to work in
a particular form or genre, then we must try to subvert
it, or put new wine in old bottles or find other ways
of creating Trojan Horse drama.
Of course the present situation
has its difficulties. The danger is that we will so concentrate
on the structural problems and the unsympathetic political
and economic climate that passivity and defeatism will
set in.
They owned it then and they
own it now. WhatÕs surprising about that? ItÕs very expensive
gear and of real political, economic and cultural consequence Ń thatÕs
what makes the game worth playing. WeÕre not indulging
ourselves with a play above a pub here. The people weÕre
dealing with, charming as some of them are, donÕt play
softball. WhatÕs new?
For the second half of the
20th century, my working lifetime, television
has been the best place to work Ń both artistically and
politically. Access to that platform, the opportunity
to speak to millions of people and have them arguing
about it the next day - thatÕs a privilege worth fighting
for. Who said it would be easy? It never was easy. It
never will be.
And so, practising with Gramsci "the
optimism of the will and the pessimism of the intelligence",
I will carry on the fight a while longer. You never know,
they might tire first.
I thank you for your courtesy
to me this evening. Have a good conference. Tony Garnett
EIS/3 1.3.1998
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