The Ape Intervenes

A chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs became a major factor in keeping commercial television off the British air.

Muggs, who wears rubber pants and a turtleneck sweater, gives U.S. viewers an occasional comedy break during Dave Garroway's two-hour morning news and chatter program, Today (TIME, April 20). Last month as Britain's Conservative government was working on a plan allowing some sponsored TV shows to compete with BBC's state monopoly, the British press reported indignantly that, on coronation day, Today had shown alternating views of their Queen and Garroway's ape. The incident did more than any other argument to fan fears of U.S.-style "television vulgarity."

In Parliament, Laborite Maurice Edelman asked whether or not supporters of sponsored TV were on the side of the chimp. Fourteen vice chancellors of universities protested against commercial TV. In a lot of British papers, U.S. commercial TV became an epithet almost as dirty as "McCarthyism."

There were some voices for the defense. Tory M.P. Derek Walker-Smith argued that a country gets the programs which suit it. "To say that commercial TV would probably involve debased programs is ... a vote of no confidence in the British people."

But the anticommercial forces included not only Laborites and predictable highbrows like Bertrand Russell, but an astonishing number of Tories, e.g., Lord Halifax, Randolph Churchill and such formidable lords spiritual as the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

Last week the government backed down, left decision to "a time when tensions have eased," perhaps this autumn, also made it clear that if sponsored TV is ever permitted, it will be sharply restricted by controls. Said one opponent of the commercial plan: "Surely J. Fred Muggs won't pop up again so soon."

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