TV & Freedom

The British squabble over whether the government ought to allow sponsored television alongside the state-controlled BBC is still going full blast. And J. Fred Muggs, the playful chimpanzee who appeared on a U.S. TV show alongside coronation pictures of the Queen (TIME, July 13), is still used to prove the inevitable tastelessness of commercial TV. In London's weekly Time and Tide, Malcolm Muggeridge, editor of Punch and onetime U.S. correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, has written a memorable answer to the enemies of commercial broadcasting. His arguments have meaning not only for Britons, but for Americans who often groan over commercials. Excerpts:

"Radio, you consider, is too potent an influence to be allowed, like printing, to be under private control . . . Private television companies, you argue, because they must look to advertising sponsors for their revenue, would necessarily be guilty of vulgarization [and] distortion [to] serve their own base interests. On the other hand, [the BBC] . . . may be relied on to sustain elevated standards. Let us see how the system has worked in practice.

"In those disastrous years prior to September 1939, you will recall, one notable voice was never heard from Broadcasting House; a voice which, in 1940 when it was almost too late, was able to summon up endurance and courage . . . How wonderful it would have been if this voice. Sir Winston Churchill's, had been heard on the air warning of the wrath to come . . . The Corporation, however, would not have it [because of Britain's] appeasement policy ... I would myself cheerfully have put up with hours of Mr. J. Fred Muggs for such a deliverance as Sir Winston Churchill would have provided from the BBC's bromides . . ."

The Only Voice. "Freedom, it seems to me. lies not so much in objectivity, which is largely beyond human realization, as in variety . . . Those who appear regularly [on] BBC . . . must be prepared to blow their trumpets or sound their cymbals or scratch their violins in accordance with the Corporation's baton . . . Whether the music is good or bad, there is one orchestra with one conductor, following one score, and this state of affairs ... is both unhealthy and dangerous . . .

"Take the case of Mr. Alistair Cooke, [who] through his regularly broadcast American Letter has an immense influence . . . The picture he presents of American life, manners and politics is, essentially, misleading. It does not matter that in the columns of the Manchester Guardian, Mr. Cooke should demonstrate mathematically that Mr. Stevenson must win the presidential election of 1952 . . . or that he should write a book in which Mr. Hiss is presented (except in the last few pages) as a kind of hero of our time. There are other newspapers and other books. On the air, however, there are not other voices ... I want others to be heard . . .

"[In the U.S.] an enormous quantity and variety of sound radio and television is available, some of which is excellent, some of which is exceedingly silly, seme of which might legitimately be described as 'horrible.' Last year, during the Republican Convention in Chicago, I sat with my head in a television set for four days. The convention coverage could not have been better done . . .There was not the smallest sign of partisanship. At intervals a personable young lady appeared to recommend a particular brand of refrigerator, but when her appearance would have interrupted a dramatic development, it was postponed . . . According to the fatuous mythology of the Left, [the sponsors] should have been Taftites. If so, there was nothing ... to give the smallest indication that this was the case . . ."

The Servile State. "Most of the [British] newspapers have put up a particularly hilarious performance . . . They do not want to lose advertising to commercial television. They have therefore discovered all sorts of high-minded reasons for preserving in the case of the BBC a monopoly which, in any other field, they would [denounce] . . . Then there has been the unforgettable spectacle of politicians rising up ... to explain how their sensitive natures recoil from the vulgarity of commercial radio . . . It is rather as though Moll Flanders, confronted with the possibility of finding herself alone with a gentleman friend, should have fainted right away from shyness . . .

"Does anyone suppose that if the Elizabethan Theatre . . . had been under public control it would have produced Shakespeare? . . . Mr. Justice Shallow in all his many guises would have greatly exerted himself to, as it were, keep Sir John Falstaff off the air ...

"In sombre moments I seem to see the stage being set for that servile state whose coming to pass [Hilaire] Belloc prophesied even before the 1914-18 war--key figures posted and ... a whole conditioning process taking place while one looks helplessly on ... More effectively than anything else, [the BBC monopoly] enables those set in authority to impose on the rest of us a pattern of thought and of feeling ... I must confess that escape, even into the arms of J. Fred Muggs, is a delectable prospect."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.