Auntie Steps Out

"What Hollywood did in the '20s and '30s for the cinema, White City could do in the '60s and '70s for television," trumpeted London's Sunday Express proudly. "White City'' in this context means the British Broadcasting Corp.'s new TV headquarters, and not the nearby White City stadium, where England's eager bettors wager millions on the greyhounds. BBC's half-finished complex of glass and brick is the largest TV factory in the world and even includes a studio that can be flooded to create a lake set. It represents a .$45 million bet that the state-chartered, viewer-financed (for an annual fee of $11.20 per set owner) BBC-TV can crack U.S. domination of world TV markets.

Of the 60-odd nations with TV today, only Britain is in a position to rival the U.S. in filling the screens day in and day out with its own products (even if a lot of American fare is served up to British audiences). Up to now the U.S. has largely monopolized the world market for TV reruns, partly because 80% of all U.S. prime-time shows are recorded before showing, hence are readily exportable, while some 92% of BBC-TV originates live. White City's building complex is fittingly shaped in the form of a question mark. And the question to be answered is: What chance has BBC-TV to grab a share of the lucrative rerun market?

Bilko & Como. BBC, after all, was ahead of the U.S. in beginning public television back in 1936. But BBC's drawback in program making has always been, in the words of one English critic, its automatic recoil from "any program that will seriously annoy the Church of England, the Royal Family, the three services, the British Medical Association or the Law Society." It enjoyed a monopoly in British radio broadcasting for 33 years, during which its Oxford-accented air of uplift earned the BBC the fond, but not too fond, nickname "Auntie." Five years ago, along came commercial TV. The Tory government created the privately owned Independent Television Authority to give Auntie competition. With a zest for controversy and no qualms about serving up popular fare (much of it made in America), ITV quickly grabbed up 72% of Britain's viewers in the areas it served.

The BBC took heed, and Auntie began to use lipstick and to take cha cha lessons.

One of those most responsible for bringing Auntie up to date was BBC News Director Hugh Carleton Greene, 49 (brother of Novelist Graham Greene), who this year became director general of the BBC. BBC-TV worked to liven up its prime evening shows (keeping, however, 35% of them "serious" as always), even bought U.S. TV packages such as Sergeant Bilko and Perry Como, both of which proved immensely popular. The result: BBC-TV is gradually winning some of its old audiences back from ITV, now regularly gets a 39% viewership, often clobbers ITV on covering news events.

Family Affair. For its first try in the world rerun market, BBC-TV is riding on The Third, Man series, based loosely on the adventures of Harry Lime--so loosely in fact, that Novelist Graham Greene, who wrote the original screenplay, has sternly dissociated himself from his kid brother's serial. Though The Third Man got a lukewarm critical reception in London, it has been bought for $1,500,000 (recouping the production cost) by Budweiser and Rheingold beers, will be shown on U.S. screens this fall. Another sales success: a Canadian Mountie series, snapped up by 20 U.S. cities the first week it was shown. Coming soon: a crime series based on Simenon's Inspector Maigret. Meanwhile ITV, far from dawdling on its domestic dollies, is cranking up its own shows for export to the U.S. (Robin Hood is an ITV series already seen on American screens).

The British are also trying in another subtle way to increase U.S. usage of British programs. No more than 14% of all programs carried on the BBC and ITV can now originate outside the Commonwealth. U.S. network men in London and New York have been told privately that the quota will become even stiffer unless U.S. broadcasters buy more British programs. Just as the foreign market has long since become the profit margin for Hollywood movies, the British rerun is sometimes the difference between profit and loss for U.S. programs. For example, CBS is inching into the black on Sergeant Bilko thanks to BBC payments.

The BBC has a special reason of its own for wanting to sell its TV output abroad. BBC's license conies up for renewal in 1962, and a third British network, due to begin after 1964, is up for grabs. The BBC will have no trouble getting its own license extended, but it would also like to be awarded the new network franchise. Only if it can prove itself competitive against front-running ITV in revenue as well as quality will it have much of a chance.

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