The Waterloo of Quality TV? : A bill in Britain calls for the sale of broadcast rights--and this, say opponents, would destroy good programming

From a small, quiet house near a subway station in the shabbily genteel Camden Town district, a rear-guard action is being fought against government reforms that could change the face of British television.

In this building, which normally houses an independent TV production company, a large, bearded, bearlike man named Simon Albury paces restlessly, rummages through piles of newspaper clippings, takes a seemingly endless string of phone calls and summons up information on a computer screen.

Albury, 44, is director of the Campaign for Quality Television, a 550-strong consortium of program makers, producers and on-air personalities that opposes plans by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government to implement its new Broadcasting Bill. The measure, according to campaign supporters, would create a climate of financial caution and exclusively market-driven programming under which the sort of shows for which British TV is famed could no longer be made.

Among the genres described by the campaign as “endangered species” are several familiar to American devotees of public television. Splashy, expensive period dramas like “Upstairs, Downstairs,” “Brideshead Revisited” and “Jewel in the Crown” would not, they say, be made in such a new broadcasting era. Nor would off-center British comedies such as “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” or John Cleese’s “Fawlty Towers”; they would be deemed too anarchic for a mass market.

The Broadcasting Bill, currently being guided through Parliament by Home Office Minister David Mellor, is expected to become law later this year. Its main provisions aim at reforming the structure of British commercial television. At present, 15 companies, each holding a lucrative franchise to broadcast in a specific region of the country, contribute programs to ITV (Channel 3), Britain’s commercial TV network. Many of these companies--Granada, Central, Thames and Yorkshire among them--have a distinguished track record in programming that has brought them international repute. As the bill stands, franchises for each region would be awarded to the highest-bidding company--with the proceeds going to the government’s treasury.

The campaign worries that the franchises could fall into the hands of companies less concerned with quality programming than profit from advertising revenues. “We fear Channel 3 could be a junk program channel,” Albury says.

Thus the campaign’s main thrust is to persuade Mellor and his civil servants to insert a five-word amendment into the bill that would significantly alter it. Under the amendment, successful bidders for each franchise would be those companies undertaking to spend the most money on programming, rather than offering large sums to treasury coffers.

“The government talks of companies having to make programs with a minimum standard of quality,” Albury says. “But how do you objectify quality? You can’t. We’re saying quality programming comes from talent and money. Without at least one of the two, you won’t get quality TV. So let the companies who want the franchises commit to spending a certain amount on the programming itself.”

This rallying cry has attracted several illustrious names to the campaign’s banner. George Harrison, now a producer, whose Handmade Fims has consumed much of his time since his Beatle days, is an ardent supporter. So is David Puttnam, Britain’s best-known film producer and former Columbia Pictures studio head. Monty Python alumni John Cleese and Terry Jones have contributed time and money; Dame Judi Dench, one of Britain’s most distinguished actresses, has been vocal on the campaign’s behalf. And comedian Rowan Atkinson, whose cult series “Blackadder” is seen on the Arts & Entertainment cable channel, outlined the campaign’s position in an eloquent speech at the Conservative Party Conference last October.

All fear that without a commitment to quality by the companies that win franchises, commercial TV will be dominated, as a campaign pamphlet puts it, by “mid-Atlantic mediocrity.” Another fear is that the companies would be too preoccupied in paying off loans raised to buy their expensive franchises to invest in quality programming. Instead, the argument goes, they would be tempted to buy cheap programming from abroad: game shows, soap operas, long-canceled American series.

The campaign’s members also scoff at the Thatcherite view that British broadcasting, like other areas of commerce, should be dictated by market forces. This, they think, would lead to bland, consensus programming aimed primarily at placating a mass audience, rather than programs stemming from the creative impulses of gifted program makers. Opponents of the campaign, who find its policies elitist, complain that too much British TV is made for program makers and their peers. But Atkinson told the Conservative conference: “It may come as a surprise to you to hear that I’ve only ever made programs for myself and my friends to watch. The fact that 12 million other people tune in at the same time is largely accidental.”

Albury worries about the dangers of devising shows to appeal to mass audiences: “What makes some programs so attractive is their uncompromising quality, and that might get watered down in a misplaced attempt to meet the market.

“Monty Python is an example of an uncompromising show that went on to become an enormous international hit. But if you’re setting out to create an enormous international hit, you certainly don’t come up with Monty Python. As John Cleese says, no one coming from a calculating commercial position would ever make Monty Python.”

Terry Jones, Cleese’s former Python colleague, is equally scathing. “If Michelangelo had been guided solely by market forces,” he says, “he’d probably have wallpapered the Sistine Chapel. Fortunately for us, he painted it instead.”

David Mellor, the Home Office minister, has stood firm against criticism of the bill and dismisses as “hyperbole” the arguments of groups such as the campaign that predict programming quality will plummet.

“The quality threshhold (for prospective franchise buyers) will be a high fence to jump,” Mellor insists.

He has also warned opponents of the bill not to be patronizing toward viewers. “I believe that, in the end, the public is infinitely more sophisticated then we give them credit for, and given the opportunity will not settle for the lowest form of pap.”

Mellor’s political boss, Home Secretary David Waddington, told the House of Commons last month: “No one will be able to argue--other than tongue in cheek--that we are creating a Philistine’s charter. What the bill provides is a sensible regulatory framework for a new age in broadcasting.

“Those bidding for licenses will have to come forward with schemes for diverse program services, calculated to appeal to a wide range of interests and tastes. High-quality news and current-affairs broadcasting will also be demanded.

“The bill’s safeguards are greater than those which exist. There will be a clear commitment to quality, capable of rigorous enforcement.”

Among professionals in the British TV industry, however, it is widely believed that the Broadcasting Bill is the first phase of an attempt by Margaret Thatcher’s government to bring broadcasters to heel. Her ministers and Tory MPs frequently lament that the TV industry is overrun by liberals and leftists. Thatcher has openly clashed with the BBC over its news coverage of the Falklands War and the Ulster situation; MPs have also attacked ITV for left-wing bias in its current-affairs programs and for the irreverent political satire in the puppet show “Spitting Image.”

Mistrust between Tory governments and the BBC goes back at least 35 years, when commercial TV was first set up--in part as a means of breaking the BBC’s monopoly. But commercial companies established themselves along BBC lines, as skeptical program makers independent of governments.

Many observers see the current Broadcasting Bill as an indirect means of emasculating the BBC. Another of its provisions is for a new commercial channel, and the theory goes that with two commercial channels airing mostly lightweight, mass-appeal shows, the BBC will be forced to downplay its more serious programs--documentaries and investigative journalism--to keep a share of the viewing audience.

Opponents of the bill are also alarmed that the two commercial channels (Channels 3 and 5) will no longer be under any obligation to air documentary or current-affairs programming at peak viewing hours.

“The bill is aimed at destroying the BBC, and marginalizing serious TV,” Terry Jones says. “At the moment, serious current-affairs programs and investigative reporting programs have a decent budget because they’re shown in peak (prime) time. But if they’re pushed off those times, their budgets won’t be as big, and they won’t be able to do the same quality of investigative work.”

Jones cites Thatcher’s well-reported outrage at a Thames documentary “Death on the Rock,” which questioned her government’s motive when British security forces gunned down three suspected IRA terrorists in Gibraltar. “Margaret Thatcher never lets up on what she wants to do,” he adds. “And what she wants to do is soften up television. If she gets her way, it’ll be all game shows and talk shows.”

Even some of Thatcher’s fellow Conservatives in Parliament concede she seems personally motivated on this issue. The moderate Tory MP Julian Critchley, who in a UK Press Gazette article attacked the bill as “a nasty example of vulgarity,” noted that it derived from a white paper on broadcasting, which was in turn the child of a cabinet subcommittee. “It will come as no surprise that the subcommittee was chaired by the prime minister herself,” he added.

Critchley is by no means the only Conservative critic of the bill. Another Tory lawmaker, George Walden, has described it as “contemptible.” Its spirit, he said, “is frankly and irredeemably Philistine.”

Back in his office, Simon Albury is pacing the floor, sorting desperately through piles of newspapers and reflecting on what the Campaign for Quality Television has achieved.

Albury and colleagues have met twice with Mellor to urge amendments to the bill. Mellor described their first meeting as constructive. However, after the second, on Jan. 24, Albury said Mellor had been reluctant to budge on the principal provisions of the bill.

Though several commercial TV companies have spent large sums on full-page newspaper advertisements stressing their own commitment to excellence, the campaign has grabbed the initiative and the visibility in opposing the bill.

“We’re fortunate that some of the people in our campaign have a lot of money and feel strongly about it,” Albury says. Only about 20,000 has come in from donations, but the campaign has been influential and is shrewdly run. “One of the things I like about it,” David Puttnam says, “is that this was the first campaign that didn’t come from a group of people with an angle, as it were. These are people whose jobs are not going to suffer whatever the outcome (of the bill). They’re interested in the purest sense. I also like the way they’ve approached the issue. They’ve taken the government’s argument about wanting choice, quality and competition, and turned it on its head.”

Since September, Albury has been on sabbatical from his job as an in-house producer at Manchester-based Granada, where he has worked for 16 years on current-affairs programs such as “World in Action” and documentaries such as “Sergeant Pepper: It Was 20 Years Ago Today.”

A year ago, he says, “we knew there was going to be a broadcasting white paper (a British government publication summarizing policy that frequently precedes a bill going through Parliament). And there was a general feeling that broadcasting was under threat.” When the white paper was published early last year, the fears of many broadcasting professionals were realized. “I had a project which fell through,” recalls Albury, “so I had plenty of time to work on the campaign. I always feel that my project was the first victim of the white paper.”

He had been approached by George Harrison, who wanted Granada to make a film about the life of Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, who enjoyed a raffish existence in Paris bistros, New York jazz clubs and at Hollywood movie star parties before returning home to perfect his musicianship under a guru’s guidance. Harrison offered to be presenter of the film, which was budgeted at slightly more than 200,000.

But Granada passed on the project. “It was felt,” Albury says, choosing his words with care, “that there would not be enough ‘return’ in making the film, which needed a lot of library footage and extensive shooting in India. Once, no one in TV ever talked about the ‘return.’ But the white paper transformed the way commercial TV companies are run.”

For the campaign, Albury used as his model Charles Winner, a Southern California political campaigner he had seen in action in 1976, influencing public opinion on behalf of the nuclear industry lobby for a statewide proposition.

“He taught me that a campaign starts early,” Albury says. “And it’s true. We kept going for months, and no one took any notice of us. Now, because we’ve been continuing the argument, people are starting to take notice.”

Still, the charges of elitism leveled at the campaign rankle. “They’re nonsense,” Albury says emphatically. “What we are for is a quality system on those channels which are freely available. And a quality system is one which has light entertainment and sports and quiz shows as well as those other things we’re fighting for--like documentaries and current affairs shows and educational programs.

“It’s an incredibly patronizing view of people that says, ‘Oh, it’s a mass audience out there, all they want is game shows.’ That’s not a view we take. It’s the mix we value--and the government aims to destroy that mix.”

Puttnam agrees. “British broadcasting has evolved organically, and you can’t paint any scenario that throws up better programming in terms of quality and diversity. If this bill goes through unamended, we will have to look at a British television ecology that’s been damaged.”

The campaign’s main aims do seem to dovetail neatly with public opinion. It recently commissioned an opinion poll that showed that more than 80% of Britons wanted the cash from commercial TV franchise bids used for making quality TV programs.

Albury punches his hand with his fist as he recites the figure. “Short of the government accepting all our proposals, we’re as well placed as we can be right now,” he says. “And that’s because our ideas are sensible.”