From Fleet Street to television, there’s always a deadline to beat

Arthur Christiansen – known to all in Fleet Street as Chris — is recognised as one of the greatest Editors British journalism has known. He edited the Daily Express for 24 years before being appointed Editorial Director of the paper in 1957. During his association with Beaverbrook Newspapers he built the Express into one of the world’s biggest-selling and best-known daily newspapers. He joined ATV last April as Editorial Adviser.

 

WHAT is the difference between television and journalism?

When I made the happy decision to journey from Fleet Street to Cumberland Place I put the question to Mr Norman Collins, ATV’s Deputy Chairman.

We are both, by the way, children of Fleet Street, for when I joined the Sunday Express in the ‘twenties your Deputy Chairman was a fully paid-up member of the National Union of Journalists making a name for himself on the News Chronicle.

“Newspapers freeze the picture. Television animates it. That’s about it”, said Mr Collins.

It is a first-rate summary, for compare the contents of your daily newspaper with a day’s television programmes:

The News

• Both mediums present news — news of politics, industry, sport, crime and punishment, human and violent happenings. (NOTE: We are always reading headlines blaming TV for crime, but what about the newspapers blaming themselves for causing crime by glorifying sex and sin in a way TV never does?)

• Both mediums devote a good deal of attention to entertainment. (NOTE: Newspapers loftily criticise those quiz show prizes but themselves offer such inducements as £10 a week for life or half a dozen new cars in order to attract readers. I don’t blame them, but why do they blame TV?)

• Both mediums publish fiction — TV with plays and comedy situation shows, newspapers with strip cartoons and jokes. (NOTE: Nothing I have read in the newspapers for years equals in moral value and reforming zeal our own “Probation Officer” or “Emergency — Ward 10”.)

• Both mediums make money out of advertising. (NOTE: Four newspapers have died this year because they did not secure sufficient advertising).

DO I MAKE MY POINT?

Newspapers are completely free and under no form of supervision or censorship.

They may be pornographic (some of them are).

They may be biased politically.

They may suppress news, colour it, print it upside down if they wish.

Nor is there any limit to the amount of advertising they may carry, or the kind of advertising either.

I would not have it otherwise, nor would any thinking person.

But television operates under an altogether different set of rules.

The BBC is responsible to the Postmaster-General. The Commercial Companies are responsible to that same gentleman through the Independent Television Authority.

If a political argument is carried on via television it must be balanced as between one viewpoint and another.

The strictest rules govern references in plays to drink, drugs, sex, suicide and the like, and woe-betide the play producer who infringes. Advertising too is strictly controlled as to volume and content.

Freedom…

It seems incongruous to me that while the newspapers are free to say just what they like about television programmes, there is no right to reply with equal freedom on TV!

For us the “balanced” programme is the only way; we cannot do television propaganda on our own behalf.

Is there much difference between working for television and working for a newspaper?

As a newspaper Editor, I was able to dream up an idea in the morning and see it in my columns the next day. That was a great advantage.

Television can work that fast on news happenings, but not so fast in the development of programmes.

A good documentary takes several weeks, often months, to mature.

Urgency, Too

A play is in rehearsal for up to three weeks before it is ready and, as in the theatre, is in preparation for months if script writing, rewriting, casting and set designing are included.

Yet there is always a tremendous sense of urgency in ATV House.

I was in fact fairly blasted into activity on my first day when I was asked by Mr Lew Grade to give him a hand with a new series called “Deadline Midnight”.

Five Weeks

The series was due on the screen in five weeks from that date and by the time Hugh Rennie the producer and I had made our deadline I felt that I had jumped out of the Fleet Street frying pan into the ATV fire!

The office of ATV’s Managing Director corresponds to the Newspaper Editor’s sanctum.

It is here that Mr Val Parnell and his deputy Mr Lew Grade get things humming long before 9 a.m. every morning.

The office jointly occupied by Editor-in-Chief Val Parnell and Managing Editor Lew Grade can be as lively as my own was on V.E. Day in 1945!

Mirror Tour

In fact I would not mind if it were used as the background set for the new series of “Deadline Midnight” plays which go on the air on Saturday, March 11.

I took Rex Firkin, the new “Deadline” producer, to the Daily Mirror office the other week where Hugh Cudlipp, one of ATV’s directors and Editorial Director of the Mirror group, showed him how the wheels go round in Fleet Street.

“Not all that different from ATV” said Rex.

And I have to agree.