CERTAIN factors have had to be met in our proposals to the Pilkington Committee.

The first one we must face is that the people of this country have spent somewhere around about £1,000,000,000 [£19.7bn in today’s money, allowing for inflation – Ed] in buying themselves TV receivers on the 405-line standard.

The Television Advisory Committee, however, recommend that the 625-line transmission offers worthwhile improvements in quality over the present British 405-line transmission. It has other advantages too.

Therefore it seemed to ATV that we should make what contribution we could to the development of television as a whole in this country over the next ten years.

This Company has said in three Annual Reports in succession that we do not like finding ourselves occupying a monopoly position and that we would welcome competition.

So one of the things we feel is that, as there is an available channel in Band III, it should be opened up for an alternative and competitive independent television service.

Competitive Service

Now we, as a Company, do not favour the idea that this third available channel in Band III should be given to the BBC. The BBC has already said that it would require a licence of at least £5 [£100] if it is to operate an additional service.

We see no reason why the public should pay more and we see every reason why true competition should be introduced in the independent television field.

Monopoly situation

We are perfectly prepared to face competition. But we are going a good deal further than that. Although this answers the objection to a monopoly situation, it doesn’t even begin to take care of the technical advancement to 625 lines. And unless we advance to 625 lines we shall be lagging behind the whole rest of the world.

Therefore we must find some way of taking care of this. There are two ways of doing it.

We are perfectly ready to pay the necessary costs to the ITA for a new set of 625-line transmitters in Bands IV and V to carry a 625-line service as well.

In other words:

1. ATV is ready to face competition.

2. ATV is also ready to institute a 625-line system in Bands IV and V.

That is one proposal. But we don’t by any means limit it to that.

Again we are prepared, within that four hours, to put out one hour of colour per day in Bands IV and V.

This means that, as the situation remains at this moment, ATV is openly inviting competition and we also want to get into 625 lines because the future of television in the country as a whole depends upon it.

Now let’s meet the members

THE Pilkington Committee was set up last autumn to consider the future of radio and television in Britain.

Its terms of reference included: To advise on the services which should in future be provided in the United Kingdom by the BBC and ITA; to recommend whether additional services should be provided by any other organisation: and to propose what financial and other conditions should apply to the conduct of all these services.

The Chairman is industrialist Sir Harry Pilkington and the members include: Mr. H. Collison, General Secretary of the National Union of Agricultural Workers; Mr. Elwyn Davies, secretary of the University of Wales; actress Joyce Grenfell; Richard Hoggart, lecturer in English at Leicester University; Mr. E. P. Hudson, managing director, Scottish Agricultural Industries Ltd.; Mr. J. S. Shields, headmaster of Peter Symonds’ School, Winchester; Dr. R. L. Smith-Rose, Director of Radio Research in the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research; Mrs. Elizabeth Whitley, Vice-Chairman of the Association of Girls’ Clubs and Mixed Clubs; Billy Wright, the footballer; and Professor F. H. Newark, Professor of Jurisprudence, Queen’s University, Belfast.

The post What we’ve told the Pilkington Committee… AND WHY appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

WHAT type of man is the new Chairman of the Company, Sir Robert Renwick, Bart., K.B.E.; stockbroker, company director, pioneer of Independent Television and chairman of the newly formed British Space Development Company?

He has been described in the newspapers as “tough”, “shrewd”, “enthusiastic”, “hard-working” and “a man fanatically interested in what he is going to do next”.

He is 57 — his birthday was the fourth of this month — has five grandchildren, one son and three daughters. He does most of his work from a small office down a lane off Threadneedle Street and spends most of his spare time at his country cottage at Winkfield, Berks.

Most mornings of the week Sir Robert takes a ninepenny ride on the Underground from Marble Arch to the Bank.

BY TUBE

“I go by tube because it is the best means of communication in London at that particular time of the day” he says. On the subject of communication Sir Robert can be considered to have expert knowledge. During the war he was Controller of Communications, Air Ministry and Controller of Communications Equipment, Ministry of Aircraft Production.

He played a big part in setting up the vast radar network which ringed Britain during the vital years of the struggle for supremacy in the air and the radar system later used to such good effect in the offensive by Bomber Command. He was also chairman of the Airborne Forces Committee which directed the fitting out of Britain’s airborne expeditions.

When the war ended Sir Robert returned to the great County of London Electricity Supply Company, founded by his father, Sir Harry Renwick. But these were the days of nationalization and when the Government took over electricity Sir Robert resigned his chairmanship and turned to other interests.

He saw the great potentials of television, both as a form of entertainment and a means of communication. And he resented greatly the monopoly which the Government had vested in the BBC to run the country’s TV service.

Long before ITV was ever talked about in the lobbies at Westminster, long before the term “commercials” ever crept into the vocabulary of the advertising fraternity, Sir Robert and Mr Charles Orr Stanley, who is also an ATV director, campaigned for an independent television service. They received a powerful ally in Mr Norman Collins — now ATV’s Deputy Chairman — who had resigned from the top post in television at the BBC.

FIRST COMPANY

They joined in forming the Associated Broadcasting Development Company in August 1952, the first commercial television company to be created in Britain.

As early as 1947 Sir Robert, as President of the Television Society had urged the Government to give TV more financial support or agree to have commercial programmes on the BBC for a trial period.

When nowadays they casually switch channels for alternative entertainment few viewers remember the tremendous battle the early advocates of ITV had to get them that privilege. Powerful interests were waged against them and at no time could they rally the kind of prestige support which the BBC and anti-ITVers could command.

ACTIVE MEMBER

Sir Robert and his colleagues eventually won the day. ITV came on the air in September 1955 and ATV, the company which had grown out of the original ABDC, helped to provide the first programmes. In the six years of its development Sir Robert has always been an active member. He, Mr Val Parnell, and Mr Lew Grade constitute the executive committee responsible for the day-to-day running of the company.

Now Sir Robert has become the occupant of the chair vacated by Mr Prince Littler, who will continue to serve on the board. He brings to the chairmanship an expert’s knowledge of company affairs. He has twenty other directorships and is chairman of the British Relay Wireless and Television Company Ltd., and the Reliance-Clifton Cables and Industrial Products Co. Ltd.

He is also deputy-chairman of the Institute of Directors, an organization he has helped to build up from a membership of 450 in 1948 to 37,000.

SINCERE BELIEF

He has a sincere belief in the future of television and of ATV in particular. He is a man of vision — a man who has his feet firmly on the ground but has his eyes on the space above us.

“This world of space is to be conquered” he says. “We can only begin to envisage the future that lies ahead in the atmosphere. It is the real Eldorado of the future. The money in space is more than any man ever dreamed of and the future gentlemen of space have a much bigger chance of vast wealth than ever did the adventurers of the Hudson Bay and East India Companies.

“So far as television is concerned we are now only at the bow and arrow stage. Satellites 22,300 miles high will, sooner or later, make world-wide television possible.

“There is no question at all that space communications will come. The language of space communications will be English — and, if we will take the initiative, the centre of communications will continue to be England”.

A BIG POWER

Sir Robert sees this country as a big power in the realms above the clouds providing we grasp our opportunities.

With so much business to attend to, Sir Robert finds little time for relaxation but most nights he drives home to his cottage where he reads the papers, watches television and then goes off for a walk in the fields with his poodle Benjamin.

Sir Robert has decided views about television. He has been very impressed with the work of the company’s engineers and technical staff whose recent exhibition he visited. He thinks technically the industry may have gone ahead of its programmes.

Programmes, he believes, could do with a good deal of improvement. Of personal preferences he says:

“I like Westerns and plays that don’t leave you in mid-air when they end. I believe that most viewers like a good story told in dramatic form without the author trying to be too clever.

ORIGINAL MATERIAL

“Outside Broadcasts, such as our recent visit to the circus, make wonderful television and sport is excellent to watch. I’m not overfond of old films as I think we should produce more original material for television. Series such as “Danger Man” are fine.”

As for the 625-405 line controversy, Sir Robert has had his mind made up longer than most people have had television sets. When TV was restarted after the war he supported Lord Cherwell in the view that it was wrong to go back to 405.

Sir Robert gives the impression of being a man who can completely lake command of any given situation, a man of integrity and purpose who would neither suffer fools gladly nor be impressed by the charlatan. His experience in commerce and industry has convinced him of the great value of concerted effort.

TEAMWORK COUNTS

“It is teamwork that counts — and will count in the future of ATV” he says. “If you are talking to men you know and have faith in, you can get something done in half an hour that would take all day to accomplish with virtual strangers. You must have a good team and inspire them — make them feel that they are doing something worthwhile.”

The post Sir Robert Renwick looks ahead at the Company’s future appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

THE Midlands administrative staff move into new offices this month.

The company has acquired the entire ground floor of a new multi-storey building in Edmund Street, Birmingham.

The new offices will be light and airy. They will also use the Open Plan principle which has proved so successful at ATV House in London.

Muzak has been installed to provide background music and the accommodation provided is the Midlands match to London’s ATV House in Great Cumberland Place.

Although the move has not been made yet — final touches are still going on — the building was officially opened last month by Alderman Garnet Boughton, Lord Mayor of Birmingham, by cutting a length of video tape at the entrance.

The ceremony was attended by Mr Prince Littler, Chairman of ATV; Mr Norman Collins (Deputy Chairman); Mr Val Parnell (Managing Director) and Mr Lew Grade (Deputy Managing Director).

The company’s London delegation were welcomed by Mr Philip Dorté, the Midlands Controller.

After the opening 150 Midlands dignitaries were entertained to lunch at the Grand Hotel. The Lord Mayor congratulated the company on its success and referred to television as “Another star in the firmament of our city”.

CHAIRMAN’S REPLY

In reply to the Lord Mayor’s speech, Mr Littler recalled that it was nearly five years since Independent Television had been inaugurated in the Midlands.

“In those five years ATV’s audience in the Midlands has grown from a handful in 1956 to well over four million today”, he said.

“Nowadays, 71 per cent of the Midland television audience with a choice of programme elects to view ATV in preference to the BBC, whose share is 29 per cent”.

Mr Littler added that although Mr Dorté the Midlands Controller met so many local people, and members of the Board visited Birmingham regularly, this was the first occasion for four years his Board of Directors, as a whole, had played host to a reception gathering of Midland civic, ecclesiastical and ambassadorial leaders.

ALPHA PROGRESS

Meanwhile, work continues on the new Alpha studios. Here, incidentally, the workers probably down tools more often than any other builders in Britain. And it’s all on account of TV.

“We had to issue programme bulletins to the foreman to enable him to call a stop to all noise while we are on the air”, Frank Beale, General Manager of Alpha, told me. While noise is a headache for the television staff, office accommodation for the production staff is at a premium too. But as soon as the new building is completed (August is the target month) there’ll be six floors of space with comfortable accommodation for everyone. But the building operations haven’t always been inconvenient.

SPECIAL FEATURES

One of ATV’s best “Lunch Box” shows was actually done on the building site. Special features in the new Alpha building will be: a control area on the top floor; a canteen covering the whole second floor and electric underfloor heating.

“We’ll turn on the current at night, and off in the day-time. This should keep the building comfortably warm all day” said chief engineer David Whittle.

The post New offices for midlands appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

Russian viewers to see our O.B.

YURI FOKIN, Russia’s top television commentator, will face an ATV camera next month to introduce the first live outside ITV broadcast from Britain to the Soviet Union.

An ATV outside broadcast unit will be covering the Soviet State Fair at Earls Court, which will open on July 7.

The Russians are sending their own TV producer to direct the unit and the whole operation is part of our reciprocal deal with the Soviet State Committee for Radio and Television.

The first part of the exchange took place last month when British viewers saw our coverage of the British Trade Fair in Moscow.

The Moscow relay was introduced by Mr Norman Collins, Deputy Chairman, from the Foley Street studio.

Originally, the introduction was planned to last four minutes but half way through — since Moscow wasn’t ready — a chalked “Keep Going” notice was put in front of the camera. And Mr Collins kept going — for eight and a half minutes.

Then came the dramatic moment for James Ferman, who directed the relay, to say “Cue Moscow” … and ATV’s first live link with the Soviet capital was on the air.

Our 90 minutes relay also made TV history through the enterprise of ATV commentator Shaw Taylor. Shaw pushed his way through the crowd with a microphone to obtain a TV scoop by interviewing Mr Kruschev.

This was the first time any TV commentator had secured an off-the-cuff comment from the Russian Premier.

The ATV team in Moscow were Bill Ward, Productions Controller; his P.A. Pam Matthews; Len Mathews, Assistant Technical Controller, Communications and Outside Broadcasts; Stephen Wade, Head of Outside Broadcasts; his P.A. Doreen Ayres; floor manager, Bill Glaze and commentators, Shaw Taylor and Reginald Bosanquet of ITN.

ATV’s Russian programmes included a ballet performance direct from the famous Bolshoi Theatre directed by Bill Ward.

Our mobile recording unit, with recording engineer, John Harrison and rigger driver, Cyril Penfold, were also in action recording documentary material for future programmes.

One of these projects has been provisionally entitled “Gorki-street, U.S.S.R.” and will be a Russian equivalent to “Main-street, U.S.A.” in which we depicted the lives of typical American families.

ELSTREE VISIT

The details of the programme we are sending to Russia next month were arranged during a visit to the Elstree Studio Centre and ATV House by a team of Russian television experts.

This was the first time a Russian television delegation had visited any ITV studios.

Heading the delegation was Mr Konstantin Kuzakov, Deputy Chairman of the Soviet State Committee for Radio and Television.

His colleagues were Mr Yuri Fokin, Head of Russian Television News and Mr S. J. Martsenitsen [sic: usually transliterated as S. I. Martsenitsen – Ed], Deputy Head of the Main Department of the Soviet Ministry of Communications.

COMPLETE TOUR

They made a complete tour of the Elstree Studio Centre accompanied by Bill Ward, Stephen Wade, Len Mathews and Technical Controller, Terence Macnamara.

The Russians were particularly interested in the control rooms of Studios C and D and the advanced technical equipment designed by ATV’s own engineering staff.

In the evening the Russians were entertained at a party at ATV House by Mr Norman Collins, Deputy Chairman; Mr Val Parnell, Managing Director; Mr Lew Grade, Deputy Managing Director and Lord Bessborough, Director.

Mr Kuzakov said they would like to prepare a documentary programme on Lenin’s life in London and some kind of musical programme.

His immediate concern, however, was the coverage of the Soviet State Fair next month.

The post Moscow here we come appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

ANY journey to Moscow must have an element of excitement, as one never knows just what to expect, and also there is always so much to learn about the Russians.

The trips made in connection with ATV’s live programme exchange deal have had the added excitement of the pioneering feeling, for, whatever stories have been written in the Press, ATV has truly pioneered this television break-through.

The first trip, in company with Lord Bessborough [Frederick Edward Neuflize “Eric” Ponsonby, 10th Earl of Bessborough – Ed], Mr Norman Collins, Messrs [Terence] Macnamara and [Stephen] Wade, was placed in what now appears the “dim and distant past” of December 1960, and although lasting less than a week, the stay in Moscow enabled us to learn a little of the Muscovite, and “what makes him tick”.

As a result of our business meetings, we made a number of social contacts at varying levels.

Over meals in our hotel with these “new found friends” we were able to find out how and where they live; their likes and dislikes; and we of course reciprocated.

We were rather surprised to find that they were very like us in many ways, and even more surprising, they even looked like us!

Food and Drink

Most Muscovites live in rather large apartment houses, State-controlled of course. The apartment rents are paid to the Government, and there appears to be no choice of location. As a result, the intellectual professor may live next door to the crossing sweeper, who will, incidentally, be a woman!

The Muscovite is very fond of his food and drink, and in our hotel eating and drinking appeared to be the favourite pastime. There was in addition a small four or five piece band playing what sounded suspiciously like capitalist music, to which the clientele danced western foxtrots, quicksteps, etc.

THE modern Moscow young lady appears to have discovered that beauty preparations and stylish clothes have a desirable effect, for we saw much evidence of lipstick and jewellery, being worn with dresses which were prettier than we would have expected.

There were, of course, still a number of people attired in more utilitarian clothes, but we suspected that they were slightly envious of their better dressed neighbours.

We also had the opportunity of a quick shopping expedition in Gorki Street, where the largest shops are to be found. Most of the shops are big and imposing as buildings, but take on the appearance of rather sombre “self-service stores” inside, where one finds a perpetual fur-hatted crowd all trying to reach the counter at the same time.

The Gum Store

One large multiple store by the inspiring name of “Gum” [Государственный универсальный магазин, Gosudarstvennyy universalnyy magazin, State Department Store] dominates a large area close to Red Square.

This is a most remarkable building which I can only describe as similar to the conventional prison block, because it consists mainly of balconies around the inner wall, up to I believe three stories, connected horizontally and vertically by steps and bridges.

Colour TV

We were further privileged to be given a conducted tour of the Moscow Television Centre, which, in addition to the normal studios for black and white transmission, houses a studio from which a colour programme is transmitted on most evenings.

This colour service is in the form of a test, as the programme time is rather limited, and we understood that only people intimately concerned with television had a colour receiver.

The senior engineer of the colour studio was, like a number of other senior staff — a woman.

We enjoyed a lengthy discussion in English and Russian, illustrated with little drawings, into the niceties of the various television waveforms.

ON leaving Moscow, to our surprise and pleasure, we were given presents of vodka, caviar and, believe it or not, Russian perfume called “Red Moscow” from our hosts, and I think we were all agreed that we liked them (our hosts).

The post This is Moscow! appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

WHAT IS THE fasted growing show business organisation in Great Britain? The answer must surely be Associated Television. For this company, headed by such entertainment veterans as Val Parnel [sic throughout – it should be Parnell – Ed], Prince Littler and Lew Grade, is now about the strongest in the business.

In the five years commercial television has been established in this country, the rate of ATVs progress has been fantastic. With hardly any experience in the television medium, the Parnel-Littler-Grade combination had, within two years, established an ascendancy over the other contractors in the amount of programmes bought and sold.

Profit

By 1956 the company, through its affiliated production organisation, Incorporated Television Production Company, was sponsoring more TV production than anyone else in the business, and a year later was able to announce that its profit for the period ending May, 1958, was over £4,000,000 [£79m in today’s money allowing for inflation].

Since then ATV has negotiated a deal with Jack Wrather, which has made the company the third largest distributor of television programmes in the world, and, through the purchase of ITPC, strong enough to guarantee a minimum of five television series a year, including the most expensive TV production to be made in Great Britain, “The Four Just Men,” with Jack Hawkins, Dan Dailey and Vittorio de Sica.

Holdings

ATV has also acquired large holdings in Australian radio and television stations, giving them a greater outlet in that country than probably any other television distribution company.

Moreover, ATV has gone into the record business and has purchased a substantial interest in Pye Records, Ltd., the subsidiary of the television and radio manufacturers.

This week Parnel was flying to the States to sign up some of the big American stars who have previously appeared in his London Palladium shows for record contracts with the Pye-ATV recording company. While he is away his colleague Lew Grade, deputy managing director of the company, will be busy with new programmes, some of them bought from America to the other contractors, in readiness for the longer viewing hours which ITV anticipates will be approved by the government for January 1, 1959.

Campaign

The next stage in ATV’s campaign for more power and profit in television will be to try to speed up government approval for the third network being placed at the disposal of the ITV companies. Prince Littler, chairman of ATV, was the first programme contractor to go on record in favour of the third network and requested the company to be given London for five days under any proposed changes instead of its present schedule of London weekends and Midlands weekdays.

Compete

Thus the company would be prepared to compete on equal terms with the present weekday contractor, Associated Rediffusion. Chairman of this company, Paul Adorian, has gone on record rejecting the third network at the present time because of the economic and financial difficulties in the way of its operation.

ATV is also interested in the possibility of commercial sound radio, should it come about in this country. A company has been formed headed by one of the ATV directors, Norman Collins, with a view to operating a commercial radio station if the government gives its approval when the BBC’s charter comes up for consideration in 1960.

Liaison

While ATV has made no move towards feature film production, on the other hand there is a very close liaison between Lew Grade and Parnel and the Eros brothers, Phil and Sid Hyams, through ITPC, of which all were directors, which has led to a number of medium-size British pictures adapted from ATV’s television successes. Such productions as “The Mystery of Planet X” and “The Trollenberg Terror” are two serials which have been produced as feature films by Eros. Another successful serial which is being made into a feature by that company is “Emergency [–] Ward 10.”

Doubtlessly, if feature production becomes more profitable, one of the first steps of ATV will be to set up a company to secure another slice of show business profit.

Already its American partner, Jack Wrather, has been able to combine a successful TV distribution programme with film production. Now that he is associated with ATV in Television Programmes [sic – Programs] of America, Inc., the third largest distributionproduction in the world, the possibility that the organisation will also handle cinema features is not remote.

In other words, ATV has become a world-wide show business entity whose future progress seems at this time of writing to be limitless.

The post The sky’s the limit for Associated TeleVision appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

PHILIP DORTÉ, ATV’s Midlands Controller, was only 22 when he was offered a job by the General Electric Company of America to work on the development of radio at their Schenectady works in New York.

From Downside he had gone to Cambridge but finding no provision there for the study of electrical engineering he attended Faraday House instead.

After reading a paper on radio to students at the Institute of Electrical Engineers, the young Dorté was approached by a member of his audience.

“Would you like to work for us in New York?” asked the G.E.C. man [sic: American General Electric was known as G.E.; the unrelated British General Electric was G.E.C. – Ed]. The young radio engineer jumped at the chance.

At New York, however, his sense of humour at once got him into trouble.

“Do you suffer from moral turpitude?” asked the immigration official.

“I said ‘Yes'” recalls Mr. Dorté “and I spent the night on Ellis island. The next morning the G.E.C. people had to come and get me out”.

In America he worked on the development of both TV and talking pictures and when his company secured the contract to build Toronto’s first high powered radio station, Mr. Dorté was put in charge.

While in Canada, he had the idea of approaching the French Government to secure a concession for broadcasting commercial radio programmes to Britain.

The French agreed and Mr. Dorté formed Radio Publicity Ltd. — in opposition to Mr. John Reith, as he then was, and his British Broadcasting Company.

“I suppose, I must have been the first Englishman to see the possibilities of commercial radio” he recalls.

“These were sponsored programmes and we had plenty of advertisers too — Black Cat cigarettes; Revelation suitcases and Grosvenor House Hotel…”

Transmissions were beamed to London on long wave. Tom Ronald, BBC sound radio producer, was one of the announcers.

Soon after this, Captain Leonard Plugge obtained a similar concession to operate Radio Normandy — on medium wave.

“Captain Plugge suggested an amalgamation” says Mr. Dorté, “I was agreeable but the rest of the Board were against it. I resigned.”

From commercial radio, Mr. Dorté switched to talking pictures. Basil Dean was just starting Ealing Studios and with his knowledge gained in America, Mr. Dorté was put in charge of the sound recording side.

From Ealing he joined Michael Balcon at Gaumont British, working in the old Lime Grove studios, now used by the BBC.

“I went on location abroad for all the big British films of that time” he says “This kept me out of the country for months on end. My wife took a dim view of this.

“Then one day I met an old friend of mine, John Hytch at the BBC, He told me the BBC were just about to start a television service and why didn’t I join them?”

Mr. Dorté thus became the BBC’s first TV Head of Outside Broadcasts. And for the next few years everything he organised was a FIRST.

“The first O.B. was the Coronation of George VI and Queen Elizabeth in May 1936″ he says. “Then there was Wimbledon, the Boat Race, a show a week from the London Coliseum and both the 38 and 39 Derbies.”

In the Spring of 1939, Mr. Done joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve. It was while he was doing an O.B. from the London Zoo that his wife came round with his calling-up papers.

With his TV and engineering background, he was a natural for radar.

Demobilised with the rank of Group Captain, he was awarded the OBE (Military Division) for his services.

As BBC TV expanded, Mr. Dorté switched over to films, becoming Head of TV Films in 1949.

“It was a constant battle with the film industry” he recalls “I fought them all the time. Finally I told them that if they wouldn’t co-operate with us over the question of newsreel coverage, we would start our own.

“They roared with laughter. They reminded me that cinema newsreels were fast going out of business. They said I didn’t stand a chance.”

Events proved Mr. Dorté right. He even put out a better service than the cinemas — by providing the BBC with a different newsreel daily as against the twice a week offering in the cinemas. And he started a Children’s TV Newsreel too.

In 1954 he quit the BBC to join Mr. Norman Collins as a senior executive of the original Associated Broadcasting Development Company which later merged with Moss Empires and other interests to become ATV.

In the early days of ITV he was seconded to Independent Television News for a year, then — as he puts it — Val Parnell asked him if he’d start the Company’s Midlands Operation.

“I’m still starting it” he says.

The post He pioneered commercial radio appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

TERENCE C. MACNAMARA, ATV’s Technical Controller, has worked in television and radio since the pioneer days.

He joined the BBC engineering department in 1923 and saw the building up of both the BBC sound and television services. Today he is in charge of ATV’s 179-strong engineering department.

At the age of 56, he has seen the growth of the industry since the earliest days. He proudly remembers showing Marconi around the BBC’s Savoy Hill studios in 1923 and Lord Rutherford around Alexandra Palace in 1936. He also worked with James Logie Baird [sic: John – Ed].

Baird, he remembers as “a lovable man of great vision — impractical, though, and with no idea of money.”

Mr Macnamara was responsible for the complete installation at Alexandra Palace after he moved to the television section of the BBC engineering design and installation department, of which he ultimately became head.

In 1951, he joined Norman Collins in High Definition Films Ltd., making electronic films with Pye Ltd. at Highbury. Mr Macnamara has chalked up some notable “firsts” during his career.

He was in charge of the first television outside broadcast ever carried out at the coronation of George VI, and also supervised the first TV outside broadcast of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race from a launch following the boats.

When ATV started there were only five months to get the service going.

“It was an enormous strain on the technical people. We worked all day and all night. The job was planned by about three people.

“Today we are using a similar team to plan the great new Elstree studio scheme”.

During the war Mr Macnamara worked for the BBC team used by the Air Ministry. Their job was radio counter-measures such as distorting German beacon signals to throw their aviators off course.

Mr Macnamara helped to deal with a German mystery voice that interrupted London programmes. The voice, which the technicians called “Funf” came from a transmitter on the continent. He and his colleagues had to devise a way of blotting out the German signals.

Looking to the future, Mr Macnamara says: “I’m a supporter of the introduction of the 625-line system. I’ve seen colour TV too, both in America and Russia, and we keep a close eye on developments in that direction.

“I believe young people with a bent for engineering should be encouraged to go in for the technical side. We started a trainee scheme straight away at ATV and nearly all the original trainees are now in posts of considerable responsibility.”

Mr Macnamara has been married for 33 years and lives with his wife, Kathleen in a “minute Regency terrace house in St John’s Wood.” But at weekends he goes to his country house in the village of Cadbury, Devonshire.

The post His first O.B. – a Coronation! appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

the International Group spanning TV, Theatres, Theatrical Costumiers, Films, Music Publishing, Records and Tapes, Property, Insurance, Ansafone and Merchandising

‘Pretax profits are up by 81% to all time record’

Review of the year

The results speak for themselves. The pre-tax profit figure is £11,161,000 [£32.3m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed], the highest in the year history of the company, and shows an increase of 81% over 1976.

The improvement in the Group Profit may be attributed in the main to two causes: first, to the resurgence in television advertising revenue and secondly, to the very substantial contribution made this year by the Corporation’s film division.

I can also confirm that all the main divisions within the Group are currently thriving and look well set for the future.

Directors

ATV Corporation

Mr. Jack Gill, C.B.E., already my Deputy Chairman, has, in addition, been appointed Deputy Chief Executive of the Corporation. Mr. Gill’s new designation thus gives public recognition to the part which he has played in building up ATV’s prosperity.

Mr. Norman Collins, who has held the position of Deputy Chairman from the inception of the Company, now gives up that post, but I am most happy to say he has agreed to remain a member of the Board.

I have been most happy, also, to appoint Mr. Louis Benjamin my other Deputy Chairman.

ATV Network

It is a condition of the franchise granted by the Independent Broadcasting Authority that 70 should be the maximum age for Directors of the licensed Companies.

Accordingly, while remaining Chairman and Chief Executive of Associated Television Corporation – the Group which embraces all the subsidiary activities – I shall be relinquishing my Chairmanship of the ATV Network Division of the Group on 1st October, 1977. I am delighted to say, however, that the Board of ATV Network has, with the full approval of the Authority, unanimously elected me to the post of President, and I am also fortunate in having Mr. Jack Gill, already my Deputy Chairman at ATV Network, ready to succeed me as Network Chairman.

Under the same age-rule of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, Mr. Norman Collins, a founder-member of the Company, will be retiring from the Network Board.

Television

As a result of improved transmitter coverage, ATV Network now serves an area extending from Stoke on Trent in the north to Oxford in the south, and from Hereford in the west to Peterborough in the east.

Due to the upturn in television advertising revenue, the profit of ATV Network, before tax, was £4,281,000 [£23.9m] against £1,945,000 [£10.9m] for 1976.

The financial revival of ATV Network should be seen against the background of the results for the year 1974/75 when the profit before tax had dropped to £1,677,000 [£9.4m].

The urgent and necessary economies which were introduced were not, however, at any time allowed to impinge on direct expenditure upon programmes.

In the result, the high standards of the service were fully maintained, and the year saw the presentation of such notable programmes as the six-part “Moses The Lawgiver”, and the irresistible, 24-episode series “The Muppet Show” – 1977 winner of the Golden Rose of Montreux Award.

The Annan Report

The long-awaited Annan Report on the future of broadcasting has now been published and I must thank Lord Annan for his welcome acceptance of the basic principles of Independent Television.

I must, nevertheless, admit to being disappointed that the Committee did not see fit to recommend that the available – and at the moment, entirely unutilised – fourth Channel should be allocated to the IBA.

Film Production

In my last two annual statements, I have been careful to draw attention to the magnitude of borrowings necessary to finance large scale film production and the inevitable time-lag between outlay and reward.

That reward, in very considerable measure, is now beginning to accrue with a contribution of £2,908,000 [£16.2m] this year.

Zeffirelli’s majestic production of “Jesus of Nazareth” was first shown in this country on Palm Sunday, 3 April 1977. It achieved immediate success both at home and abroad. In Britain, the audiences amounted to 21 million viewers; in the USA to over 91 million and in Italy 84% of the viewing public saw the film.

I have no hesitation in saying that this film, representing ATV’s largest single film-production investment, will prove an asset of inestimable worth to the company and provide a valuable annuity over the years to come.

Among the Film Division’s other successful releases, “The Return of the Pink Panther” has proved particularly outstanding. Further investment in film production is currently being undertaken in the light of up-to-date practical experience of the international market.

The overseas interests of ATV have during the past decade been steadily expanding. In consequence, the Group is now a large-scale earner of foreign currency.

Theatres

The Stoll-Moss Theatre Group enjoyed a most satisfactory year. Included amongst its outstanding achievements are the record-breaking “A Chorus Line” at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the musical hit, “Ipi Tombi”, at Her Majesty’s Theatre.

Moreover, the Group’s Shaftesbury Avenue theatres – Queens, Globe, Lyric and Apollo – all showed to best advantage, with long-running performances by such of our leading actors as Sir Alec Guinness and Sir John Mills, and with the work of many award-winning dramatists.

The twelve months at the London Palladium proved equally stimulating and successful. The new international star policy launched with Frank Sinatra in 1975, brought before the public such artists as Sammy Davis Jnr., Julie Andrews, Bing Crosby and Shirley Maclaine on her triumphant return visit; and the box office demand became overwhelming.

Music Publishing, Records and Tapes

Music publishing produced record profits with an increase of 21% against the previous year and there is every indication that the current year should again make a major contribution to the Group’s finances.

The decision has been taken to start new companies in the major territories outside USA and Switzerland, where we already have our own music publishing subsidiaries. We have therefore acquired a controlling interest in Allo Music in France and investigations are proceeding with the object of establishing companies in Germany and Italy.

The results of the Pye Records Group show improvement over the previous year despite a non-recurrent setback in the company’s trading in the United States.

Among the Pye artists who won international acclaim were the Brotherhood of Man with their 1976 Eurovision Song Contest winner “Save Your Kisses For Me”, and Max Bygraves and Lena Martell both earned top places in the overseas Charts.

Other Activities

It is a remarkable achievement that Bentray Investments should have increased its profits by nearly 20% in a year which was a notably difficult one for property companies.

A complete re-organisation has been undertaken at Ansafone and the new range of equipment being offered shows every sign of being able to meet the steadily growing demand.

Bermans & Nathans, our theatrical costumiers, are now trading profitably.

The Marbarch Insurance group is steadily expanding its business overseas and the whole outlook is most promising.

ATV Licensing has most enterprisingly expanded its activities. In addition to the wide range of “Space 1999”, a forthcoming range based on “The Muppet Show” and our own long established “Rupert Bear” should ensure another good year.

Tribute to Staff

Thanks are due to all directors and staff of the Group’s companies at home and abroad for their staunch support throughout the year. The growth of ATV is something of which we can all feel justly proud.

Group results at a glance

Year to 27 March 1977

Turnover rose from £69.2 million [£386m] to £89.3 million [£498.7m] an increase of 29%. After paying an increased television levy of £6.03 million [£33.7m] against £2.73 million [£15.3m] in 1976, the profit before taxation was £11,161,000 [£62.3m] (1976 – £6,151,000 [£34.4m]). Taxation accounted £4.75 million [£26.5m] (£3.17 million [£17.7m]), leaving a profit after tax of £6.41 million [£35.8m] (1976 – £2.98 million [£16.6m]). Earnings per ‘A’ stock unit were 15.32p [85.49p], an increase of 118.5% over for last year.

An interim dividend of 2.275p [12.69p] per ‘A’ stock unit, together with a final dividend of 3.099p [17.29p] to be paid on 3 October, makes a total of 5.374p [29.99p] per ‘A’ stock unit – the maximum permitted.

After paying these dividends, the profit retained in the business amounted to £3.82 million [£21.3m].

The post ATV financial results: 1977 appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

REASONS FOR DECLINE IN PROFITS

LEVY ON TURNOVER A DISTORTION OF TAXATION PRINCIPLE

GOOD NEWS REGARDING SECOND INDEPENDENT CHANNEL

SIR ROBERT RENWICK ON EFFECT OF NEW AGREEMENTS

The 8th annual general meeting of Associated Television Limited will be held on 26th August, 1963, at 12 noon at ATV House, Great Cumberland Place. London W.1

The following is the statement of the chairman. Sir Robert Renwick, Bt., B.E. circulated with the report and accounts for eleven months ended 31st March, 1963:-

Your Directors decided that it was in the interest of the Company to change its year-end date from 30th April to 31st March and the Accounts now before you are, therefore, for a period of eleven months to 31st March, 1963.

You will see from the Consolidated Profit and Loss Account that the profit of the Group before taxation is £3,405,714 [£59.1m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] for the eleven months as compared with £5,038,204 [£87.5m] for the previous twelve months. This profit is after charging all expenses including depreciation. Taxation based on the profit for the period amounts to £1,556,005 [£27m] and, after making allowance for this and for the interests of outside shareholders, there is left a profit of £1,860,135 [£32.3m] attributable to ATV

The amount retained in subsidiary companies is £249,706 [£4.3m] leaving £1,610,429 [£28m]. Arising from the change in the Parent Company’s year-end date, certain provisions for taxation, made in previous years, amounting £1,546,000 [£26.8m] are no longer required and, together with the unappropriated balance brought forward from last year of £2,424,909 [£42m], make available for appropriation now an amount of £5,581,338 [£96.9m].

An interim dividend of 20% has already been paid and your Directors now recommend a final dividend of 21.25% making a total of 41.25% for the eleven months. This is equivalent to 45% for the full year as against 60% paid in respect of the year to 30th April, 1962. If this recommendation is approved and after transferring a further £500,000 [£8.7m] to Investment Reserve there will be left a balance of £3,906,486 [£67.8m] in the Accounts of the Parent Company.

Balance Sheet Items

Turning to the Consolidated Balance Sheet it will be noted that the Investment Reserve has been used to offset the Goodwill arising on consolidation. Current Assets have increased during the period by £518,077 [£9m] to £8,558,556 [£149m] whereas Current Liabilities have decreased by £816,170 [£14.2m] to £7,440,500 [£129.2m]. It will be noted, however, that Advances from Bankers have increased by £1,781,020 [£30.9m] to £3,018,618 [£52.4m]; this is in the main due to increased investment in the Group’s Fixed and Current Assets and the payment of an exceptionally heavy taxation liability in respect of the financial year 1960/61.

In deciding to change the year-end date from 30th April to 31st March, your Board recognised that this would inevitably mean the exclusion of the profit deriving from one of the more remunerative months in the calendar. Had the trading results for April been included, the profit figures would have been substantially higher.

A decline in profits would nevertheless have been revealed. This decline is due to a variety of causes. In the first place, there has been a drop in revenue from advertising of approximately 5%. Secondly, certain of the subsidiary companies have, as anticipated, made losses in the early stages of their development. Thirdly, the Company was feeling the full effects of the new agreements with Equity and the Musicians’ Union and, to a lesser extent, of a new agreement with the Variety Artistes’ Federation. Some indication of the increases which the Company had to meet in programme expenditure may be gauged by citing a few examples. The settlement with Equity on which work was resumed on 6th April, 1962, provided a new minimum fee for an actor on a networked programme of 36 guineas [£37.80 in decimal, £656 with inflation]; the old fee was 10 guineas [£10.50/£182]. The settlement with the Variety Artistes Federation reached on 17th November, 1961, provided for a new minimum fee of £30 [£521] for a networked programme as against 10 guineas: the settlement with the Musicians’ Union reached on 10th April, 1962, gave a minimum fee of £18 [£312] for a networked programme as against £6 [£104] under the previous arrangement.

Threat of the Television Bill

Historically, the year 1962/63 will be remembered by your Board as one of many and major preoccupations, chiefly concerned with the future of Independent Television in general and with the future of this Company in particular.

In June, 1962, the Report of the Pilkington Committee, which was appointed in July, 1960, was at last published. This Report, which proved to be hostile towards Independent Television as a whole, recommended the total abolition of the system as we know it to-day and the substitution for it of a system whereby the Independent Television Authority was to plan the programmes, arrange for their networking and for the selling of the advertising time – leaving Companies, such at ATV, to play the role merely of programme suppliers to a Government Authority.

It is to the credit of the Government that the main recommendations of the Pilkington Report were rejected. Nevertheless, when, on 20th December, 1962, the Postmaster-General presented his Television Bill it was immediately apparent that the atmosphere Pilkington was still pervasive. For, although it was recommended that the Programme Companies should continue as full operators of the television service in their various areas, it was laid down in the Bill that the Authority should be able to specify not only which programmes should be networked but at what price the originator should be required to supply them.

Nor was this all. The financial provisions in the Bill included a clause empowering the Postmaster-General to impose additional charges on the Programme Companies by way of a tax on profits deriving not only from the operation of a television licence but from the operation of any subsidiary company or companies.

It was because your Board felt that such a discriminatory tax was most improper that we took action. First, I wrote to shareholders warning them of the gravity of the situation; then, on behalf of your Board, I issued a number of statements to the Press; finally, I sought, and obtained, an interview with the Postmaster-General and corresponded with him. Throughout I made it my business to see that Members on both sides of Parliament were informed of the true facts of the situation

I mention these matters because in certain quarters much play has been made of a Television Lobby and the activities of a so-called Television “pressure group”. Those who have been most vociferous in expressing their disapproval have completely ignored the fact that within Independent Television there are nearly as many points of view as there are Companies, and that it was only in respect of certain limited objectives that there was any measure of agreement at all. This state of affairs seems to me healthy. democratic and in the true spirit of free enterprise.

So far as ATV is concerned I would regard it as a total dereliction of my duty as Chairman if, faced by a situation which could obviously be grievously harmful to your Company, I had not exerted every legitimate effort to induce the Government to revise its thinking.

The Board, and shareholders in general, have every reason to be grateful to your Deputy Chairman, Mr. Norman Collins, for the unsparing and untiring work which he devoted to securing improvement in the Television Bill.

An Ill-conceived Levy

Not that our efforts were entirely successful. Quite the contrary, in fact. For on 25th April, 1963, the Postmaster General suddenly withdrew his proposed omnibus tax on profits and substituted for it an arbitrary – and I think thoroughly ill-conceived – levy on turnover. In my view the levy is entirely mis-applied. The purpose of a turnover tax, as it is usually called. is to extract money for the Exchequer at the various stages where profit has accrued in a developing economic process – say between the suppliers of raw materials, the manufacturers, the wholesalers and the retailers. To attempt to apply it to an industry such as Independent Television which has only one operation – the earning money from advertisements to enable it to put out a free service to the public – is clearly a distortion of this taxation principle.

In order to substantiate our case financial statements were made freely available to the Postmaster General and to his colleagues. These statements clearly indicated one thing, viz., that a levy on turnover would affect some Companies far worse than others – your own Company, I regret to say, worst of all.

Why? For the simple and inescapable reason that ATV with its dual and divided seven-day operation in London and the Midlands has two lots of overheads, two lots of studios, two lots of offices, two lots of programme costs and so forth. The revenue – now to be subject to the levy – earned from this dual operation is no larger, and may indeed be smaller, than the revenue earned by a Company operating a five-day service in one area only with one lot of overheads, one lot of studios, one lot of offices, one lot of programme costs and so forth.

The Postmaster General has now said that he will look to the Authority to iron out these inequalities by imposing a system of differential rentals as between the various Companies. It may well prove to be the case, however, that the inequalities are so great that it is only by some measure of re-allocation of days or areas that the Authority will be able to seek to redress the balance.

Competition Achieved

Nevertheless, if your Board has failed in some of its efforts, there is cause for congratulation on one matter of major importance. On 27th June the Postmaster General announced in the House that by 1966, when there should be not fewer than 1½ million television sets in London capable of receiving a new 625-line service in UHF, he would authorise a second Independent Channel in the main areas. That is good news indeed and does much to remove the sourness of a singularly long and frustrating series of negotiations. It represents the culmination of a campaign that your Company alone has fought from the very beginning of Independent Television. Over the years we have repeated in Annual Report after Annual Report that we have never believed that a single Independent Television Service could comply with the basic requirements of the 1954 Television Act that “there is adequate competition to supply programmes between a number of programme contractors independent of each other both as to finance and also to control.” Within a single service the Companies inevitably tend to be complementary rather than competitive. Your own Board, moreover, has always felt that the advertisers. on whom the revenue to support Independent Television depends, should enjoy the freedom of buying in a competitive rather than a monopolistic market.

As the pioneer Company in advocating competition, ATV looks to play its full part over the years in the expanding field of Independent Television.

In the meantime. and for the immediate future. we have concentrated our efforts on making the most effective contribution that can be made in both the areas in which, under the terms of the licence, we are required to provide programmes. The success of London programming at the week-ends will be familiar to all the viewers who live within range of the Croydon transmitter.

4,000,000 Audience in the Midlands

Not that we regard our Midland audience as in any way less important. For those who do not live within the area served by the Lichfield transmitter I should report that for the first time our audiences have topped the four million mark. Many notable figures from all political parties and from all walks of life have appeared in programmes. These have included the Prime Minister, both when he addressed the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce early this year and also when he made his important announcement on leadership only last month at Wolverhampton. In such regional programmes as “Midland Montage”, “Midland Profile”, and “Look Around”. Mr. Iain Macleod and Mr Ernest Marples have appeared; and Miss Jenny Lee and Mr Roy Jenkins have spoken for Labour.

ATV is particularly proud of being the first Company to introduce a regular mid-day programme, and Noele Gordon’s “Lunch Box”, now in its seventh year, is already running into its 1,600th edition. Scarcely less important is the children’s programme conducted by Jean Morton, “The Tingha and Tucker Club”, which now has an estimated membership of half a million children and is firmly established as the most popular children’s programme in Midland television.

Company’s Multiple Interests

From the earliest days of the Company your Board decided on a policy of diversification. In the result our production subsidiary, Incorporated Television Company Limited, has traded widely throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. ITC Ltd. deals with 42 countries in the Eastern Hemisphere, 21 of them in Europe, nine in the Middle East and North Africa, seven in Australasia and the Far East, and five Commonwealth countries in Africa. ITC Ltd. also deals with the three of the Islands in the British Caribbean which operate a television service.

During the twelve months ended 31st March, 1963, over 5,600 hours were sold in these territories, approximately 4,300 hours being sales of film series, the balance telerecordings and documentary-type programmes.

Sales in these areas in this period amounted to £336,810 [£5.9m], and this is a steadily expanding market.

In the U.S.A., Independent Television Corporation has again shown progress in distributing our productions in the Western Hemisphere. Though trading conditions have been difficult within the USA. this Company since its inception has brought not less than $12 million [$119.3m] into this country.

“Fireball XL5”, beginning in the autumn, has been taken for showing on one of the principal American networks, while both “The Saint” and “Broadway Goes Latin” are being sold for syndication.

In partnership with the National Broadcasting Corporation of America and Herbert Brodkin, we are producing twenty-six one-hour episodes of “Espionage” in England. Our Group has world-wide distribution rights in this series outside the U.S.A. The series is to be shown on the N.B.C. Network as well as by our Company in the U.K. and has already been sold for transmission in Australia, Canada and Japan. The production on film of any television series necessitates considerable expenditure which can be recovered only over a period of years and provided a satisfactory sale can be secured in the U.S.A. Not the least of the reasons for deprecating the new levy on turnover is the fact that less money will be available for the production of film series which are vitally important both for home use and for export.

I am happy to say that Australia has emerged from its recession to which I referred last year and the results from our group investments in Australia have once again produced better figures. Our investment in Canada is also making satisfactory progress.

The build-up of our background music service, Muzak, is continuing slowly but steadily. It will be appreciated, however, that inevitably heavy investment in the development of this type of service will take some time before it can be fully recovered and the Company be made profit-making.

In the last eighteen months we have taken the first steps to set up and operate a chain of tenpin bowling centres. Our wholly owned subsidiary, Ambassador Bowling Limited, now has two centres in operation and a further three or four will be in operation in the course of the next twelve months. It is already apparent that tenpin bowling is a sport which has found considerable favour in this country and I am sure that this new venture of ours will prove remunerative over the years.

Pye Records Limited, in which your Company has a 50% holding, continues to make excellent progress and with the advent of its up-to-date recording studios will, I am confident, continue to expand.

As to our large investment in British Relay Wireless and Television, as shareholders will appreciate from the figures recently produced by that Company, it is progressing well.

Top Management

During the year under review,. your Company has seen major changes in top management. Mr. Val Parnell, who has acted as your Managing Director from the inception of the Company, retired at his own request. The services which he rendered during the formative years of the Company cannot be over-valued and we are delighted that he has agreed to remain on the Board and to act in a general advisory capacity, in addition to remaining responsible for one of the most popular programmes on Independent Television, “Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium”. Your Board was fortunate in having his successor so close at hand. Mr. Lew Grade, who over the years has acted as Mr. Parnell’s deputy, was immediately appointed to the top post. Mr. Grade’s appointment has proved to be universally popular throughout the industry and has been widely acclaimed by the Press. The Board regards itself as equally fortunate in obtaining the services as deputy to Mr. Grade of Mr. Edward J. Roth who, prior to joining your Company, was Director-General of Radio Eireann.

In the general context of Independent broadcasting as a whole I am happy that the date of this Annual Report makes it possible for me to be the first to express the feelings of the industry as a whole in welcoming the Rt. Hon. Dr. Charles Hill, now Lord Hill of Luton, as the new Chairman of the Authority. In doing so most warmly I will take this opportunity of thanking Sir John Carmichael who has acted Chairman since the retirement last November of Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick. Independent Television has never felt that it has had a wiser counsellor than Sir John. Once again I would like to express the appreciation of ATV to the Director-General of the ITA, Sir Robert Fraser, and to his colleagues within the Authority.

And now a word of tribute to our staff in London, Birmingham and elsewhere the world over. Despite the cloud of political uncertainties which has hung over the industry every member of ATV’s staff has worked most loyally throughout the year and the Board wishes to express its keen appreciation.

The post ATV financial results: 1963 appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

A Memorable Year Yielding Eminently Satisfactory Financial Results

SUCCESS OF BOARD’S DIVERSIFICATION POLICY

The Industry’s Growth Continues

MR. PRINCE LITTLER’S REVIEW OF ACTIVITIES

The Fifth Annual General Meeting of Associated Television Limited will be held at A.T.V. House, Great Cumberland Place. London, W.1, on 28th September 1960.

The following is the statement by the chairman, Mr. Prince Littler, C.B.E.. which has been circulated with the report and accounts:-

The year under review has proved to be a memorable one and has yielded eminently satisfactory financial results.

The proposed dividend means that the Company will have maintained its dividend at the equivalent of 100%, bearing in mind that the capital of the Company was doubled during the course of the past financial year.

Board’s Policy

The principal business of your Company is that of a Programme Contractor licensed by the Independent Television Authority to trade in London and the Midlands, and it is primarily upon this trading that these excellent results have been achieved. It has, however, from the inception of the Company, been the policy of the Board to make investments in allied fields both at home and abroad and, in consequence of this policy, the resources of your Company are now more strongly diversified than any time since it commenced trading.

Developments overseas have proved particularly gratifying in Australia and in Canada. It should, moreover, be noted that in the USA, your Company has recently acquired full control of the Independent Television Corporation of America.

The diversified interests at home are highly encouraging and include the operation of the Muzak franchise, a 50% interest in Pye Records and a substantial and most profitable investment in British Relay Wireless. All these developments will be reported in detail later in this statement.

Success of Consolidation Policy

Your Company has been actively trading for some years. The period of licence from the Independent Television Authority extends until July 1964 and your Board has, with conspicuous success, sought to consolidate the Company’s position as the only major seven-day-a-week Company operating under licence from the Authority.

At the outset of operations your Managing Director, Mr. Val Parnell, and his Deputy Managing Director, Mr. Lew Grade, resisted the pressures put upon them to equip large studios and to build large offices. The volume of programming both for ATV’s own domestic purposes and for the Independent Network as a whole has, however, necessitated a plan of expansion, carefully phased over the past and current years. Your Company has therefore purchased the important riverside site at Vauxhall. Moreover, the Company has proceeded to enlarge its Elstree Studios in order to meet the steadily increasing commitments of live, tape and film production for home and overseas television as a whole.

New Headquarters

During the past year the headquarters of Associated Television Limited have been moved from Television House, Kingsway, to an island site office block in Great Cumberland Place, W.1. The effect of this move has been beneficial to the Staff, and has resulted in a marked increase in inter-departmental efficiency.

The financial results reflect the confidence expressed by your Board in December 1959 when an interim dividend of 8s. per share, less income tax, was declared on the Ordinary Shares of £1 each, and 2s, per share, less income tax, on the ‘A’ Ordinary Stock Units of 5s. each.

Bonus Issue Approved

At an Extraordinary General Meeting held on the 21st January 1960 the shareholders passed a resolution, submitted by your Directors, for the capitalisation of £2,325,000 [£44.3m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] of reserves by the issue of 9,300,000 ‘A’ Ordinary Shares of 5s, each, credited as fully paid, to the holders of the then existing issued share capital in the proportion of four new shares for each existing Ordinary Share of £1 each and one new share for every existing ‘A’ Ordinary Stock Unit of 5s, each. The new shares, on issue, were converted into ‘A’ Ordinary Stock Units of 5s, each.

Profits & Dividends

The Group profit before taxation for the year ended 30th April 1960 amounted to £5,388,330 [£102.6m] as compared with £5,316,493 [£101.3m] in the previous year. Taxation takes £2,711,820 [£51.65m] as against £2,715,076 [£51.72m]. The Group net profit is £2,676,510 [£51m] of which £1,031 [£19,600] is attributable to outside shareholders of subsidiaries leaving a profit attributable to the Parent Company of £2,675,479 [£50.96m] as against £2,601,048 [£49.54m] last year. The subsidiary companies retain £76,852 [£1.5m] leaving £2,598,627 [£49.5m] to be dealt with in the accounts of the Parent Company. To this amount must be added £1,711,215 [£32.6m], the balance brought forward from the previous year, and £445,000 [£8.5m] transferred from General Reserve – making a total of £4,754,842 [£90.6m] before appropriations. Your Directors propose recommend a final dividend of 6/- per share on the Ordinary Shares of £1 each and 1/6 per share on the ‘A’ Ordinary Stock Units of 5/- each. The interim dividend already paid and the proposed final dividend absorb £1,424,063 [£27m]. After deducting this amount, together with the sum of £2,325,000 [£44.3m] involved in the capitalisation effected in January and a transfer of £500,000 [£9.5m] to Investment Reserve, there is a balance of £505,779 [£9.6m] to be carried forward in the accounts of the Parent Company.

The accounts include provision for the distribution of £264,171 [£5m] for the Staff Profit-Sharing Scheme.

Home Investments

In the field of your Company’s home investments, it should be recorded that during the year British Relay Wireless and Television Limited made a bonus issue of one 5/- Ordinary Share for two 5/- Ordinary Shares. From this issue you Company obtained 134,000 new 5/- Ordinary Shares by way of capitalisation and the Conversion Right attached to your Company’s holding of £500,000 [£9.5m] 7% Convertible Unsecured Loan Stock 1967-1968 was increased from 184 to 201 shares for each £100 of stock. In March 1960 British Relay Wireless and Television Limited made a rights issue of two new 5/- Ordinary Shares for five 5/- Ordinary Shares and your Company subscribed for 562,800 new Ordinary Shares of 5 at 19/- each, which was its entitlement in respect of its shareholding and under the terms of the Loan Stock Trust Deed. The Stock is convertible on the 30th September 1961. The shares to which your Company would become entitled on conversion would, if there is no change in the present market price, have a value of approximately £1,100,000 [£21m]. British Relay Wireless and Television Limited has recently made a major extension in the Glasgow area and your Board remains confident that this investment will continue to grow.

New Franchise Acquisition

The subsidiary company which handles the sale of Muzak is developing most satisfactorily and a wide range of customers, including Banks, Hospitals, Hotels and Factories as well as Supermarkets, Restaurants and Shops, are installing this service. In the course of the current year operations have been extended to Birmingham and will shortly be followed by similar expansion in Manchester. In this connection shareholders will be interested to learn that we have acquired the Muzak franchise for Australia and New Zealand and it is felt that there is great opportunity for development of a background music service in this area.

Pye Records, in which your Company has a 50% interest, has been largely reorganised and the new plan of direct distribution to retailers has proved an outstanding success. This, together with the excellent reception given to the ‘Golden Guinea’ records, has had a marked effect upon the gramophone industry as a whole.

Your Group’s British production subsidiary ITC-Incorporated Television Company Limited continues to make good progress, During the past year the number of commercial television stations throughout the world has more than doubled and we are now actively selling programmes in a continually expanding market. The series ‘Danger Man,’ which is still under production Elstree, has been sold over the full Canadian network at a price higher than that previously paid for any similar series. Further series and pilot films are in the planning stage and will shortly commence production.

Overseas Investments

As regards investments overseas in the USA, Independent Television Corporation Inc., which, as at 30th April 1960, we held a 50% participation, has continued to handle the distribution of your Company’s film productions and has achieved a turnover of close to $10,000,000 [$103m]. During most of the period under review conditions have been particularly difficult, largely because of the increasing tendency by the three major television networks to assume an attitude of inflexibility towards programmes proposed by the independent producing companies. Recently, however, there have been signs of a slight improvement in business generally and your Board remains of the opinion that it is vital for the Group to have a direct outlet to the American market.

Since the end of the financial period under review we have purchased the balance of the share capital of Independent Television Corporation Inc. at a price which your Board regards as satisfactory. Having acquired control of the company we have taken steps to strengthen the management and to reduce the overheads of the operation and are confident that in time, and with adequate product available for distribution, this company should prove profitable to the Group. Nevertheless, in view of present uncertainties, you will see that your Board, as a measure of prudence, has set aside in the accounts before you a sum of £500,000 [£9.5m] to Investment Reserve.

In Canada your Company has purchased 25% (the maximum permitted under Canadian law for non-Canadian investors) of CJCH – the Halifax, Nova Scotia, radio station which has been awarded the licence for independent commercial television in that area.

The diversified interests of your wholly owned Australian subsidiary continue to prosper. Commercial radio in general is maintaining its level of profit and commercial television is expanding rapidly. The Sydney Commercial Television Station showing increasing profits and the Queensland and Adelaide Stations are rapidly advancing to profit-making stage. Altogether the Group’s television investments in Australia, which have a book value of nearly £250,000 [£4.8m], have grown in value to a sum greatly in excess of the amount invested. Since the end of the financial period under review ATV (Australia) Pty. Limited has sold the Artransa studios and the film production side of the business to Station ATN, the Sydney Commercial Television Company, in which we hold 9.7% of the share capital. We have retained the profitable radio transcription side of the business.

Level of Acceptability

All these investments business at home and it should ancillary to the Company’s main be recognised that the success of forward in the accounts of the any independent television company must depend upon the degree of popular acceptance of its those programmes by those members of the British public whom it serves. Here, it is noteworthy to add that during the calendar year January to December 1959 the level of acceptability in London (where the weekday programmes are provided by another company) has been 69% against the BBC’s 31%, whereas in the Midlands (where Associated Television Limited has the five-day operation) during the same period the level of acceptability has been 74%, against the BBC’s 26%.

Documentary and Religious Programmes

Despite the fact that such popular productions as Mr. Val Parnell’s ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’ have continued to occupy a high place in the ‘Top Ten,’ your Company has been responsible also for such serious documentary programmes as ‘We Dissent’; ‘The Western’ – an enquiry into the popularity of Western films; a medical programme, ‘Fear Begins at 40’: ‘The Art of Architecture’; the series of five lectures by Sir Kenneth Clark on ‘Revolutionary Painters’; the lectures on British Prime Ministers by Dr. A. J. P. Taylor; and the ‘Right to Reply’ series in which Mr. William Clark interviewed among others, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd. Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, the late Aneurin Bevan, Father Trevor Huddleston, M. Jacques Soustelle, M. Hammarskjöld, the late John Foster Dulles, Mr. Krishna Menon, Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, Mr. Paul Hoffman, and Mr. Norman Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica.

It will be remembered that Associated Television Limited was the first company to introduce regular religious programmes in Sunday television and those who took part during the past year included their Graces the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishops of Kensington, Lincoln, Manchester, Woolwich and Bedford, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, Dr. Heenan, Dr. Donald Soper and Lord Woolton.

Notable Achievements

Notable also have been those series which, while serious in content, have nevertheless secured maximum audiences. The series ‘Emergency – Ward 10’ has throughout the greater part of the year played to a weekly audience in excess of 20 million viewers. The new series ‘Probation Officer’ has proved equally successful and has earned wide praise from social workers and the Church alike.

Among British companies, your own Company has maintained its lead in the field of international television film production. In addition to such series as ‘Four Just Men’ and ‘Danger Man,’ produced in this country, the Company is just completing a series, ‘Whiplash,’ in Australia.

Company’s Major Role

Your Company has continued to play a major part in the independent television industry itself. Your Deputy Chairman, Mr. Norman Collins, has for the past year acted as Chairman of the Independent Television Companies Association and is currently also the Chairman of Independent Television News Limited, the company which provides the news bulletins for all stations. Mr. James Drummond, the Financial Director of your Company has for the past year acted Chairman of the General Purposes Committee of the Independent Television Companies Association. Mr. Bill Ward, Productions Controller of your Company, is the current Chairman of the Society of Film and Television Arts and I am pleased to place on record that he is the recipient of the Award of the Guild of Television Producers and Screenwriters for the best Light Entertainment Producer of 1959.

The Industry’s Growth

The television industry as a whole continues to grow and it is pleasing to note that during the year under review the ITA has appointed new companies to serve East Anglia and Northern Ireland and has erected a satellite station to give coverage to the Dover area.

By April 1960, 47,578,000 viewers were within reach of programmes broadcast from the ITA transmitters and the average total peak viewing audience for independent television is now over 13,000,000, compared with the BBC’s 5,500,000, as measured by TAM in homes with a choice of programmes.

Your Company’s operations have from the outset been divided between London and the English Midlands and the proportion of locally produced programmes in the Midlands is higher than that of any other independent company.

Your Company, nevertheless, continues to feel that an uninterrupted seven-day-a-week operation in any one area is calculated to provide the most satisfactory service to viewers, and your Company again places on record the fact that, in the public interest, it would welcome the introduction of new stations providing alternative services, so that genuine competition could be assured.

Relations with the Independent Television Authority, under its Chairman Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., have been most closely maintained and I would like to express the gratitude of your Board and more particularly of the Executive Directors for the unfailing service rendered by the officers of the Authority at all levels

Tribute to Management and Staff

As in other years I would, as Chairman, like to pay tribute to the services rendered by the Management. Your Company’s Managing Director, Mr. Val Parnell, and your Deputy Managing Director, Mr. Lew Grade, have continued not only to shoulder the heavy responsibility of the manifold interests of the Company but have added to their other duties by arduous business missions abroad. In addition, non-Executive Directors have continued to render most valuable services to the Company. They have given generously of their time and I would like to express my thanks to them.

Finally, I am happy to report that the Staff in all departments continue to reveal all those characteristics of enthusiasm which have served to build up the Company and I am sure the shareholders will wish to join me in thanking them for their loyal services rendered during the past year. It is gratifying that the Staff Profit-Sharing Scheme again enables the Company to show its appreciation of their efforts.

The post ATV financial results: 1960 appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

YEAR OF CONTINUED PROGRESS AND EXPANSION

OVER TWENTY-FOUR MILLION VIEWERS ON I.T.V.

SIGNIFICANT WIDENING OF PROGRAMME RANGE

MR. PRINCE LITTLER’S REVIEW OF ACTIVITIES

The fourth annual general meeting of Associated Television Limited will be held at the Connaught Rooms, Great Queen Street, London, W.C.2., on Thursday, September 3rd, 1959, at 3 p.m.

The following is the statement by the chairman, Mr. Prince Littler, C.B.E. which has been circulated with the report and accounts:–

The year under review has shown continued progress and expansion both for your Company and for Independent Television as a whole. New programme companies have been appointed for southern and north-eastern England, and the number of viewers able to receive Independent Television has risen to a total of more than 24 millions. Apart from the natural growth of the television audience through the purchase of new receivers, an entirely new Independent Television audience will arise from the opening of three new transmitters which will be on the air by the end of the year, thereby bringing Independent Television to an additional four million viewers in East Anglia. Northern Ireland and south-eastern England. All Independent Television companies, the pioneer companies as well as the newcomers, benefit from this expansion because network arrangements between the various companies enable basic production costs to be spread.

Planned Expenditure by Advertisers

With the nation-wide growth of Independent Television, advertisers are now able to be more selective in their buying of time, and the industry is entering into a new phase of overall planned expenditure on the part of the advertisers and their agencies. This is a thoroughly healthy development and it is supported by increased budgets which amply demonstrate the faith that advertisers have in the television medium.

While advertising revenue increased in the period under review as against the previous year, it must be recognized that saturation point may soon be reached. On the other hand programme costs continue to rise, both as a result of our confirmed policy of improving programme standards and as a result of wage increases arising from negotiations with the various trade unions concerned in the industry. Continuous watch is kept on expenditure and, although various substantial economies have been effected, the present extremely high level of profitability may become increasingly difficult to maintain.

Capital Structure

In the past 12 months there have been considerable changes in the capital structure of your Company. On September 30, 1958, the remaining £207,120 [£3.9m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] of the 6 per cent. Convertible Unsecured Loan stock, 1960/63, was converted into “A” Ordinary shares of £1 each, but with a reduced right to dividends in respect of the year ended April 30, 1959, and the Company’s 6 per cent. Unsecured Loan stock, 1960/63, was redeemed at 102½ per cent.

On December 11, 1958, the authorized capital of the Company was increased to £5,000,000 [£94m] by the creation of 2,980,000 additional “A” Ordinary shares of £1 each, and 305,000 new “A” Ordinary shares of £1 each were issued credited as fully paid by way of capitalization of reserves and distributed to the holders of the Deferred shares and the 400,000 Deferred shares of 1s. each were converted into 20,000 “A” Ordinary shares of £1 each. On the same date each of the Company’s 4,850,000 “A” Ordinary shares of £1 was sub-divided into four “A” Ordinary shares of 5s. each.

On March 19, 1959, 7,871,520 fully paid “A” Ordinary shares of 5s. each numbered 1 to 7,871,520 inclusive were converted into stock transferable in amounts and multiples of 5s. The 828,480 “A” Ordinary shares of 5s. each, arising from the conversion of the Loan stock on September 30, 1958, will be converted into stock after the payment of the final dividend in respect of file year ended

April 30, 1959, at which time these shares will rank pari passu with the remaining “A” Ordinary stock.

Group Profit and Dividend

The Group profit before taxation, for the year ended April 30, 1959, amounted to £5,316,493 [£100m]. Taxation takes £2,715,076 [£51.2m] and there remains a Group profit of £2,601,417 [£49m], of which £369 [£7,000] is attributable to outside shareholders of a subsidiary company, leaving a profit attributable to the parent company of £2,601,048. Of this amount £38,373 [£724,000] was retained by the subsidiary companies and there remains £2,562,675 [£48.3m] to be dealt with in the accounts of the parent company. To this must be added £333,040 [£6.3m], the balance brought forward from the previous year, and £153,123 [£2.9m] in respect of taxation provisions no longer required due to the reduction in the rate of income tax, producing a balance of £3,048,838 [£57.5m] available for appropriation.

Your directors propose to recommend a final dividend of 12s. per share on the Ordinary shares of £1 each and 3s. per share on the “A” Ordinary stock units of 5s. each. “A” Ordinary shares numbered 7,871,521 to 8,700.000 inclusive rank for dividend of ⁷⁄₁₂ths of that payable on the “A” Ordinary stock. The interim dividend already paid and the proposed final dividend absorb £1,337,623 [£25.2m], leaving £1,711,215 [£32.3m] to be carried forward in the accounts of the parent company.

The accounts include provision for the distribution of £213,897 [£4m] for the staff profit-sharing scheme.

The balance of the mortgage on National Studios was repaid in September, 1958.

Proposed Capitalization of Reserves

On February 5, 1959, your Company applied to the London Stock Exchange for a quotation of its “A” Ordinary share capital which was granted. In the statement submitted with the application your directors indicated their intention of recommending in December, 1959, the capitalization of £2,325,000 [£43.9m] of reserves by the issue of 9,300,000 “A” Ordinary shares of 5s. each credited as fully paid to the holders of the present issued share capital in the proportions of four new shares for each existing Ordinary share of £1 each and for every four existing “A” Ordinary stock units of 5s. each. It is still their intention to make this recommendation.

Last year you were notified of the acquisition at par by your Company of £500,000 [£9.4m] 7 per cent. Convertible Unsecured Loan stock, 1967/68, in British Relay Wireless and Television Limited under the terms of issue of which the Company has options, exercisable on September 30, 1961, or September 30, 1962, to convert the whole or part of the stock into fully paid Ordinary shares of 5s. at the rate of 134 shares for each £100 stock converted. In February, 1959, British Relay Wireless and Television Limited made a rights issue and your Company subscribed for 268,000 new Ordinary shares of 5s. at 20s. which was its entitlement under the terms of the Loan Stock Trust Deed. The operations of British Relay Wireless and Television Limited continue to expand and your board is confident that this investment will prove profitable.

Recent and Proposed Acquisitions

In September, 1958, your Company received the consent of the Australian Federal Government to the acquisition of file commercial radio and television interests of the Daily Mirror Group in Australia. In March, 1959, the wholly owned Australian holding company, formed by your Company to control its Australian interests, subscribed for 75,000 shares of £A.1 each in the company operating the new Brisbane commercial television station.

It is anticipated that this station will go on the air in August, 1959. The Sydney commercial television station in which your company has a 9.36 per cent interest, is now operating on increasingly profitable terms.

As I reported in my statement last year, your board was then negotiating for file acquisition of a prominent United Kingdom production company engaged in the production of films for television. These negotiations were successfully concluded last autumn when the share capital of Incorporated Television Programme Company Limited, which has since changed its name to ITC—Incorporated Television Company Limited, was acquired. This company owns a 50 per cent interest in the voting equity of one of the three most important television film distribution companies in the United States. Preparatory work for the production of television film series is in hand and will be carried out in your Company’s studios in the United Kingdom and also in its studios in Australia.

Agreement with Pye Records

As indicated in the statement accompanying the application for quotation to the London Stock Exchange, your Company has completed an agreement to buy for a nominal consideration, half of the issued share capital of Pye Records Limited, a gramophone record manufacturing company, and has undertaken to advance to Pye Records Limited up to £300,000 [£5.7m] by way of loan. Although it is anticipated that certain initial losses will be incurred, your directors are confident that this will prove a profitable venture.

The Company has also concluded its negotiations with Muzak Corporation. Subsidiary companies have now been formed to operate the concession acquired on a royalty basis in the United Kingdom and Ireland for the distribution of background music on the lines developed by Muzak Corporation in North America.

Preparatory development work is now in hand and a sales force is being built up to develop this franchise commencing in August of this year. An encouraging number of inquiries for the use of this service has been received and it is hoped that there will be a steady growth in demand once the operation is established.

New Head Office and Studios

The first stage of the transfer of the Company’s head office to its new office building at ATV House, 17, Great Cumberland Place, W.1, was.completed on June 29, 1959, and it is anticipated that the transfer of the second stage will be completed in the spring of 1960. These offices are among the most modem and efficiently planned in London and your Company has been able to set an example in providing such agreeable working conditions for its staff. The amenities include a Muzak service throughout the building.

Plans are currently under review for the Company’s permanent studios. From the outset the staff has been working under considerable difficulties in temporary accommodation converted to television production purposes and it is remarkable that programmes of such excellence should have been produced in the existing studios. The consolidation of the London production facilities has been consistently postponed until the Company’s financial position warranted the considerable expenditure involved. Plans have already been approved for the rebuilding of the Midlands centre, Alpha Studios, which are shared and jointly financed by ABC Television and ourselves.

Distinguished Artists and Public Figures

The range of ATV’s programming has significantly widened. During the past year not only have such distinguished artists as Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud and, more recently. Sir Michael Redgrave and Miss Leslie Caron, made their world debuts in major TV drama, but a succession of public figures, politicians, philosophers, scientists, educationalists, and the clergy of the main denominations, have all appeared in ATV’s various topical series. Thus, in “Right to Reply,” the speakers have included the late John Foster Dulles, the Right Hon. Selwyn Lloyd, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Russell, General Norstad, M. Soustelle and Mr. Aneurin Bevan. In “Free Speech,” Lord Boothby, Mr. Michael Foot, Mr. A. J. P. Taylor, Mr. W. J. Brown, to name four of the regular debaters, have kept the conduct of current controversy not merely balanced but also bold. Sir Kenneth Clark’s series “Is Art Necessary?” has now reached its eleventh programme and, in the field of documentary studies, ATV’s treatment of such subjects as Polio and World Population have achieved audiences in excess of five and a half million. The Religious programmes, moreover, have grown in audience from an average of under three million in 1958 to an average of nearly four and a half million in 1959. Among the many outstanding religious figures who have taken part in the “About Religion” series are the Reverend Father Trevor Huddleston, the Most Reverend Archbishop of Liverpool, Dr. John C. Heenan, and, more recently. Dr. Billy Graham, the American evangelist.

Popular science has been most successfully presented by Mr. Gerald Leach, a 26-year-old Cambridge scientist, who, in the series “It Can Happen Tomorrow” now addresses the largest home schoolroom audience of children and adults in British television.

A Notable Outside Broadcast

Notable among the many outside broadcasts was the first coverage in Independent Television of polo, with H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh playing at Windsor Great Park. Not less notable in another context is “Emergency – Ward 10” which has now entered its third year of twice-weekly series, with more than 10 million viewers for each episode.

Undoubtedly, however, the outstanding ATV record belongs to “Sunday Night at the London Palladium,” which on March 29, 1959, celebrated its 139th performance, having appeared no less than 130 times among the Top Ten most popular programmes in this country. “Sunday Night at the London Palladium” has brought into the homes of nearly 12 million viewers the best in light entertainment and, together with “Saturday Spectacular” has presented such internationally famous stars as Arthur Askey, Max Bygraves, Margot Fonteyn, Bruce Forsyth, Benny Hill, Bob Hope, Sally Ann Howes, Jewell and Warriss, Dave King, Liberace, Johnny Ray, Harry Secombe, Jo Stafford, Sophie Tucker and Norman Wisdom.

Recognizing the importance of maintaining the highest standards in children’s programmes your Company, in association with ABC Television, has appointed Miss Mary Field as Childrens Adviser. The work that Miss Field has already done as chairman of the Children’s Film Foundation earned her unique authority in this field.

The Midlands

Your Company is unique among the main Programme Companies in having responsibility not only for week-end broadcasting in the Metropolis but also for providing the week-day Independent Television for some six million inhabitants in the Midlands. In this important Midlands operation not only do we broadcast regular programmes for the farming community but, in the series “Where Are You Going?’ the Midland teenagers are helped by Midland educationalists and by the large industrial organizations in arriving at the right choice of career. The Midlands programmes include the popular “Lunch Box” programme of Noele Gordon’s and many programmes not seen on the London screens. The latter include the daily “Midlands News”; “Midland Montage,” the weekly magazine-type programme which presents news, views and comment about the Midland scene; daily religious programmes; “Paper Talk,” the regular discussion programme which had the longest run of any weekly television senes in Britain; and “Cover Girl,” a new type of teenage show produced in ATV’s Midland studios.

Your Company has continued with its policy of publishing in pamphlet and booklet form various of its outstanding television programmes. Particularly notable is the fact that by adopting new techniques we were able to place the text of the broadcasts of Mr. Dulles. Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, General Norstad and M. Soustelle in the hands of Members of the House of Lords, M.P.s and newspaper editors on the morning following the broadcast.

Your Company during the past year contributed £26,000 [£491,000] out of the total of £100,000 [£1.9m] from the four main companies by way of grants to the arts and sciences. Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, chairman of the Independent Television Authority, said of these grants: “The money will rescue many a valuable enterprise from extinction and will help others to improve their standards.”

Competition Welcomed

In my last statement I referred to the fact that this Company would welcome competition by another Independent Company seeking to attract viewers on the same days of the week and in the same areas. I reaffirm this view. Indeed, I feel that the competitive requirements of the Act call for such a second service. Moreover, your Company feels that the present restrictions on broadcasting hours are unrealistic and should be reviewed. The Company is at the moment precluded, solely by lack of opportunity, from scheduling many new programmes which it would like to be able to present to the British public. Furthermore, your Company has always been in the forefront of those which have supported the view that British television should progressively adopt the 625-line Continental standard and should not be permanently shackled to the outmoded standard of 405-lines to which this country reverted after the close of World War II.

The problems confronting any Programme Company are many and various and, once again, I should express our sincere appreciation for the invaluable guidance and advice always made readily available to us by Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick himself and by his two chief officers, the Director-General, Sir Robert Fraser, and the Deputy Director-General, Mr. Bernard Sendall.

The thanks of this Company, as of the other Independent Television Companies, are due also to Mr. Paul Adorian, managing director of Associated-Rediffusion, who for the past year has acted as chairman of the Independent Television Companies Association, an office in which he has from July 1 been succeeded by Mr. Norman Collins, deputy chairman of your own Company.

I have to report the resignation as executive director of Mr. Richard L. Meyer, whose wide experience of sound broadcasting matters proved so valuable to the Company during its initial stages. Mr. Meyer has been succeeded as an executive director by Mr. J. A. L. Drummond, whose City background and knowledge of financial matters has already proved of the greatest possible benefit to the board.

Tribute to Management

It is customary for the chairman to pay a tribute to the services rendered by the management. This I am most happy to do. I would like to thank all the directors, not least the non-executive directors, who have so generously given of their time and services.

No tribute to management would, however, be complete without a specific reference to the unique services rendered by your Company’s managing director, Mr. Val Parnell, thanks to whom the Company has not only become highly profitable but has laid sound foundations for the future. Moreover, Mr. Parnell, no less than I, would, I am sure, wish to include a special mention of your deputy managing director. Mr. Lew Grade, on whose shoulders fall so much of the detail of the day to day running of the business.

In conclusion, as regards the staff of your own Company, it will be apparent that such excellent results could not have been achieved without arduous and unflagging efforts on the part of all concerned. I therefore extend to them our heartiest thanks, and I am glad that the staff profit-sharing scheme enables our appreciation to take a tangible form.

The post ATV financial results: 1959 appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

It was, however, Hugh Jenkins, MP, when he was Labour’s Minister for the Arts, who gave the most succinct expression to misgivings about the system which enables men like Lew Grade to consolidate such an empire.

‘I agree Lew Grade is a nice man,’ said Jenkins without much fear of contradiction, ‘but what is dangerous is that such a concentration of power should rest even in the most moral hands. It is a dangerous situation in which a man has such power that the question of whether he’s a nice man or not is not important. Even Lew Grade is not immortal.’

When a government minister expresses his alarm in such strong, unequivocal terms, it is worth while to examine more closely the causes for his concern. Niceness and straight-dealing are not the issue; nor is plutocracy. Something far more difficult to define, yet all the more insidious for that, is at stake. ‘The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse,’ said the eighteenth-century philosopher Edmund Burke two centuries before such a force as television was ever imaginable. Even the high priest of free enterprise, Benjamin Disraeli, qualified the Victorians’ unswerving belief in personal empire-building by writing: ‘I repeat that all power is a trust – that we are accountable for its exercise – that from the people, and for the people, all springs and all must exist.’

To justify his own position, Lew Grade can point to his ratings. If that is not power from the people and for the people, what is it? He is genuinely perplexed by the sophistication of Mr Jenkins’s arguments, and will maintain with sincerely wounded feelings that the accumulation of money is the last thing he thinks about. ‘Multimillionaire? Baloney!’ he protests, a small, finely boned hand raised in horror so that the gold jewellery winks away up to his cuffs. ‘I have no money. I spend my money. I have perhaps been very generous with my money, but let’s not go into details about that. Making money, having power, that’s just an incidental part. If people let it change their lives, they don’t love their work.’

All this, as we shall see, is the case. He does love his work. He is nice. He does produce popular programmes. He does give the public what they seem to want. He is not interested in amassing wealth for wealth’s sake. He is the benefactor of countless untold good causes. The epitaph he once asked for was: ‘I always kept my word’ (subsequently altered to: ‘I didn’t want to go’!) But go, one way or another, he must. He himself has fixed his retirement at the year 2000. Be that as it may, as Hugh Jenkins points out, even the most moral men are mortal.

However or whenever he goes, he will leave behind that ‘dangerous concentration of power’, and given the vagaries which put it into those sensitive, delicate hands in the first place, who can tell what manner of man will succeed him?

When Lew Grade finally emerged from the fascinating early musical chairs at Association TeleVision, his company’s assets stood at £9,400,000. Within the first ten years of his single-minded stewardship, this tiny, rotund and genial man had husbanded his empire so shrewdly, and with such canny flair, that its assets topped the £35 million mark and its interests spread around the globe. By the time the centre of his all-consuming interest had shifted from television to the making of movie spectaculars and he took the title of president, it is fair to say that he had stamped his personal mark on all branches of the entertainment industry from his vast office in ATV House, Great Cumberland Place, adjacent to London’s Marble Arch; he had become a showman mogul cast in a heroic mould, as Lord Annan was to agree.

By then the chances were that when you turned on your radio, went to the cinema, bought a record or a theatre ticket, relaxed at home in front of the box or merely whistled a tune, this amazing man would own a slice of your consumption. For his £210,000 a year president’s salary, he brought a Sam Goldwyn touch to the television industry. No other man has been so successful in selling what the public wants to buy. There are few who would deny Lew (later Sir Lew and latterly Lord) Grade the status of the real founding genius at ATV. The one man who might have put in a counter-claim was Val Parnell, and Val Parnell is dead.

Grade himself enjoys telling how he first came to be in television. Like most stories concerning him it has a nub of truth and is packaged with a showman’s relish for the quotable anecdote. It started, he says, with the advertisement placed by the ITA inviting interested parties to tender for the original contracts. His version of what followed has all the hallmarks of his own bravura simplicity:

‘Now it was bandied about at the time that you needed £3 million. I said how was I going to get that kind of money? Well, my friend said he had someone who could find £2 million if I could find the rest and a board consisting of people well known enough in entertainment. I said “Okay” and I told my brother Leslie he was in the entertainment industry.

‘At that time we hadn’t got much money. We put in all we had – about £15,000 each. Then I rang Val Parnell and told him: “You’re in the television business” and he put in £10,000 to £15,000. Then I called other friends and we virtually formed the group.’

Among the most influential of those other friends was Prince Littler, chief of the Moss Empires variety chain. It was an impressive showbusiness consortium by any standards. There are people who remember hearing Val Parnell tell a similar story with the calls reversed. Exactly who picked up the phone and called whom is not, however, the real point. It is a good story and it is a revealing story, for it demonstrates lucidly what a modest outlay was needed for these leading showmen to buy their way into the ground floor of a multi-million pound venture. It is also some indication of how much (or little) they judged that new industry to be worth.

For what Grade’s throw-away anecdote disguises is in fact how slow any of them was to pick up the phone. It was certainly not a case of sizing up the potential of the new service, as both Norman Collins and Lord Woolton had done five years before, and rushing in to bag a claim. The bandwagon had been rolling, albeit bumpily, for a long time before Lew Grade jumped aboard. He actually missed the ITA’s advertisement in the newspapers. And even after it had been brought to his attention and the cavalier phone calls had been made, there was no direct route to the handsome blue-carpeted office with its table-tennis sized desk which was to become the seat of all power within ATV. It was a circuitous and quite improbable series of events which finally brought him there.

When the ITA advertisement appeared, Lew Grade (as he then still was) was totally immersed in the business affairs of his vast theatrical agency. It is both his strength and his weakness to be almost obsessively absorbed in his own current project. Part of the project he was then concerned with was a tour of the American singer Jo Stafford, and it was two of Miss Stafford’s entourage who played the most prominent roles in launching him into television. Her manager, Mike Nidorf, over in London from the United States to iron out various details of her contract and her performance schedules, spotted the advertisement and enthusiastically outlined its possibilities into Grade’s receptive ear, one of his most abiding qualities being his willingness to listen to new ideas. It is, indeed, among his proudest boasts that his office door in Great Cumberland Place has always remained open to anyone from tea lady or office boy to top executive if they have an idea which they think might be useful to him.

Lew listened carefully as Nidorf argued how, once it got under way, commercial television would have about as much chance of losing money as a fruit machine in Las Vegas. He was backed in his assessment by a most persuasive lady, Suzanne Warner, who was also prominent in the Jo Stafford menage. Added to her obvious Californian glamour was a spirit of daring enterprise. It was, in fact, Suzanne Warner who ‘had someone who could find £2 million’ to put alongside Lew, Leslie and Val’s £45,000. By one of those happy chances, the stuff that television’s dreams are made of, she was being treated by one of London’s most fashionable medical practitioners, who also happened to number among his patients one Mr H. Grunfield. Mr Grunfield was a senior partner in the merchant banking firm of Warburg & Company; what is more, he had already formed his own shrewd conclusions as a banker that commercial television in Britain could be as big and bountiful as it had been in the United States, if used effectively.

It took only an introduction from their mutual doctor to fuse the ambitions of Suzanne Warner to the resources of Mr Grunfield and to deliver them both at the doors of Lew, Val and Prince. Thus was the Incorporated Television Programme Company born, and no one who had any part in it – except, as it proved later, Dr Nathaniel Mayer Green, the accommodating practitioner – had any cause to rue their participation. Their company was to become the most profitable of all the commercial empires, and when it did so, Dr Mayer Green sued both his former patients for a portion of the fortunes they had amassed from their founder shares; shares which he had at the time declined. The cases were settled out of court.

Compared to the slippery, rock-strewn trek they had to make to reach the top of the mountain, the doctor’s litigation was merely a pebble to be cast lightly aside. By then they had survived far worse vicissitudes. When the ITA came to award contracts, the Incorporated Television Programme Company was the only one of the five competing contenders whose bid was rejected. The first three, announced on 27 October 1954, went to Lord Kemsley’s alliance with the television producer Maurice Winnick; to Associated-Rediffusion; and to Sidney Bernstein’s Granada chain, those former pious opponents of allowing anything but a public corporation to invade the sanctity of the home via the cathode ray tube.

Before going in with Lew Grade, however, Prince Littler himself had begun by vehemently mistrusting the advent of commercial television. He saw it as a real threat to his theatre empire, and in this proved quite correct. But he rationalized his fears with a businessman’s innate instinct for survival. He realized in time that, if television was going finally to complete the erosion of popular variety which the cinema had begun, he would guard his interests better by exerting his influence from within the enemy camp. He quickly became chairman of the board of the Incorporated Television Programme Company. A similar logic must also have had as much to do with Sidney Bernstein’s volte-face as his undeniable socialist desire to make his mark on the progress of the new mass culture. And though Associated-Rediffusion were the only experienced operators in the broadcasting field, they too had gone on record as believing that commercial television would not be in their best interests before waking up to the inevitable and putting in their bid.

Norman Collins, perhaps the only one among the contenders who was not counting the possibilities of the new service in terms of business expansion, was offered the franchise to broadcast London’s weekend programmes and weekday to the Midlands. That he should have been awarded such a rich base for his Associated Broadcasting Development Company was only to be expected, and was only fair. His role had been crucial in bringing the ITA into being.

Had he been more of a businessman and less of an idealist, had he seen his new brainchild in the same light as his competitors, he might well have hung on to that franchise. It was, however, significant that he took a week longer than the rest to accept the offer. Benson, Lonsdale & Co., the bankers Lord Bessborough had brought into his deal, were already dragging their feet. Their over-hesitant caution caused them to under-invest and ultimately cost Collins his contract. Winnick’s group was also in dire financial need. His Kemsley backers developed cold feet at the last minute and withdrew. The financial hiatus took Winnick, the clever operator who had introduced the popular panel game What’s My Line? to the BBC, out of the running before the starting-pistol was even fired.

The collapse of the Collins enterprise – on the face of it, the safest and most public-minded of all the companies – gave Prince Littler’s conglomerate the breathing space it needed to regroup for a fresh attack. Lew Grade’s explanation of their failure to capture one of the four contracts was probably the correct one. ‘It was the result,’ he said, ‘of too great a publicity campaign in which we made it look as if we owned the world.’

The ITA members were deeply reluctant to hand over one of their precious contracts to such a daunting array of vested interests: the complex web of the Grade Agency (of which more later) allied to the might of the Moss Empires variety chain along with the commercial radio interests represented by Harry Alan Towers and the powerful spending potential of Warburg’s merchant bank.

It is still a part of Lord Grade’s charm that the best stories against him are invariably the ones he tells himself. ‘As far as I was concerned, Warburg’s might have been a chocolate company when their name was first mentioned to me,’ he confesses. ‘So I called up a friend of mine, Sid Hyams, and asked him if he’s ever heard of them. He said: “Yes, they’re merchant bankers.’” Which was also how Warburg’s became part of the act.

The ITA held out for many months against the Littler-Grade-Warburg conglomerate. But a neat side-step, as neat as anything Lew Grade ever accomplished in his early days as a novelty dancer on the variety stage, shook the authority’s determination. Littler, having started as a reluctant recruit to the joys of commercial television, had grown incensed by the ITA’s refusal to recognize his group’s claims. He began to fight an ever more determined campaign, and when Norman Collins finally had to capitulate to the parsimony of his bankers and bow out, Littler was ready to advance his forces. The remnants of Collins’s Associated Broadcasting Development Company merged with Littler’s light entertainment giant, and the weight of Collins’s reputation clinched the matter. In the spring of 1955, ITA announced that the newly formed Associated Broadcasting Company – almost immediately the title was changed to Associated TeleVision (ATV) – would fill the breach by taking over the contract to broadcast London’s weekend programmes and the weekday schedules in the Midlands. Littler, Parnell, Grade and their holdings were in the race after all, and again it was Collins more than anyone who had made the success possible, though he could hardly be expected to feel altogether happy at this outcome to events. In such company he had effectively lost control of his own brainchild.

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