TELEVISION FOR BRITAIN

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXV, Issue 14254, 31 December 1946, Page 5

TELEVISION FOR BRITAIN

SIR WILLIAM HALEY’S HOPES

'8.8.C. CO-OPERATION

A pledge that the British Broadcasting Corporation intended to press on with the task 'of making television available to as many homes and over as widespread an area of Britain as possible, was given recently by Sir William Haley, Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation, speaking at the Imperial Press Conference in London.

‘"Television has come to stay,” he said. "On behalf of the 8.8. C., I would say this: We approach this problem in as broad and statesmanlike a way as possible. We seek no temporary advantage but hope to establish good-will by com fidence. The one thing we cannot envisagfe is the stifling of television, for television will* go on.

‘"We intend to press on as fast as physical resources allow with the task of making it available to as many homes and over as widespread an area of the Kingdom as we possibly can.” Declaring that it was clear that television was an integral part oi radiocasting and not an art separate from it, Sir William added, “In the long run both' the cinema and the theatre will benefit from television. Thanks to the gramophone and to broadcasting, serious music has never had such live audiences as it has today. Twenty years of the broadcasting of news bulletins finds newspaper sales higher than ever they were before.” Summing up the 8.8.C.’s “responsibility to the community,” he said this was “both to* satisfy and to lead, to satisfy current demand.” Sir William said that of all the great purposes British broadcasting must unsparingly serve, none was more .important than that of the Commonwealth.

“Last year, even before the war was over but as soon as it became apparent its end was near, the 8.8. C. called together in London the first Commonwealth Broadcasting Conference. Programme, administrative, and engineering problems were discussed.”