The tube as a blowpipe

Press, 16 June 1979, Page 13

The tube as a blowpipe

By

JOHN COLLINS

The way things are going in this place, they’ll have cut the power off by the end of the year to” save energy, and the nearest most of us will come to entertainment will be to huddle together in the blanket emitting wheezes .of appreciation and racked, tubercular coughs of delight as Dad uses candlelight and his hands to cast on the tent walls clever shadows of open-mouthed alligators and men smoking cigars.

Until then, until television is reduced to a choice between the test card and a glove puppet shoved up through a hole in the bottom of the set, it will be interesting to watch on such excellent

programmes as “Eye Witness” the progress of the power struggle that began in the last few days over the television licence fee. Neil Roberts, the “Eye Witness” reporter on Thursday night, could hardly have done better in his questioning of Hugh Templeton, the Minister of Broadcasting, and lan Cross, chairman of the Broadcasting Corporation, over the Government’s refusal to allow an increase in the licence fee, and about the Corporation’s announcement of cuts in radio and television coverage. Apart from one moment of forgiveable selfindulgence when he smirked like a schoolboy getting away with cheeking the head prefect as he told Cross his plans for the reorganisation of television had gone down among

broadcasters “like a concrete parachute,” Roberts controlled the interviews expertly without giving too strong an impression that he would like to bend a chair around his interview subject’s head. Both Templeton and Cross were in refreshing articulate contrast to the dejected queue of Chairmen of That and Ministers of This that drone through the tube on most currentaffairs snorefests. Templeton was his usual spry self, composed, loyal, thoroughly good officer material, and not at all miffed that the import of Roberts’s questions was that he was little more than a cipher. It was all a matter of

Cabinet responsibility, you see, he explained. He had wanted an increase in the licence fee. The Prime Minister, in his role as Minister of Finance, had said he couldn’t have one — “So we looked at the alternatives and one of the alternatives, of course, was no increase in the licence fee.” If that’s how it goes, Templeton’s job makes Hobson’s choice seem like an agony of indecision. Cross looked tired and strained, which is what one would expect from a man who is gambling on that most rare of occurences, a public outcry, to help him in his struggle with the Government — wh,o, I have read, is at present in Paris. However impressive Cross and Templeton were, the impact of the programme really lay with

Roberts, with the interpretation of events that threaded clearly through his questions. His interpretation — and I agree entirely with it — was this: The Prime Minister’s refusal to allow an increase in licence fees contrasts strangely with his policy of high taxes and his constant veneration of “the userpays principle.” The reason is nothing more or less than a desire to squeeze broadcasting until the pips squeak, hoping that some of the people

who are made uncomfortable are the upstart news and current affairs people who do not meet the standards of sen ility he requires in journalists. Cross has decided that only way around the Prime Minister’s obsession is to make the cuts in areas that will bring most pressure to bear on the Prime Minister — the extension of TV2 to rural areas (promised in National’s manifesto and sure to bring pressure on the P.M. through rural National members of

Parliament), cuts in sports coverage (pressure from the great unwashed), and withdrawing support from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra embarrassing encounters with culture vultures at cocktail parties and embassy receptions). Television is falling apart at the wells: and the the public, not the television journalists, feel once again the effect of the P.M.’s prolonged tantrum.

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