The repeats

Press, 21 January 1982, Page 11

The repeats

Douglas McKenzie

One of the strange effects of summer viewing is not so much repeat programmes as what low-cost material they find instead of repeats. One on Tuesday had some more of “In the Sky" produced by London TV Service, whoever they are; and if anyone paid more for it than its'surface-mail postage they were robbed.

The programme was about how satellites "are using space to improve life on earth: they tell the world the news, forecast next week's weather, discover goldmines and oil wells, predict the world's wheat harvest, and give advance warning of disaster." Well, thank you satellites. The weather forecasts —

even tomorrow’s — are wrong at least 40 per cent of the time; some solution to starvation might go further than predicting the harvest; and it's funny how warnings of disaster never seem to save loss or damage. This was burst-the-eyeballs TV. with flashes and explosions and up to six pictures in the one frame. The commentary was imposing and educational — a style suggesting a scientific detergent-ad read by a senior English master. This programme was hundreds of bits of newsreel from everywhere put together in an office. On the subject of satellites, "using space to improve life on earth" it failed altogether to refer to the proportion of satellites on purely military duties, mostly nuclear-re-lated. Is it not something like two to one?

The programme repeat season is still in full spate; on Monday on One there were 12 of them.

There are many reasons why repeats should be made, but none so strange as the official one — that they are in response to viewers’ requests. If one is to believe this official reason it means that a body of professional broadcasters is handing over one of its most precious privileges and duties — the selection of material for screening — to the kind of person who will write letters to authority, and who represents no-one but himself.

Followed through, this means that broadcasters are

handing over decision-mak-ing not only about what to put on but also what to take off.

Enough letter-writers don’t like Philip Sherry, for example, and off he comes; is that the idea? If not. what is so worthy about the notions these correspondents have about what should go on?

The letter-writers must have two characteristics: they are articulate and they have firm ideas; and the firmness will amount to either, sentiment or prejudice. These are the attitudes. broadcasters imply, which are most favoured for decision-making about what should go on the screen.

Broadcasters say they get many letters. How many? Will five be enough to demand a programme? Fifty? Two hundred? And are they really to speak for a population of perhaps 2M adult viewers?

Ronnie Corbett this week had the right idea in this general kind of situation. He said: “I normally don't do viewers’ requests because, let's face it, 90 per cent of them are physically impossible.”

Translating this standpoint to the much less lively TV in New Zealand, there’ is, of course, no reason at all why broadcasters should follow viewers’ requests. In fact, let’s face it, their claim, that they do is just a device to give the corporation a cheap spell while the viewers are supposed to be too busy outside to need the good stuff; and the reason they take the cheap spell is that the corporation can't afford it any other way. And. to go on facing it, the reason they don't have the money is that the Minister of Finance keeps their licence fee six years out of date. Why don’t they say so instead of putting up the defence of viewers* requests?