“image”. Manufacturers buy advertising time on television at rates calculated on the basis of how long a commercial runs and how many people may be expected to be watching it; it is the television equivalent of a newspaper’s “cost per thousand”. For example, the cost of showing a television commercial lasting a minute in the Anglia Region at six p.m. will be less than that of showing one lasting only half a minute in the London Area at eight p.m. Time is sold as a commodity. Time-merchants (the commercial television companies) sell it to advertisers, just as the advertisers sell commodities to the public. And since, when selling anything at all to anyone, the seller must consider not only the immediate bargain, but the
idea
of what he is selling, its personality which will bring the buyer back again, and keep him buying more of the same, each of the television companies is selling itself as well as its time. It is selling a minute at seven-thirty on Thursday, 27th April 1961, and it is selling its new special Summer Discount, but it is
also
selling Granada, A.T.V., A.B.C., Tyne-Tees, and suggesting that in some way
its
sort of time is a better sort of time, that
its
sort of people (which means simply the people who watch in the areas for which each company is responsible for transmitting programmes) are not only more willing customers with more money to spend, but actually confer a moral
cachet
on those who provide them with goods and services.
More than this (so complex are the considerations which govern the professional lives of businessmen!), each of the companies is not merely a business for selling an audience to advertisers, but is also a public service under the control of Parliament, and therefore ultimately of the audience it isselling. It wants to be liked by the people. It wants the people, as well as the manufacturers, to have an
idea
of it, and, since one can’t entirely disassociate people from manufacturers, it would save a great deal of confusion if this
idea
, this image, the manufacturers had were also the image the people had.
Commercial television in Britain came by stages. There were so few companies to begin with that, to the mass of those who watched, commercial telly was simply commercial telly; it was what you watched on Channel Nine, if you’d had your set adapted; it was the telly with the adverts. Time passed. More and more parts of Britain were reached by a network of more and more companies. Since the best (or at least the most expensive) of every company’s programes is transmitted over the whole network, and for most of the time, most of the people who are watching commercial television continue to see the same picture, hear the same sounds, with T.W.W. viewers watching Granada on the network, A.T.V. watching Associated-Rediffusion , most people still do find it difficult to remember —far less to care—which company is which. But the companies care. By its choice of what programmes it originates, by advertising, by public relations, each company works at “projecting an image”. That image is something far more special than merely the picture of a company which is not the B.B.C. Simple enough, it would be, to project
that
image. The B.B.C. already has an image—an image of “They”, complex enough in its way, but permeated with the flavour of Old Folk’s Homes and the teaching profession. All the commercial companies are “we”, not “They”; they began with that advantage. But that is not enough for them. They would like the public to know which “we” is which.
The policy of Norah Palmer’s company was ingenious.It was to be the “we” of “They”—or perhaps the “They” of “we”; no one had formulated it in quite those terms. The B.B.C. Charter lays a duty on that great corporation to “inform, instruct and entertain”. But this is from the top; this is what is called an “Establishment” activity. Those who planned the programmes for Norah
idea
of what he is selling, its personality which will bring the buyer back again, and keep him buying more of the same, each of the television companies is selling itself as well as its time. It is selling a minute at seven-thirty on Thursday, 27th April 1961, and it is selling its new special Summer Discount, but it is
also
selling Granada, A.T.V., A.B.C., Tyne-Tees, and suggesting that in some way
its
sort of time is a better sort of time, that
its
sort of people (which means simply the people who watch in the areas for which each company is responsible for transmitting programmes) are not only more willing customers with more money to spend, but actually confer a moral
cachet
on those who provide them with goods and services.
More than this (so complex are the considerations which govern the professional lives of businessmen!), each of the companies is not merely a business for selling an audience to advertisers, but is also a public service under the control of Parliament, and therefore ultimately of the audience it isselling. It wants to be liked by the people. It wants the people, as well as the manufacturers, to have an
idea
of it, and, since one can’t entirely disassociate people from manufacturers, it would save a great deal of confusion if this
idea
, this image, the manufacturers had were also the image the people had.
Commercial television in Britain came by stages. There were so few companies to begin with that, to the mass of those who watched, commercial telly was simply commercial telly; it was what you watched on Channel Nine, if you’d had your set adapted; it was the telly with the adverts. Time passed. More and more parts of Britain were reached by a network of more and more companies. Since the best (or at least the most expensive) of every company’s programes is transmitted over the whole network, and for most of the time, most of the people who are watching commercial television continue to see the same picture, hear the same sounds, with T.W.W. viewers watching Granada on the network, A.T.V. watching Associated-Rediffusion , most people still do find it difficult to remember —far less to care—which company is which. But the companies care. By its choice of what programmes it originates, by advertising, by public relations, each company works at “projecting an image”. That image is something far more special than merely the picture of a company which is not the B.B.C. Simple enough, it would be, to project
that
image. The B.B.C. already has an image—an image of “They”, complex enough in its way, but permeated with the flavour of Old Folk’s Homes and the teaching profession. All the commercial companies are “we”, not “They”; they began with that advantage. But that is not enough for them. They would like the public to know which “we” is which.
The policy of Norah Palmer’s company was ingenious.It was to be the “we” of “They”—or perhaps the “They” of “we”; no one had formulated it in quite those terms. The B.B.C. Charter lays a duty on that great corporation to “inform, instruct and entertain”. But this is from the top; this is what is called an “Establishment” activity. Those who planned the programmes for Norah
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