C-Day

Lightning crashed from the dark skies over London and thunder reverberated in its byways one evening last week, as C-day came to Britain. "Zero hour is on us," intoned a voice over the nation's TV sets.

"Citizens of London, wish us Godspeed." Within an hour, some 2,000,000 Britons had watched their first television commercial--a tube of Gibbs toothpaste sliding majestically down a mountain stream in a cake of ice while an announcer crooned, "It's cool, cool, cool." For years, the debate over permitting American-style commercial TV to invade the unsullied air waves of Britain has rent the nation with a fury unmatched since Burke demanded conciliation for the rebellious American colonists. But at the end of the new Independent Television Authority's first day of telecasting. Britain was still intact. With its commercials rationed by law to six minutes for every hour of entertainment, I.T.A.'s advertisements sounded about as American as tea and crumpets. Housewives spoke quietly of the merits of this and that. Playful animals won friends and influenced buyers. "The British." explained a visiting U.S. adman, "are crazy for animals." On I.T.A.'s second day, a tea commercial got tangled with a station-identification signal, another commercial inexplicably appeared twice, and the station itself broke down five times. Meanwhile, the government-sponsored BBC carried on smoothly with plenty of reliance on Mickey Mouse. By week's end. it was clear that the Americans had landed on British TV.

The only question was: Who had conquered whom?

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