Invasion by Film

Recorded end to end, all of the gags about old British movies on U.S. television would be no more than a beep compared to the clamor going on last week about U.S. shows on British TV. "Is BBC short of British ideas?" screamed London's weekly The People. "The latest American import [the Phil Silvers Show] plunged us into the heart of U.S. Army life, and as the series is here to stay, we've just got to get used to the slang. A pity the B (for British) BC can't devise a British series." The tabloid Daily Mirror complained of "four American filmed programmes from the BBC ... on an English Easter."

"Do you love Lucy?" sneered Lord Beaverbrook's Sunday Express. The Express complained that the infiltration of American TV has become a "persistent, irresistible intrusion ... a tumbling, roaring flood." The BBC televises seven American-made shows each week (Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Amos 'n' Andy, I Married Joan, Hey, Jeannie, Star Choice and Champion, the Wonder Horse) and also has three programs whose formats and titles are carbon copies of U.S. shows (What's My Line?, This Is Your Life, Twenty Questions).

Beaver's Bite. The British critics' chief target is the Independent Television Authority's commercial Channel 9, which is so U.S.-infected as to make BBC seem "a stern, inflexible nurse of home-grown talent." Johnnie Ray turned up as the star performer of Easter Sunday's feature program. Sniggered the Express: "Twiddle the dial any evening, and the chances are that the crack of a shot in Dragnet will set the objets d'art tinkling on your chimney piece. Or that pathetic crib of an American quiz show, The $64,000 Question, will dribble a sad, self-evident little droplet of knowledge into our sitting room." Further, the Express charged that 50% of the time that ITA allocates to children is now taken up with Americana. "Do they imagine that commercial TV was brought into being here in order to turn our children into little Americans?"

Stung by the Beaver's bite, ITA Director Sir Robert Fraser hit back, called the attacks "anti-American feeling thinly disguised." American films, said Fraser, do not account for more than 14% of the total running, while ITA 13 selling British films to U.S. TV at a chip that pays for all U.S. imports. "And remember this," Fraser told a London Rotary Club. "Americans have acquired such a mastery of TV film techniques that we can apply no better stimulus to our producers than to let them see how it is done."

Insidious Influence. Lord Beaverbrook was not silenced. His Evening Standard retorted: "A lame reply to those who criticize Channel 9's American accent. The influence is most insidious and gives serious cause for complaint . . . The U.S. puts its views in a famous program: the Voice of America. There is no need for Sir Robert to double this role."

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