The world of British television off and on the screen, as it was sixty years ago.

Six Down, Five Letters

An anonymous postcard arrives at the Daily Mirror. I says, “At last I’ve seen someone on TV who I consider has an outstanding personalityVictor Mishcon, who was on the Brains Trust”.

The Guardian leads with the news that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will present an autumn budget in the House of Commons next Wednesday and that television sets and licenses may be dearer as a result.

It also reports the news that Mr W. Payne, the headmaster of Swinton Bridge Junior School in South Yorkshire, has granted pupils a day’s holiday on 30 November “To enable pupils to do their Christmas shopping in midweek instead of on Saturdays, or to watch, on television, in international football match.”

Bernard Delfont’s plans are also recorded by that same paper. He is to package shows for British television – “programmes up to an hour in length complete with comedian, singer, chorus girls and orchestra.” Mr Delfont will not be filming these himself but they will be designed to be performed in front of a studio audience and offered to the highest bidder, be that one of the ITV companies or the BBC. I wonder whether his brother, Lew Grade, will be thinking of bidding for these for ATV.

Also with their eyes on additional income are members of the Racehorse Owners’ Association whose council requested that owners should benefit financially from the agreements which certain racecourses have entered into with the commercial television companies. The Guardian quotes thus: “It will, therefore, be of great interest in our association to ascertain, in the first instance, what plans or proposals the racecourse companies concerned have in mind to ensure that racehorse owners also benefit financially from these arrangements.”

Much of that was also reported in The Times which also carries the news that the BBC has acquired the Ealing film studios and will gain vacant possession early in the new year. The studio will become “the permanent home of the BBC television service’s film department and for other developments.”

That paper’s crossword includes the clue “Show for the pre-television viewer”. Answer tomorrow.

Robert Cannell writes in the Daily Express on the BBC’s At Home in which Mr J. P. L. Thomas, the First Lord of the Admiralty, became the first minister to take the TV audience on a tour of his official residence. Cannell was impressed: “… the knowledge he displayed of the history of Admiralty House made Richard Dimbleby almost redundant. It was a relief to find somebody else telling the story in a Dimbleby programme.”

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