TV Commercials Come to Britain

Abstract

LAST THURSDAY EVENING, in the midst of the season's most vivid thunderstorm in southern England, the British launched a bold, new enterprise which nearly everyone feels is going to have a revolutionary effect on the life, habits, taste, and manners of the people of this island. Commercial television made its long-awaited bow in Britain with a fanfare of trumpets, a burst of orchestral music, a solemn round of inaugural speeches, and an advertisement for toothpaste. In spite of the thunderstorm, the reception on opening night was sharp, clear, and uninterrupted within a 70-mile radius of London; and, in spite of the vivid storm of controversy that has raged on the subject, it is already obvious that commercial television is not only here, but here to stay, an accepted and permanent feature of the life of this nation. Commercial television has been a hotly controversial issue here for the past three years. No other public question has created a greater outward fuss on the upper levels of British politics. During the three-year debate, the British have heard a thousand dreadful warnings about the damage that commercial TV would do to the British way of life. The TV monster, as it is commonly referred to by its legion of unfriendly critics here, would bring in its wake a host of undesirable things-the debasement of taste, the corruption of youth, the breakdown of law, and a huckster's riot of vulgarity. Eminent public men, like Lord Halifax on the Conservative side and Herbert Morrison on the Labor side, have