TELEVISION AND RADIO

by JAMES GRAHAM t 1VE me a viewer at 7.30", say the television planners, -and we will have him for the whole evening."
This rather Jesuitical attitude to programme-making Made a vast forttine for commercial television. The facts they saw were that viewers svcre either too lazy or too contented to turn over from One chahhel to another once the family had settled in for the everting.
The vital time became 7.30. Before that, although the set might be turned on, the viewer could be having supper or putting the children to bed. After that, the journey of a few feet from chair to the channel selector switch was apparently a few feet too far.
So much for selective viewing! And it is perhaps disturbing to find in the current ram Ratings that thls rule of thumb, applied ten years ago when commercial television started, is still working.
On Mondays. for example, ITV win hands down at 7.30 with Coronation Street (Number 2 in the Tam Top Ten). And sure enough they keep this audience at 8 o'clock for Crane (joint Number 4 in the Top Ten) and for Play qf the Week (joint Number 13). These at the expense of the BBC's Lucy Show, Panorama and repeat of Maigret.
On Tuesdays ITV do not have it all their own way because Ward 10 at 7.30 is up against another audience-pulling soap opera, COmpact. This leaves the BBC clear to score with Sykes (joint Number 13) and the Dick Powell Theatre (also joint Number 13) at the expense of The Plane-Makers dn ITV.
Of entlkse; this is not an infallible pattern. Certain programmes break across it. Butt evidence over the week does, I believe, show that it is not programmes but a whole programme service . that attracts viewers, and that the bulk of people will Watch either BBC or ITV for a whole evening.
It might he more constructive to ignore for the Moment the
gloomy implications of this mass Indifference to programmes and look at the bait that rt-V has used to hook the viewers at 7.30.
On the four of the five weeknights they have used their longrunning serials.
Serials are surprisingly rare in television. Ward 10, Convect and Coronation Street—all incidentally in the 7.30 slot—are the big three. A .few children's serials. the occasional Dickens make up the hulk of the remainder.
A SERIAL., unlike a series, has a cliff-hanger at the end of each episode. The same story, or often two or three different stories, are carried over front one week to another.
In A SERIES strsh as Perry Masan. or Dr. Finlay's Casebook, the same principal characters go through each episode, hut the stories are complete in themselves.
These audience pullers make use of quite different appeals and techniques.
Coronation Street. the most successful of all, relies on the illusion of truth. The pub looks very nearly real. The street itself could pertuiPs be in Bolton — but not quite. The characters are almost like real characters.
ALMOST is the common qualification. Elia Sharpies and the rest arc "almost" people. They are convincing enough to entertain but not to believe in—rather like Andy Capp in the newspaper cartoon. The reality stops short of truth as surely OR with the old Mrs. Dale. Death has no rattle. Eviction has no cold. Loneliness has no endlessness.
Hospitals have a macabre lure for many people, but neither the (ready Kildare nor the psychotic Ben Casey have hit off the public's interest in sickness and death as richly as Emergency Ward (0. Yet it has no more reality than Coronation Street. Apart from its deliberate do-good policy — safe driving, accident prevention. immunisation, etc., which get a seEtsonal airing—it relies on the warmth of its presentation.
Desmond Carrington. Jill Browne and Paula Byrne become make-believe friends to their audience. The strength of the programme has been in the habitforming quality of these principal actors. And the producers have always managed to replace warm audience attracters with others when necessary. As long as this replacement game can go on, presumably the programme will rup indefinitely longer probably than Coronation Street.
Reputations have been made in Sonic funny ways on television. But few stranger than the road to fortune and success being followed by Miss Janice Nicholls.
Her name may be unfamiliar to many people. But anyone who has watched Thank Yob*. Lucky Stars will remember the leading teenager whet comments on new records.
fler comment is both mysterious and laconic. and obviously, as far as Miss Nicholls is concerned. profitable : " I'll boiy it and give it l'here will be no prizes for translations.
Look and Listen
EEC-Is : Monday land nightly during week): Michael Flanders and Donald Swann describe the events of liply Week with readings and music, 11.25 p.m. Wednesday: "Murder in the Cathedral". by T. S. Eliot, 9.25 p.m. Holy Saturday: Easter Vigil from Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Aintree, Isiverpool, 11.30 p.m. Easter Sunday: Pope Paul speaks from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, and gives his Blessing, 1E55 a.m.
People's Service from St. James's School, Burnt Oak, 1E30 am. Light: The Vision of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, script by Neville Bray
Mc-Radio Palm Sunday : brooke, produced by Fr, Patrick McEnroe, 7.45 p.m. Home! Evening Service from St. George's, Penitee, Glasgow, 7.45 p.m. Scottish: Aichhishop Heenan appeals on behalf of the Crusade of Rescue, 8.25 p.m. Horne: Monday. Talk by Stephen Gardiner on Me Dominican Monastery built by Corbusier at Eveux, 9.15 p.m. Third.
iTV: Tuesday and Friday: Epilogue on Tyne-Tees-tv will be given by Fr. Lawrence Tinnion.