BBC 'like a drunken aunt' Muggeridge

WHEN Independent Television began. the BBC made the wrong decision to compete for big audiences, said Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge last Saturday at the Birmingham convention of "Clean Up TV" campaigners.
The consequence was, he said, that the image of the BBC was now that of a benevolent aunt who had come up from the country, gone to a cocktail party and got disgracefully drunk.
But the people running the BBC were not sadistic monsters congratulating themselves on salacious programmes. They were trying to do their best, and their faults were not malicious but usually due to thoughtlessness or misunderstanding.
The 250 campaigners represented 5,000 members of the National Viewers and Listeners
By a Special Correspondent
Association, founded by Mrs. Mary Whitehouse.
Mr. Muggeridge was given a standing ovation at the end of his speech, in which he explained why the campaigners were not to be regarded as "blue-nosed idiots or prigs."
They were perfectly entitled to take the position they had in tackling the real problem of deteriorating standards on television.
It was because of the immense output that 95 per cent was second or third rate.
But the only hope was that the sheer imbecility of much that was on the screen was beginning to bore people, especially the young, who were spending less viewing time than in the past.
He said the BBC did not need another advisory body, but governors who were more representative of ordinary viewers. Mrs. Whitehouse told the convention that she had received a letter from Lord Hill, chairman of the Independent Television Authority, encouraging the campaign. He had said the ITA was always ready to hear the association's views and give them careful consideration.
She said the ITA's attitude contrasted sharply with that of the BBC. Lord Normanbrook, chairman of the board of governors, was always courteous to the association; but their relationship with Sir Hugh Greene, the director-general, was of a very different order.
Colour TV series ACOLOUR television programme on the visit of Malcolm Muggeridge to the Holy Land is being made by the BBC—one of the first of a colour series of religious programmes.