LONDON LINE FIRST SERIES As the Overseas Television Services moved into the 1960s two considerations emerged that eventually led to major changes. First, was the appearance of additional funding for the Overseas Information Services (OIS) following a Ministerial review that had taken place some years earlier.In 1954 an Official Committee of the Overseas Information Services chaired by the Earl of Drogheda recommended an expansion of the information services. It had recommended development of the use of television by the Overseas Information Services, particularly in the United States. These positive recommendations languished for a while in the official machinery though they were given impetus as a consequence of the debacle of the invasion of Suez that did great harm to the image of Britain in the world. The implementation of the Drogheda recommendations was the taken up by Charles Hill, who had been appointed coordinator of Government Information Services in 1957. He moved to find the necessary financial resources to expand the use of television in the overseas information services. The White Paper on Overseas Information Services (Cmd 225) published in 1957, following a further Ministerial inquiry that concluded by noting “Britain’s full influence can be exercised only if we are prepared to devote enough effort and resources to ensuring that the people’s or other countries have every opportunity to understand our ideas our policies and our objectives. Furthermore, we shall strengthen our economic position only if our efforts include vigorous sale salesmanship overseas”. The White Paper announced an expansion of the order of 15% in terms of annual expenditure now a total of £15 million a year compared with £13 million pounds then currently expended. It was “necessary to maintain Britain’s information services as a level consistent with our world wide responsibility to ensure the necessary reinforcement of our national policies and our associations in the defence of the free world”. It took several years for this additional expenditure to fully come on stream. Gradually it did so and from 1958 onwards the Overseas Television Services were brought into being and developed. While by no means entirely spent on Overseas Television the budget for Film Division grew from under £200,000 in 1957 to £1,530,000 in 1964/5. Second, as a consequence of the possibility of additional funding, there was a growing acceptance of a need for new thinking about the overseas programs that had been developed in the late 1950s. The style, nature and presentation of the programs needed a fresh look given that television stations in many countries were developing: different degrees of sophistication were appearing. It was, after all, the swinging ‘60s. Early in 1963 the prospect of additional funding for the Overseas Services was coupled with a concern, largely on the part of COI, but also from some Posts, (notably Canada) about the format of British Calendar, which was still that of an extended newsreel. It was felt that the format of the series was simply not right for the increasingly sophisticated television stations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The format of the newsreel had been derived from the cinema, yet we were aiming to have our material transmitted by television stations that were very different in style. By contrast This Week In Britain was popular with television stations through the personalities of its presenters and because it had more space and time to deal with individual subjects. Furthermore unlikeBritish Calendarthe series was not constrained by the newsreel companies. During 1963 Ray Fleming (Head of Overseas Television Services) and John Hall had a number of discussions from which emerged the concept that eventually became London Line. The approach was to build on the popularity of the reporters in This Week In Britain but create a magazine program that was based in a television studio. The items in the program would sometimes take place in the studio and sometimes would be stories filmed on location. The program would contain a mix of subjects which would vary between quite serious political issues, through scientific innovations, the arts and entertainment. It was thought that this mix of subjects with a group of lively presenters might provide a vehicle through which an entertaining series of television programs might be produced that would meet the information objectives of the OIS in a way that would also be more acceptable to television stations and appreciated by their audiences. To this end it was proposed that a magazine series that: (a) was based in a television studio, with film inserts and offered production flexibility (b) that offered an entertaining and informative mix of serious and not so serious items including pop music c) that recognized that television stations were more likely to transmit programs perceived as being entertaining, as well as informative and which might contribute to maintaining the station’s ratings. (d) that was presented by people who might become recognized personalities and hopefully, well regarded by audiences. Thus following a formula that This Week In Britain had already demonstrated. (e) this would mean making several versions of each program. There would be an edition aimed at Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Caribbean countries known as the “Old Commonwealth”. Another edition would be produced for the African countries South of the Sahara. Two editions would be produced for Latin America in Spanish and Portuguese together with one in Arabic for the Middle Eastern countries. The concept was presented to the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office and after some discussion with them and also consultation with some Embassies and High Commissions, it was eventually accepted. It was to be a very ambitious undertaking. 1963/64: Planning and Setting Up London Line: Oncethe project was accepted there were a number of practical issues to be addressed since a project of this nature was quite new to Film Division. Findingsolutions to production issues, took some time because there was no experience in COI of producing a studio based television series on a weekly schedule. Moreover the programs would be produced in house rather than being contracted out. Film Division was now attempting to do something quite different to anything that had gone before. The two main areas to be addressed were staffing the production teams and dealing with the technical problems of making a studio based program that could be distributed and transmitted by television stations overseas on a weekly basis. The first technical issue concerned distribution. It arose because the accepted medium for the production of television programs and their distribution to overseas television stations was 16mm film. Videotape lay some years in the future. However the ambition for London Line was to produce programs in a television studio with electronic cameras and then to be able to use 16mm film for distribution. The ambition went further. We also wanted to be able to insert into the studio material stories shot on location. In order to achieve this ambition a system known as tele-recording would have to be used for studio presentations, interviews and demonstrations. The tele-recording system, though a trifle crude, was widely used at the time. It consisted of taking electronic signals produced by the studio cameras and sending them by cable to a facility that could turn them into 16mm pictures. In order to do this a television studio with electronic cameras that would be available each week on agreed days would have to be found. It would have to have transmission line facilities to a tele-recording suite where the transfer to 16mm film could be made. The solution to the studio problem was the Granville Studio in Fulham Broadway. It was originally a music hall then converted to a television stuio by Associated Rediffusion when ITV was set up. It was then sold to a partnership of Peter Lloyd and Bill Stewart. The latter was a television director with a long track record including the very popular Emergency Ward 10. The studio was, at the time, mainly used as a facility for shooting television commercials. In time the London Lineseries, with its versions, were to use the studio for three days a week (Tuesday-Thursday). One day for a North American and some Commonwealth countries edition. One day for the African and Arabic versions and one day for the Latin-American editions. It is not entirely clear exactly when the move to using conventional electronic cameras, took place, though probably it was around the middle of 1965. The studio material was sent by line to a tele-recording facility in central London owned by Associated Television Ltd where it was then transferred to 16mm film the quality was passable though not brilliant, but was all we had at the time. Once the tele-recordings were processed, the location film inserts were cut into the negative, with some tidying up during the editing process. The process had the advantage of being able to shoot sequences with any errors or mistakes in the studio being edited out. The production of distribution copies then followed. These were sent by airfreight to Posts. The schedule from studio to arrival at overseas Posts was about one week. The first studio director was Eric Beecroft who was Canadian. He was a quiet, totally unflappable and experienced director. Exactly what was needed for a project that was new, that was feeling its way. Eric stayed with London Linefor some eight years. As the African, Arab and Latin-American editions came on stream to join the Old Commonwealth edition it was decided to form separate production teams for the four versions, though it was envisaged that some story lines and ideas would be shared. However each version would include material that was particularly pertinent to the geographic area for which the program was intended. Each team would consist of a Producer, a television studio director and production assistant, together with one or more researchers. This structure was supervised by an Executive Producer (John Hall) with a group of Producers reporting to him. The five programs were to be made on a weekly basis, 52 weeks of the year. Finding the right Producers was a key issue, since the weekly slog of creating interesting and entertaining programs, rested substantially on their shoulders. Bright and energetic researchers/writers were also important, as were experienced television directors. Nonetheless it was the Producer who had to pull all the elements together. In the event four producers played key roles. They were, Anna Kaliski (later Anna Hamlin) who created the London Line (Africa) series, Adam Leys who took over London Line First Series (Old Commonwealth) in 1965 and later created the London Line (USA colour)series at the request of BIS New York, and Lillian Davidson who created AquiLondres in Spanishand Portuguese editions for Latin America. The Arabic program Adwa WaAswatwas produced and directed by Janice Kay who made an enormous contribution to the success of the very ambitious series. Ensuring that there was a marriage between the ability of each Producer to make interesting and entertaining television and the needs of the Overseas Information Service was the job of the Executive Producer. It was essential that the programs were perceived by the television stations as being entertaining as well as interesting to their audiences. It was believed that the programs had to succeed as good television, not simply as good propaganda for the United Kingdom. Unless this was the case the chances of transmission were that much lower as was the possibility of influencing an audience. Moreover, if possible, it was important to get transmissions in peak or near peak viewing time when audiences were watching so that our information message, was seen by as many people as possible thus justifying the expenditure the of British taxpayers money, The staffing issues included recruiting the producers on staff contracts, directors on special contracts. ACTT, the film union, was still a power in the land. Production secretaries with television experience, plus a production manager, together with studio set designers and graphics designers would have to be recruited. It was also necessary to set up a number of film editing rooms with editors and their assistants. This was a steep learning curve for the personnel people in the Establishment Division of COI. That it happened at all, indeed was allowed to happen, given that COI was Civil Service Department operating under Civil Service rules, is surprising. Memory says that there were no high level discussions about the departures from the normal procedures. Now that different approaches were needed, they happened. It was a demonstration perhaps, of the flexibility of the Civil Service when it chose to do so. Potential television presenters and interviewers, not only in English but also in Arabic, Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese had to be found and auditioned. All this work was necessary to prepare the foundation for launching into a heavy schedule of production. At this point a note about the sponsors may be helpful. In 1964 the Overseas Information Services (OIS), consisted of the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office. The day to day contact between the OIS and the television production teams were conducted with a light touch, especially the Foreign Office. The content of London Line and its versions for Africa, Latin America and the Arab world were not generally discussed with the Posts and rarely with Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office staff. In retrospect it is more than a little surprising that the sponsors exerted so little influence beyond agreeing the general approach. The Foreign Office provided a general brief and left Film Division to get on with making the programs and where appropriate, liaising with Embassies. The Commonwealth Relations Office had more frequent contact, from time to time suggesting possible items. For both Departments Film Division provided regular screening of completed programs, generally after the programs had gone into circulation. These screenings were an opportunity for the COI production staff to obtain a first hand reaction from Foreign Office and Commonwealth Office Information Department staff to their work. 1964: Production of the first London Line series By 1964 Film Division was ready to start production on a “First Series” of programs aimed at the “Old Commonwealth” together with an edition initially called London Line (New Commonwealth) thatwas planned for distribution to Sub-Saharan Africa comprising countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and others. This edition would be presented by a team of African presenters who were to provide an essential link between a program coming from London and an audience in Africa. The first programs in these two editions were completed in July 1964. In late 1964 a further edition was added: produced in Arabic, called Adwa WaAswat it was to be offered to television stations, where they existed, across the Arab world. Finally two further series called AcquiLondrescame on stream, one in Spanish and one in Portuguese, for distribution in Latin America. All the programs consisted of 3-4 items or 3 items plus a couple of short items. The aim was for a mix of something reasonably serious perhaps with a trade or economic aspect, some new ideas with a scientific or technology slant: gadgets were always good value. There might be an item with a tourist slant and one in the area of the arts or music. Fairly regularly, a pop music group was included which reflected the UK’s “swinging 60’s” position at the centre of the pop music world. Essentially the programs were public relations rather than “propaganda” with the implications carried by that term. The approach recognized the essential reality of dealing with the overseas television stations who decided which programs they would transmit. They were very unlikely to transmit overt propaganda. Thus the underlying philosophy was to present an image of the United Kingdom as a lively, interesting country, friendly, outward looking with lots of new ideas. The series also made a point of covering issues that were about connections between the UK and the countries where we hoped would show the programs. The use of Arab television presenters for Adwa WaAswat, or presenters from Nigeria such as Ibrahim Tahir who went on to become a senior member of the Nigerian government, for London Line (African) or Latin-American presenters in AcquiLondres . They were all a considerable plus in obtaining good transmission times in the countries to which the programs were sent. The studio content of the first series of London Line in 1964, took place before the tele-recording issue could be sorted out. They were therefore shot on single 16mm cameras filming at the Granville studio with a crew supplied by a freelance cameraman, Keith Z Ord. The director was Jim Allen a Film Division staff member and a freelance director Julia James. Jim was very much a product of Film Division having come up through the clerical ranks. The Producer was John Hall until Adam Leys took over in1965. Adam Leys joined as a Producer with the remit to take over London Line (Old Commonwealth). He was to make a huge contribution both to London Line and to subsequent series. His memories of joining COI and taking over London Line provide an insight into what it was like to work in Film Division Adam Leys writes : I joined the COI in 1965, amazed that I had this chance. I had had an upside-down history in film, starting as a producer in commercials, after an earlier stint for Radio Luxembourg, but that’s another story, and had slowly worked my way back to being an, assistant director/ writer and producer. I had managed to stay away from working at an advertising agency, despite offers, as I wanted to stay with actual film making. I had worked in live-action and animation, for television and cinema, and was working freelance at the time I applied for the COI job, and had to race for the interview from location. I was astonished to learn that I had the job, though I was quite unsure what it really involved when I turned up at Hercules Road. I was to produce London Line, the ‘Old Commonwealth’ version, squarely aimed at the white ex-colonies of Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, with some distribution to smaller territories as well. It was a weekly magazine program, with studio introduction and closing, and studio based items mixed with location reports on different subjects. It was distributed on 16mm film, which at that time was still the only internationally acceptable distribution medium. Videotape was in use, but the necessary standards conversion, from the European to the US standard for instance, was expensive and of variable quality. In Britain we were still in the world of black and white television. The studio element was shot at the Granville Studios, a television studio in a converted music-hall theatre in Fulham. The studio used black and white studio cameras, the images being telerecorded ‘down the line’ at a facility in central London. The location items, were filmed by freelance crews. The telerecording and the filmed reports were assembled in one of the half dozen cutting rooms at the COI, then taken to a dubbing theatre for any voice inserts, sound mixed, then negatives cut, prints made, and dispatched overseas by air. It took me some time to find out what was going on in the program, and in the production set-up. There was a small team of researcher writers, about three. They had to come up with a stream of stories, as each program had about five items in it, some very brief and some longer, but even the brief ones had to be organised, objects borrowed, sets designed, scripts written, etc. Each week we would meet to discuss what was coming up, and try to balance the content, with some more serious items balancing some more frivolous ones. From my earliest contact with the program I could see the tension between the desire by some of the senior COI people to please the Foreign Office masters by including lots of ‘heavy’ items, and the production team’s instinct that their first audience was the scheduler at a television station who needed to know that the program would hold his audience, needing a light touch, some tourism, some fashion, some pop music and so on. A weekly program of any length has a momentum of its own, and it is demanding. Every day things would go wrong – a story would turn out to be too dull, an interviewee would cry off – and other stories had to be found. When I started I found that the researchers were writing ‘draft’ scripts, and all the bits of drafts were being sent to a scriptwriter some days before the studio date for a finished version which he delivered a couple of days later, with the studio bits being sent then to autocue. This process was slowing things down at the very stage when we needed to speed up, and the scripts sometimes got things wrong because the writer didn’t have all the background that the researchers had. It also de-motivated the researchers, who seemed perfectly capable of writing for themselves. I persuaded John Hall, the executive producer, to let me have a go at writing the scripts, and in a fit of generosity he agreed – mind you, it also saved the cost of the writer. From then on the researchers wrote their scripts, which I often tore apart, or sent back for re-writes. Even though my own writing experience had previously been small, we quickly hit on the right demotic style for television – though I still relish the memory of Michael Smee, the main presenter, declaiming from the studio floor with all the microphones live, “Who wrote this flatulent crap?!”. I was standing beside him, and said I did, and to his great credit he laid about the script, denouncing it – and he was right. A word about John Hall, he was the executive producer who became my friend, and has remained my friend. He was pivotal in the development of the programs at COI in this period. He is not a dramatic person, but dogged, consistent and in his quiet way determined. He was always open-minded, prepared to take a chance on people and situations, able to play the politics of the civil service, while retaining his friendships from his time at the BBC. He loved a written paper that explained and justified a course of action or a program, the ‘rationale’ as he always called it, and would go off to argue a case of any sort so long as he had his paper. It was John who had led the expansion of the programs at the COI to comprise this sizeable suite of productions, employed the film editors, the researchers and directors, and created a big production unit inside an often reluctant Civil Service. He was unusual because the COI was an odd place, and creating this producing unit was doing so against the odds. The recent history of the Film Division in the 1950s had been that all the production for the ‘home’ departments was contracted out as a single block of work to a production company, and the Division had developed systems that understood that this was the correct way of relating to the film production industry, at arms length. It had ‘budget officers’ who knew what to do when faced with the production of a half-hour film for the Department of Whatsits which might take a year or more to research, write, shoot, edit, etc. This was no good at all for television, when production had to take place in a few days, with staff directly employed to do it. This was a very different matter, and there were plenty of people in the COI in administration and finance positions who were deep down convinced that all these people who produced for television were not just flighty and frivolous but were probably dishonest, and the job was to protect public money from them. It led to many difficulties and conflicts, eased with time but never resolved. The production people felt that their hands were tied, and the civil servants felt that they were being ripped off. There was also a culture clash, in that the staid civil servants felt that the production people were leading glamorous lives, possibly immoral, they were critical of it and resented it. The COI offices were in a dull 1950s building near Waterloo Station, the epitome of civil servicedom , filled with people who did exhibitions or publications of all sorts, well versed in working for government departments. Our overseas television group was doubly unusual because while we were funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, we had very little to do with them directly – no vetting of scripts, or showing of rough cuts – we felt that we were working for the television stations which screened our items, even though we had no contact with them at all. The other parts of the COI were much more tied by their sponsors. And the other sense in which we felt unusual was in directly doing the work ourselves – the researching, writing the scripts, directing the films, editing them – and not just farming it out as a contract to others. There was probably also a sense that the suspicion of the traditional civil service element created a response from us, a certain stylish disdain, a slight devil-may-care, which of course fuelled the suspicion, and so on. In truth, only some of the incomers had come from television. I myself had not worked in broadcast television, though Eric Halliday (a program Director) had, and Margaret O’Donald (production assistant) had worked in radio at Bush House, but I cannot recall who else. Some were homegrown, and were some of the most effective. Most enjoyed working for their country, despite the tensions and contradictions, and they all put in long hours. The directors had worked in television, though some had washed up on the shores of COI from rather stormy seas. Eric Beecroft, a Canadian, was very serious and solemn; Peter Yolland had worked in light entertainment, and it showed. Mark Lawson was an interesting man who had been a big theatre director in Germany before WW2, had escaped to Britain, found television after the war, and had risen to direct the opening night transmission from a giant new studio built for ATV Ltd an independent television station, which was a live drama two hours long with multiple cameras, camels, dancing girls, etc. And now he was directing shows for the COI. Bob Morgan, an American, had started as a documentary maker, and had made one about American tourists in Europe, called “ If It’s Tuesday It Must Be Belgium”, a title later pinched for a feature film. Once he failed to show at the Granville for a day’s work, and I sat in the director’s chair for the first and only time, called about two shots and he showed up. I think he had just got bored and decided not to go, and then changed his mind. Some of the other programs had people with television backgrounds, and some took time to understand how things worked at the COI – I remember being furious that a story I had nurtured and waited for was stolen by a newly arrived researcher on another program who just said that was life sweetie, you had to compete – she did not last long there. And the film editors were interesting too, first of all that they existed at all, inside this odd civil service building. One of them, famously, was Peter Greenaway, who later became an internationally famous film director and stager of opera and other events. The relationship with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was very interesting at this time. Various studies and inquiries had established that Britain should use television to show itself to the world, and the FCO had accepted that, and produced the funding for it. At the start of my time there, I was quite unclear about exactly what we were trying to say, but we all gradually imbibed, rather than being instructed in, the ground rules of our work. There were the ‘hard’ information goals – to show Britain as an innovative, energetic place, full of dramatic discoveries and earnest politicians. Then there was our real audience, the weary television schedulers in far away television stations, keeping an eye on their audiences’ interests and their ratings. There was also at this time, the mid-sixties, the surge in pop music, fashion, the whole swinging London idea, which was known world-wide with a mixture of excitement and horror, and which some in the Foreign Office(FCO) and in the COI viewed as evil and unnecessary. The interesting part was that while John Hall, and possibly his masters (and mistresses, the Director of the Film Division was a woman) had serious discussions with the FCO annually, to set out production plans and agree budgets, the FCO never asked to see a script or a rough cut, or even see a finished program, except rarely, for some particular reason. They got feedback from their Embassies and High Commissions about distribution achieved, but little on content. So we were a sponsored film unit, where the sponsors assumed that we were working in their best interests, and left us to it. It was enlightened sponsorship, where John Hall and those above him were left as the guardians of content. Later I came to know the FCO people rather better, and their languid air always amused me, but in retrospect their ease of judgement was interesting. But returning to the major part of the work we did, the television programs. I produced a series of the black and white London Line programs, which were sometimes good and sometimes mediocre, in retrospect. We tried hard to dress up the studio part with simple set dressing, and mixed the occasional serious and rather heavy handed items with much lighter stuff. I recall an interview with the then Minister for Power which was meant mainly to boast about the number of nuclear power stations we then had and were building and remember asking him as we waited to start whether there were going to be power cuts that winter, as there had been the previous one. No, he said, so long as January and February were sunny and warm! And then we might have a fashion item, shot on location, and a studio music item, or a piece of theatre. On one occasion we got Sybil Thorndike, then appearing in what proved to be her last London stage appearance to come to the studio to talk about her play and her life in the theatre. We asked her about “St Joan”, which had been written for her by George Bernard Shaw, and asked, before the recording, if she might perform a bit of St Joan for us – we had a copy handy for her to refresh her memory. She did it, and the lighting director had prepared a spot for her, and she did that amazing theatre trick of suddenly shedding sixty years - she was about eighty at the time – and seeming like a young girl again. We were all moved, and it looked beautiful on the recording – what was the propaganda effect of that, and could it have been planned? I was clear that it was about culture and history being important in our lives, that it made good television, and would satisfy both the FCO and the unseen studio scheduler seeking to satisfy his audiences. We actually found another way of checking to see if we had any audiences, when I discovered that for some reason in the past the COI had registered a Post Office box number that had never been used, so we invited viewers to write to us about anything they had seen in the program. I remember being quite astonished when the first letters arrived. There really was someone out there! Then more and more arrived, and we realised that we would have to have some organised way of recording and responding, so someone was assigned to the replies. The letters continued from then at a steady rate, never huge, but sometimes valuable, occasionally commercially valuable. In one program in a later series we had shown the original Space Hopper, a big inflatable ball a child could hop and bounce on, which drew swift letters from distributors who wanted to sell it in the USA. I believe the manufacturer wound up hiring whole freight jets to fly them to the States to try to keep up with demand from distributors who had first seen it on our program on a local station. There were many other smaller examples of where commercial links were made, which often astonished us because we had thought that trade links would have connected to things better than watch our television program. Although a first series and finding its feet the series covered quite a range of subjects from an interview with the Desmond Morris a world class ethnologist comparing children playing, with chimpanzees playing to Alec Issigonis designer of the Mini Car together witha piece about the Royal Court Theatre in London. We interviewed Cabinet Minister Barbara Castle MP responsible for transport together with a story on traffic management legislation. For London Line 56 we interviewed music composer Benjamin Britten about his recent opera Curlew River and his work with the Aldeburgh FestivalwhileLondon Line 58 interviewed Canadian Lord Thomson who had purchased The Times newspaper. Followed by a story about the Annual British Dairy Show and the introduction of long life milk
Altogether some 84 programs were produced in this first series of London Linethat came to an end in 1967. The next series was to be very different in that it was now to be produced in colour and the primary market was to be the United States. The information about this first series of London Line is very incomplete because of poor record keeping on the part of COI. If any viewer has any further information that can be added to this account please write in through "Contact Us". For details of all those programs for which information exists please go to the section on The Films We Made on the Navigation Bar.