London Television Services (LTS) for the London Correspondents                                      of  Overseas Television Stations 
 
 
As might be expected London as the capital city of Britain was home to a considerable number of resident correspondents of foreign television networks and television stations. As such they maintained contact with the Press Offices of most departments of government in order to cover events in the UK that were of interest to their audiences. The contacts with Press Offices provided information and where appropriate access to officials and Ministers for interviews. 
 
However the nature of television reporting sometimes led to requests for assistance that required more than was available to Press Offices. When this happened they would be referred to COI and where relevant to Film Division.  
 
These requests for assistance had been met by the Television News Item Service in Film Division during the 1960s. As a consequence of the review in 1968 of the Overseas Television Services the item service evolved into the London Television Service (LTS) and carried with it the provision of assistance to the correspondents. 
 
Requests for assistance grew in the late 1960s leading to a dedicated group within LTS.  In turn this led to the idea of offering production facilities to groups of correspondents to produce their own reports of specific events in Britain. The idea was superficially attractive to those correspondents from smaller stations who did not have the resources such as those of the large American networks. However difficulties in reaching agreement on subjects together with the logistics of making efficient use of technical facilities led to the project being short lived. 
 
However the simple approach of cultivating good relations with the individual correspondents and delivering assistance when required enabled LTS to become a go to place for the correspondents. In turn this enabled LTS to suggest stories that  might be covered.  
 
In addition LTS provided help and assistance to overseas broadcasters visiting the UK to produce documentary films. The amount of assistance asked for varied considerably from help with research sometimes requested in advance of the arrival, or it might simply be a question of helping to unlock doors to people or places. In some cases this assistance could be quite substantial. 
 
 Adam Leys provides an account of one such visit: 
 
Since we had a sizeable television production team, and were looking for exposure on foreign television screens, it made sense to consider helping overseas producers who wanted to make programs in and about Britain. COI had done something of this for some time, but usually visiting teams were looked after by Tours Division, who were specialists in arranging visits by guests of the government, often senior ministers or experts who would be put up in the best hotels and carried about in limousines, a very comfortable way of life. It wasn’t suitable for, say, a German television producer who wanted help in finding the right locations for a serious program.  
 
So we in Film Division branched out into ‘co-productions’. This really meant co-financing productions which we felt showed promise of demonstrating real benefit to Britain and which might not be made without an input of some cash. We found that a very small amount of cash committed early usually gave the producer the platform from which to raise his main budget elsewhere. We also sometimes contributed research help, which meant we knew what was going into the program. This worked well enough on a small scale, but then came the big one.  
 
In the early seventies John Hall and I were asked to go the Foreign Office to discuss a proposal which had come via BIS New York, for a week long visit to Britain by the NBC Today Show 
  
The NBC Today Show was the premier of the three big US networks daily 2 hour morning television shows, a mixture of politics, news, fashion and so on, of the type now familiar to us in Britain, but unheard of then.  ‘Today’ was a big heavy weight show, with a remarkable producer, Stuart Schulberg. In US terms, this was serious television, not showbiz. If NBC invited senior politicians for an interview, they turned up. They begged to be on.  
 
The Today Show had a practice of spending a week each year in a foreign country, with the extra cost of doing so borne by the host country. It wouldn’t be allowed today under FCC (Federal Communication Commission) rules as it was hidden sponsorship, and was stopped a few years later. The question was – was it worth the money?  
 
In that languid but purposeful way the Foreign Office had, they said someone should go to New York to see what was needed and report back. I found myself on a plane about two days later. I returned and made my report, and the money and logistical support was agreed in a couple of days.  
 
The NBC people were charming, very bright, very professional and accomplished. They knew that I, and later my research team, were government public relations people but they never patronised us or were disrespectful. It was very quickly clear that it was a tremendous public relations opportunity for Britain, and would need heavy staffing at our end. The Foreign Office agreed and supported the plan. The Today show pattern was that they made all the segments on location apart from the news, weather and travel, which were made in New York daily, live. The foreign element was all made on tape with location vans, and the carefully timed tapes were flown to New York daily in those pre-satellite days. 
 
The producer of the Today show, Stuart Schulberg, was a very intelligent and very experienced film maker and political producer, the brother of Budd Schulberg ,the  novelist  and screen writer, and the son of B P Schulberg, a movie producer in the thirties. He gave me a steer on the sort of locations they were looking for, so that we could propose some items when they came first on a reconnaissance visit.  
 
We drew on our regular team of researcher/writers and assigned one to each potential location. When the US team arrived on their reconnaissance they were charming, relaxed and very professional. They visited all the locations, made their choices and went away. We fixed all the access details and provided background information. 
 
Later a huge team came for the production, where we had researchers alongside their people, helping the shows into being. We had five researchers and me – they had about fifty staff, researchers, writers, gofers, producers, directors PAs, etc.   
 
When the week of the shoots came, my team worked their socks off and loved it. Eventually they recorded at Edinburgh Castle, Liverpool waterfront, at a Welsh coal mine, the Roman Baths in Bath, and the Barbican complex in London, They edited the material here, and flew it back to New York, with empty slots for the local news and weather and ads to be inserted there.   A huge variety of guests were interviewed, government ministers, actors, sports people, business people and so on. I think it all went well, and it was memorable experience. 
 
We all loved doing it, and the American team seemed to enjoy our people being part of the project.  
 
(The team had booked rooms at The Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane, and as they walked in Schulberg said ‘I remember this place, I lived here for a couple of years, and it was true.  His father had come to England in the thirties to produce pictures, and he had brought his family and they all lived in the hotel for two years.) 
 
Given the COI and Foreign Office images of slow moving bureaucracy, the speed and ease of decision making to undertake this facility was in part rather magisterial and in part very pragmatic, and rather matched the way television programs got made – fast and flexible, with instant decision-making on the spot.  Perhaps that was why Foreign Office left us alone, as they saw something of themselves in the way we worked? 
 
The co-production idea grew in the early seventies.  We found that many television stations in countries we regarded as ones where we wanted to make an impression and where they would not take our programs, such as the German stations, were quite keen on mounting co-productions.  They often sought multiple partners, and we found that by committing even a small sum of money, and doing so early, we could help a series of programs come into existence, and be part of the production team.  
 
These relationships and the help that was given was appreciated not only by the London correspondents but also by the television stations as John Hall, then Deputy Director, discovered on a visit to Tokyo in 1981 when NHK (the BBC of Japanese television) greeted him very warmly and expressed their thanks quite lavishly for the help that COI had provided. 
 
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