The interviewee was angrily waving a leaflet at a presenter who was just not getting the point. It was early 1972 and an exasperated John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins was trying on BBC2’s Late Night Line-Up to explain the difference between a conventional broadcast documentary and the National Film Board of Canada’s Challenge for Change approach – community video – as summarised in their journal Access that he’d brought with him.(1)
Challenge for Change/Société Nouvelle had begun in the late 1960s with Colin Low’s filming in Fogo Island, Newfoundland. The provincial government was threatening a small outlying fishery with closure and the resettlement of its residents. Low’s film put into context the residents’ protests by showing the social and economic importance of fishing to the community. His vivid portrayal resulted in a reversal of the resettlement plan. At this time, portable video cameras, known as portapaks, were becoming available and were being trialled in Montreal by the Challenge for Change project. The advantage over film of this technology was the possibility of immediate playback, involving no wait for film processing and printing. Used in community development, video allowed people to speak for themselves and see, edit and improve their presentation. Repeated viewings in the community allowed a campaign to gather support and strength. The work of Dorothy Todd He?naut and Bonnie Sherr Klein, using this method in downtown Montreal, was recorded and made widely available by the National Film Board of Canada as the film VTR St-Jacques.(2)
Hoppy, best known at the time for his New Arts Lab near the Euston Road, London, had been using this participatory approach with portable video in community development work in Notting Hill. His report for the Home Office was the first to refer to Canadian experience in the Challenge for Change/Société Nouvelle project.(3) His journal JCATS, Journal of the Centre for Advanced TV Studies, continued to carry articles on the topic from across the world. ED Berman’s Inter-Action, based in North London, also used video in many of his community projects.
This was the beginning of my journey, my exploration of community video. I’d been working in educational broadcasting for nearly ten years and was at that time in the Independent Television Authority, ITV’s regulator, under Brian Groombridge. Groombridge’s book on broadcast access, Television and the People, was published that year and his example encouraged me to pursue the related area of community video.(4) I met Hoppy, devoured all his copies of Access and borrowed VTR St-Jacques from the National Film Board of Canada’s London office. No one else seemed to be writing about these ideas so, with Groombridge’s blessing, I had articles published in New Society,(5) the Guardian,(6) and Time Out,(7) pointing out the relevance of the participatory video method to the local programming licences the government was inviting the cable companies to bid for.
The Conservatives, under Edward Heath, had returned to government in 1970 intent on fulfilling their manifesto promise to introduce commercial radio. Christopher Chataway, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, went to the USA to learn from the American commercial radio experience and, while there, was impressed by the success of local cable networks which were able to supplement local programming by bringing in distant signals from the major broadcast networks. The British cable industry had different origins: where broadcast signals were impeded by the geography of hills and mountains, cable subscribers rented their TV receivers and paid a small charge in return for clear pictures. But they could only see what everyone else was seeing, three broadcast channels – BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. Satellite TV was still in the future and, as the broadcasters began improving their reach with small relay transmitters, there was no advantage to be had from cable: across the country, the networks began haemorrhaging subscribers. Although the government’s offer of local programming was a surprise, the industry decided to go along with the scheme even if it wasn’t going to bring them in any revenue – neither advertising nor any increase in subscription would be allowed. But the ‘experiment’, as the government called it, would test whether subscriber interest could be restored, and the brownie points for trying would, they calculated, lead to pay-TV. And so it would have done had the Conservatives not lost to Labour in the two elections of 1974.(8)
Greenwich Cablevision was the first to launch in July 1972. Rediffusion’s Bristol Channel came next in May 1973; British Relay began programming on its Sheffield network in August 1973; the next month Swindon Viewpoint was launched with EMI financing Radio Rental’s local network. Wellingborough Cablevision started in March 1974. Milton Keynes’s Channel 40 came later (December 1976), with a station manager who had been deputy manager at Swindon Viewpoint.
Rediffusion was not just the biggest of the cable companies; as a broad- caster it had been in on the beginning of ITV in 1955, operating the weekday London contract until it was merged with ABC to form Thames TV. Some of its broadcasting power and rep- utation could be felt in the London office of the cable company. I decided to find out what it planned for Bristol and arranged an interview with the executive responsible for the project. He seemed open to the idea of involving the community and said they were planning a public meeting in the city in November. As he saw me to the lift after the interview, I told him I had one more question: ‘What are you going to pay the station manager?’ ‘That’s another interview’, he replied and we went back to his office.
Months later, as station manager of Bristol Channel, I was learning how to deal with two Rediffusions: its corporate centre in London and its Bristol cable branch. The Bristol staff were having to put up with the noise and dust of drills as builders worked on creating a TV studio from an old soap factory (an appropriate predecessor) behind Rediffusion’s office in Broad Plain, near the city centre. Their work involved serving 23,000 subscribers across the network, a relationship that was potentially an invaluable resource for contacts and programme ideas, something they hadn’t realised until we explained how we were going to work. In London, my line manager (the executive who had appointed me) and his assistant found themselves acting as a buffer between my insistence on a low-key, participatory approach and the PR style of a nation-wide commercial organisation.
‘Who’s this “we”?’ my manager asked on the phone from London. ‘I thought you were the manager there.’ Industry gossip described it as an ‘alliance of mercenaries and missionaries’. Inevitably, I struggled against the demands of the PR division. They wanted an early launch in May 1973, four months after my appointment, too soon in my view to allow for the involvement of local communities, let alone choosing and training a team to run the station. I lost the launch battle but fought off the idea of young women riding on elephants from Bristol Zoo as part of the opening. I also lost another significant battle. I had been discussing with Professor Halloran at the University of Leicester’s Centre for Mass Communication Research the possibility of a research study to provide a baseline to measure the impact of Bristol Channel. Rediffusion vetoed the idea; instead, it was Swindon Viewpoint that got the benefit of the Leicester research.(9) The lack of such research, with no criteria for success set by the government, made nonsense of its talk of an ‘experiment’.
I did manage, with my London manager’s support, to win what I called the ‘battle of Baskerville bold’ – the font used on an art student’s winning entry for our competition to design the station ident. This was in the teeth of opposition from Rediffusion’s PR division, who wanted the bold capitals of the corporate image with a blast of pompous sound. Our logo was accompanied by a jingle of guitar and lyric (another student contribution): ‘Everyone’s got a story to tell and we’d love to know what yours is...’ The battle gave me a story to tell over a beer with Richard Dunn, Swindon Viewpoint’s manager. I’d kept in touch with Richard after meeting him a few weeks into my job, comparing notes about our respective managers in London. Richard had come from EMI and had a much more relaxed relationship with his London office. They accepted his decision to delay his launch until September. To use on location work, Richard had a Range Rover fitted with a 1” video recorder, allowing what was shot to be transmitted back in the studio without loss of quality. We used 1⁄2” Nivico portapaks whose recordings, transferred to a 1” machine, lost some quality, and for location work we had to work with an ordinary saloon car.
Swindon had another advantage: the small size of the town and its relatively remote position. As one local told me, ‘It takes royalty to fall off a horse to get a camera crew round here.’ Rediffusion’s network reached only an eighth of Bristol’s population and the city already had plenty of local media: two well-established local newspapers, BBC Radio Bristol, the headquarters of BBC West and Harlech Television (HTV)’s English studio. Bristol was also on the list to receive a commercial radio licence. The local press were known contenders and Rediffusion was seen as a rival – we were unable to persuade the Bristol Evening Post to print Bristol Channel’s programme schedule.
I understood Rediffusion PR’s need for publicity even if I opposed its more gross ideas. Thousands were spent on its bus poster ‘Good mornings begin with G’, timed to coincide with the launch, on the network’s G channel, of the first TV breakfast show in the country. We made other programme decisions designed to catch attention. One took advantage of the ‘God Slot’, the agreement – unimaginable these days – between BBC and ITV to observe a break in transmission on Sundays around 6pm so as not to distract churchgoers from their evening service. We used the space for a ‘Dog Slot’, ‘a programme for pets by pets’, with the first presenter being my own dog, Jenny, who’d had experience in a schools series some years before. The publicity coverage for ‘Animal Fountain’, titled after the watering place on Clifton Down, even reached Italy: I had a letter from one of the team researching animal behaviour for Umberto Eco, asking about audience feedback.
The launch date approached. Up to a week before, builders were still working on the studio. As the steering committee approved some £70,000 for staff and equipment, a question was raised about £35 for an electric kettle. ‘What’s this?’ my London line manager barked. It was quite expensive then for a kettle – it switched off after boiling as they all do nowadays. I argued it was one of the most important pieces of equipment – no one needed to stop work to rush and switch off.
The night before the launch, a party for the press and local dignitaries was attended by the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications. Those who stayed overnight at the Grand Hotel were greeted in their rooms the next morning, 18 May, by Friday Breakfast, the first in a weekly series. The trans- mission was only possible thanks to help at the last minute from the BBC who supplied a vital piece of equip- ment we lacked – a process amplifier.
Over the next 22 months Bristol Channel cablecast 700 hours of programming, moving after a few months from weekends to daily early-evening transmissions. The programmes came from all over the city, from all kinds of classes, groups and individuals in a mix of styles that defied categorisation. Advice centres, trade unions, churches, the city museum, arts organisations, youth clubs, rock bands and folk groups, hobby and sporting clubs, as well as the campaigners and pressure groups BBC’s Open Door had made familiar. Twenty-one hours of this footage came from Knowle West TV Workshop (KWTV).
We were interested in seeing what would happen if a portapak was made continuously available on terms decided by local people. We chose Knowle West, a pre-war housing estate in south Bristol, to work in because a community centre warden there had already contacted us over an adventure play scheme, because Rediffusion had a retail shop there which provided an initial base, and because, while the rest of Bristol regarded this 1930s housing estate as a ‘problem area’, there was a strong community spirit born of shared hardship. A staff member who had had experience at Greenwich Cablevision was assigned to help gather interested participants and train them in the use of the camera. A group of some 30 residents was formed, with a hard core of about ten continuing. A selection of the programmes they made can be seen in the exhibition People Make Television at Raven Row. Knowle West TV were invited to give a presentation at a Women and Media conference held in the city, and ‘Women’s Lib’, produced in August 1974 after their conference experience, includes three satirical sketches of feminist, middle-class and their own working-class positions.
Bristol Channel was visited by Dutch MPs, French planners and the government’s Annan Committee.(10) It was filmed by Swedish, Irish and Belgian television. Its programmes were applauded at video festivals in Graz and Vidcom 1974 in Cannes. Yet, along with the other cable stations, it received very little attention at home in the UK. This lack of attention led to a cherished incident. I had been taking a portapak to Bristol Rovers and Bristol City football matches to test suitable positions for recording. At a City match against Sheffield Wednesday I happened to be opposite a disputed offside which the referee allowed – no VAR in those days. I replayed the tape successively to the Bristol City and Sheffield Wednesday players, to the referee and to the referee’s assessor. Finally the Bristol Evening Post reporter wanted a look. I refused unless he guaranteed full credit to us. The Post’s sports page gave us the only headline we ever got in the paper except when the station was closed down.
There was nothing participatory about London’s shutdown of Bristol Channel at a week’s notice with a year of the licence still to run.(11) Early in January 1975 I had been tipped off by a London journalist that a close-down was imminent. The government’s Annan Committee on the Future of Broadcasting visited a week or so later. Away from the official presentation I had been asked to prepare, friendly Committee members heard from staff, volunteers and the KWTV group about what had been achieved and how wrong it would be if the station were to be closed. A support group was formed, ABC (Aid Bristol Channel), and I confided in a local reporter who wrote a short piece.(12) Its appearance immediately triggered a call from London: I was to come to a meeting the next day. At the meeting I was read the riot act by my manager and his boss. I promised not to break the contract again, then asked if we could move on to administrative matters. ‘No, this meeting is disciplinary. You can come back after lunch.’ I went to have a beer or two with my former colleagues in Thames TV. In a corridor I passed my old boss, the executive in charge of Schools Television. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you’re in Rediffusion now, aren’t you. You might be able to help me. Do you know X? He’s up for membership of the Athenaeum. What’s he like?’ This was the senior manager who had just threatened me with the sack.
Bristol Channel was closed down on 14 March 1975, with more than a year of its three-year licence to run; and it was the volunteers who were ‘sacked’. We persuaded Rediffusion to let us keep 100 tapes of recordings and the six portapaks. The recordings ended up in BFI’s National Film Archive, and the cameras were used by our volunteers who formed ACCA, Avon Community Communications Association. The Sheffield and Wellingborough stations closed later that year, but EMI sold Swindon Viewpoint to a community group for £1 and the station continued network transmissions for several years, with a community video group continuing to the present day.
There was anger and frustration at this ending of the cable ‘experiment’, both with the cable companies, but also with the unwillingness of a Labour government to support the continuation of what it saw as a Conservative project. But the anger fuelled a positive energy to campaign for recognition of a local level of communication. A year later, Richard Dunn and I, both attending Vidcom 1976 at Cannes, discussed the creation of a nationwide campaigning group. Our meeting took place over a bottle of wine on EMI’s yacht in the harbour – an unlikely setting for planning a grass-roots movement, but one which, in retrospect, neatly reflected the mercenary/missionary alliance. The result was COMCOM, the Community Communications Group. Over the next few years COMCOM published comments on the Annan Committee(13) and gave evidence to a parliamentary committee.(14) By then its focus was on community radio, and the campaign, continued by the Community Media Association, would take 30 years before community radio came to Britain. But that is another story.
Notes
1. Challenge for Change/Société Nouvelle, Access (National Film Board of Canada, Summer 1972)
2. VTR St-Jacques, directed by Bonnie Sherr Klein in association with Dorothy Todd He?naut (1969; Montreal: National Film Board
of Canada)
3. John Hopkins, Cliff Evans,
Steve Herman, John Kirk, Video in Community Development (London: Ovum Ltd, 1972)
4. Brian Groombridge, Television and the People; A Programme
for Democratic Participation (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972)
5. Peter Lewis, ‘Community Television: A new hope’, New Society, 9 March 1972, pp. 490–492
6. Peter Lewis, ‘TV’s Big Blank Out’, Guardian, 27 May 1972
7. Peter Lewis, ‘Video’, Time Out London, No. 116, 16 May 1972
8. Peter Lewis, Community Television and Cable in Britain (London: British Film Institute, 1978)
9. James Halloran, Communication and Community: the Evaluation of an Experiment (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Committee for Cultural Development. CCC/DCC (75) 46, 1975)
10. The Committee on the Future of Broadcasting, led by Lord Annan,
was set up in 1974 to review the future structure and funding of UK broadcasting. It reported in 1977 (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 6753, 1977)
11. Peter Lewis, Community Television and Cable in Britain; Peter Lewis, ‘Swimming against the tide’, The Leveller, issue 90 (1982), pp. 10–11
12. Jack Pugsley, Western Daily Press, 17 January 1975
13. Community Communications Group, Comments on the recommendations of the Annan Committee on the Future of Broadcasting (London, 1977)
14. Tenth Report from the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries, Volume I: Report and Proceedings of the Committee; Volume II: Minutes of Evidence and Appendices (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 637- I&II, 1978)
Further reading and viewing
Archival material relating to community radio and television in the UK and worldwide is available in London Metropolitan University’s Community Media Collection: https://student.londonmet.ac.uk/library/ using-the-library/special-collections/