Committee of Enquiry: 1960

Abstract

The 1954 Television Act had given the ITA a life of ten years. During the first five years, both it and the companies had been busy getting the system on to a practical working basis. There had been the planning and building of new stations and the recruitment of additional contractors. There had been the near debacle of the spring and summer of 1956, to say nothing of the following swift leap into exceptionally high profits with all the repercussions, both official and unofficial, to which those gave rise. Little time had been found for longer-term thinking about what was to happen when the ten years came to an end. Yet in the 1953 White Paper and during the Parliamentary debates on the 1954 Bill, it had been emphasised more than once by Government spokesmen that the plan for Independent Television was an experimental one, implying thereby that there might well be found need to modify it in the light of experience.¹