Programme Balance

Abstract

It should be expected of a ‘balanced’ programme service, as the Report pointed out, that it finds space for a reasonable number of programmes dealing with a variety of different and divergent minority interests, by no means all of them so-called ‘high brow’. At the end of Chapter g of the Report there are listed some two dozen broad but specialised topics that had been mentioned in communications to the Committee from more than fifty individuals and organisations complaining that their particular interests were getting inadequate coverage on television, and in some cases none at all. The Report did point out that ‘within the number of programmes possible, it would not, of course be possible to fulfil all requirements… and the claims made for their subject by some of the organisations listed cannot merit much attention’.¹ It went on, however, to recommend that both bbc and itv should consider how much more they might do to meet such special needs.