Ameri-vision: You are what you watch

Yanks have few philosophical problems with television. They have more or less resolved the conundrum about combining hard news investigation with ads for Toyotas. At bottom, they’re confident that programme quantity finally ensures fairness and quality ... and this is a safety-net. If the ‘ignoble scramble for ratings’ produces some ‘naff daytime soaps and pretty thin sit-coms, it’s also brought usM.A.S.H. andBilko, and Ted Koppel and Edward R. Murrow. Most important, Yanks see television as a business first of all, and a public utility second. No network presumes to appoint itself guardian of public morals, and arbiter of taste. That’s your job.

Brit-tv: They’re watching me

Brit programme-makers are often hampered in their jobs by the Brit Establishment’s photo-phobia. Power-brokers (politicians apart) often regard the camera as enemy, and do not like being watched. The impact of pictures transmitted direct to the public is random, dangerous ... impossible to judge. Where possible, Great British Public is prohibited from receiving its information ‘neat’. So, cameras are excluded from:

1. courts of law (reporters are compelled to sketch pictures of the proceedings instead);

2. the House of Commons (where necessary, the nightly news shows slides of MPs or the debating chamber – combined with audio recordings);

3. wars (when Brit-troops engaged the Argies in the Falklands, reporters were asked to leave their cameras in Shepherd’s Bush).

Yanks love cameras, and basically feel that nothing is real unless it exists on video. I Vide(o), Therefore I Am. Andy Warhol struck an all-American chord when he said that everyone should be famous for 15 minutes. The Press has instant access to events and people, with only the inner recesses of the Pentagon and the CIA generally off-limits. This can lead to press scrums, and the abandonment of all acceptable standards of behaviour when the heat is on (witness TWA Beirut hostage crisis). On the ‘plus’ side, it has also led to Watergate, and to demands for the present Freedom of Information laws, which increase the Government’s accountability to Ameri-public. TV transforms reality.

You are what you read

… And Brits read lots. Many leaf through 7 or 8 national ‘dailies’ every morning, then a collection of weeklies, trade-mags and evening papers later on. Not to mention the give-aways. Brits are voracious consumers of printed matter ... and fast readers.

Newspapers have long thrived in the UK; first, because Brits are literate people, and second, because geography is on Fleet Street’s side. For the past 100 years, this relatively small country has been served by a sophisticated rail network. Papers printed in London can be distributed to the far corners of the realm on the same day. And in recent decades, Britain’s well-developed popular press has used this natural advantage to disseminate stories of national importance, such as:

1. ‘Registered Nurse Turns Vice Girl’;

2. ‘When Hell Broke Out At Church Bash’;

3. ‘Pop Star’s Secret Wedding Confession To His Bride’.

Britain’s national papers are, of course, divided into two categories:

The quality press, or ‘posh’ papers

(you know it’s ‘posh’ if you can’t turn its pages in a crowded commuter train without assaulting the passenger next to you).

The ‘popular press’, or tabloids

(anything of more manageable size, with a nude on page 3, and 1 million pound sterling Bingo Jackpots everywhere else).

America has quality papers and rags, too ... but there are subtle differences in style.