Ed Murrow Panorama


Ed Murrow

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BBC Four Collections -

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specially chosen programmes from the BBC Archive.

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For this Collection,

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Sir Michael Parkinson

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has selected BBC interviews

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with influential figures

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of the 20th century.

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More programmes on this theme

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and other BBC Four Collections

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are available on BBC iPlayer.

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Ed, you're the most... Without being unduly flattering,

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you're the most famous television interviewer in the world.

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As far as this country's concerned, I'm probably the most infamous.

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How do you manage to interview people so interestingly,

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and talk so little?

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Well, Malcolm, may I begin by registering a complaint?

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Yeah.

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You have intellectual advantages over me.

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But, you also have sartorial advantages.

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You should've told me you were going to wear a dinner jacket.

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I have one, you know, made by a London tailor.

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I'm sure you have, Ed,

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but the pure excuse for my being in a dinner jacket

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is that I'm going to dine tonight with a very eminent person,

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and it's unusual for me to put on a dinner jacket,

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and I wouldn't have done it, unless it had been the case

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that I was going to dine with this very eminent,

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dare I say, newspaper proprietor?

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Yes, and now, to your question, though.

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Interviewing seems to me reasonably simple.

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It consists only of finding an interesting person

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and then finding questions to ask him.

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But, when it's not an interesting person, what do you do then?

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Well, then, you listen harder than you do, normally.

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I find it a real strain, if you're interviewing someone

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and you get the answer that says, "Yeah, no, don't know,"

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then the physical effort of listening so hard that you try to extract

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from that individual a little more of an answer than you have already had.

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But you do that without talking too much.

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Yes, I rather prefer doing an interview with the camera

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working over my shoulder,

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so that the interviewer does not get between the subject

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and the audience, so that the subject is in fact,

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rather, talking to the audience instead of talking to me.

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Ed, now, the point that always puzzled me

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about this television interviewing is this.

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If you're having an interesting conversation with someone,

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- you must participate in it. - Yes.

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If you participate in it, you must speak a bit.

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You must have a position.

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You can't be a purely neutral personage.

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Now, how do you get over that?

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Well, I think perhaps the honest answer to that is that I don't.

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But, the way I try to do it is to do enough research in advance

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so that one can ask the offbeat questions, as we call them.

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By which I mean, if you are interviewing a movie star,

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you try to find out whether that movie star is interested

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in shooting or fishing or doing woodworking or something like that,

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so that, instead of doing the typical fan magazine sort of interview -

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"How did you get started in the movies?"

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"What is your favourite role?"

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"Who is your favourite director?" And so forth...

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- Which are boring questions. - Boring questions,

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and have already appeared in print and elsewhere.

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You ask about hobbies and, as I say, offbeat interests and activities.

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You see, my great difficulty is that, if I get interested

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in a conversation, I want to say what I think about it.

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And, if I say what I think about it, I begin to talk a lot.

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And that detracts interest from the person you're talking to.

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- Have you had that difficulty? - Yes.

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And I haven't seen, unfortunately, enough of your interviews

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to be able to give a critique on them.

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Sometime, when I can spend more time here, I will do it,

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but I have the same difficulty.

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- I am always tempted... - To hone in.

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Yes, but I think that results from

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what is called in the House of Commons, supplementary questions.

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But I always want, I never know, when I'm doing an interview,

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where I'm going.

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Because my questions generally arise from the preceding answer.

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Rather than being carefully thought out.

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I am very much opposed, as I'm sure you are,

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to the rehearsed, planned interview.

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I'm sure that's a mistake. It's a complete bore.

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Because there's no sort of spontaneity in it,

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there's no sort of interest in it.

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For instance, you take the most interesting person

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I have interviewed on television, was Mr Somerset Maugham.

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Yes.

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Right, we began talking about the novel.

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And my single desire was to bring out from Mr Maugham

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what he thought about it.

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But the moment he began to talk about the novel,

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all sorts of ideas of my own began to develop

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and I couldn't help myself expressing those ideas.

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Do you think that's bad, or not?

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I think it depends upon what you elicited from Mr Maugham

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as a result of your questions.

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I think the most interesting interview I have ever done,

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where I did not have that difficulty, Malcolm, was with Dr Oppenheimer.

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Because, he stood up at the blackboard

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and started doing these symbols, and I didn't understand a word

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he was saying, but the cameraman took a cutaway shot,

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and when I looked at the cutaway shot,

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I was sitting there, fascinated,

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looking at these entirely unintelligible symbols.

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Well, there, I was in no danger of interrupting or talking

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because I didn't know what he was talking about.

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I quite agree, and I don't want to be rude, but that was

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money for jam, because none of us know anything about those symbols.

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But if you begin to talk about something like the novel,

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it's terribly difficult.

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We've all got views on those things.

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Not for me. I don't know anything about novels, either!

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HE LAUGHS

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Ed, I would like to switch on

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from the particular thing of interviewing,

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to this question of television altogether.

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Now, you were a famous broadcaster here in England,

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and there's not a single person here

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who doesn't remember your broadcasting in the war.

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What do you feel about this thing, television,

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which has taken the place of sound broadcasting?

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Well, in the first place,

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I don't think it has taken the place of sound broadcasting,

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insofar as news is concerned.

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Which is the only thing I pretend to know anything about.

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I think, in the field of news, it is basically a pictorial supplement.

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Where you have a set spectacle, a coronation.

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The Trooping the Colour,

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something like that, then television cannot be equalled.

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But, I think in the realm of news,

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and I would contend that news consists,

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to a large extent, of ideas.

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And you know how difficult it is

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- to translate ideas into words. - My goodness, yes.

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But then, when you have to translate them into pictures as well,

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it becomes exceedingly difficult and, to answer your question,

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so far as I am concerned personally, in the area of news,

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I continue to get more personal, psychological dividend,

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and I don't believe that television is going to replace radio.

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For example, I had meant to say, earlier on,

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how pleasant it is to be back in London,

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where I spent nine years.

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And where I left all of my youth and much of my heart.

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Well, one can say that on radio, I think,

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as effectively, perhaps more effectively, than on television.

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I see exactly what you mean, but I'm still thinking, for instance,

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the last time I was in the United States,

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I had to cover the Chicago Conventions.

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Now, the television coverage of those conventions,

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seemed to me so perfect, so complete, that, you know,

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we foreign correspondents didn't go into the convention hall at all.

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I remember.

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We sat in our hotel rooms with the television going on

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and covered it from that.

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Yes, but, Malcolm, this was the set, predictable spectacle.

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- Like the Coronation? - Like the Coronation.

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But, when it came, at that convention in Chicago,

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to finding out what was happening in the party caucus,

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the television cameras weren't there,

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and that is where the old reportorial effort had still to be applied.

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So, you really feel that, just as newspapers have survived radio,

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sound radio will survive television?

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I do indeed, and I think it's going to be a different type

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of news reporting in radio. I think it will go in greater depth.

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It is not going to be just the pictures of what happened today.

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Radio is going to have to devote more time to backgrounding the news.

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Not only saying this happened, but this is the background,

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this is what caused it to happen, these are the results

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and the consequences that may be expected to flow from it.

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I think radio news has got to change due to the impact

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of this incredible device called television.

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I remember when, the last time I saw you, which was in New York,

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you had just done what I think was a sort of historic thing,

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was your very effective attack,

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effective because it was based on reason and not on passion,

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on the whole business of the McCarthy hearings,

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which we all hate in this country, you see.

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Now, I remember asking you

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whether that would lead to any trouble with your sponsor.

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And you said no, it wouldn't lead to any trouble with your sponsor.

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And I frequently use that argument.

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Are we absolutely sure that the withdrawal of this sponsorship

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is not due to any considerations of that kind?

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No-one is ever quite sure what is in the mind of a sponsor or an editor.

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- But your honest opinion. - I can only tell you this.

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That, since the McCarthy programme, the Aluminum Company of America

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had four opportunities to drop the sponsorship,

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contractually, that is, contracts expired.

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They didn't.

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They chose to do it now, and I choose to accept their explanation,

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that it is because of a change in their merchandising programme.

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You see, this programme, had... Oh, it was, what?

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25th, 30th, something like that, in terms of popularity rating.

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A corporation that is trying to sell consumer goods is obviously,

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as an advertiser looks for the preferred position in a newspaper,

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is obviously going to try to get up

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with the programme in the first five, ten, 15.

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Now, I accept their explanation in this case and, as I say,

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the answer will come

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in terms of whether anyone else decides to sponsor it. We shall see!

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And you think they will, of course.

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I have no alternative but to think they will!

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But whether they do or not, and this, again,

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is an aspect of commercial television, in this particular case,

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whether it is sponsored or not, it will remain on the air.

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But you see, I remember seeing in your room in New York,

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and it rather touched me, that among the various trophies that you had

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was the BBC microphone that you'd used in the war.

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Which is the only trophy I have ever kept, and I have received many.

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The most touching thing that ever happened to me.

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When I left here, after nine years,

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they went down and just cut loose that old-fashioned microphone,

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literally cut the cable, put a little plaque on it which said,

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in substance, "This is from studio B4.

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"For Morrow, who used it with," I think they said "some" distinction.

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- Which is... - Very fair!

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...overstatement. And this, I value above anything else.

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I just want to ask you one last question. You know the BBC.

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You know what monopoly broadcasting means.

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We have embarked, and we are about to embark,

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unless the election has it otherwise,

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we are about to embark on the experiment of commercial television.

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Do you think that that is going to be good or bad?

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HE LAUGHS

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It's a good last question, Ed!

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Malcolm, I lived here long enough to know that the British have

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this admirable trait, when they go abroad, of not attempting

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to give counsel or comment on domestic affairs.

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I don't know the results here.

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I do know one thing.

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That, after about four years

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of discussing here in London with my friends,

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the relative merits of British and American broadcasting,

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I finally concluded it was an utterly futile undertaking because,

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if you compare the two systems, in the end of the day,

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or rather, at the end of a long evening,

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you come down to a comparison of the two countries.

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Neither system could be transplanted effectively to the other country.

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It has always seemed to me that American radio,

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and the same thing perhaps goes for television,

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is highly competitive, it is commercial,

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it is loud, it is vulgar, it is... At times vulgar, it is experimental.

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British broadcasting is careful, cautious, rather paternalistic.

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And, at times, vulgar.

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And, not quite so often, vulgar!

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At least to these tired old ears.

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But, when you finish comparing the two systems,

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you have compared the two countries.

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Both radio in the States and in Britain are, I would contend,

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accurate reflections of the political,

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social and economic climate in which the two grew up.

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I think it's a very true and interesting point of view.

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The only thing is that we now are going to embark upon this change,

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which I have supported, Ed, not for any reason,

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except that I hate monopoly.

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- I'm always for competition. - So am I, I loathe monopoly.

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I loathe one person or one entity controlling anything.

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And I just wonder what it's going to be like.

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Well, I'm curious to know what the commercials

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will be like, for example.

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I'm sure they will not be the jingles,

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the singing commercials, that we have in the States in many instances.

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But, certainly, competition, I think it would be most deplorable

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if Punch were the only publication

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permitted in this country. Wouldn't you? Would you go that far?

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It would be more than deplorable, it would be a catastrophe,

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an immeasurable catastrophe!

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I say that as one of your loyal subscribers in the States, Malcolm!

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And, if that be a commercial, so be it!

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Well, it's commercial!

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