Grade stays on TV gravy train

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change your vote.

Just get hold of a shot gun (you need a licence signed by a magistrate-maybe Duffy will do the job for you) and blast hell out of the buggers.

Then charge them with trespass, rape of royal personage and arson in her majesty's dockyard. If it works for the royal family surely it will work for the workers of Longbridge?

Lord Windlesham, chairman and managing director of ATV summed up the Plowden reshuffle of commercial television contracts by saying: "We remain in control of the company and that is what matters"

The once-a-decade share out had brought two sacrificial lambs in the shape of Southern TV and Westward (which had committed the crime of public boardroom Iows) but had left the giants alone.

One of British capitalism's more bizarre charades was over for another ten years.

Recession or no recession the licence to print money handed to the owners of the commercial TV stations remains as good today as when it was launched.

If public cynicism is today more evident than last time the prospectuses were drawn up (thạt sudden yearning for regional drama which grips the directors for a few short weeks) then expectations will not be so high and results less important.

If the IBA contemplations were to mean anything at all then ATV was surely for the chop.

Lord Grade's empire has become a byword for the cynical use of TV stations, to propagate shows produced by other wings of the Grade empire, with actors hired by agents from other sections of the Grade empire.

Even Crossroads wouldn't be complete without the block of ATV shares firmly held by Noele Gordon, one of the stars whose career can confidently be expected to run and run.

Not only that but there were two powerful. conglomerates bidding against ATV. The perfect bid comes from a sort of opposite of a popular front.

Cross section

A gang of hard boiled entrepreneurs larded with a few names associated with the labour movement to give the appearance of a cross section of the community.

One of ATV's opponents, Mercia, naa not only the support of 28 local MPs and the Birmingham Labour Councilbut also Shirley Williams (who is to a television programme today what good design seemed to the Titanic just before it was launched).

The other opponent, Midlands, had Uncle Joe Gormley among the list of directors (Lady Airey Neave was another plum).

Sir Robert Booth, who headed the bid, made a virtue out of the fact that they 'only' had £33 million to bid with.

Misquoting Lord (Ted) Willis, front man, kept misquoting the Beatitudes at the press conference to launch their bid, claiming that the poor (that was them) would inherit the earth.

But ATV has survived. Just under half the shares will have to be given up and negotiations are now going on as to how that will be done.

The area-which hardly gets covered in some towns in terms of news-will be split into two with separate boards, and ATV will have to find a new name.

Perhaps that last condition was the most penetrating description of the cosmetic changes.

Southern TV will be forced to hand over to TVS which in terms of shareholders means Associated Newspaper: (Daily Mail) being forced to h to European Ferries.

Monopoly

The franchises are unparalleled in British capitalism. They provide monopoly conditions for a decade with the promise that someone will go to the wall at the end of that time just so the public can see how tough the IBA really is.

But previous reshuffles have not even truly passed the money press from one capitalist to another.

Defeated bidders have in the past merely bought their way in to those who succeeded. In the ATV region presumably the 49% of shares will now go mostly to the opponents of ATV and the feuding enemies will become the best of buddies.

Workers have of course nothing to gain in one or other of these teams of bandits (except that every time there is a change their jobs get put at risk).

Takeover By carrying out this charade the IBA are surely providing an effective advertisement for a different sort of redistribution' -a workers' take over of the means of production.

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Price 65p including postage from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX.

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