Learning on ScreenFeature Films on British Television in the 1970s
ITV’s most expensive items in the 1970s were the epic Ben-Hur ($800,000 or about £457,000) and the first nine James Bond films, acquired in packages of six and three for £850,000 and £540,545 respectively. Although some big films were premiered on big holiday dates (such as The Robe on Good Friday 1975), others were used strategically in the ratings war, usually in the Autumn and Spring seasons when the broadcasters launched their new series (such as the premiere of Quo Vadis in the first week of September 1975). These purchases too were often criticised, but on different grounds from the BBC’s – as private companies rather than publicly funded broadcasters, they were bought with the network’s own money. They were instead criticised not so much by the press as by the film trade itself, in an echo of the industry’s past attitudes towards television as a rival entertainment medium. The acquisition for TV of the Bond films and other blockbusters was seen as depriving exhibitors of product on which they could make a considerable continuing profit in subsequent runs and reissues. It was reported in the trade press that in 1974 – when the first six Bonds had been acquired by ITV – the first eight Bond films in aggregate had earned enough money that year to be placed as a group among the top ten box-office hits. Not only was the food being taken out of exhibitors’ mouths – that is how it was presented – but it was being thrown back at them when these films were scheduled in peak evening slots and drew audiences away from new films in cinemas. It was claimed that when The Italian Job was TV-premiered on a Sunday evening in January 1976, cinema takings across the country fell by as much as 60%. The major ITV premiere of 1975 was the first James Bond film, Dr No, in October, which according to JICTAR’s ratings drew a record audience for a film on TV to date and, according to the BBC’s own alternative viewing figures, an all-time high one of 27 million people. The BBC’s ratings blockbusters of 1975 were both on Christmas Day: The Wizard of Oz and the ‘world television premiere’ of Butch Cassidy, for which Paul Newman’s personal permission had to be sought. According to the BBC’s ratings (but not JICTAR’s) they drew audiences of 20 and 24.7 million viewers, respectively.
Scheduling Patterns
There were distinct differences in the way the BBC and the ITV companies scheduled their films. All broadcasters typically kept to regular weekly slots, some of which were changed on a seasonal basis (so BBC1’s or BBC2’s midweek film might change from a Tuesday to a Wednesday evening; or an ITV Saturday-night film might change from early evening to late evening). Throughout the decade, it was usually possible for viewers at least in some parts of the country to see a film every night of the week and in some cases to have a choice among several (video recorders not becoming widely available until the late 1970s).
Following a policy introduced by David Attenborough when he had been Controller of BBC2 in the 1960s, the BBC channels generally avoided scheduling films against one another (with the occasional exception when BBC2 was showing a foreign-language film) and instead planned programme ‘junctions’ so that a viewer could, for example, switch over after the end of a film on BBC1 in time to see the start of one on BBC2. On the other hand, certain slots were typically battlegrounds for BBC1 and ITV, notably Saturday and Sunday evenings. The BBC most often used evening slots for premieres, with off-peak slots (especially weekend afternoons) for repeats or occasionally premieres of minor films; the pattern with ITV was less regular, and again subject to variation among the regional companies.
…it was usually possible for viewers at least in some parts of the country to see a film every night of the week and in some cases to have a choice among several…
Besides regular slots, the most common scheduling strategy employed by the BBC was the practice of grouping films in thematically related series or ‘seasons’. In the 1960s such seasons had often been very long indeed, with Saturday-night Westerns and thrillers on BBC1 or weekday-night vintage classics and musicals on BBC2 running for over a year without a break. Seasons in the 1970s tended to be shorter than this – four to eight films were typical, though some could be longer – and were particularly useful for presenting repeats in a way that gave them a certain freshness and coherence, interspersed with an occasional premiere. Typical ‘hooks’ for seasons were stars, genres and directors, but also on occasion other creative figures such as writers and even studios, or a more general theme, such as ‘Images of Childhood’. The BBC’s longest season of 1975 was the chronological sequence of sixteen of the seventeen Tarzan films made by MGM and RKO between 1932 and 1953 (the one omitted being the first, the only one the BBC had shown previously and the least often repeated). Despite their age, many were receiving their UK TV premiere and the others their first screening on the BBC; whereas ITV had tended to show them in holiday afternoon slots, the BBC scheduled them at peak time on Tuesday evenings on BBC1. Also notable was a series of six films made during and about World War Two and showing for the first time on TV in a peak-time Sunday evening slot, hosted by David Niven. Several director seasons were linked to a series of bought-in American interview profiles, The Men Who Made the Movies, which continued in 1976. But perhaps the landmark season of the year was the first series of horror double bills on late Saturday nights during the summer on BBC2 – a novel scheduling idea that became an annual institution for nearly a decade.
