Armchair Nation by Joe Moran

shortage, television was cancelled for over a month. ‘I am assured on reliable authority,’ wrote John Ware of Chelsea, one of the few aggrieved set owners, in a letter to
The Times
, ‘that the total power consumption of a whole day’s television transmission is approximately equal to that of one hour of any one of the sound broadcast transmissions.’ But most of the country was far more worried about the rationing of the use of fires and stoves than a television service limited to a few hours a day and to the south-east of England. ‘Last evening I and W went into the Sparks, next door, to wish them a Happy New Year and to look at their television picture of the Cinderella pantomime,’ wrote an underwhelmed Herbert Brush, a retired electricity board inspector living in Sydenham with two female housemates, in his Mass Observation diary on New Year’s Day 1948. ‘My eyes are not good enough to see such a small picture well, but as, according to the announcer, it was the first time they have televised a theatre with its own light, perhaps I did not see the television under the best conditions.’ 5
    The first intimation that television might be waking from its long period of torpor came with the London Olympics in the summer of 1948. Since most sporting events refused permission to film, until then television had been reduced to showing tug-of-war, Japanese sword-play, ping-pong and amateur football from Barnet. There were huge attendances for live sport since, with rationing still in place, rising disposable income tended to be spent on leisure. But the public’s sporting tastes were domestic: league football, horse racing and county cricket. That summer’s big event was Don Bradman’s farewell tour of England in the Ashes. The Olympics, an international event that happened to be staged in Britain, was not anticipated with much relish.
    Yet viewers soon found themselves caring about the fate of little-known athletes competing in unfamiliar events. The new Emitron cameras had a revolving lens turret with a close-up, medium-range and long shot, so they could follow runners all the way round the track. They were nearly as sensitive as the human eye, making outside broadcasts possible even in fading light, although the picture then tended to peel off from the corners like a sepia-tinted photograph. Viewers saw clear, velvety images of the giant Jamaican RAF war hero, ‘Art’ Wint,pounding the ground in grief after pulling a muscle and losing his team the 400 metres relay; the housewife and mother, Fanny Blankers-Koen, bringing victory for Holland in the 100 metres relay with her last stride; and the exhausted Belgian Étienne Gailly being heartbreakingly overtaken on the marathon’s final lap. Even better pictures came from the Empire Pool, where swimmers were brought before the Emitrons still breathless and wet. The BBC’s director general, William Haley, lukewarm about the new medium, was staying in a hotel in Devon and was astonished to overhear new arrivals from London talking animatedly about having seen the games on television in their homes. 6
    A programme called
Viewers’ Vote
on Saturday evenings invited them to pass judgement on six selected programmes and send in a postcard. Of about a thousand postcards sent in each week, most rated all six programmes, suggesting a great deal of ‘block viewing’. Viewers had stronger and more polarised reactions than radio listeners did to programmes, probably because it was harder for block viewers to tune out things they did not like. Ninety-one per cent of viewers watched the whole evening’s broadcast from 8.30 p.m. to closedown at 10.15 p.m. Few radio programmes drew TV owners away from the set. The nearest things to a dilemma of choice were
Have a Go
with Wilfred Pickles on Wednesday nights and the comedy series
ITMA
on Thursday nights. 7
    The BBC’s conclusions about this block viewing