£llm overnight profit Within a week of the announcement of the new commercial television contracts, profits have soared astronomically. The original value of the London, Yorkshire and Welsh groups! shares was £63m. Within a week the value of these shares had rocketed to over £17m. Individuals such as Aidan Crawley and David Frost have each made over £100,000 last week simply through owning London TV shares. ‘The Times’ wrote a worried editorial about it all last Saturday (June 17) under the title ‘Lord Hill's £1lm patronage’, The Times seems to be worried on three pointss- 1. Excess profits. It compares this commercial TV bonanza with the Ferranti and Bristol Siddeley scandals. In the TV case "it is known beforehand that: equally excessive profits will be made".cecee. 26 Political influence. Lord Harlech, who is chairman of the new Harlech. TV group is also Tory spokesman on the House of Lords. Aidan Crawley, - chairman of 8 the London TV group, is a well-known right-wing Tory MP. And Maurice MacMillan, another Tory MP is associated with the Yorkshire group. And as the 'Timest comments..'Lord Hill, whose board is responsible for: this ee is himself i a retired Conservative Cabinet Minister." i 3. TV and the Press. The Times points out that the new contracts will mean ae that even more newspapers are involved in commercial TV than are ‘at present. (The Mirror, Mail, Express, Times and Guardian already have considerable TV interests) With the new contrgcts, the Sunday Telegraph, The Observer, The. Economist, the Yorkshire Post, The Spectator and the New Statesman all es interests too. The Times summed up its.objections thuss ‘What is intolerable is to. create out of public property. a great new series of , fortunes for individuals, chosen on an arbitrary basis,. required to take the minimum of risk, and including politicians and newspapers in an inflated profit Clearly the Labour’ Government is simply continuing Tory policies on commercial television. The idea of popular control of the mass media is inconceivably under: this capitalist regime. Hugh Jenkins, MP, wants all the commercial television companies turned into non-profit trusts. This is worth thinking about, but clearly it will not come about under a capitalist government. We mst recognise this. Similarly, it is not a socialist policy to suggest that commerci-~ al TV should be taken over by the B.B.C. which is: simply part of the Govern-= ment apparatus, quite lacking in a democratic structure. With the increasing monopolisation of the British press and the perpetuation of the undemocratic television set-up, the democratic outlet for socialists in mass communications is virtually closed in this country. And it is not an acce ident that Harold Wilson now wants to strengthen his D-notice system so that the Government can increase its powers to tap phones and cables, ..-It's all part of the corporate state Labourism. The least we can do is to expose the antidemocratic drift of this Government. And the television profits should certainly be useful ammunition for the anti-incomes policy struggle of trade unionists.
: Alan Rooney.