Bill Moyers Journal: International Report; 109; A Conversation with Huw Wheldon

ANNOUNCER: Funding for this program was provided by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Ford Foundation, International Business Machines Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Rosalind P. Walter. MOYERS: What do you do now that you say this is what is good and this is what the people ought to see. HUW WELDON: Oh no, my dear chap, oh no. Oh no. I mean, is that, are you, are you must, oh no. There is a, there is a, there is a question, the answer to which in broadcasting in this country is taboo, and it's not less than taboo, I mean, it's much more taboo than incest. It really is taboo. MOYERS: I'm leaving town right now. WELDON: And the question, the question is this, do you give them what they want, or do you give them what they ought to have? ALISTAIR COOK: Good evening. I'm Alistair Cook. What you are going to see is an interview with a most remarkable man.

More than any interviewee, I can think of. He leaps from the screen with a vitality and a, and a candor and a humour that have the effect of a prolonged electrical charge. That was the effect he had in life too. It's not a performance. His life and his character were absolutely devoid of fakery, of performance. Now, you may not even know his name, but I think you'll be pleased. And I hope grateful to learn how much you owe to him. His name is Huw Wheldon, and when Bill Moyers did this interview 11 years ago with him, he was the managing director of BBC Television. And in the seven years he was in that job, more than any other individual. He created a golden age of BBC Television in music and documentaries, most of all in drama. All the early BBC dramas on Masterpiece Theatre were his doing. Now the title, Managing Director, is very deceptive.

The thing, I think the main thing that has fortified BBC Television down the years has been its tradition of never having anybody run a programme service who was brought in from on top or from the outside, never a businessman brought in, but of recruiting the top executives from the BBC's own creative ranks. This the history of Hugh Welden is quite typical. A Welshman born in 1916, educated in Wales and therefore bilingual, he was briefly with the London School of Economics, I say briefly, because Hitler called. And in the Second World War, Wheldon volunteered as a private and fought bravely with the Royal Welsh Fuseliers. And after that, he went to the British Arts Council, but then in 1952 he joined the BBC on the bottom rung of the ladder.

He helped with and he wrote children's programmes and school programmes and bits of news and documentary. Then he went into directing, then he produced an onward and upward till he became head of documentaries, head of BBC Music, controller of all programmes. And finally, after 17 years of apprenticeship, Managing Director of Television. And then and there he galvanised the best talent he could find among his huge staff. He also corralled, distinguished outsiders from other fields. He told Kenneth Clark to make Civilisation and Jacob Bronoffsky to do the Ascent of Men. And one day he buttoned-hold me and talked to me rather like a colonel ordering a shirker on a dangerous mission. He said, "Cook, you have been in the United States for over 30 years and it's time you made a statement about an on television. I will give you the same producer and the same crew as Clark's Civilisation.

And their entire life will be devoted to making your ideas visual. Now go away for two years and make it and I'll see you at the end of it." I never saw him again until my own history of America was finished. Well this dynamic man was stricken with cancer four or five years ago and a drastic operation recovered. How well we never knew because in the past two years or so he went about his business stoically, quietly, hiding what in the end was atrocious pain. And in the spring of 1986, in his 70th year he died. So this is sadly a memorial tribute, but not so sadly, it's the celebration of a life of great achievement, a life led briskly and to the hilt by a man of astonishing vitality.

And what's more, a man who could not be bought, that's to say a man of incorruptible integrity. The name is Huw Wheldon. BILL MOYERS: I'm Bill Moyers in London and tonight I want you to meet a man who's presided over some of the most creative programming in the young history of television. I've asked him to meet me at the Glasshouse Pub in the West End of London, not only for the sake of a convenient meeting place, but for the sake of a metaphor. There are two institutions which to me reflect the vitality of this society, both in its ancient and modern sense. One is the pub. Over the centuries the people of this country have met in places like this to inform themselves, to debate, to communicate as well as to have a drink. The other institution is the British Broadcasting Corporation.

One of these institutions is quite ancient. One is quite modern, but they both have to do with communications, with informing a people of their past and also of giving people a chance to laugh. No institution has done it better than the BBC. This symbol is known throughout the English-speaking world. It stands for the British Broadcasting Corporation, and BBC stands for Innovation and Excellence in Television, Sir Kenneth Clark, Civilization. SIR KENNETH CLARK: Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three, the only trustworthy one is the last. MOYERS: Alistair Cook's America. ALISTAIR COOK: When I first came to this country, I'd been teaching school in East Germany, and pictures of Frederick the Great were on the walls of every home, public place, barbershop. And it was the same with Roosevelt.

He was a godhead throughout the 48 states. I didn't know this. And I well remember being tossed out in the middle of the night by a saloonkeeper in the Rockies, when I suggested to him that maybe his picture of Roosevelt over the bar was a little romanticized. MOYERS: Jacob Brunowski, The Ascent of Man. JACOB BRUNOWSKI: There is no place and no moment in history where I could stand and say arithmetic begins here now. People have been counting as they've been talking in every culture. A arithmetic like language begins enledged. Elizabeth R. starring Glenda Jackson. GLENDA JACKSON: I may not be a lion, but I am a lion's cub, and I have a lion's heart. BILL MOYERS: Monty Python's Flying Circus. And this is Huw Wheldon, the Welshman who keeps the world of BBC television spinning.

He's been with the BBC for 23 years, as producer and broadcaster, as director of music and documentary programs, as controller of programs, and since 1959 as Managing Director for Television. MOYERS: Were you surprised when I asked you to meet me in a pub? WHELDON: I wasn't surprised that you asked me to meet me in a pub. I was a bit surprised to find that it was this one. And I thought it would be one of the pubs where we hold rehearsals because it's a very curious thing. I try and spend a few hours, once a week, at rehearsals, if I can. I don't always succeed, but I certainly spend some hours during a month at rehearsals. We got huge rehearsal blocks and rehearsals and so on, but the tradition of London in the theatre and in television and in radio. The tradition of London, is that rehearsals take place in the upstairs rooms of pubs. And at this moment, while we're here, there's no doubt that there'll be at least 150 rehearsals of one sort and another taking place in the upstairs rooms of pubs up and down the West

END. MOYERS: How does that come about? WHELDON: I don't know. I mean, if you're going to hold rehearsals, you've got to hold them somewhere. And if Laurence Olivier in Ian Richardson on the one hand or pop singers on the other, Doesn't matter who it is? If you're going to rehearse, you've got to rehearse somewhere. And the upstairs rooms of pubs is what suggested itself to the great British heart. And it's been taking place for years. MOYERS: What is the most unique thing about the BBC to you? WHELDON: Well, it's a very big question. I know the answer, but it's a long answer. I'll try and make it very short. The important thing about the BBC to me, is that it's got nothing to do with me or my colleagues, it's this that our forefathers in the 1920s and 30s invented a constitutional instrument, which they call the BBC, which allowed you to take broadcasting very, very seriously. Which means that you're going to do very, very funny television and very, very sad television and very, very short television and very, very long television and television about facts

and television about fictions. But the notion of being as pro-tier as that, as many sided, is not because I am many sided or because other people are many sided, it's because our forefathers invented this kind of instrument, which allowed it. And the great thing about the BBC is that it encourages you to make good programmes. I mean, you often fail, of course, so you make rotten programmes, but the foundation itself is an encouragement to make good programmes and that's a very engaging one. MOYERS: And yet the foundation financially is based upon everyone's participating in the cost of the enterprise. And while this may sound naive to you, to an American, it seems that that would pull down the general level of excellence. When you were trying to please every citizen who is himself an advertiser or a subscriber to your medium, that it would somehow bring down to what de Tocquville feared as the ultimate democratisation of information and culture. WHELDON:Well, as a matter of fact, it might, you see, I don't think it will happen now, I'm

just saying we're all right now, but it might have happened. I think it's a very real thing. The way in which, let's get it quite clear, the way in which it is financed, is that if you've got a television set, as you know, in this country, you've got to pay a license. I mean, you've got to pay a charge, more for colour than if it is for black and white. MOYERS: You pay that, you go down to post office. WHELDON: You go to post office and pay it. Now, that money, see, it's not a tax, it's a nice thing about that money. It doesn't belong to the government. The government has allowed that money to come to us. We could collect it if we wanted to. We don't. We get the post office to collect it. MOYERS: I hope it doesn't take as long for you to get your money as it does for us to get our mail. WHELDON: Well, it's the same kind of thing. You know, post offices are like that. On the other hand, the irony is that the fact is that what we find is that if we collected the money ourselves, it would cost us even more. And so we get it collected by the post office. But it is our money. And we collect that money from, as you say, the subscribers, the people who have television sets.

Now, then, in a way, they found out in the early days of radio that collecting the money, which you're to make your programmes within that way, does mean that naturally, you've got to deal with that audience. I mean, it's they who are paying the money. They pay. They've every right to have what they want. And they found early on that it was very difficult to do a full public service operation on one network. Owing to the fact that in a given moment of time on this network, you had some programme which pleased an awful lot of people, but also displeased quite an awful lot of people. And so early on in the 20s, they came to the conclusion that if you were going to do a very big public service job in this country with that kind of relationship to the audience, which is that they are paying, then you've got to have two networks at least. You've got to have two networks so that if you've got boxing on the one, you've got non-boxing on the other. And this came into television.

And as soon as television started in our country, BBC television, as soon as the network started, BBC One, straight away, we wanted a second network. And we got the second network, of course, in due course. So now we've got two networks. They're both BBC networks. They're both national. All over the country, we make programmes for both the networks. And there's another network, which is commercial, which is also very good. So that one way or another, you'll provide choice and with two networks, you can carry a real range of possibilities, so that you deal with a greater majority. As you should they pay and who you to look down your long nose at them. You see, I mean, fair play. They pay so that you've got to deal with them decently and properly. At the same time, the country is packed with minorities, like any country, minorities everywhere. And you've got to deal with them too. And if you've got two networks planned together, you can do it without saying, if we only had one, I think we might have gone your way. MOYERS: What do you mean? WHELDON: The way you just suggested that we would have gone. MOYERS: That you look at the audience. Yes. What do they want?

WHELDON: That's right. MOYERS: What do you do now? Do you say, this is what is good and this is what the people ought to see? WHELDON: Oh, no. Oh, my dear chap. Oh, no. I mean, is that you must, oh, no. There is a question, the answer to which, in broadcasting in this country, is taboo, and it's not less than taboo. I mean, it's much more taboo than incest. It really is taboo. MOYERS: I'm leaving town right now. WHELDON: And the question. The question is this, do you give them what they want, or do you give them what they ought to have? No, it's a taboo question, because there is no answer to that question. I mean, if you'd set that question to Shakespeare, or to P.G. Woodhouse, or to George Elliott, or to Raymond Chandler, in fact, to anybody who makes things, what would his answer be? Neither. I am giving them neither what they want, nor what I think they ought to have. What Shakespeare and P.G. Woodhouse and Raymond Chandler and Updike and Mailer and anybody gives people what they can make a living by and something which will gain them the admiration of people who judge what they admire.

And you finesse the question under no circumstances. Did Shakespeare say to himself writing Twelfth Night, now then is this what they want? Or, no, is this what they ought to have? Not at all. What he did was to write as good a play as he possibly could, which he thought he'd also make a living by, make enough to keep himself going and land a right another one. That's what he did. And what's good enough for him is good enough for us. MOYERS: VNo one sits around the table and says, we ought to do historical drama and we ought to do scientific. WHELDON: No, they do because there's money in it. You see, takes a lot of money. So there's a lot of sitting on tables. It's getting the money. There's a business. It's nearly always obsession, isn't it, in the end. It's obsession. Preoccupation. The Forsythe Saga It's a thing called Donald Wilson, a highlander, with hair coming out of the cheekbones, you know, at all. He was obsessed with the The Forsythe and he just thought that he could go very well. MGM had the rights and we couldn't get the rights, for ages. MGM wouldn't sell them and that made him all the more obsessed. And in the end, he went to work on The Forsythe Saga and found that you couldn't do it unless you wrote a new part one, wrote a new part one all by himself, nobody knew you, nobody

did. And then he drove and drove and drove to get it on the air. I mean, he was a producer. He was able to hit his sales at that time, cost a lot of money to make, but in the end, he succeeded. Once he got his money, he just went on with it. MOYERS: I always wondered if The Forsythe Saga, the popularity of it, didn't represent some yearning for the kind of order and regularity and position. I don't know. Each of us prior to World War I wanted, there's some nostalgia there. WHELDON: I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it. On the other hand, it was also very well done. And Soames, to see what it was, what it was, what it was, what it was, what it was. MOYERS:the chief character. WHELDON: Yes. I mean, he's the man you're, I thought that he was better even than John Galsworthy the embodied as being in the original book. MOYERS: Did The Forsthye Saga become a national obsession in this country?

WHELDON: Yes, I don't think it became a national obsession in this country to the extent that it didn't go to Yugoslavia. I went to Yugoslavia when it was on there, and they put it on Thursday nights. And when he went out on Thursday night, they called it Saga Forsthia there. I mean, you couldn't find a human being anywhere. Policemen were indoors. I mean, everyone was indoors watching this extraordinary English work. Why? I cannot imagine. MOYERS: Yeah. I can understand it. WHELDON: Well, they you are. It went down very big in Yugoslavia. In fact, it helped us get the army for War and Peace. Because one of the difficulties about War and Peace was how to get an army. So you can't pretend to do War and Peace with six soldiers and a shield. You can't do it in that kind of. You can have an army. And of course, an army is a very difficult to find. Now, the Yugoslav army is a well-known army and a very cheerful one. And eventually, we hired the Yugoslav and by chief, of course. And so we hired the Yugoslav army. They were terrific. MOYERS: So those French and Russians dying in War and Peace were Yugoslavian? WHELDON: Yes, they were.

To a man. MOYERS: Of the programs that have been on the air since you have been managing director of BBC, which of you personally enjoyed most? WHELDON: Enjoyed. MOYERS: You personally. WHELDON: Oh, I hadn't expected that question. I enjoyed. Well, I can tell you, there are either great cries of the human spirits or very, very funny programs. MOYERS: Do you like Monty Python? WHELDON: I do. like Monty Python. I think Monty Python is a really excellent program. MOYERS: What appeals to you about it? WHELDON: Well, it's mainly what appeals about it is that it makes me laugh. And what I like is laughs. And if I had to choose on my deathbed between watching the news or Panorama or Window on the World or some big program on science or Brofnowski or K-Clark or any of these big programs or Bill Moyers with Dr. Kissinger, I mean, if I had to choose between seeing either those or seeing Monty Python or Dad's Army on my deathbed, I would undoubtedly choose Monty Python

or Dad's Army, wouldn't I? MOYERS: You wrote me and said that your favorite segment of Monty Python was the Department of Silly Walks. Why? WHELDON: Because it made me laugh. MONTY PYTHON SKETCH: Hi, good morning. Could I have a copy of the Times please? Excuse me, though. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. .

. . . . . Good morning. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but I'm afraid my walk has become rather silly. I've recently learned so it takes me rather a long time. MOYERS: How did the decision get made to make some of these these these programs that have made such an impact not only here but in the United States. So Henry, The Six Wives of Henry VIII. WHELDON: The, um, there was a man called Gerald tk Savory. He wrote a play called George and Margaret many years ago and then went to Hollywood. Um, he joined our staff some years, some years ago now and he started talking about the possibility which is idea that we might do six separate plays about these six wives

and so he made a few inquiries to find out whether this was technically possible. Roundabout, roundabout this time, he got advice, and so did I, that we really should do this. And we were told by a woman called Naomi Capron she still with us, a director, a very distinguished one and she wanted to direct a couple of these which she did the final analysis. And the reason why she wanted to do this was because she was sure it would work. And the reason why she was sure it would work was because she remembered that many years ago we had done a curious program called Animal, Mineral, Vegetable where you've got three archaeologists sitting around, being asked to give attribution. What is this? And he'd look at this thing and he'd say well that's a 16th century spectacle case. Thank you very much, quite right, good to the top of the class. Now, Naomi remembered that on one of these occasions in the Tower of London after the program was finished and they were sitting around in the office they noticed on the mantle shelf of the office they noticed that there was

a silver or silvery codpiece or jock-strap. And one of these great archaeological grandees said I see that you will have a silver codpiece up there. And somebody said yes would you care to give it an attribution and he looked at it and he said I, uh, French. Wrong. So he passed it on to his neighbour and his neighbour couldn't give it an attribution either. And the people of the Tower were delighted and they said well they said it came off the garments of Henry VIII. Henry VIII's armour is downstairs at the bottom of the staircase. And that armour is very famous armour and you should have guessed this Now not only his armour there but there's the undergarments he wore under his armour which were made a kind of chai mail and this is the codpiece of that armour. And the reason why it's here is because it came loose. And we've had it here sometime and we should really weld it back on but we've forgotten and keep off getting to do it But the reason why it became loose is because generations of Cockney women have given it a bit of a rub on their way past, on their way upstairs has a kind of little fertility symbol.

So if you're going to go past Henry VIII, then you want to make a little bow towards fertility because Henry VIII is one of the great symbols in the British mind. I mean like Humpty Dumpty and Alfred and the Cakes and Lord Nelson, he occupies a real position in the British consciousness and, although in point of fact, as we all know he never had any many children, the fact is he's thought of Bluebeard in his castle and he's knocking them off and as a great fertility symbol in there he is. And Naomi was sure because she remembered, this and she was right. I mean he occupies a real place in the British heart and there was no problem and the Sixth Wives of Henry VIII got itself therefore done MOYERS: I would have never predicted that source of creativity WHELDON: Oh,well that's right you see it isn't I mean that's a very good point isn't it because the source I mean yes it is a good point you made it well it is true because the source of creativity you see if you're going to be serious if I'm going to be serious about it

it is a question of living in a creative community. so we have a very funny system here it wouldn't do in the States It would be against the monopoly commission anyway it would be absolutely out of the question against the monopoly commission it's a very curious system we have. I mean I have these great offices over a Television Centre as I say there are 7,000 people there every day. We make 80% of all the programs that are shown on our two networks we make ourselves there. Those 7,000 people are all producers and designers and camera men and electricians and so on and so forth. And the place is seething it is a highly creative community. Now some of them are only in there for a few months because they've come in from the theatre and films some of them are for life. Because, like me, they signed on many years ago to be there and one way or another it's a slightly mobile but very very large creative community. And it's in the corridors and the clubs and the offices of that community the creativity takes place and creativity is nearly always a question of somebody very bright like Gerald Savory

getting on to somebody very bright like Mary Capontktk and between them thinking up some bright scheme and then it's up to executives like me, and there are lots of usm to agree those schemes. Now on the whole you agree with them if you trust the people and they've made these things before they're very good they know what they're doing. And you trust them and on you go. That's the name of the game. but it depends on individuals, it depends on writers MOYERS: But it also depends on tradition, it depends on culture as you said earlier WHELDON: We're lucky we're lucky because there is no doubt that in the country we do have we do have a very very marvelous literary and dramatic tradition. And you can buy actors in England, as you know, you can buy them in any grocery shop. Walk into a grocery shop and ask for fifteen actors please. No, five gentlemen and ten ladies. And they'll be delivered 3:00 in the afternoon. I mean actors are two a penny in England. God knows why, nobody knows why I mean it's a country full of stiff upper lips

and dignity and so on but there it is. I speak as a Welshman and I can't but all English people, men and women, act from the minute they're born and nobody knows why, it's just a mystery. MOYERS: Talk about trust Huw, you have to trust a man a great deal to give him thirteen hours on a national network WHELDON: Yeah but you've got no alternative you see I mean the only other thing to do is to trust a committee and as you'll know you can't trust a committee committees to do nothing. You have no alternative. Economics is now very much the name of the game isn't it? Everybody's talking about economics and economic man and inflation and the economic world. And we thought perhaps we ought to do something big about economics. Well what do you do? I don't know what you do about economics. Adrian Malone is a good producer and Adrian Malone produced Bronoffsky's Ascent of Man series. He was very inventive and he got on well with that Bronoffsky and we wondered whether Malone might handle something to do with economic man. But then instead of getting Malone through that by himself.

You've got to have him with somebody And the question was who. Well we looked around and the question is who really does have authority they're not easy to find or I mean most economists are dull dogs anyway. They're not as bad as sociologists but I mean they're pretty bad MOYERS: There goes a very substantial size of my audience well I can hear the sets clicking. MOYERS: you don't know any economists and they're all dull dogs aren't they? Anyway in the end we went for John Kenneth Galbraith who is not a dull dog and who does have a certain amount of authority and who does cut ice. And we asked him whether he'd been interested in making 13 hours of programs taking two years or so over the making of them. And he said yes he would And so he and Adrian Malone have now got together and they'll spend the next two years filming around the world. WelI, I don't know what they're going to do but you mean I got to find somebody else? The thing not to have is some panel that'll look at their work I mean the best thing you can do is get John Kenneth Galbraith and Adrian Malone.

Who else can you trust? MOYERS: Do you look at these programs before they are on the air? Does anyone? WHELDON: No. Not unless there is something very very controversial I mean if it's full of naked women or sex MOYERS: That's controversial? WHELDON: Sure it's controversial I mean if they say 700 naked women upside down MOYERS: I will not go for the moment into the analysis of how 700 would be wrong and 600 would be all right because I want to stay with Galbraith a minute. When you ask an individual to do that because, as you implied, lively and articulate. Aren't you at the same time eliminating somebody who may have just as much to say as John Kenneth Galbraith? And may even be as legitimate but isn't lively and articulate and can't communicate on this medium? MOYERS: Oh absolutely of course yes you've got an alternative. You're certainly you're eliminating more than him. You're also eliminating people who haven't got enough time. You see what we try MOYERS: They're teaching at Harvard. Well they are Yes

What we try what we're trying to do in these big programs is to make in television terms the equivalent of a publication of the first order. So that had we been living in the middle of the 19th century and Darwin had written The Origin of Species why shouldn't he have written it for television as a television program. Civilization is certainly the most important single work I believe that Kenneth Clark has made for example. And he's a very very well-known writer on the history of art and his books will be on bookshelves for many years. Now that if you're trying to make the equivalent of a first-rate work of work of art which is what it is in the end. Then you've got to find somebody who's authoritative. But the limitations are tremendous because they've got to be authoritative like K. Clark or Cook or Bronowski or Galbraith. But they've got to be, as you rightly say, articulate and capable of speaking on these old cameras and so on. Which is not everybody's cup of tea All those are experienced in it and as I say lastly, they've all got to be free to do

to be free for two and a half years. Well that limits things very much on the other hand, as you know Bill, there's nothing like a limitation. I mean if you really want to find a house with only one chimney and a Yew tree in the garden and a bent staircase. All you've got to do is to put all those down in an advertisement and you'll have fifteen tomorrow MOYERS: But let me delimit it another way you trust a Clark and a Galbraith because they have authority they can communicate and they can organize their thoughts but then can the viewer trust this medium because in a sense you're a choice of those people is going to bias or structure what is presented to them. That is there may be a legitimate view of the world of civilization, of economics WHELDON: Oh well they're not supposed to be God-knowing MOYERS: They're communicated on television WHELDON: Oh so okay that would be communicated in books or whatever it is it's like a book you've got to be able to be a good writer you see

I mean you're limited by those who can actually write. Now there are lots of people, especially economists, who can't write at all. So that in terms of getting a decent book published about economics you've also got a very grave limitation on it. MOYERS: It's a limitation that does not seem to impose many handicaps all of the progress But Shouldn't somebody proclaim the rights of the inarticulate WHELDON: Yes, but you can't by definition have that proclaimed by a television service. It's like saying in the theatre should not somebody proclaim the rights of the untheatrical I'm sure they should. But it's no use getting plays from people who've can't write plays. See we don't believe I mean, it's like you, you could easily be have been earlier in life a big man on the BBC. You're the kind of man the corporation would have gone for. Because the BBC both in sound and television never believed in people who look nice. MOYERS: Well I'm not sure I am well now all right WHELDON: I beg your pardon who simply look nice. you do look nice.

But it's never believed in charming people you see it's never believed in announcers who are nothing except announcers. It's never believed in in anchorman who are just television anchorman. It has always believed in people who who are authoritative in their own right either as television directors or as journalists or as scientists or as playwrights or something. And most of the people who appear and appear a lot on the on the BBC television are either scientists or artists or historians in their own right or they are journalists or directors or whatever it is as you are. and in you You are not... I mean you and I both have been in the same business I was on the screen for many years but if there's one thing I loathed being called it was a television personality it suggested you couldn't be anything else didn't it? MOYERS: Seems too ephemoral. WHELDON: That's right well I wasn't a television personality I mean I was a television producer and a television director before that for many many years and that was the game I knew and it was by virtue of my authority in that game that I was able in the end

to inhabit the screen that's right isn't it? MOYERS; Did you select television as a profession? WHELDON: Yes or late in life mind you. MOYERS: Late? WHELDON: Yes, because I personally I mean I had well I had one of these undistinguished careers where you fail exams and do all that kind of things. And then I joined the Army. I enjoyed the Army very much indeed for a lot of years enormously and I mean guaranteed life and limb there's nothing like a war but very very enjoyable MOYERS: I've heard you before and discussed the Army I've heard you talk about it being the most exciting experience of your life WHELDON: I don't know about the most exciting. I mean I suppose getting married or the most exciting experience about getting born but oh I did I did there's no doubt that I enjoyed the Army. Yes. MOYERS: Do you think that this is not unique to Huw Wheldon and that this is something of the whole generation of men who took part in the saving of Britain and the saving of kind of Clark's Western Civilization? WHELDON: I don't think it was because it was saving Britain

or saving civilization. I think it was just because it was the Army. I mean it was nice being told my the Sergeant Major. I mean it was nice being told that I mean I remember writing something down a bit on a bit of paper. And Sergeant Major then to have answered me "sorry he said always have everything in writing and never put pen the paper" and I think. Dead right. I tore it up at once. Quite right Sergeant Major I said. I don't know. I like the men. and the great thing I see My life has suggested to me that things go in a funny in a different way. I remember very vividly indeed the first week I spent in the Army it's a private soldier and we were in a barrack room and this was early in 1940. And there were no uniforms. The uniforms hadn't arrived this was in the Buffs in Canterbury. And so there we were thirty men in our ordinary clothes, some people in tweed jackets, some people in dark suits, and some people in blue surge and working men and university men and aging men, well thirty,

young men nineteen. And it was a very agreeable week we had. And then one day the uniforms turned up. And we all put these uniforms on. And the first thing that happened, most unexpected, as soon as people were in uniform was what I saw instantly their faces, properly, for the first time. I no longer saw their clothes or the class that lay behind them or the life that one could deduce from their shoes as it were. What you saw for the first time was a group of thirty people with countenances. And I saw these men and I thought these really are men. And there were all sorts: of strong men, feeble men hesitant men, impulsive men. And I liked being part of this of this body of men. MOYERS: I don't want to take an unjustifiable long leap of metaphor -- but I am intrigued by the fact that television imposes on the culture the same kind of order

or a similar kind of order that the army imposed upon this vast. WHELDON: I don't think it does MOYERS: It makes history no, a structure? WHELDON: I disagree I think a single director, I mean with respect I disagree, I think a single director directing a show Three Sisters or Monty Python whatever it is funny show, a director is in a very tyrannous position. it's a limited tyranny. And he is in a very strong commanding position and he's like a sergeant with troops or an officer with troops there's no doubt about that. But television is a whole, television service, certainly in our case. the thing about the BBC is that what we live in is a very pluralistic society in many ways. This is obviously a Christian country. It is clearly a democracy. It is clearly part of the Western world. And yet having said that, in a way Christianity is challenged all over the place. Democracy can be seen as doing all

sort of different ways. And there is a great deal of debate as to how we should grope our way forward to new forms of belief and behaviour. Now then those sort of divisions make different voices. And it seems to me that what a television service has to do is to let all those voices sing. And in fact what you've got to have in a country like ours, divided but at the same time in its own way unified, is a television service which allows the Christian and the agnostic humanist and the man who believes in the left and the far left and the far right and the middle right you want all sorts of pressures by way of plays, documentaries and programmes to go forward different voices. All of us in the end quite clearly inhabiting a country that is soaked in the Christian tradition and soaked in the Western democratic tradition of itself two thousand years. But nevertheless there are many voices

and the business of television is not to impose a pattern upon their voices but let those voices sing come what may. MOYERS: And yet you they there's a great common theme or at least a common assumption of selection of those programmes that have been brought from the BBC to America. I mean Kenneth Clark is an Alistair Cook in another disguise and Bernowski clearly a product of the Western tradition is in science a way in a way to what Clark was to culture. WHELDON: If you do something very big of that kind you go for big central themes I suppose. LIke if you're going to do a very very big dramatisation then you tend to go for Trollope or War and Peace or Galsworthy. I mean you wouldn't risk something smaller and less central. On the other hand I mean there are programmes have been taking place

since we've been sitting here and programmes are going to take place on two networks all afternoon and all evening I mean all of their programmes made by midnight and they are not going to be anything but very various by definition. MOYERS: We see the best in the United States are you implying that there's some things not quite so good? WHELDON: Oh yes, with knobs on Yes oh yes I mean what's more. MOYERS: Do you do detective stories science fiction stories? WHELDON: But of course. But of course. I mean going back to what I said a moment ago if you're going to deal with majorities as well as minorities. If you're going to keep faith with the members of those huge majorities who actually pay in the end all the money you need who make your programmes well then you've got to make popular programmes that is to say you've got to make programmes which will please me both when I'm a member of a minority which is quite often and when I'm a member of the majority which is quite often. Because we're all members but it's both all the time aren't we? MOYERS: What are some of the pressures on you? where do the forces of constraint?

WHELDON: There are very few we have very few. Most of the pressures on me personally come from making poor programmes. I mean you've got to take the risk of making poor programmes you see because the game is not avoiding failure or costs. The game is giving triumph a chance isn't it? That's the game. Well now if you're going to do that then you're going to have plus that you're going to have failures where there was no chance of triumph anywhere they just fail because you went a wrong decision to start with you'll mucked it up And the greatest pressures that I have is is people who are my colleagues and my friends, therefore, because we are 7,000 strong over their in Television Centre and the place sees with creativity and out of the creativity quite often they can come forth these mice. It's a very difficult thing to live with a mouse when you expect it to be a buffalo. MOYERS: Does the government put pressure on you? WHELDON: The government not at all. MOYERS: I was here in 1971 when there was a

small storm in Parliament because the BBC was showing extremism in Northern Ireland and there were complaints that you were in effect promoting violence, not intentionally but consequentially. And for a while WHELDON: It was a row MOYERS: for a while about why you didn't put on IRA leaders. WHELDON: But we've always been very careful about IRA leaders we've allowed a naturally you've got to cover what's happening they'll see it a very complicated process covering what's happening in your own country where you've got civil disturbance. Now, in the IRA of course are from another country I mean they're from the Republic. And we've always been very careful. We've only had three IRA men on throughout anyway as IRA people. The row wasn't so much about that. The row was about dealing with a thing in as big a way as we were doing. Now there was one government... there was one moment, probably the moment you were thinking of, when the government and in presence

of Mr. Mortalingtk which has come back as Foreign Secretary Mr. Maudling was Home Secretary at that time and Mr. Mortaling asked us not to do a program we were thinking of doing which was a big debate with Paisley and everybody in it about our stuff And we've got all the main people to be in this debate it was going to ask two or three hours And we've got as we go Mr. Justice Devling and all sorts of people. We went to the board with a very well= thought out program we thought anyway. Mr. Mortaling got very bothered about this and felt that it would harm things and he did ask us publicly he wrote us a letter asking us not to put it on. And so we had taken it very seriously and it went to the Board of Governors. I mean the BBC I guess it's got a Board of Governors and so they thought about it and in the end they decided to put it on. And these rows happen MOYERS: In 1956, if I remember correctly, when commercial television arrived in Britain the BBC lost a large portion of its audience. WHELDON: Yes people were they went over that That's right they said

'ah, here we go boy's and at last we can go and look at commercial television.' And they did. And for a time they were looking at commercial television and their relationship of 70 to 30 I mean 70 percent of the audience was with commercial and the commercial had passed us. Only 30 percent was with us it was intolerable. MOYERS: What happened? Do you think? WHELDON: What happened and we naturally put that right are they back of course. MOYERS: How did you get a it back? WHELDON: We got it back in two ways. We naturally got very bothered because if our audience had gone down much more down to 20, and of course once you go down it's like a falling circulation isn't it? I mean the inherent dynamic of a falling circulation is downwards. And from him that taketh away from him who hath not just taken away even that which he has. And if you're on 30 percent this week you're going to be on 29 next week MOYERS: And everything that goes down doesn't necessarily come up. WHELDON: That's right it doesn't so we will got by right bothered. Secondly of course this is going to do a great disservice to a great

institution I mean the BBC is not some little sectional institution. It's a great institution of the Western world. It's not going to be kind of 20 percent of the audience so we had to do something. Well, in the final analysis we set about a little bit of rescheduling. We found, one of these ridiculous stories, we found that if you could get a very big part of the audience going with you around about half past six seven o'clock and half past seven in the evening, that they were likely to remain with you for the rest of the evening come what may. I mean we foun, in other words, that commercial were putting on very popular programs at half past six and seven and half past seven. So we thought well now then we better knock them in the eye. That's the obvious thing to do. And we are quite capable of making popular programs and the great thing to do was to make these popular programs and put them opposite those and beat them

at it. So we decided the thing to do was to put on light entertainment a situation comedy which the BBC is always marvelous at early in the evening half past six and knock them back. Now we were up against it because of the comedians and the actors didn't like that at all I mean they know for certain where they should go they should go is after a very popular program so they inherited that amount of audience and be opposite a documentary on Balzac in Chile. I mean they know so they didn't want to go in half past six or seven. However we had to twist their arms so we popular programs in half past six and seven o'clock Monday through Friday. And within three months we had them back. MOYERS: You played the game. WHELDON: Of course I mean if a Tory government, in its infinite wisdom, decided to put up a commercial competitor to compete against us they could hardly expect us not to compete back could they? That's the reason

you went for a lunch that game by the way I got nothing against that game. I like that game. MOYERS: Do you have any feeling for for the possibility of television in the world becoming more than simply a transmission belt for very well-done cultural and historical programs. Do you see it as a force in a growing consciousness? in WHELDON: I actually slightly see it the other way, Bill, I don't know. MOYERS: What do you mean? WHELDON: Well, I think at the moment that one of the difficulties... my experience has suggested to me that both in newsrooms and in public affairs offices and so on... one of the difficulties now is that there is too much information to digest as it were. So that by four o'clock in the afternoon you're up to here in international news if you want to. Now you can't use it you can't use it. There's too much of it. So that when you come to putting on a main news bulletin at nine o'clock for half an hour whatever time it is. In our case

it would be nine o'clock on one of the networks. You've already got to boil an awful lot down and distill it a great deal. And once boiled down and once distilled it becomes, of course, in itself less meaningful than it originally was. MOYERS: What's the consequence of this? WHELDON: The consequence of this I think is going to be, it would not surprise me, that if in the next 20 or 30 years there was less international news as it were. It wouldn't surprise me a bit because now, even now you've got to throw it away. I mean by the time you've got by the time you've got this stuff in and you've got this this battle taking place in the middle of Africa and this explosion taking place in the middle of South America and something else taking place in the Far East and some hideous catastrophe taking place in Tokyo and some other uprising in Durban or whatever it is. By the time you've got all this stuff it is very difficult to use it all. But there's too much because our collection you see is by now

so sophisticated that nothing can happen anywhere in the world without our being able to collect it. MOYERS: I don't want to make a prophet out of a good producer. But I'd like to try to explore the consequence of this. Does this mean then that television becomes a force for insularity? A force for retreating into the privacy of our own homes and sitting rooms and living rooms and dens --- at the expense of a growing sense of consciousness about the interdependence of the world we live in? WHELDON: Well I don't think that you see I don't think insularity I mean Emanuel Kant, after all, never moved more than 30 miles from the house in which he was born over an entire lifetime. Now nobody could say that he was insular. I mean if ever there was a universal man it was Kant. I don't believe that concentration on and dealing with what you know about, and trying to do that truthfully and well, is likely to make

insularity as such. But it is likely to make a narrower set of possibilities. I mean we're not God we're very human. MOYERS: Well let's don't look ahead and let's look back to the plaque that's owned the entrance hall of broadcast house in London. WHELDON: Broadcasting House MOYERS: Broadcasting House and it reads as follows this is in English or in Latin I've got it in English of course This temple of the arts and muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first governors in the year of our Lord in 1931. John Rieth being director general. And they pray that the good seeds sown may bring forth good harvests. That all things foul or hostile to peace may be banished hence. And that the people inclining their ear to whatsoever things are lovely and honest whatsoever things are a good report may tread the path of virtue and of wisdom. Good statement of the spirit of 1931. Do you think television has fulfilled do you think the BBC has fulfilled

what the first board of governors hoped it would? And has it in a way made the man in the pub tread the path of virtue and of wisdom? WHELDON: Well you see when you use phrases like tread the path of virtue they are rather condescending kind of phrases and they're difficult for us to live with. They're like Matthew Arnold's great phrase about sweetness and light. It is a marvelous essay he wrote but sweetness and light came into it and somehow it's difficult to live with. On the other hand, in I don't think that we're as far away from that as a sardonic view might think. In the 30s our country was much more patrician, it was much more establishment-minded and it was still imperial of course. So that kind of statement was more possible. By today we're not imperial the establishment is virtually national as it were, it's very democratic in that sense, and so we've got a different pulse beating in the national heart. On the other hand given all that --

what programs should be is truthful in their different ways. If a program is funny well then it should be it should be a good program which is funny and it should be a funny program that is good. If it's a serious program well then it should be truthful in its own serious way. And I do not believe that that it is entirely... it's not sense to dismiss big words like truth and beauty. In the end you can't I mean if you do can't. I don't mean you, but nobody can. In the end I mean the question is are those programs good? I mean was that first one really as funny as they said it? Was was that second one as documentary in a documentary sense as meaningful as they said it was. Was it not true that the first was really commonplace and the vulgar and predictable? And was it not true that the second one was really very biased and what it was really saying "was why aren't you more like me" which was not not documentary programs do say.

Is it really true that that news was well judged and was it as accurate as it could have been and was it true in the end? That that play that was commissioned with such a rage of trumpets wasn't really cheating cheating it own author cheating the public cheating everybody by in the end cutting corners. I mean were the programs as good as they were said to have been? Now it is possible for me and if programs are as good as that well there you are as a matter of fact the best you can living up to that kind of tradition. And that's what the inheritance allows you at least to try to do and all we do of course I regret everything is fail at it all the time but at least that's what you're going to try. MOYERS: I had this sense that Alistair Cook, Bronowski and Kenneth Clark were continually being surprised and delighted and excited about what was happening to them as they made these. WHELDON: I think that's true I think that's true. I think there were they were and I'm sure it's true from in fact all three have told me that it was true. And one of the one of the things that excites them, you see, is is a little extension of what I just said.

If you actually get close to grandeur then the grandeur if it doesn't rub off on you it certainly rubs off on the program. I mean it's very very difficult to make a bad production of Twelfth Night. I mean you can try but you're up against Shakespeare and it's a job. Now the great thing about those people is that they are on these big themes and if you're going to be on a theme that involves Venice and Galileo. Or if you're going to be on a theme that allows the Supreme Court or the Philadelphia Convention. If you're going to be on big themes of this time -- well then once you get there once you find yourself -- whenever it is in Pisa in Boston in Berlin the theme itself and the people who people

the story are themselves so big that this stuff is like a bit of a YYKYK behind you. And they did, all three of them, all four of them they did find themselves much helped not simply by the capacity of television and all these things but by being reminded of the immense power of Michelangelo anyway. Once you're there you see there's Michelangelo too. MOYERS: And you don't find it incongruent to discuss such things at a pub? WHELDON: Oh no that's what pubs are for MOYERS: From London this has been a conversation with Hugh Weldon the Managing Director of the BBC. I'm Bill Moyers so

funding for this program was provided by the German Marshall Fund of the United States the Corporation for Public Broadcasting the Ford Foundation International Business Machines Corporation the Rockefeller Foundation and Rosalind P. Walter Hello, I'm Edwin Newman I'd like to invite you to join us for an extraordinary discussion with four former secretaries

of state Dean Rusk Henry Kissinger Edmund Musky and Alexander Hague these men will examine those who make United States foreign policy and those who influence it they will talk about the struggle between the president and Congress over control of foreign policy as well as who really advises the president and who carries out his foreign policy decisions they will discuss the influence of the press and all of this all of these issues will be examined in light of recent developments and foreign policy and in light of the November elections please check your local listings for the time of this program on your public television station