Countdown to Countdown: Setting Up the Channel and Getting on the Air

Abstract

Almost from the moment of their appointment Isaacs and Bonner were discussing and devising the internal structure for the new channel. Nothing in British Television at that time was a template for what they now had to do; set up a national channel the output of which would consist entirely of programmes that it did not make itself. Isaacs considered the publishing-house model. The full analogy with publishing, as envisaged by Anthony Smith in his original National Television Foundation proposal, would not be possible under the regulatory terms of the Broadcasting Act. However, the commissioning aspect of the publishing model could be the basis for programme generation from independent producers. The term ‘Commissioning Editor’, unknown in television until then, was adopted for those who would generate the programming for the channel’s schedule.

When we build, let us think we build for ever.

[John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1849]