ANCHOR

Cliff Michelmore

FIELD REPORTERS

Derek Hart, Geoffrey Johnson Smith, Alan Whicker, Fyfe Robertson, Trevor Philpott, Macdonald Hastings, Julian Pettifer, Kenneth Allsop, Brian Redhead, Magnus Magnusson

PRODUCER Donald Baverstock

DIRECTOR Alisdair Milne

PROGRAMMING HISTORY

BBC
1957-1965                              Weekdays 6:00-7:00 P.M.

Tonight was a 40-minute topical magazine programme which went out every week-day evening between 6:00 P.M. and 7:00 P.M., and was first broadcast by the BBC in February 1957. The programme was produced under the aegis of the BBC's Talks Department by Alasdair Milne and edited by Donald Baverstock, who later went on to occupy a senior position within the BBC. It was presented by Cliff Michelmore who had already collaborated with Baverstock and Milne on Highlight, a shorter, less ambitious version of Tonight. With Tonight, Michelmore quickly acquired status as a broadcaster picking up an award for artistic achievement and was twice named Television Personality of the Year. Indeed Tonight was significant for its ability to attract and cultivate new broadcasting talent and over its eight-year run managed to launch a number of notable careers including those of Alan Whicker, Ned Sherrin, Julian Pettifer and Trevor Philpott.

The programme was conceived by the BBC as their response to the ending of the "toddlers' truce"--the hour in the evening when television closed down to allow parents to see their children off to bed. As such Tonight went out to a new and untried audience, an audience who, at this time of the evening, would be quite active rather than settled, who would be busy preparing food, putting kids off to bed or getting ready to go out. Tonight was designed around the needs of this audience and its style reflected this: the tone was brisk and informal, mixing the light with the serious and items were kept short allowing audiences to "dip in" at their convenience. This emphasis on the needs of the audience was something of a departure for the BBC who had tended to adopt a paternal tone with its viewers, giving them not what they wanted but what they should want. Tonight was going to be different. It wasn't to talk down to the viewer but would, as the Radio Times put it, "be a reflection of what you and your family talk about at the end of the day" (Watkins: 29). In Baverstock's words, Tonight would "celebrate communication with the audience", and indeed the programme came across not as the institutional voice of the BBC but as the voice of the people.

Tonight was recognised by many to be evidence of the BBC's fight back against the new Independent Television companies who were quickly gaining ground and by 1957 had overtaken the BBC with a 72% share of the audience. But if Tonight was largely a result of competition and the breaking of the monopoly, which in effect forced the BBC to adopt a more populist programming philosophy, the style and content of the programme also reflected broader social and cultural changes. Tonight seemed to capture an emerging attitude of disrespect and popular scepticism towards institutions and those in authority. Furthermore, the adjectives which were often used to describe the programme at the time, such as "irreverent", "modern", and "informal", could have easily described the mood that was beginning to inform other areas of the arts and popular culture.

Tonight introduced a number of innovations to British television. It was one of the first programmes to editorialise and adopt a point of view, flaunting the Public Service demands of balance and impartiality. The programme also introduced a new (some might say aggressive) style of interviewing where guests would be pushed and harassed if it was thought they were being evasive or dishonest. Indeed Tonight eschewed the carefully prepared question and answer type format that had prevailed in current affairs programming until then. Furthermore, broadcasters had tended to fetishise the production process, concealing the means of communication and carefully guarding against mistakes and technical breakdowns which threatened to demystify the production. Tonight though, kept in view such things as monitors and telephones. Its interviews were kept unscripted and any technical faults or mistakes were skillfully incorporated into the programme flow giving Tonight an air of spontaneity and immediacy.

Tonight was meant to be a temporary response to the ending of the "toddlers' truce" and was initially given a three month run. It quickly proved popular however and within a year was drawing audiences of over 8 million. In addition the programme won critical acclaim receiving the Guild of Television Producers award for best factual programme in 1957 and 1958. The programme generated other material as well, including feature length documentaries and was the inspiration behind That was the Week that Was, a show that stepped up Tonight's irreverent, hard-hitting approach for a late night adult audience.

Baverstock left Tonight in 1961 to become Assistant Controller of Programmes and his place was taken by Alasdair Milne. Milne proved to be a capable editor and indeed over-saw a number of innovations including the feature length documentaries. However, the programme would not be the same without Baverstock whose leadership and vision had made Tonight something of an individual success. By 1962 it was felt the programme had become rigid and stale. As is the case with many innovative and ground breaking enterprises, the programme could not sustain the pace of its initial inventiveness. The final edition went out in June 1965. Nevertheless in its eight-year run it had established a format for current affairs programming which mixed the light with the serious, which blurred distinctions between education and entertainment and which managed in the process to soften the image of the BBC, transforming it, as Watkins has noted, from an "enormous over-sober responsible corporation", to something that looked "more like a man and a brother".

-Peter McLuskie