Few television producers ever gain name recognition beyond their industry, but Kenith Trodd is arguably one who has. Described as the most successful of all British television drama producers, he is the winner of countless awards for the many one-off plays and films he has shepherded to the screen, and a figure seen as indispensable to the health of the drama department of the BBC, in which he has worked almost continuously for more than 30 years. Trodd's career is also unusual in that it has spanned the history of British television drama-from its golden age of experimentation in the 1960s to today's more hard-nosed era of cost­ efficiency and ratings imperatives.

     Trodd is perhaps best known for his work with the doyen of television playwrights, Dennis Potter. Both came from similar working-class and Christian fundamentalist backgrounds (the son of a crane driver, Trodd was brought up as a member of the Plymouth Brethren). Both did National Service as Russian­ language clerks at Whitehall, where, during the height of the Cold War, they became firm friends with shared left-wing convictions. It was only at Oxford, from 1956 to 1959, that they found a convenient outlet for their political views, rising to become stars of a radical network of working-class students that gained national media coverage and taught them about the value of courting public controversy.

     Originally, Trodd had intended to become an academic, and it was only after returning from a stint of teaching in Africa in 1964 that he received an offer from another ex-Oxford friend, Roger Smith, that would change his life. Smith had been appointed story editor of the innovative Wednesday Play slot and desperately needed two assistants to help him recruit as many new writers to television as possible. Along with Tony Garnett, Trodd joined the BBC just at the time the single television play was entering a radical phase of experimentation and permissiveness, as a new generation of talent began to make its presence felt. Working as a story editor on The Wednesday Play and Thirty Minute Theatre (a shorter experimental play slot), Trodd became central to this wave of innovation in the 1960s, nurturing writers such as Potter, Jim Allen, and Simon Gray.

     In 1968 Trodd gained his chance to become a drama producer when, along with Garnett, he was lured to the rival commercial company London Weekend Television (LWT), on the promise of forming an autonomous unit within the organization. Notable as the first independent drama production company in British TV, Kestrel scored some successes during its two-year association with LWT, but the arrangement ended in acrimony, with Trodd eventually decamping back to the BBC, where he became producer of the Play for Today slot throughout the 1970s.

     Never any stranger to trouble, he returned to a drama department in political turmoil, as managers cracked down on the freedoms program-makers had enjoyed during the 1960s. While producing some of Potter's most controversial work, Trodd often had to make a public fuss to defend the writer's freedom, most notably in 1976 when BBC management decided not to broadcast Brimstone and Treacle. He also found himself held at arm's length by BBC management as a suspected communist sympathizer for his support of a range of radical left-wing practitioners.

     Though these difficulties were eventually resolved, Trodd continued to campaign for greater independence within the BBC, particularly after the success of his Potter serial Pennies from Heaven in 1978. In marked contrast to Potter, he became a passionate advocate for TV drama filmed on location rather than recorded in the studio (the dominant practice up to that time). This drive for change came to a head in 1979, when he again left the BBC for LWT, as part of a deal involving the formation of an independent production company with Potter. Once more, the arrangement ended in acrimony. Trodd returned to the BBC, but this time on the eve of the foundation of Channel 4 ( 1982), the network that would do so much to legitimize the concept of the independent producer in British television.

     In the early 1980s, Trodd became chair of the Association of Independent Producers as one of the new breed of "independents," although he continued to work within the very heart of institutional television at the BBC. Under his influence, however, things were changing there, too. He had finally achieved his goal of remaining within the corporation while being able to produce independent projects as well. This ideal soon became accepted practice. as did his campaign for shooting on film.

     In 1984 Trodd formed part of a BBC working party convened to examine how the corporation should respond to the feature filmmaking for TV and theatrical release that Channel 4 had pioneered. The outcome was the abandonment of the old concept of the studio Play for Today and the introduction of new BBC film slots, Screen One and Screen Two, with Trodd helping to oversee the first batch of films in 1985.

     Despite the success of his campaigning, Trodd's career after that point raises uncomfortable questions about whether he has made himself somewhat redundant by the changes he helped bring about in the 1980s. The decline in the annual number of single­ drama slots due to the increased costs of filmmaking, plus the corresponding decline in writers and directors required to fill these slots. indicates a much tougher and more competitive environment than the one that allowed him to experiment with new ideas and untried talent in the 1960s. Nor, despite the success of a few of his  BBC  "single  films,"  such   as  After   Pilkington ( 1987) and She's Been Away (1989), has there been anything like the constant stream of outstanding material that secured his reputation in the 1970s. A rift with Potter in the late 1980s also did not help matters in this respect; however, the two reconciled before the play­ wright's death in 1994, and Trodd produced Potter's last two works for television, Karaoke and its sequel Cold Lazarus, both in 1996. Despite these projects, it remains true that Trodd's function has changed from the days when, as a BBC tyro, he filled his many play slots with a motley crew of young writers and directors-the question is whether it has changed for the best.