HC Deb 06 April 1960 vol 621 cc521-32

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Brooman-White.]

9.59 p.m.

Mr. Roy Mason (Barnsley)

I must say right at the outset that I was very reluctant to raise this matter in the House tonight, but having started by raising this question of wireless and television record programmes last December at Question Time, when the advice of the Postmaster-General to me was to send the material on to the B.B.C. and I.T.A., and knowing the contents and the material, and having only qualified privilege, and so finding Chat I could not do that, I feel obliged to raise it in the House tonight.

I must say that as a Member of Parliament I am very much against this present system where, though we may find that untoward practices are prevailing in a Department or in any of the ancillary departments of the Government, if we want to follow the matter right through to the end we are somewhat hamstrung and cannot send our communications to the Department concerned without incurring the risk of libel because we have only qualified privilege. In consequence, no Member is prepared to send the material of this nature. Therefore, I want to make my protest right at the outset. I am very much against this system and I raise this subject here only as a last resort.

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed. That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Brooman- White.]

Mr. Mason

As to the substance of the Adjournment debate, I raised this matter, as I said, last December, and intend to see it right through. First of all, I am absolutely against the undesirable alliance of disc jockeys and producers of record programmes with record firms as partners or employees, and at the same time having a job writing in the popular Press stating or advertising or giving ideas as to what records should be bought.

We have plenty of examples of this. David Jacobs, for instance, who has been voted top disc jockey of the year, and, I understand, is earning at least as much money per year as the Prime Minister—an example of our values going astray. He is the disc jockey of "Juke Box Jury". I understand that he has complete autonomy of selection. He is employed by the Pye record firm and at the same time is writing a weekly article on discs for the Daily Mail.

Ker Robertson, the producer of "Cool for Cats", is also attached to the Pye record firm and writes in the Daily Sketch. His disc jockey, Kent Walton, is employed by the Top Rank record firm. When I mentioned "Cool for Cats" in my Question last December, it was not because it was any worse or better than the others. It was just an example. It could equally have been "Juke Box Jury" or "Housewives' Choice". This is an undesirable grouping of jobs open to the very practical criticism that it is purposely designed to make the plugging of records very easy indeed.

Neal Arden, the regular disc jockey of "Housewives' Choice", in his article in The People of 15th November, 1959. said: Mantovani played me his latest composition, ' It was Love' (Decca), the other day. It is sung for all it's worth by Brian Johnson, and song and voice and record are so excellent that I'm afraid this disc would never make the Top Ten. Much too good! However, as I shall be doing ' Housewives' Choice' at the B.B.C. in a couple of weeks' time, I hope some wise lady will ask me to play it. This is absolutely blatant plugging in the public Press, asking that he should be given the opportunity of plugging a record on the air. As every hon. Members knows, if it is played on the air or on the television programme it is boosted in sales by thousands. There is also the inference that this system of the "top ten" is dishonest because it was said that this record was so good that in any case it would not get into that top number.

Jack Good is, firstly, a television producer and, secondly, a music publisher with a half-share in a business. Thirdly, he works for Decca Records as a recording manager and for E.M.I. as a disc jockey. Finally, he writes a column for the record paper Disc. This places him in a position where he can make money from his music business, through his television programme, and where he could come under pressure from two record companies to boost their records and artists on T.V. and in the newspaper.

Russ Conway, who recently had a television programme, discovered and now manages the singer Eddy Falcon, and twice he has been a guest on his show—plugging Russ Conway's songs. First he gives him a spot on the show; secondly, he gets a commission for every contract, including these appearances, and thirdly, Falcon plugs the songs which Conway has written. This undesirable alliance is taking place and this plugging ring ought to be broken.

Next the method which is to be very much deplored is that whereby teen-agers are being continually cheated and exploited whenever they purchase a record. This is in two parts. The first, of which we have had an example by one of the top disc jockeys, concerns the "top twenty". It is a swindle. Billy Cotton described it as the "tyranny of the ' top ten'." There is not only one "top twenty". There is another called "juke-box top twenty" and another called "twenty top tunes".

Record firms are making arrangements with their agents and distributors purposely to boost a record. They take extra copies of that record on special terms and those they do not sell they can return, so that the record starts to move and they can then claim that it is certain to move into the "top twenty". This is how trash is getting into the "top twenty". As Neal Arden suggests, the best records never get there. The "top twenty" is a swindle and is being used to encourage teen-agers to buy the wrong type of record. That is only a small part.

The other part of the racket involves a good side and a bad side of a record, called the "A" and "B" sides. They are all conversant with this. Record manufacturers watch for hits in the United States, or for a song destined to be a hit. They group a team together and make an "A" side, and possibly it sells half a millon, or, if it is very good, a million copies. Some recording managers have connections with music publishing companies, though not usually openly. It may be that their shares are held by nominees. They also have the same artists under their direction, and sometimes they are managing them.

Consequently, they have one of these artists record the "B" side. It may be one of the music publishing firms's own numbers—one that would not otherwise be recognised or sell, but with the "A" side it is assured of at least half a million copies sold.

The recording manager and his music publishing firm will get the same financial return, too. Thousands of pounds are involved. There is no consideration for the record buyer, particularly the teen-agers, who are paying for these records. This is the system that means one popular number on one side and trash on the other.

The Minister ought to recognise the size of the market. There are 3½ million record players already in use, and the record industry has a turnover of £50 million a year. That is really big business. The production of records in 1959 totalled nearly 70 million and sales were valued at nearly £14 million. Here is a system specially designed to cheat every record lover, but particularly the young people.

We have plenty of allies on our side in opposing these things. Mr. Harold Walter, general manager of the Performing Right Society, has said: Our directors feel that all is not well in the business and that it should be cleaned up…. We are also trying to devise means of limiting pseudonyms used by composers. We understand that one member of a recording company used 54 … Although the use of pseudonyms is usually justified and is without ulterior motives….

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I am not quite clear what the Government responsibility for that is.

Mr. Mason

The Postmaster-General, under licence, is responsible for certain actions by the I.T.A. I am drawing his notice to these associated matters which come within his jurisdiction, such as wireless and television record programmes.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I do not see how the Minister is responsible for the manufacture of records.

Mr. Mason

This is the system that is being employed, within the I.T.A. particularly, for which the Postmaster-General has some responsibility. It is under the Television Act that we are able to raise this matter in the House of Commons, as we have done at Question Time, and as I am following it up now, as I think logically, in an Adjournment debate. I am unable to send my material through the post, as I have said, because these communications only carry qualified privilege, and if they go through the post then legally they are published. Members are stultified in following through any of these rackets or practices that are continuing to grow in any department that the Minister may be responsible for.

The gentleman goes on to say: … there may be some cases where recording managers use them to conceal the fact that they are writing songs to put on their own records. Mr. Paddy Roberts, chairman of the Song Writers' Guild, says: We are in the process of compiling a list of recording managers … These are the people working in the I.T.A. and the B.B.C. … who make records of songs they have written or published. We understand that some of them have made as many as fifty in one year. Another colleague who comes to our aid, a man with great knowledge and experience of these matters, is Jack Payne. In a statement decrying this system whereby recording managers use their company's songs or their own to foist on the public on the "B" side of a record, he says: In my view, this could lead to evil. No wonder the British songwriter finds it difficult when the market is monopolised in this manner. Most emphatically, bribery occurs in the 'pop' music industry, and I defy anyone to prove otherwise. Those are very strong words. What better evidence could there be than that from a person who is in the industry itself?

Because of what has been happening, an American music company recently wrote to me. It was very perturbed and said: We have felt for some time that when the American music publishers, with their history of underhand dealing, got into your market, it would only be a matter of time before your recording men and programmers of music were corrupted. As a matter of record, I had been considering for the past several years opening a branch in England … Previously so, because I believed that in a clean atmosphere, energy and talent would receive a just reward. It went on: We have seen the picture change in your country, and I think it only fair and just that you point out that it is the advent of the American publisher and record company that has caused this. Even across the Atlantic they are noticing what is happening here. They are getting worried. They thought they might be able to come in here and give, particularly, young song-writers a chance, but even they have been pushed out of the market. I assume that the writer was referring to the companies which I mentioned in my Question when I raised the matter with the Postmaster-General last December.

They are the Aberbach companies which are run in London by a person called Cyril Baker. The Americans invented that type of organisation in the United States. There has been criticism of their activities. The Music Publishers' Association disapproves of some of them. In America the Aberbach companies formed a partnership with recording managers, disc jockeys and artists—the same alliance again. They started the same thing here two years ago. By this means recording managers are placed in a position where they can take songs from their own companies and put them on the "B" sides of records which are destined to be hits. The "B" side of the record makes just as much money as a hit. This prevents many song-writers from being able to sell their talents and takes business away from the more reputable music companies who show no favouritism.

This shady form of record making is tending to increase. It requires the Postmaster-General's reserve powers of intervention to stop it. The British songwriter has not a chance of competing against these rings. First, he has to persuade a publisher to publish his song. Secondly, the publisher has to persuade a record company to make the record. Thirdly, the recording manager has to try to get the song on the air. These are formidable obstacles which cannot be surmounted. The only method left is for the man to buy himself in. Everybody wants a cut from the royalities, so he has to make an effort to bribe someone in order to get into this closed shop. Therefore, the good, honest song-writers in this country are being frozen out of the market.

In conclusion, I ask the Postmaster-General to request the I.T.A. and the B.B.C. to conduct internal inquiries into these malpractices because they could grow and become a major scandal. Now that we know they exist, the Minister has an opportunity to step in and nip them in the bud. Consequently, he could give instructions for these undesirable practices to end. Having brought these things to light, without having gone into great detail—and I could mention more corrupt practices within these two associations—I look forward to hearing from the right hon. Gentleman that he will do something positive about them.

10.15 p.m.

The Postmaster-General (Mr. Reginald Bevins)

My hon. Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General would have replied to this debate in the ordinary course of events and would have replied with a natural charm and aplomb. Her absence is not due to any disrespect to the hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) but is because she has another and important engagement. I hope that I shall be able to give the House a reasoned reply to what has been said, or at least to most of it, because, as you implied. Mr. Deputy-Speaker, at one point some of the hon. Member's remarks might have been a little wide of the responsibilities of the Postmaster-General.

It is always refreshing to listen to the hon. Member for Barnsley. I appreciate his beliefs and his sincerity and I have no choice but to put up with his tenacity in this matter. Since he first raised this subject, I have made a point of listening to one or two of the programmes on which his criticisms have centred and I have found that they are quite amusing, provided that one closes one's ears to the words.

What is the case that the hon. Member has deployed? The first and perhaps the most important suggestion is that certain records are what is known as "plugged" by disc jockeys, that is to say, they are put on to an excessive extent on both some extent, of course, be interested and that not only is plugging improper, but it also prevents young and talented people from coming forward and securing the limelight.

The first thing I have to say is that hon. Members know perfectly well that, irrespective of their political colour, successive Governments have always endorsed the independence of the B.B.C. and, more recently, of the Independent Television Authority in their day-to-day affairs. I shall not weary the House with the statements in the manifestos of the two parties. It is the business of the B.B.C. and the I.T.A. to keep their houses in order, but the hon. Member is entitled to know what steps those two broadcasting authorities take to prevent these alleged abuses.

Before I come to those specific measures, I want to make it clear that, irrespective of what the two authorities may do in the mechanical sense to prevent these abuses, there are and always will be two very powerful sanctions which operate against abuses of the kind which the hon. Member has alleged. In the first place, as the House well knows, these programmes are essentially popular programmes. The hon. Member said that millions of people listen to them. They have a very wide popular appeal, especially among those who are young, or young in heart.

Quite clearly, any attempt excessively to plug unpopular or dreary records would very quickly lead to a falling off in audiences, to the disadvantage, both financial and otherwise, of the programme company, or of the broadcasting authority. That is obvious to anyone. The second point is that there is extremely keen competition among the record companies themselves. I do not pretend to know how many of those companies there are, but there must be many and if they were to detect any greatly pronounced bias in favour of one company or another, by either the I.T.A. or the B.B.C., I am perfectly sure that there would be a public hullabaloo in no time.

We in Parliament know something about the power of what is colloquially known as the bush telegraph. I am perfectly sure that the bush telegraph hums far more in the world of popular song writing than it does in the world of government. If there were to be improprieties or acts of corruption by disc jockeys, it would soon become very widely known in the world of entertainment and even more widely publicised than this topic has been in the last few months.

I come to the steps that have in fact been taken by the two broadcasting authorities. First, the B.B.C. practice— and I have discussed this matter both with the B.B.C. and I.T.A.—is to limit the number of permitted performances of any particular song within given periods and to make sure that the products of the record companies are fairly distributed in the programmes. In fact, the B.B.C. studies the details of the programmes to make sure that, in this particular type of programme, a proper balance is kept.

Mr. Ness Edwards (Caerphilly)

Does that mean that the disc jockey has no complete right of selection?

Mr. Bevins

The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly right, but I should like to say something even more explicit on that in a moment. It is perfectly true, as the hon. Gentleman said, that about six of the present B.B.C. disc jockeys also have employment with record companies as comperes on Radio Luxemburg. But the B.B.C. informed me that it has absolute confidence in these men, and it believes that its disc jockeys are men of honour.

On the point just mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards)—and this I think is most important—I have ascertained that the position is this: it is most unusual for the disc jockey himself to select the records that are actually played. The usual thing is for records to be selected by two or three people, including the disc jockey and the producer of the programme. The hon. Gentleman can take it from me that the producer always has a say in the selection of the records. He referred to Mr. Jacobs and the popular programme known as "Juke Box Jury". There, in fact, the records are chosen by the producer and director of the programme and not by Mr. Jacobs at all. When I say that, quite clearly Mr. Jacobs is working in concert with the producer and the director of the programme and must to some extent, of course, be interested and involved. But the primary selection of records in that particular case rests with the producer and the director.

Mr. Ness Edwards

Does the Postmaster-General realise that that is getting dangerously near sponsorship? Here is an employee of a company who is concerned about producing products of his company and, in that sense, this is really a borderline case of sponsorship? Is he satisfied that no sponsorship is actually taking place?

Mr. Bevins

I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman, but that again is a point to which I shall come almost immediately. Naturally, neither the B.B.C. nor I.T.A. can broadcast or televise every record that is made. Perhaps that is just as well. If any singer or crooner, or whatever these artists like to describe themselves as, makes the grade, I think that he has a fairly good chance of getting on to the air or on to the screen. I.T.A. has an agreement with the programme companies whereby anybody who is even indirectly connected with a record company is not allowed to select the records for programmes. It is quite true that at one time the records of the programme "Cool for Cats"—this I think originally inspired the hon. Gentleman's initiative in this matter—were selected by one of the representatives of the Daily Sketch newspaper, who, unknown to Associated Rediffusion, had taken up work with one of the record companies. When that fact was discovered, a check was made of the records for which that gentleman had been responsible and it indicated no emphasis at all in favour of the record company with which he had a link.

As an ardent viewer of these programmes, the hon. Member will realise that there are no such programmes on the I.T.A. network at the moment, although at least one may return in the near future. I doubt if I should be in order in pursuing the question of records having a good melody on one side and a less good one on the other. That has been the case ever since I was a boy. I remember buying a record with "Pomp and Circumstance" on one side and "The Red Flag" on the other, but I did not complain.

Mr. Ness Edwards

Which was the better side?

Mr. Bevins

I will not be drawn into a discussion on that point. I am certainly not responsible for the conduct of the record companies and the way in which they manage their business.

I now come to the question of the interest of independent television programme companies in record companies, and vice versa. I am told that there is a financial interest which works both ways as between Associated Television and one of the larger record companies. But in this connection, the checks that have been taken have not suggested in any way that undue prominence is given to the Pye label in the record programmes. Hon. Members on both sides of the House will appreciate that there are many diverse interests in commercial television. Some people think that there are far too many. Newspapers, cinemas, theatres and show business in its most comprehensive sense all have interests in commercial television.

I am not sure why record companies should be singled out as a class and disqualified from having such an interest when all these other interests are allowed. It could be argued that any of these interests could influence the programme content on commercial television, but if that proved to be to the detriment of the programme contractors they would very soon feel the draught. Whatever I may feel about that, as Postmaster-General I have neither the legal power nor the statutory duty to prevent programme companies from entering the gramophone record field.

I noted what the hon. Member said in opening. It may well be that he has raised a difficulty. I appreciate that, and I should like an opportunity to give further thought to it. I hope that the hon. Member will feel that this discussion, short though it has been, will at least have some effect. At least it will be studied by the television and broadcasting authorities, who are always anxious to heed what is said in a responsible fashion in this House.

That is all that I can say for the moment. I hope that I have been able to say a few things which will give some sense of satisfaction to the hon. Member.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock.