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In his legendary 1971 song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, Gil Scott-Heron recited advertising slogans from America’s most famous brands, including Coca-Cola, Listerine, Hertz, Dove and Exxon, to make the point that sitting in front of a TV set will not effect change. Around the same time, a new vision of television was attempting to open up the medium and perhaps prove Scott-Heron wrong. “Participatory TV” was an early name for public access or community television, and initiatives such as the Canadian “Challenge for Change” were key to promoting the idea that local communities and government should have free access to the airwaves.
At the BBC – with a mandate since 1922 to “inform, educate and entertain” – producer Ronan Ayres, inspired by these new North American initiatives and wishing to make television more inclusive, created Late Night Line Up for BBC2. Beginning in 1964, the show invited guests – both well-known and members of the general public – to discuss BBC output. In one episode, reporters were sent to a Guinness factory in Park Royal to interview workers about their feelings on the TV license, their enjoyment of the BBC, and whether it was worth the fee. Their responses that the content was mostly made by and for a perceived academic elite spurred Ayres to see then-director of programming David Attenborough and suggest the creation of a Community Programme Unit (CPU). It was approved and its first initiative was Open Door, a community-access show that ran from 1973 to 1983 on BBC 2. Around 500 groups and individuals sent in applications each year with 30 selected and given a producer, a camera crew, a studio, and complete editorial freedom.
People Make Television, an exhibition at non-profit gallery Raven Row in East London, explores the resulting decade of CPU output featuring unheard or ignored voices. Giving visitors access to 100 Open Door shows, it reveals how the project inspired and enabled largely personal, diaristic material, shot predominately on 16mm. The format appealed to many campaign groups with a huge variety of struggles and causes, and as copies of the programmes were shared with their participants, they were often used and circulated to promote specific causes. While certain editions of Open Door became well-known – such as Stuart Hall’s classic “It Ain’t Half Racist, Mum” – the majority of the programmes remain almost completely unknown.
Thanks to People Make Television, Open Door’s key visual archive of campaigns and struggles of the period can finally be rediscovered. The subjects it raises – such as race, ecology and housing – sadly remain as pertinent today as they were over 40 years ago. ◉
People Make Television is at Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, until 26 March 2023.