Too Cold for Culture?

The British press was deluged with letters protesting the speedy way that culture had been dumped out the window when cold came in the door. To save power during the coal crisis, the BBC had consolidated the popular Light (comedy-variety) and Home (slightly more serious) broadcasting programs. The cultural Third Program, which had a listener-audience of only about two million, was quietly done in.

The Manchester Guardian chided: "It is dangerous when economies . . . contract intellectual horizons. . . ." At week's end, BBC Chairman Lord Inman, in an apologetic letter to the London Times, "deplored the necessity," promised to restore the cultural program "at the earliest moment . . . allowed."

The hapless Third was getting more attention in death than it ever had in life.

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