Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 25

E-wSJk ifc' 1a A UU- KJmtiV ft hw i V- mV- 28 EVENIN9 (STANDARD THURSDAY JULY I 1VM -r --vr 7 just sit i i A switch off by SUE SUMMERS proving ground for a succession or names and faces aU trying to give Tonight the sense of purpose direction and style sadly lacking in its beginning battling against low morale a restricted budget and as present editor Roger BoUon puts it the sleeping habits of the nation" Denis Tnohy Sue Lawley and Donald MacCormlck AND the next Tonight be tomorrow night Tonight says Goodnight for good tonight apart that Is from the London- only Arts version nearly four chequered years after lit was revived It goes out in considerably more style then it came in Tonight got off to a bad start even before it went on the air when its first editor Michael Bunce failed to turn up to the press conference' which launched it Since then it has been the oney Bunce 'departed nonths to after the first six mont make way for Christopher Capron now editor of Panorama He tried to give the programme a more relaxed run image discarding presenter Sue Lawtey in favour of radio's John Tlmp-son and bringing in Barry Norman and Melvyn Bragg saving £85 £129 £119 taxes extra films on subjects which may not be In the news that day but may in the end be more important than the news-stories wffl 'kneen the person Who wants to read the front back end middle pages of a will have to get japers to get the and middle pages" The new nightly current affairs programme as yet which gets underway on BBC-2 in the autumn will Inherit many of the old Tonight beam Unlike Tonight it seems it will not have to battel for viewers against a floating start tame varying from anywhere between 1030 and 1120 pm As for as BBC journalists aro concerned however the your Entecpnfses and became a TV producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation instead There he met Dan lannumi a newspaper publisher of Italian descent who hit on the bright idea of renting off-peak time on other TV stations to broadcast programmes In Italian for sizeable Italian pdpuflotfan Soon the Portuguese oaene to IannuzzA and asked him to do the same for them Then the Greeks Eventually TMwwftad was putting out programmes in 14 languages When Toronto decided to grant another TV licence lannuzzl won the contract Now it is up to Nigel Napier Andrews to sort out the' logistics and get the station on the air The logistics are quite enough to boggle even the strongest mind The languages in which CFMT will talk to Toronto read like a roll-call of the United Nations Apart from Italian Greek German and Spanish they include Macedonian Bulgarian Armenian Arabic Estonian Latvian and Lithuanian Then there will be Cree and Mohawk Not to mention limit the language of the Eskimos Majorca 1 8 12 14 15 19 July 7 Nights Hotel Principe (full board) Luton Gatwick departures 0 7 ia JC Gran Canaria 9 16 July 7 Nights Hotel Gran Canaria (half board) Gatwick departure BILL GRUNDY I ONCE stayed at a hotel in Blackpool In front of the main entrance there 1 was a lawn On the lawn there was a notice On the notice were the following words Keep off this-grass It Is poisoned As a welcome it fell something short of perfection As a warning it was efficiency itself Ton could say the same a- pro- me I had been watching about the title of gramme I had been It Is called Just There The invitation is obvious just sit there: ge away and do something more profitable with your time No programme has ever had a more accurate title Yorkshire TV seems to take' Ssat pride in the fact that three performers in the programme performers is the exact word are doctors Exhausting I do not say why this should be a recommendation unless YTV thinks the greater part of its audience Is suffering from a disease (it is: it is called an addiction to pro-amines like Just Sit tare) The three doctors In question are David Bellamy a bearded botanist who struggles bravely on despite a severs speech defect Magnus Pyke whose imitation of a demented windmill is positively exhausting to watch (what it mpsft be like to do is beyond my powers of imagination) and a young man called Robert Bookman who is said to be a comedian I be at at all surprised except that he make me laugh The idea of the programme Is that you ring or write to Yorkshire TV with some question or other The three doctors then answer your question Maybe that last sentence needs re-writing The three performers then perform broken English whirling windmill and smus smoothness ean hardly be called answers A bad name TV Times describes Just Sit There as a programme in which anything can happen -1 think that if I set my mind to it I could prosecute TV Times under the Trades Description Act of 1968 since nothing at all happens in the programme except that the longer it gois on the more strongly do I feel compelled to follow the advice implicit in its title just sit there: get up and switch It off This is the sort of programme which gives commercial television a bad name And if yon can think of a harsher comment than that be glad to hear from yoa Tenerife 10 July 7 Nights Hotel Monopol (half board) Luton departure A RATTLE against sleep Oapron left after a year to make way for the more popu- Tbwhr list approach of Mike son who with Denis Tuohy in the chair every night gave the programme a sharper identity Bolton who arrived last April along with yet another enter Valerie Single new ton has built on that sense of identity and given the programme an ability to tackle more serious subjects like Northern Ireland With scoops like Bob Astles interview under their belt the Tonight journalists feel the far axe has fallen just when the jjrogramme was coming into own "By losing Tonight the range of current affairs is being says Bolton who goes on to edit Panorama It will mean losing longer A BRITISH BORN TV executive is in London this week buying programmes for the most unusual television station the world has yet seen Nigel Napier Andrews is programme director of the first TV station set up specifically to cater far foreign speaking ethnic minority groups CFMT Toronto (the Initials stand for Canada's First Multilingual TV Station) goes on the air in September in 24 different languages By next Januai-y Mr Napier Andrews auis to have programmes in 32 laeMTUQiges so rich is the diversity of Toronto's ethnic Ufe Salesman Programme meetings he says breezily are rather like the Tjwer of BabeL Nanier Andrews himself aaeaks only English and Swahili The titter wifi not be much use in his new job since Swahili is one of the few languages CFMT wil not use Napier Andrews went to Canada 12 vears ago as a programme salesman for BBC Tell us all DAVID DIMBLEBT who recently appeared as the anchor man in BBC General Election coverage returns to a more familiar role tonight as sn interviewer' trying to persuade the famous to details of their private lives In Person to Person (BBC-1 10 pm-1 he begins his series of eight interviews of celebrities with Mrs Mary White house who talks frankly about her early days and Is also persuaded to give her views on sul-h subjects as oral sex The aim of the series which one major disadvantage is being on BBC-2 There's a philosophy which' says it matter which channel a programme is on as long as avafltabSe" says Bolton But the plaun fact is that the majority of people watch BBC-1 and our responsibility to get people to watch things they normally watch In Town was a popular programme but each week we would try to include something the principle being that people should not always get what they expect People should have the ooportunitv of seeing things they normally turn on to I believe BBC-1 ought to work on that The reason Toronto has embraced the idea of the station so warmly says Napier Andrews is that unlike the United States which subscribes to a philosophy Canada wants its- immigrants to retain their own cultural while- avoiding the extremes of separatism The entire package in which minority groups have been allocated airtime in proportion to their will be sandwiched together with English-language programmes mostly bought from Britain Dancing If wc survive the first year determined we will think have something we can really wave the flag about Of course there will be problems We were putting together an Arab show the other day and something went wrong with the tape numbers When we edited it some Koran readings got next to some belly dancing Everyone was most upset things will happen We will have some insane moments and some disasters but we make that particular mistake markable for containing the first television interview with her husband Ernest who fa asked what it is like to be married to such an outspoken and widely-quoted woman David Dimbleby has also managed to persuade Lord Denning Master of the Bolls to give his first lengthy television interview for a later programme Lord Denning talks about his early impoverished days as a drapers son and describes with obvious relish the power which he bow wields Airport These are just some of the bargains Thomas Cook Holidays are offering All at less than brochure price All guaranteed no' surcharges And there are many more Gatwick and Luton departures available in July i Cut out this advertisement and take it to your Thomas Cook travel shop or any ABTA travel agent Askhim to phone us on (01) 499 0822 or at Peterborough (0733) 502200 for details on these and all holiday offers Quote RefSA3 Mrs Whitehouse iraiOTis also includes Interviews with Lord Denning and Arthur Scargill is to reveal somethin of the personalities of people who hare tried to have an Impact on the world Mrs Whitehouse speaks about her platonic lore affair with a married man when she was In her early twenties and also tells how her parents separated shortly after she left college On oral sex Mrs Whitehouse Is more reticent saying only that she Is sorry for people who indulge in it The programme Is also re Holidays to write home about AETA VeTr COL 265A9C Off an subject to 'h 'VSMKftC' -py.