Targets on TV

Press, 12 April 1979, Page 15

Targets on TV

When the "A Week Of It” team fires broadsides, anyone and everyone is fair game as a target, says the producer, David McPhail. “This has the effect of balancing the content of the show,” he said. “We do not make a conscious effort to find this balance — it seems to occur naturally over a period of time and comes from the material available for us to use.” At the same time the team has to be aware of what is considered bad taste. “We always have to be conscious of what we are doing and the responsibility we have to viewers. It would be very easy to let personal views creep in, so we temper what we say with caution. “This was particularly the case with the election last year,” said McPhail. Nevertheless “A Week Of It” does receive letters from people criticising the programme because they think comments have been misplaced or public figures have been offended. “We believe that criticism is part of public life. We do for television what political cartoonists do for newspapers which, in many cases, cut far closer to the bone than we do,” said McPhail. While the programme is in production the writers always have to be aware

of . the week's events; and often if something dramatic happens the script has to be changed at the last minute. This year the producer hopes to widen the scope of the show and make it more general than in the past. "The political side of

the programme only thrives when there is a lot of political activity," said David McPhail. “For the first series we don’t expect a lot to be happening so we can develop the breadth of the show to cover things we haven’t dealt with previously.”