Page 70 [70]
“RANDOM DOTTINESS”...
Programme broadcast was on 13 November 1962. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
was broadcast in an abridged version in a season of programs showcasing
the cultural highlights of the 1950s on 5 February 1962, with Andrew Sachs
and Nigel Stock, produced by Robin Midgley. Pinter’s The Caretaker was
broadcast in the same season, on 13 April, and his play The Collection was
broadcast a total of three times that year, beginning on 12 June 1962, directed
by Cedric Messina and featuring performances by Pinter, Vivien Merchant
and Alan Bates. This very distinguished record of Beckett and Pinter on radio
continued throughout their lives and beyond, with personnel who comprised
a cadre of Britain’s finest stage actors, as well as directors and production staff
who had privileged relationships with the authors and intimate knowledge of
their work.
But during the 1950s the mass audience for radio peaked and fell away,
partly due to the rise of television. Changes in BBC policy attempted to address
changes in British culture, including discourses about taste and the arts.
BBC undertook research into its audiences, not so much to gain quantitative
ratings information as to probe the audience’s thoughts and desires. The
BBC sought to put itself at the center of national life, both reflecting what
were seen as the central movements in national politics and culture, and
projecting its notion of the ideal form of British society by the selections and
omissions of content for its three domestic radio services, and their targeting
of particular audience groups. The roles of Pinter and Beckett are in some
ways indices that trace the assumptions behind the BBC’s intentions, and
the contradictions between reflecting society and projecting a vision of the
nation beset its executives. A BBC audience report on a reading of Beckett’s
novel Molloy in 1958 demonstrates this problem:
sharp divisions of opinion characterised the response of the sample audiences,
ranging from intense disgust to great admiration and excitement, with a
substantial proportion of listeners wavering between the two extremes, several of
them confessing themselves uncertain of their critical judgement, reduced almost
to incoherence when confronted by Beckett.””
There were two pressures affecting BBC services. One was the desire to
address the whole populace, and thus legitimate the BBC monopoly and fight
off commercial radio. This led to increasing anxieties about the loss of youth
and working-class audiences during the period, and decisions to provide mass
entertainment broadcasting. The other pressure was the commitment to
preserve the educative and enlightening policies of the pre-war era when the
2 Audience Research Report on Molloy and From An Abandoned Work, 14 January 1958,
Caversham, BBC Written Archives Centre, R/9/7/37.
+69 +