In many Durham mining villages residents are suffering from planning blight, whilst in Macclesfield, architect Rod Hackney refurbishes old houses and communities. As Langley Park’s Railway Street faces the bulldozers, we ask should local authorities demolish old housing or renovate instead?
Brass Tacks has returned with an interesting innovation in public access which combines national television and local radio, but offers as raw material only the same irresponsibly sensational nonsense which we grew to distrust in its previous series.
The BBC should be thoroughly ashamed of the journalism on this programme, and we shall have to keep a very close eye on it.
Chris Dunkley, Financial Times, 16 May 1979
GILBERT HARDING was not only the first TV man, he was the first two-way TV man. A friend remembers him “watching and arguing with the television.” He would carry on these one-way discussions with whomever it was he happened to be watching and get quite violent about it.
I remember him having a set-to like that with Cliff Michelmore and then, when the programme was finished, he phoned up Michelmore and continued the argument in person. People have always talked to television; it is just that television has not always listened.
Following Peter Fiddick’s programme on Two Way Television, Brass Tacks (BBC-2) was something like three-sided television. Brass Tacks is transmitted live. Then all the BBC’s local radio stations run phone-ins – most the same night, some less enthusiastically the next morning. Finally on Monday, Return Call will report the audience reaction in a 10-minute programme just before midnight. To me that suggests a disappointing dwindle with the Brass Tacks bellow tailing away to a whisper.
Continue reading People have always talked to television; it is just that television has not always listenedJudge for yourself – as the people who make decisions come face-to-face with the people those decisions will affect. First the arguments, then your chance to join the debate.
Britain’s public health enemy number one is salmonella. It’s a source of disease that lurks in most of the meat that we eat, and it’s on the increase because of the way our farming industry is run.
Diseases spread quickly amongst pigs and chickens in factory farms unless huge quantities of drugs are used to keep them at bay. And those diseases increasingly spill over into the human population. So is it time to call a halt? Is it time to chose between cheap meat and safe meat?
Continue reading It Shouldn’t Happen To a Pig, Brass Tacks, BBC2 (1979)AT last, democracy is coming to television. Tonight, you, the viewers, can pick up your phone or put pen to paper and have a chance to air your opinions.
The revolutionary experiment is the brainchild of the Manchester-based “Brass Tacks” team.
After tonight’s programme in the new “Brass Tacks” series called “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Pig” (BBC-2, 8.10 pm.) viewers will be invited to give their views, either by phoning any local BBC radio station or by writing to the producers.
Continue reading Peril of pig in a pokeFACTORY farming may mean cheap food but are we paying too high a price for this benefit in terms of health?
That’s the alarming question tackled by It Shouldn’t Happen to a Pig (BBC-2, 8.10) which launches a new series of Brass Tacks debates.
With poultry, pigs and beef being reared in increasingly crowded conditions that foster large-scale disease, the use of antibiotics is spreading.
Continue reading CHEAP FOOD, BUT AT WHAT COST?Brass Tacks (BBC-2, 8.10) returns with a full-blooded commitment to the multi-media technique it has pioneered: a report and debate thrashing through a topic of current controversy in the television programme, with BBC local radio stations lined up to start phone-in discussion the moment the television has ended.
Factory farming, and the public risk of food poisoning arising from its crowded conditions and use of drugs – with salmonella the main enemy – is the first subject.
The public response will be reported by presenter Eric Robson in a programme the next Monday.
Tonight Brass Tacks examines some of the calculated risks involved in the development of nuclear power.
If the predictions of the nuclear industry are correct we can look forward to limitless cheap energy, economic growth and an increasingly powerful role in world affairs. If, however, the predictions of the opponents of nuclear power are correct, there is serious cause for concern. The dangers of the creation of plutonium in large quantities in conditions of increasing world unrest are genuine and serious. We should not rely for energy supply on a process that produces such hazardous substances as plutonium unless there is no reasonable alternative.
*First ever TV programme to enable multimedia audience participation with live local radio phone-ins nationwide.
**The only TV programme to examine the long-term health effects of increasing radiation in the environment from nuclear power and reprocessing plants.
***No clips of this programme are available as the BBC wiped the tapes shortly after it was transmitted!
Continue reading A Calculated Risk, Brass Tacks, BBC2 (1978)
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