Viewpoint was first registered as a company in May 1958 by the cable company in Swindon, then called Radio Rentals, (eventually to be known as Swindon Cable). The company at the time thought that commercial television on a local scale would one day be feasible and formed a company in preparation. Swindon was developing a relatively large cable network, relaying TV directly into people’s homes, because reception by aerial was so poor, due to the considerable distance from the nearest transmitters. Radio Rentals ran the service, which distributed the main off air channels (BBC and ITV) to homes on the system, and realised the cable system could carry more channels than those currently available, including locally originated television.
The government was still not permitting local television, but Radio Rentals kept Swindon Viewpoint on ice in the hope that one-day they would. The company was steadily expanding the cable network meanwhile, and began to think that a local TV service would also encourage greater subscriber uptake. There were concerns around the funding of a local service however, and the company wanted the government to allow them to carry local advertising.
The cable network in Swindon at the time
The chance to activate Swindon Viewpoint came in 1972, when the Government licensed six experiments in local TV at a number of places in Britain, including Milton Keynes, Bristol, Telford and of course Swindon. Swindon Viewpoint was the only one of these to establish itself successfully and flourish beyond the initial period.
However, things have not always run smoothly. At our inaugural meeting at the Goddard Arms in 1973, the man Thorn EMI appointed as Station Manager, Richard Dunn, said 'Viewpoint is a pioneer, and the problem for pioneers is they get shot at'. Over and over again through our history this has proven to be the case and countless obstacles have had to be overcome to continue providing this unique and invaluable service.
Almost certainly a key factor in Viewpoint's initial success was the inspired choice of Manager already mentioned: Richard Dunn.
Richard quickly realised that half a dozen staff and a few recording kits were not enough to make a significant amount of regular television output. But his practical decision to harness wider community energies in programme production was also coupled with a genuine personal philosophy of encouraging as much public involvement as possible in decisions surrounding the nature and content of programmes.
Richard Dunn (Drivers seat) and the original Viewpoint staff
Swindon Viewpoint in this early phase was funded by EMI Ltd, the telecommunications company, as a research and development project. EMI was a separate company from Radio Rentals the cable system owner. Viewpoint began transmissions in September 1973 and soon began to flourish, transmitting an average of five hours of original programming a week. (10 hours with repeats).
By 1976 the success and popularity of Viewpoint was beyond doubt, but the government were still not willing to allow a local channel to carry advertising or sponsorship, and EMI, having now proved the viability was no longer willing to continue to cover the cost of the operation. Viewpoint was now scheduled to close, but such was the public outcry that numerous public meetings were held and both Radio Rentals and EMI were petitioned to help find a way for Viewpoint to continue. Radio Rentals expressed their commitment to continue carrying the service, but both they and EMI were clear they could not fund the service at the necessary level. Then EMI offered to sell the service to the public of Swindon for £2, and this is what happened! So Viewpoint passed into public ownership.
Swindon Viewpoint Studios at 14 Victoria Road
The company was reconstituted as a not-for-profit company and restructured with a Board of Directors elected from and by the public. The Board set about raising funds in earnest and Viewpoint survived for a year or two on various grants. The breakthrough came when an experimental Lottery scheme (a forerunner of the National Lottery) was piloted by the firm Ladbrokes, and provided regular funding for Viewpoint.
Richard Dunn left for Thames Television in 1976 and was soon to become its Head of Production. For a year or two there was some organisational turmoil at Viewpoint, and staff confusion over policy. This finally settled down when Rupert Kirkham, a man who implicitly understood Viewpoint’s philosophy, became Station Manager.
New funding allowed a change to Umatic colour equipment, and a productive few years followed, with regular programmes like Seen in Swindon, Spectrum, and Tune In, gaining considerable popularity, and frequent social action programmes, on issues such as housing problems, being regularly made.
Rupert Kirkham preparing to present a studio programme
By the end of the decade storm clouds began to loom again. The experimental lottery scheme was not renewed and Viewpoint’s funding base once again disappeared. Swindon Viewpoint was scheduled to close again in April 1980 when the money to pay staff finally ran out.
The next phase in Viewpoint’s history begins with the arrival in early 1980 of Martin Parry, who answered an ad by Southern Arts Association for a practising filmmaker to open a film workshop in the town to encourage and train local filmmakers.
Coming from work with The National Film Board of Canada and having run a local TV channel in Canada he immediately realised the value of Viewpoint. Martin quickly became involved with efforts to save Viewpoint and with no apparent solution to the funding crisis, eventually proposed that the film workshop go into partnership with Viewpoint, and offered the workshop’s hopelessly inadequate room at Swindon Arts Centre as a base for Viewpoint operations. These, with no funding for staff, would have to be completely volunteer-based from now on.
Martin Parry helps a budding filmmaker at the film workshop
He then immediately drew up proposals and lobbied Thamesdown Council to support a larger operation as a result of this partnership. By the second year the council had agreed to take on his salary (thus freeing the Southern Arts money for an additional helper) and to provide the near derelict top floor of the Town Hall Arts Studios as accommodation. The space was converted by Viewpoint volunteers for the new partnership venture Media Arts, which was to become one of Britain’s most successful media workshops of the eighties. (See ‘Videoactive’ BBC1 primetime 1987)
The film workshop had no video equipment so that of Media Arts all came via Viewpoint and was largely responsible for its success. It was rented commercially some of the time, and the income used to maintain and upgrade it regularly when necessary, whilst the rest of the time it was made available for public access and also arts based programming. The production equipment worked hard and needed to be reliable and readily available for a variety of functions, which, with some frustrations, it mostly was.
Viewpoint and its structure of an accountable, elected board of directors continued to function through the eighties, and volunteer made programmes went out regularly on the cable system. Many long time Viewpoint stalwarts such as Peter Wallen, Peter Monk and Rupert Kirkham (Station Manager in the late seventies, and board member thereafter), continued on the Board of Directors. Many local media figures, such as Paul Langcaster and Shirley Ludford also cut their teeth with Swindon Viewpoint. Another person key to the success of Viewpoint in the 80's was Rob Watling, who took the second post at Media Arts, Studio Manager. Rob undertook the training of many community groups in the eighties and effectively organised their production schedules.
Relations with key partners, such as the Borough Council (which Viewpoint programmes sometimes criticised!) were at times awkward; but liaison with the cable company broke down seriously later in the decade. At the time, the company and Viewpoint were cooperating and through negotiations Swindon Cable had even offered Viewpoint its old premises back and some funding. Viewpoint had begun to move back in and then came a programme originating in West Swindon in which the makers heavily criticised the cable company for alleged insensitive practises in laying new cable in the area. (See 'Rough Cuts').
The company took the view this was ‘biting the hand that feeds’ and relations deteriorated seriously. The premises were withdrawn, cleared out and sold and valuable records and some equipment that had been taken there was lost. Fortunately core equipment had not yet moved from Media Arts, so programmes continued to be made. (and aired, though with increased difficulty). Despite realising that the programme in question would be received as bad publicity by the cable company, the board had hoped they would react maturely and understand that Viewpoint's policy needed to be consistently applied.
This was a rather dark decade for Swindon Viewpoint.
In the early nineties a ‘coup’ at Media Arts in the guise of departmental restructuring, resulted in Martin Parry being ‘promoted’ from Media Arts and a more authoritarian regime took over. A new policy was introduced whereby all equipment use now had to be bought, and Viewpoint was presented with the situation of having to pay (when of course it had no funds) for access to its own equipment. The Viewpoint Board tried to no avail to lobby against this policy, but this grew even harder when soon afterwards accountability at Media Arts declined with the abolition of its publicly elected Users Panel. - Which had been set up, and functioned through the eighties, to oversee policy and access.
The Viewpoint Board, though continuing to lobby its case, had no alternative but to temporarily suspend programming operations and concentrate on consolidating its position. This was the reason Viewpoint had to cease programming in the nineties. A new partnership organisation Western Film Archive was set up to look after the extensive bulk of media history that Viewpoint had created over the years, and other items of local media history that had been donated. Many of the early tapes were placed for safekeeping at the County Records Office, and many others stored in various places, often having to be moved several times as accommodation was lost by various supportive organisations such as the Mechanics Institute Preservation Trust.
Several times during this decade attempts were made to rebuild links with the cable company (or companies, - since it was taken over a number of times), gain access to their equipment and re-establish programming on the system, but these were to little avail. Perhaps because they did not want the risk of more challenging programmes, and the company was itself from time to time now endeavouring to operate its own local TV service.
In this decade prospects have grown much brighter for Swindon Viewpoint and access TV. Changes in the wider media environment, the multiplicity of outlets and diversification, and particularly the growth of the Internet, means we are no longer dependent on cable as a sole outlet for our programmes. At the same time the widespread availability of cheap camcorders and computer editing makes production easier than in our early days of bulky, expensive and sometimes unreliable equipment.
During these years Western Film Archive, curated by Martin Parry, has been concentrating on gradually transferring our large programme library to a digital format and make it available once again; and we have also been developing the web distribution service for both existing and new material that you see with this site. The process has been slow and time consuming as tapes sometimes almost forty years old are fragile, and often need careful handling and conditioning to yield reasonable results. But great progress has and is being made and fascinating new releases from the past will regularly be made available to the public here, in parallel with providing a hub for new material.
Swindon Viewpoint has long been Britain’s public-access TV success story, and as such has a unique history and place in Britain’s media landscape.
Now at last after much preparation Viewpoint is having another of its determined relaunches, - this time online. As well as making our extensive library gradually more and more available, we can now accept and show new material and continue our philosophy of entertaining and encouraging debate, dialogue and understanding on issues of public relevance.
2010 -
The next decade is your story! If you would like to help with Viewpoint's production or administration activities, or have programmes you think we could show, please do get in touch.
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