GREETINGS TO THE NEW TV

From DR. THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES HILL, M.P., Postmaster-General.

BY its programmes, Independent Television will be judged. As now we pass from prophecy to performance, your pages — and the screen — will bring us the facts we’ve long awaited. May you bring us good news of good viewing to come.

From SIR KENNETH CLARK, Chairman of the Independent Television Authority.

THIS, the first issue of TV Times, gives me the opportunity to send the good wishes of the Authority to all who are working in Independent Television. May their efforts during the past year be crowned with the success they deserve.

From SIR ROBERT FRASER, Director-General of the Independent Television Authority.

OF course, Independent Television had to have its own programme journal, and I send my congratulations to those who have produced it — what a job it must have been in the time available. My best wishes for bounding circulation figures.

From FELIX AYLMER, President of the British Actors’ Equity Association.

ALL good wishes to the first Press organ of the newly-won Freedom of the ether! The actors stand ready to help.

From SIR SEYMOUR HOWARD, Lord Mayor of London.

AS Lord Mayor of London I extend a cordial welcome to the new television service which will be inaugurated at Guildhall on Thursday night.

It is fitting that Independent TV should have its start in the capital — also the heart of the Commonwealth — where enterprise and free choice are so highly prized.

From SIR COMPTON MACKENZIE.

FOR the writer, the musician, the singer, the actor, indeed for any artiste, the advent of commercial television is a most encouraging prospect — competition is essential to the life of the arts. So may I wish at the outset of this great adventure a splendid future for it?

From SIR ALAN HERBERT — A telegram in verse.

GOOD LUCK TO INDEPENDENT T MUCH AS I LOVE THE BBC ALL INDEPENDENCE PLEASES ME ESPECIALLY IF BETTER FEE FOR ACTORS, MUSIC, CAST — AND ME.