World in Action output. For the first 35 years of its existence, ITV had a near-monopoly of television advertising revenue. Roy Thomson, who ran Scottish Television famously described ITV as a "licence to print money". In return for this income, the broadcasting regulator insisted that the ITV companies broadcast a proportion of their programmes as public service TV. Out of this was born the network's reputation for serious current affairs, eagerly grabbed by programme makers under Granada's founder Lord Sidney Bernstein. Some of the most prominent figures in 20th-century British broadcasting helped to create "World in Action", in particular Tim Hewat, "the maverick
Face to Face (UK TV programme) Face to Face (UK TV programme) Face to Face is a BBC interview television programme originally broadcast between 1959 and 1962, created and produced by Hugh Burnett, which ran for 35 episodes. The insightful and often probing style of the interviewer, former politician John Freeman, separated it from other programmes of the time. "Face to Face" was revived in 1989 with Jeremy Isaacs as the interviewer, and ran until 1998. BBC talks producer Hugh Burnett had the idea of a simple personal interview programme in the mid-1950s. It took two years to persuade Grace Wyndham Goldie (assistant head of talks