Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein

Sidney Lewis Bernstein, Baron Bernstein (January 30, 1899 - February 5, 1993) was one of Britain's first television "barons", the least flamboyant, but probably the most enduringly influential, of the show-business entrepreneurs who won the first independent commercial television franchises in the 1950s.

As founding chairman of the London-based Granada Group, and later, as chairman of its famous subsidiary, the Granada Television Network Ltd., Bernstein earned a considerable reputation as a man sensitive to the frequently contradictory ideals of popular entertainment and public service. Today, Granada Television continues to thrive, some fifty years after its creation, successfully reconciling its twin roles as a powerful purveyor of regional culture and a major participant in a vigorous national television environment. It is one of the most profitable and highly respected television companies in Europe, and it is the only British Channel 3 contractor still surviving in anything like its original form.

In 1956, the first year of Granada's transmissions, the Granada Group posted pre-tax profits of £218,204; by 1980 that figure had grown to over £43 million. Sidney Bernstein, socialist, millionaire, and "benevolent despot", is the visionary businessman who brought this media empire into being.

Career

Bernstein had developed a considerable show-business organisation long before his controversial entry into television. While in his early twenties, he inherited from his father a handful of small London cinemas. He went on to build, with his brother Cecil, a successful circuit of some sixty cinemas and theatres, the first building-block in the creation of a diversified group of leisure-oriented enterprises. The Bernstein holdings eventually encompassed interests in publishing, real estate, motorway services, retail shops, and bowling alleys, as well as the hugely profitable television-rental business.

The Granada name

Some sources say he chose the name, Granada, for his cinema chain, and later for his television company, because it connoted the sun-drenched gaiety and flamboyance that English people often associate with Spain. These were qualities he sought to bond with the image of his entertainment establishments, which tended, in the early days of cinema, to be decorated in the Spanish baroque style. Another story suggests that Bernstein, rambling in Andalucia while looking for a name for his company, visited the city of Granada, whose exotic splendour suggested the name.

howmanship

Bernstein always considered himself, first and foremost, a showman, and he was unashamed of that label. He admired, without reservation, Phineas T. Barnum, the American circus impressario, a figure who is often associated with brazen hucksterism; portraits of Barnum hung in various parts of the Granada empire. Bernstein, nonetheless, was neither flamboyant nor frivolous. He exhibited serious foreign films in his cinemas at a time when distribution outlets for them were scarce. He was also a founder of the august British Film Society. More significantly for the future of independent television, he argued forcefully that popularity and accessibility were not incompatible with quality and depth. He believed that the average viewer was far more discerning than others believed.

Principled socialism

Bernstein had been aware of the commercial potential of television from its earliest days, but his socialist principles prevented him from questioning the BBC's monopoly. Beginning in 1948, he lobbied the government to give the cinema industry the right to produce and transmit television programmes, not to individual homes, as the BBC did, but to audiences gathered in cinemas and theatres. Indeed, the evidence presented by Granada Theatres Ltd. to the Beveridge Committee of Enquiry into Broadcasting (whose report was published in 1951), fully acknowledged the sanctity of the public-monopoly principle with respect to domestic broadcasting. All the same, Granada and Bernstein were quick to overcome their reservations when the resulting Television Act of 1954 signaled the end of the BBC's monopoly by permitting private companies to apply for the first regional commercial franchises.

Regional broadcasting

The London-based Granada group surprised establishment thinkers by not bidding for a lucrative contract in the affluent Southeast. Instead, Granada pursued the weekday licences centred on Manchester in the industrial North, embracing an area extending across the north of England and Wales.

Granada's evidence to the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting in 1961 justified this decision: "The North and London were the two biggest regions. Granada preferred the North because of its tradition of home-grown culture, and because it offered a chance to start a new creative industry away from the metropolitan atmosphere of London."

Bernstein himself shrewdly put it another way: " ... the North is a closely-knit, indigenous, industrial society; a homogeneous cultural group with a good record for music, theatre, literature and newspapers, not found elsewhere in this island, except perhaps in Scotland. Compare this with London and its suburbs —— full of displaced persons. And, of course, if you look at a map of the concentration of population in the North and a rainfall map, you will see that the North is an ideal place for television."

Granada television

Bernstein's instincts proved to be sound. Despite objections to a commercial franchise being awarded to a company with overtly left-wing leanings, Granada began broadcasting from Manchester in May 1956, proudly proclaiming its origins with the slogan "From the North" and labeling its new constituency "Granadaland". The first night's programming began, at Bernstein's insistence, with a homage to the BBC, whose public broadcasting pedigree he had always admired, and closed with a public-spirited statement of advertising policy which suggested an ambivalence about the commercial imperative, —— to maximize profits.

As early as January 1957, Granada was responsible for the top ten programmes, by ratings, available in its region. In 1962, it became the first television outlet to screen the Beatles for the British television audience. Bernstein's company soon came to be regarded as one of the most progressive of the independent television contractors. Its reputation for quality popular drama, like the long-running serial, "Coronation Street", and for high-profile current-affairs and documentary programmes, like "World in Action", "Disappearing World" and "What the Papers Say" lent Granada prestige and aligned it, unmistakably, with the ideals of its founder.

The final years

In the 1970s, Lord Bernstein finally relinquished stewardship of the television company and moved over to the business side of the Granada Group. He retired, after a long career, in 1979, and died in 1993, aged ninety-four.

Major events in Bernstein's life

* 1899 Born in Ilford, Essex, England, on 30 January
* 1914 Left school at the age of fifteen
* 1921 Inherited control of a small cinema chain from his father
* 1924 Became a founding member of the British Film Society
* 1927 Introduced Saturday-morning film matinées for children
* 1939 Acquired control of more than thirty cinemas
* 1934 Became chairman of the Granada Group, encompassing films, television, and publishing
* 1940 Named a film adviser to British Ministry of Information
* 1942 Posted to the British Embassy, Washington, D.C.
* 1942 Named chief of the film section, Allied Forces in North Africa
* 1943 Named chief of the film section, Allied Forces in Europe
* 1948 formed Transatlantic Pictures with film director Alfred Hitchcock [Date to be confirmed] * Married Sandra Malone (born 1919, Toronto; died 1991, London); they raised one son, David and two daughters, Jane and Charlotte-Lynn, the latter from a previous marriage of Sandra Malone's.
* 1956 Founded, with his brother Cecil, Granada Television
* 1964 Appointed governor of the Sevenoaks School in Kent
* 1965 Began lecturing on film and international affairs at New York University and the Nuffield Foundation
* 1969 Created a life peer as Baron Bernstein, of Leigh in the County of Kent
* 1979 Re-assumed the post of President, Granada Group
* 1983 Became chairman of the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
* 1984 Named a Fellow of the British Film Institute
* 1984 Received the International Emmy Directorate Award, 1984
* 1993 Died on 5 February

Films

* "Rope" (1948) (producer, uncredited), directed by Alfred Hitchcock
* "Under Capricorn" (1949) (producer, uncredited), directed by Alfred Hitchcock
* "Memories of the Camps" (1985) TV Episode (executive producer)
* "Frontline" (executive producer) (1 episode, 1985)

References

*Tony Pearson [http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/bernsteinsi/bersteinsi.htm]
*Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Bernstein, Sidney Lewis by George Wedell