The 1976 Oscar winning film Network was made at a time when the leading TV channels dominated the media landscape in America and in Britain delivering huge audiences and the leading two or three networks battled each other for audience share to drive advertising income. The management poured over the audience shares and overnight ratings and judged the programme producers on those audiences. This new play adapted from the film by Lee Hall , is based firmly in the studios of one of these networks and set in September and October 1975 but much of the dialogue points clearly at the new multimedia world of today , the arguments about fake news and the public's passionate engagement through social media.
As the news this week is dominated by the collapse of Carillon, the central background to the play is the ownership of UBS network by the CCA a large business conglomerate, its drive for profits and a potential change of ownership. Howard Beale is the main news anchor of UBS, the failing channel but his announcement that he will blow his brains out on the live news show in two weeks time prompts a surge in ratings. This brings into sharp focus the clash between traditional impartial presentation by a news cost department which has become stale and the sensationalised showbiz style of a function driven by appealing to audiences and being a profit centre. Howard Beale becomes the pawn in this business game.
