1971: Guinness WORKERS on the QUALITY of TV | Late Night Line-Up | Voice of the People | BBC Archive

This episode of Late Night Line-Up, the late night discussion programme on BBC Two about news, television and the arts, that featured candid discussions with invited studio guests, took a slightly different approach from the usual.

Presenter Tony Bilbow instead went to visit the canteen of the Guinness factory at the Park Royal trading estate in London, inviting the employees to air their opinions about the quality and content of TV programmes in light of the recent increase in the licence fee. As Bilbow says in his introduction, the idea was that "nothing has been taken out, the conversation is exactly as it happened".

This experiment inspired the conception of the Open Door series in which individuals or groups would make their own programmes, with the help of the newly-created BBC Community Programme Unit, to speak directly to audiences without editorial interference.

Clip taken from Late Night Line-Up, originally broadcast on BBC Two, Friday 19 February, 1971.

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