julian_craster

Mike Scott, the ever-smiling presenter of Granada TV 'Cinema' programme.....


Obituary: Mike Scott
Anchorman, presenter and producer with Granada Television

by Philip Purser
The Guardian,
Monday June 2 2008

Mike Scott, who has died aged 75, was the best-known exponent of a job definition that, among television companies, only Granada, based in Manchester, really acknowledged. He became a producer-performer, fronting programmes for which he was also responsible. At first these were mainly regional miscellanies, but from 1975 to 1978 came the fully networked Nuts and Bolts of the Economy, which strove to explain the underlying causes of the three-day week and power cuts.

While still appearing in a more familiar capacity, as anchorman of the regional news magazine, Scene at 6.30, Scott was the messenger in an historic Granada coup. On November 22 1963, the programme had been on the air five minutes when the telephone rang in the newsroom adjacent to the studio. It was CBS in New York with the tip that President John Kennedy had been shot. There was a rule that individual programme companies should never pre-empt ITN on big news. Denis Forman, the senior Granada executive present, called ITN and was told they were not going to break into the schedules with the story until they had it from their own reporter in America. On the impulse Forman decided to go ahead, and Scott broke the news to northern viewers half-an-hour before it reached the rest of the country.

By the 1970s Scott's appearances in programmes such as People and Places, or the popular movie review Cinema, had made his film-star good looks and warm manner familiar to viewers everywhere. His executive career advanced in step with his on-screen one, and from 1979 to 1987 he was Granada's programme controller. These were the years of the mega-hits, Brideshead Revisited (1981) and The Jewel in the Crown (1984), but also of high standards in everyday programming.

Scott was educated at Latymer upper school, west London, and Clayesmore, Iwerne Minster, Dorset. After national service in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps his career echoed the cultural history of the day. He became a stagehand with the Festival Ballet - set up for the 1951 Festival of Britain - a film extra and then, in 1955, a TV production trainee with the Rank Organisation, which was bidding, with partners, for one of the new commercial TV contracts. But the southern region franchise they won was not due to go on the air until 1957. So Scott joined Granada as a floor manager just before its launch in May 1956.

He was soon researching, directing and occasionally producing such shows as We Want an Answer (1958-59), in which politicians and other figureheads were questioned by sixth-formers from all over the country. He directed the three historic outside broadcasts from the Rochdale byelection, also in 1958, which successfully challenged the official view that such coverage would be illegal. From 1963 he appeared on the screen as well as working behind it - a role for which his extrovert personality well equipped him, according to his Granada friend and producer Barrie Heads.

As presenter of Cinema, which notched up 534 editions between 1964 and 1975, he took his turn in a distinguished batting-order - Bamber Gascoigne, Derek Granger, Mark Shivas, Michael Parkinson, even Clive James. Scott's two-and-a-half years as resident cineaste gave him one of his few bad moments. In a live special from the British Academy film awards ceremony in 1967, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were to receive a joint award for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? As it was well established that they never gave interviews, Scott did not bother to prepare any questions. When the floor manager, Walter Mariner, wheeled the pair up to him, all too ready to talk, he was flabbergasted. The result, according to Mariner, was probably the worst interview in TV history, but a tiny debit to be set against the good stuff Scott regularly drew from his guests.

Over the years he conducted discussion programmes on every kind of topic. Invited speakers aside, these often included contributions from the floor, and Scott's firmness and humour were much appreciated.

Scott and his wife Sylvia were friends of Joyce, and the late Mike Wooller. The two Mikes had been Granada colleagues, though Wooller went back to the BBC in 1970, then joined Thames Television before setting up his film company, Goldcrest. The two families built a holiday house on the Algarve in Portugal, and were spending longer spells there until Wooller was taken ill and died in 1996. Scott's own health began to deteriorate in the late 1990s, and he had been in a care home for most of the last 10 years.

He is survived by Sylvia and their daughter, Julia.

Michael John Scott, broadcaster, born December 8 1932; died May 30 2008

Freddy

Many thanks for this Julian.

A wonderful presenter who added to the excellence of Granada TV.

Very sad to read that he had suffered ill health for a considerable time.

RIP

Freddy

The world wags on.

wadsy

He was a fabulous presenter.!!

R.I.P Michael!!

dpgmel

Another very sad loss.

R I P

Mr Cosmo

Little known fact - Mike Scott directed the second ever edition of CORONATION STREET - something he was always very proud to talk about!

charliekane

Yes I still vividly remember him making the JFK announcement that Friday evening. Michael was a major - and admirable - figure at Granada throughout the 60s and 70s, in the days before Nationwide set the trend for all local programming to be trivialised.

Moor Larkin

Queerly enough, I recently came across photographs and articles about him in some 1960's TV magazines. His face brought a flood of Granadaland memories to me.

A generation, the like of which we will never see again, and television too.

julian_craster

julian_craster

From The Times
June 8, 2008

Mike Scott: Television broadcaster and producer at Granada who was adept at making complex subjects simple

Mike Scott was one of the foremost producer-performers in commercial television, one of an elite group at Granada whose other members included Bill Grundy and Michael Parkinson.

His career on the small screen involved extensive work both in front of camera and behind it. In both capacities, he was regarded as exceptionally skilled at presenting complex and superficially unattractive subjects — of all sorts — in a simple and appealing way. Perhaps his finest achievement in this regard was Nuts and Bolts of the Economy, which he presented and produced from 1975 until 1978; though he will probably be better remembered for presenting ITV’s networked morning-discussion programme The Time . . . The Place, in the late Eighties and early Nineties.

His broad experience eventually won him the position of programme controller at Granada — arguably the greatest commercial TV company in the history of the industry. In that capacity, Scott was drawn into skirmishes with the regulator, notably over charges of left-wing bias in progamming, which he denied.

But towards the end of his career Scott returned to active broadcasting with The Time . . . The Place, which moved from one city to another each day; and changed topics at the same rate. Scott co-ordinated discussions involving several experts and a large number of “ordinary” people too. Always full of enthusiasm, he coped with the many demands of the job throughout a first series of 205 shows; and for five additional series after that — not bad for a man who, at the start of his career, was rejected as front man because of his difficulty pronouncing the letter R.

Michael John Scott was born in 1932, the son of Tony Scott, timpanist in a London orchestra, and his wife Pam. He was educated at Latymer Upper School and Clayesmore in Dorset, where he failed all his A levels. “I took the wrong subjects,” he said later.

Called up for National Service in 1951, Scott joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, where he met his future wife, Sylvia, the daughter of an officer. After leaving, in 1953, he found work as a stagehand with the Festival Ballet and also as a film extra, before joining the Rank Organisation in 1955 as a TV production trainee.

At Rank, Scott met Mike and Joyce Wooller, both of them, like him, to achieve eminence at Granada after readily accepting job offers from Denis Forman in 1956. Salaries at Granada were not especially high, but in other respects the company was considerably more attractive than Rank. All three moved together to the North West, and the Scotts and the Woollers remained lifelong friends, sharing houses in Manchester and Portugal and later acquiring adjacent homes in Wiltshire and Kensington.

Granada, which moved into television from cinema, proved itself a hothouse for broadcasting talent. Leading figures whose careers at Granada overlapped with Scott’s included Jeremy Isaacs, later to be founding director-general of Channel 4, and John Birt, later Director-General of the BBC.

Scott joined the company in time for its launch, as a floor manager. Always good-humoured, he was especially suited to that role. Less successful was his stint as cameraman, largely because he had scant visual flair. He also learnt to operate a boom.

In 1957 he became a director. One programme he directed was Coronation Street, then relatively new to the schedules. But again, as Scott later recognised, directing requires a visual strength that he never possessed.

But he was versatile, producing and performing in daily magazine programmes during the early 1960s. As presenter of the local early-evening news programme Scene, Scott was able to inform viewers that President Kennedy had been assassinated — some half an hour before the BBC or ITN got the story out. Understandably, he always looked back on that achievement with pride.

In 1965 Scott took over as presenter of a programme about films and film-makers, Cinema, handing over to Michael Parkinson three years later (Cinema was eventually replaced by the better-known Clapperboard). For five years after that, Scott was executive producer of local programming. Then in 1974 he moved to the flagship current affairs programme World in Action, as interviewer. He also continued to serve as producer-performer on a range of other programmes.

In 1978 he was given a directorship in the company as deputy programme controller, and the following year he moved up to programme controller. He retained that position until 1987. (From 1984 until 1987 he was also a director of Channel 4).

Scott was one of few employees able to tackle Granada’s prime mover, Sidney Bernstein, on personal matters. This he frequently did with a measure of good-natured cheek. Bernstein’s driving was known to be appalling but Scott managed to amuse colleagues by quizzing him innocently about why he’d given it up. And whenever the wealthy Bernstein complained about his own modest annual salary, Scott would assume a puzzled air of concern, asking: “But have you not got anything else?” With others trying the same thing, Bernstein could clam up and even leave the room, but Scott made him laugh.

Scott’s return to active broadcasting was mooted during a programme controllers’ meeting in which Andy Allan sent a note asking Scott if he would like to be “ITV’s Phil Donahue” (the American talk-show host). Scott’s note in reply indicated his belief that Allan was pulling his leg, but in fact Allan was serious. Within two weeks Scott accepted the job on The Time . . . The Place.

This programme covered a range of topics, from the downright silly to the relatively weighty, and pitched Scott directly opposite the BBC’s Robert Kilroy-Silk. In the race to establish the kind of reputation enjoyed by Donahue, Scott was outdone by his permanently tanned rival, whose show was named after him in recognition of his early success. But Scott took greater risks, transmitting live from the start and committing himself to a first series almost twice as long as Kilroy. As if that were not sufficiently onerous, Scott also took his show round the country, travelling each afternoon from one city to another.

Spurning the traditional warm-up man, Scott liked to perform a jig 30 seconds before transmission to put the audience at ease. During discussions he would jokily raise a hand to get a word in. And he managed the entire show without an earpiece, having become fed up by the sound of directors screeching at him.

Live broadcast threw up regular difficulties. Scott might occasionally need to disregard a loud and violent coughing fit or the sound of low-flying helicopters (when broadcasting from a football stadium). During the last years of the Soviet Union, The Time... The Place pioneered live debates with citizens of Moscow and Riga.

Scott gave up The Time . . . The Place in 1993. In retirement, he enjoyed collecting and repairing clocks, and driving his 1932 Lagonda.

He was married to Sylvia Hudson in 1956. She survives him, as does their daughter.

Mike Scott, broadcaster, was born on December 8, 1932. He died on May 30, 2008, aged 75