[Mark Rabinowitz] Sean O'Grady of The Independent newspaper has a column in which he bemoans the death of "public service" programming on UK broadcaster ITV and issues a call to arms of sorts. "Television is an ephemeral medium," he writes, continuing, "but it is still possible to recall the superb programming that ITV used to offer in this field. "World In Action," "This Week," "Weekend World," "Walden" - all tremendous, long-running series that broke news, investigated crooks, threatened governments. They even had brilliant theme tunes."

"Millions watched and were moved by Jonathan Dimbleby's "This Week" 1973 documentary "the [sic] Unknown Famine" about starvation in Ethiopia, a decade before Michael Buerk did the same for the BBC. "This Week"'s "Death on the Rock" documentary investigated the shooting by the SAS of three IRA terrorists in Gibraltar in 1989, the sort of trouble-making by broadcast journalists that is almost impossible to imagine now."

That kind of sound like "Frontline" or "POV", doesn't it? Let's hope Mr. O'Grady raises some support, because after all, he's been at it for some time, including this post on the apparent death of the BBC's political programs. Interestingly, he uses an almost identical (but none the less telling) passage in each piece when he recalls journalist Brian Walden telling them Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that she was "off her trolley." The thing is, with support for the arts dwindling on this side of the Atlantic, I for one have always looked to Great Britain as somewhat of a safe haven for publicly funded documentary programming.

"All these shows moved the political markets," O'Grady writes. "All were popular. Michael Grade has four ITV digital channels, 24-hour broadcasting and plenty of resources. He cannot find room for an hour of current affairs a week. Someone should make a documentary about it. Working title: The Strange Death Of ITV."

The UK has a funny idea of what "public service" means. Of course here in the good ol' US of A, the term probably conjures up thoughts of NBC stars telling us that reading is important, while over there across the pond, the Brits actually consider political documentaries a public service! How weird, right? This isn't my first post regarding the UK funding crisis and until things are put right over there (and here, of course) it is unlikely to be my last.