Tom Sloan (broadcaster)
|
Tom Sloan OBE |
|
|---|---|
| BBC Head of Light Entertainment | |
|
In office November 1961 – May 1970 |
|
| Preceded by | Eric Maschwitz |
| Succeeded by | Bill Cotton |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Thomas James H Sloan 14 October 1919 Hertfordshire, England |
| Died | 13 May 1970 (aged 50) London, England |
| Nationality | British |
Thomas James H. Sloan, OBE (14 October 1919 – 13 May 1970) was a British broadcaster and journalist and BBC Head of Light Entertainment in the 1960s.
Sloan was born in Hertfordshire, England, the son of a Scottish Free Church Minister, and educated at Dulwich College. He entered the BBC Sound Effects Department in 1939, but left at the start of World War II to serve in the Royal Artillery throughout the war. He married Patricia Coverdale in 1943 and had four children.
In 1946 he returned to BBC radio as a talks producer and spent several years as the BBC's representative in Canada. In 1956 he joined the BBC Light Entertainment group, under Ronnie Waldman. During this period, he provided the British commentary for the Eurovision Song Contests in 1957, 1958 and later the 1964 on radio (BBC Light Programme), and in 1959, 1961 and 1968 on BBC Television.
In 1961 he was appointed Head of Light Entertainment, taking over from Eric Maschwitz (who became Assistant Controller of Programmes). One of his first tasks was to attempt to hold on to one of the BBC's biggest stars of the time, Tony Hancock. After he failed to persuade Hancock to sign a golden handcuffs deal designed to prevent him defecting to ITV or the cinema, he wrote a confidential memo to the BBC Controller of Programmes on 13 April 1962, stating "Hancock is a moody perfectionist with a great interest in money and no sense of loyalty to the corporation". He added that nothing short of handing over entire "production control" to Hancock and paying him an unprecedented £150,000 - the equivalent of £2m today - for a further 13 episodes of his TV sitcom would be enough to persuade him to stay with the BBC. In the autumn of 1961 he approached Hancock's writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, with the idea of a series called Comedy Playhouse. He had ten half-hour slots and asked them to fill them with anything they wanted, insisting only that his title of Comedy Playhouse be used. The fourth episode of the series, broadcast on 5 January 1962, was entitled The Offer and starred Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell as Steptoe and Son. Sloan badgered Ray Galton and Alan Simpson to write a series of Steptoe and Son episodes, which were broadcast between May and June 1962. A further seven series, totalling 57 episodes, would eventually be made between 1962 and 1974.
...
Wikipedia