While many in Labour had formally opposed the idea of commercial television, it seems that not everyone got the memo. Paul Bryan, a former Conservative MP for Howden, speaking in 1969, noted how this in fact helped the BBC, hitting out at Labour's previously failed pledge to ban commercial television, telling MPs that commercial television had "stimulated the BBC into better programmes and people enjoyed a better choice". In the end, the Television Act of 1954 permitted the creation of the first commercial television network in the UK, ITV, effectively ending the monopoly the BBC had held for years. John Reith, who established the tradition of independent public service broadcasting in the UK, went as far as to compare it to the introduction of the Black Death. Even some in the Conservative Party opposed commercial television for fear it might have on standards.
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