In the year 1992 I was responsible for organising one of the UK’s very first Radio Psychic ‘Phone in programmes at Red Rose Radio in Lancashire. It was, at the time, considered worthy of mention in The National Press. This late night programme also created quite a sensation in the area. There were crowds gathered in protest outside the radio station in Preston. A thump of ‘born-again’ Christians were there singing hymns, when I asked they declined to sing my favourite ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. I wanted that at my wedding and they wouldn’t sing it then either. Which is beside the point. The host of the show, Tony Newman, told me we were making radio broadcasting history in the UK as they had been required to clear this show with the controlling body, the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

That groundbreaking show was just 14 years ago, today virtually every local radio station in England has a regular psychic telephone night. Tony Newman at Red Rose 999MW now features, Tarot readings, Astrologers, Past Life Regressionists, Pet Psychics, Dream Analysis, Handwriting Analysis, Clairvoyants, and every shade of Psychic under the moon. Radio then has accepted the attraction of broadcasting mediums with messages. The big new development is television.

Independent television is broadcast under certain rules set out by the ITC. Section 1.10 of the ITC rules states: ‘Psychic or occultic practice are not permitted in factual programming, except where they are the subject of legitimate investigation’. Those words are manna from heaven for the likes of James Randi. He can use those words to justify his pseudo scientific mumbo-jumbo TV programmes about psychics. Randi’s Psychic TV is, in truth, little more than a direct attack on Spiritualist beliefs. Randi is, of course, not alone. Numerous TV chat shows have publicly ‘sacrificed’ Spiritualists in the name of so called entertainment. Some do almost invite  ridicule, for example so called clock stoppers and spoon benders. However, as a general rule the insults and unmitigated assaults on mediums have been legitimised by section 1.10 of the ITC rules.

Some few months ago the UK based psychic-medium Derek Acorah was invited to demonstrate his ‘claimed’ paranormal  gifts on the Granada Breeze TV channel show ‘Livetime’. The programme’s producers enforced the ITC rules and did legitimately test the ability of Derek to produce information that was verifiably beyond his personal knowledge. The results so astounded the directors of this TV show that they immediately invited Derek to return the following week. He has been on that show ever since.

Derek is from a long line of mediums. His grandmother was a medium and she held meetings and gave readings around the Bootle area of Liverpool during the 1940’s through to the late 60’s. His great grandmother was Dutch and she too had the gift of clairvoyance. As a child this lady materialised from the spirit world to save young Derek whom, as a child, had fallen in front of an oncoming car. Throughout his life, Derek is 50 years of age; he has experienced psychic phenomena. In the late 1970’s the highly respected Edinburgh based medium Mary Duffy predicted that Derek’s psychic gifts would one day be recognised. The book 'The Psychic World of Derek Acorah' published by Piatkus books in the UK and by London Pride in the U.S.A. tells his amazing story.

The late Doris Stokes filmed a documentary about her work for Granada TV, it was lifted from the schedules the day before transmission and was never shown. Since then there has been a plethora of Randiesque psychic put down shows on TV, but never a major programme offering a medium a public platform to prove that psychic powers are a fact. To date the ITC rules prevent this.

The David Frost TV shows on UK TV with Uri Geller and Matthew Manning made a brief attempt at presenting psychic phenomena. To some extent this worked quite well, but one was left with the impression that this was a vehicle for Geller and Frost more than a legitimate look at the subject. Certainly the scene with the static cycling land speed record will rank alongside The Goons as one of broadcastings funniest moments. ‘Errr, the thing’s broken David’…’Thank you and goodnight’.
 

The recent Helen Duncan story on BBC TV featuring our Deputy Editor Michael Coleman was a really positive step in the right direction. Any open minded person watching that documentary would quite likely have reached the conclusion that Mrs Duncan was persecuted and imprisoned because she was a Spiritualist medium proving life after death to be a fact. If this was not the case why would the authorities take the trouble to concoct a case against the lady?

So what can  turn the tide in favour of the mediums? We will all have to wait and see. When the general public are given the opportunity to see the proof available through  Spiritualist mediums another door will have been opened, the door to the next frontier; Psychic TV.

In just fourteen short years the public perception of psychic phenomena has totally changed. The very idea that a medium would be asked to give members of the public psychic readings live on UK TV was unthinkable less than a decade ago. Today, with the onset of digital TV we are looking at the next frontier. I believe that right at the front of the psychic TV revolution will be gifted psychic-mediums. The public is ready for the Truth.

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