BBC Four presenters rally to save channel amid closure
rumours
Lucy Worsley and Waldemar Januszczak are among those
to have taken to social media
Mark Sweney
@marksweney
Published
onThu 14 May 2020 17.52 BST
BBC Four
presenters are rallying to save the arts and culture channel which is rumoured
to be facing closure as the corporation looks to cut costs and invest in
younger audiences.
Presenters
including Lucy Worsley, art historian Dr James Fox, Oxford historian Dr Janina
Ramirez and Waldemar Januszczak have taken to social media to campaign against
widespread rumours that it could be shut as a TV channel by the end of this
year.
BBC Four,
which has an annual budget of £44m, attracts a small, niche audience of mostly
older viewers to its schedule of shows, although it was responsible for
creating the hit comedy The Thick Of It.
Rumours
that BBC Four could be under threat have been circulating for some time as the
corporation has made it clear that its goal is to pursue younger audiences
increasingly slipping away to rivals such as Netflix.
Speculation
intensified earlier this month when it was announced that Cassian Harrison, BBC
Four’s long-serving controller, is to move to BBC Studios, the corporation’s
commercial arm, on a nine-month attachment.
“There are
no plans to close BBC Four,” said a BBC spokesman.
However,
there are several options available as an alternative to a full closure of the
channel. One option, which has been floated a number of times over the years,
is to merge BBC Four with BBC Two. Another is for BBC Four to follow sister
channel BBC Three and cease to exist as a TV channel, instead becoming
online-only.
Earlier
this year it emerged that the corporation’s bosses have discussed a return to
TV for BBC Three, which moved online-only in 2016 as the corporation pursued
its youth audience, which could replace the slot held by BBC Four in electronic
programming guides.
BBC Three
has flourished during the coronavirus lockdown with youth drama Normal People
fueling its best week ever.
The
corporation is in the process of making major cost cuts to plug a huge hole in
its finances, including hundreds of millions of pounds to pay for the end of
free TV licences for the over-75s.
In
addition, the BBC has said the coronavirus will cost it £125m as door-to-door
enforcement activity stops and a call centre that handles payments shut down
because of the lockdown and physical distancing rules.
A decade
ago a vocal campaign saved radio channel BBC 6 Music from closure after the
then director general Mark Thompson looked to shut it, and digital sister
station BBC Asian Network, to cut costs. The campaign raised awareness of the
music station, which recorded its biggest-ever weekly audience, 2.56 million
listeners, in the first quarter this year.
BBC Four’s future is uncertain, but we need arts
channels like it now more than ever
The home of arts programming and innovative dramas
like The Thick of It, BBC Four may now be under threat - and the impact would
be devastating, says Flora Carr
By Flora
Carr
Monday,
11th May 2020 at 4:39 pm
BBC Four
first launched almost 20 years ago, back in 2002. At the time, controller Roly
Keating claimed in Radio Times that the new channel would be able to achieve
things that no other channel could – its slogan was “everybody needs a place to
think”. It was, and is, ostensibly a place for culture, a free-to-air channel
helping to democratise the arts.
It’s also
ambitious when it comes to commissioning original British content. Such gems
like political satire The Thick of It, Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, the
hilarious Olympics comedy Twenty Twelve, and the thinking-woman’s quiz game
Only Connect, hosted by Victoria Coren Mitchell, all originated on BBC Four.
Which is
why the new rumour that the BBC will soon be relegating BBC Four to online, as
it previously did with BBC Three, came as such an unwelcome surprise. Last week
Broadcast added oxygen to those industry rumours, revealing that BBC sources
feared for the channel’s future following its editor Cassian Harrison’s move to
BBC Studios.
Much has
been said in the recent weeks and months about how in times of crises, we turn
to the arts – but that in the case of this particular crisis, the coronavirus
pandemic, the arts have never been more at risk. Following the news about BBC
Four, it must be assumed that the same can now be said for arts programming.
At times
frightening, at other times frustrating, lockdown is a stressful state to be
in, and BBC Four represents everything that’s keeping us sane during this
pandemic. We find refuge in the arts: escapism, a creative outlet, or else a
place to disappear. Under lockdown, galleries, theatres and film sets are
(rightly) closed. Concerts are cancelled, and booksellers struggling. But as
we’ve discovered, the arts aren’t luxuries: they are a vital part of our own
identities, of our culture and communities.
Through
film and art and reading books, we travel to places we may never go, meet
people we would never encounter otherwise; it’s a lifeline for those who are
currently staring at the same four walls day in, day out, and particularly for
those self-isolating alone.
For those
stuck at home and looking for creative ways to fill their time, BBC Four has
filled that gap. Tomorrow at 8pm, for example, BBC Four viewers are invited to
pick up their pencils for a life drawing class – with real nude models – as the
nation channels its artistic side.
It’s via
BBC Four that we were first introduced to many foreign dramas, from Twin (the
Scandi-noir, starring Game of Thrones’ Kristofer Hivju, that’s recently gripped
the nation), The Killing and the original Wallander, to American imports like
Mad Men and the gentle art series Painting with Bob Ross, which has enjoyed a
resurgence of interest and achieved cult status among millennials and
Generation Z viewers (it even featured in teen drama Euphoria).
Britain’s
future music stars, like the royal wedding cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, are
discovered on the contest BBC Young Musician, which has been televised solely
for BBC Four since 2014.
If you go
on BBC iPlayer, BBC Four’s channel page is chock-full of content for those in
quarantine. For those missing visits to art galleries, you can check out their
‘Museums in Quarantine’ four-parter. Slowly realising you’ll probably miss that
sold-out play you booked before the lockdown? You can watch the channel’s
Culture In Quarantine: Shakespeare series. But of course, the great thing about
BBC Four is that it’s also on-air, so older, less mobile and potentially less
tech-savvy viewers can still experience culture from the comfort of their
homes.
Music,
literature, drama, comedy, theatre, art: it’s all there. And now more than
ever, we need channels like BBC Four, to plug the gap that’s currently missing
from our lives.
Through channels
like BBC Four, we can all access the arts. It doesn’t matter if we couldn’t
attend that famous play at The Globe Theatre, or couldn’t visit the Tate
Modern; and it certainly doesn’t matter if we’d normally be too shy to attend a
real-life life drawing class.
But taking
BBC Four off-air, and limiting its resources, would make it that little bit
harder for people to experience world-class culture – whether we’re in lockdown
or not.
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