Interview: Melvyn Bragg (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
FORGET Celebrity Shark Bait - for a sure-fire reality hit, ITV should lock Lords Birt and Bragg in a house together. Since Birt used his MacTaggart lecture last month to suggest that ITV was "clinging on to the public-service tradition by its fingertips", the two Labour peers have been engaged in a sharp exchange of views livelier than anything in this summer's schedules.
With the network cutting religious and regional broadcasts, and replacing the Jonathan Dimbleby political interview with something "more fun", Birt's accusation could not have come at a more sensitive time. So you would naturally expect Bragg, custodian of ITV's arts output, to spring to its defence.
Immaculately dressed in a Hampstead café, around the corner from his house, Bragg is still bristling two weeks later. "I was genuinely angry," he says of Birt's speech, which he has since criticised publicly as well as privately via email. "When someone's in as important a position as John, these prophecies can become self-fulfilling. If he goes around telling people that the ITV game is up, well ... Actually, no, it isn't. It's all to be fought for. John is a brilliant man in many ways, but he's been the servant of statistics and graphs. And graphs change."
The "argument", as Bragg puts it, also concerns Birt's suggestions that television drama is failing to give a creative lead, and the "ridiculous" suggestion that TV generally has declined over the past 20 years. "I attacked that quite strongly," Bragg, his former LWT colleague, says. "I also questioned whether people like that were watching enough television to see the good stuff. It always had to be looked for."
Bragg should know. While making his five-part history of ITV - to mark the 50th anniversary, which falls next Thursday - Bragg and his team watched around 1,700 tapes - "not all of which were that good". Yes, he admits, ITV's public-service programming is unquestionably "under pressure" in today's commercially competitive climate. "We can look at the highlights of the past, and go in for golden-ageism," he says. "And you can pull out crap stuff [from contemporary schedules]. But actually it's not in bad shape. It seems to me that we in ITV, from Charles Allen right down to programmemakers, are trying to hold on to public-service broadcasting. It is a really tricky time, but we're in shape, trying to win that fight."
For his part, Bragg, 66 next month, has just renewed his contract as Granada's head of arts and features for three years, where he will continue to make The South Bank Show after 28 years. But aren't his contributions effectively the "serious" fig-leaf on a network increasingly looking simply to drive audiences?
"Well, I'm the arts on ITV, yes, because we do look after the arts very well," he says. "And we do not only do the arts, we do The Adventure of English, Twelve Books that Changed the World, The Story of ITV ... We've stuck to it. We do 26 major arts programmes a year, and the BBC only does 12. For a long time they hardly did any. You can't call that tokenism by ITV."
Yet critics point out that other traditional "public-service" programmes, such as religious and regional broadcasts, are down. ITV News, meanwhile, has faced a 17 per cent year-on-year budget cut, according to Stewart Purvis, former ITN chief executive. "We do wail a lot in television, with people always complaining," Bragg replies. "There were 102 regional feature programmes a year on top of regional news. Frankly, these were too many; they were not watched. They're now cut to 52. Religion has been cut down, but we were doing twice as much religion as BBC1. Well, why?"
As for news, ITV's "mistake", he suggests, was historically to treat ITN as a separate commercial supplier, giving Sky and other companies the opportunity to undercut its bids, thus increasing pressure to scale down costs. Still, he adds, ITV News continues to "whack" the BBC on stories from the tsunami to the London bombings. "And Trevor [McDonald] does 92 Tonight programmes in peak time, while BBC1 does none."
Bragg, a Radio 4 presenter, has long been outspoken about what he considers the BBC's failings. Four years ago, he accused the corporation of "a dereliction of duty" in its arts coverage. He still considers the BBC "insane" to have killed off The Late Show ("Newsnight Review is a very nice roundup, but it's not The Late Show ...").
Alan Yentob's Imagine, he says, is "a very good beginning", but with just 12 programmes, it is hardly enough. "I think they should at least match us," he says. "When Michael Grade was with us, he said that one of the things the BBC existed for was to keep ITV honest. I think the wheel has turned, Michael. I think we exist now to keep you honest."
He has, though, revised his view that part of the licence fee should be available to commercial rivals for public-service programmes. "I think it would muddy the waters now," he says. "Get the BBC Charter and licence renewed, give it time to bed in, then re-attack the whole subject. It's really important this country keeps that broadcasting system." The solution, he suggests, is for the Government to provide a separate £300 million fund for other programme-makers to bid for. Would his colleagues in Government really want to pay? "I don't know," he admits. "On the whole, though they have failed ITV in the past 10 years, governments have been pretty good about public-service broadcasting. If you want to keep things going, you're going to have to have some intervention. There's no other way." To leave the BBC alone to carry the load, he says, "will kill them".
He claims not to regret trading Radio 4's Start The Week for his Labour peerage (the BBC considered the roles incompatible). So he was surprised when the channel then asked him to present In Our Time. "A little part of me said, right, I'm going absolutely for broke, completely upmarket."
The formula has proved successful: seven years on, the programme reaches as many as two million listeners. "The big discovery," Braggs says, "is that the socalled inarticulate, in-bitten, anorak academic does not exist. These people, many of whom have never been on radio, bring a lifetime's study and try to tell you and me what they know. It's fantastically impressive." He does, he admits, now regret holding a listeners' vote for Britain's favourite philosopher - won by Marx, but rather too populist a venture for Bragg's liking. "There's a stage at which you're the writer-presenter and not the producer, and I allowed myself to be persuaded," he says. "Never again."
As for his own future, Bragg seems quite happy juggling broadcasting, writing - he is currently struggling with his latest novel, he can't quite remember if it's number 20 or 21 - and his attendance in the Lords. Retirement is not on the cards, despite calls from his wife, the writer Cate Haste, for Bragg to wind down.
Besides, if he stopped working, there would be one less soldier to defend ITV's public-service credentials from the "beached grandees". And as John Birt has discovered, Bragg is not shy of making his views known.
(Evening Standard, September 14, 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
FORGET Celebrity Shark Bait - for a sure-fire reality hit, ITV should lock Lords Birt and Bragg in a house together. Since Birt used his MacTaggart lecture last month to suggest that ITV was "clinging on to the public-service tradition by its fingertips", the two Labour peers have been engaged in a sharp exchange of views livelier than anything in this summer's schedules.
With the network cutting religious and regional broadcasts, and replacing the Jonathan Dimbleby political interview with something "more fun", Birt's accusation could not have come at a more sensitive time. So you would naturally expect Bragg, custodian of ITV's arts output, to spring to its defence.
Immaculately dressed in a Hampstead café, around the corner from his house, Bragg is still bristling two weeks later. "I was genuinely angry," he says of Birt's speech, which he has since criticised publicly as well as privately via email. "When someone's in as important a position as John, these prophecies can become self-fulfilling. If he goes around telling people that the ITV game is up, well ... Actually, no, it isn't. It's all to be fought for. John is a brilliant man in many ways, but he's been the servant of statistics and graphs. And graphs change."
The "argument", as Bragg puts it, also concerns Birt's suggestions that television drama is failing to give a creative lead, and the "ridiculous" suggestion that TV generally has declined over the past 20 years. "I attacked that quite strongly," Bragg, his former LWT colleague, says. "I also questioned whether people like that were watching enough television to see the good stuff. It always had to be looked for."
Bragg should know. While making his five-part history of ITV - to mark the 50th anniversary, which falls next Thursday - Bragg and his team watched around 1,700 tapes - "not all of which were that good". Yes, he admits, ITV's public-service programming is unquestionably "under pressure" in today's commercially competitive climate. "We can look at the highlights of the past, and go in for golden-ageism," he says. "And you can pull out crap stuff [from contemporary schedules]. But actually it's not in bad shape. It seems to me that we in ITV, from Charles Allen right down to programmemakers, are trying to hold on to public-service broadcasting. It is a really tricky time, but we're in shape, trying to win that fight."
For his part, Bragg, 66 next month, has just renewed his contract as Granada's head of arts and features for three years, where he will continue to make The South Bank Show after 28 years. But aren't his contributions effectively the "serious" fig-leaf on a network increasingly looking simply to drive audiences?
"Well, I'm the arts on ITV, yes, because we do look after the arts very well," he says. "And we do not only do the arts, we do The Adventure of English, Twelve Books that Changed the World, The Story of ITV ... We've stuck to it. We do 26 major arts programmes a year, and the BBC only does 12. For a long time they hardly did any. You can't call that tokenism by ITV."
Yet critics point out that other traditional "public-service" programmes, such as religious and regional broadcasts, are down. ITV News, meanwhile, has faced a 17 per cent year-on-year budget cut, according to Stewart Purvis, former ITN chief executive. "We do wail a lot in television, with people always complaining," Bragg replies. "There were 102 regional feature programmes a year on top of regional news. Frankly, these were too many; they were not watched. They're now cut to 52. Religion has been cut down, but we were doing twice as much religion as BBC1. Well, why?"
As for news, ITV's "mistake", he suggests, was historically to treat ITN as a separate commercial supplier, giving Sky and other companies the opportunity to undercut its bids, thus increasing pressure to scale down costs. Still, he adds, ITV News continues to "whack" the BBC on stories from the tsunami to the London bombings. "And Trevor [McDonald] does 92 Tonight programmes in peak time, while BBC1 does none."
Bragg, a Radio 4 presenter, has long been outspoken about what he considers the BBC's failings. Four years ago, he accused the corporation of "a dereliction of duty" in its arts coverage. He still considers the BBC "insane" to have killed off The Late Show ("Newsnight Review is a very nice roundup, but it's not The Late Show ...").
Alan Yentob's Imagine, he says, is "a very good beginning", but with just 12 programmes, it is hardly enough. "I think they should at least match us," he says. "When Michael Grade was with us, he said that one of the things the BBC existed for was to keep ITV honest. I think the wheel has turned, Michael. I think we exist now to keep you honest."
He has, though, revised his view that part of the licence fee should be available to commercial rivals for public-service programmes. "I think it would muddy the waters now," he says. "Get the BBC Charter and licence renewed, give it time to bed in, then re-attack the whole subject. It's really important this country keeps that broadcasting system." The solution, he suggests, is for the Government to provide a separate £300 million fund for other programme-makers to bid for. Would his colleagues in Government really want to pay? "I don't know," he admits. "On the whole, though they have failed ITV in the past 10 years, governments have been pretty good about public-service broadcasting. If you want to keep things going, you're going to have to have some intervention. There's no other way." To leave the BBC alone to carry the load, he says, "will kill them".
He claims not to regret trading Radio 4's Start The Week for his Labour peerage (the BBC considered the roles incompatible). So he was surprised when the channel then asked him to present In Our Time. "A little part of me said, right, I'm going absolutely for broke, completely upmarket."
The formula has proved successful: seven years on, the programme reaches as many as two million listeners. "The big discovery," Braggs says, "is that the socalled inarticulate, in-bitten, anorak academic does not exist. These people, many of whom have never been on radio, bring a lifetime's study and try to tell you and me what they know. It's fantastically impressive." He does, he admits, now regret holding a listeners' vote for Britain's favourite philosopher - won by Marx, but rather too populist a venture for Bragg's liking. "There's a stage at which you're the writer-presenter and not the producer, and I allowed myself to be persuaded," he says. "Never again."
As for his own future, Bragg seems quite happy juggling broadcasting, writing - he is currently struggling with his latest novel, he can't quite remember if it's number 20 or 21 - and his attendance in the Lords. Retirement is not on the cards, despite calls from his wife, the writer Cate Haste, for Bragg to wind down.
Besides, if he stopped working, there would be one less soldier to defend ITV's public-service credentials from the "beached grandees". And as John Birt has discovered, Bragg is not shy of making his views known.
(Evening Standard, September 14, 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
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