The triumphant return of the South Bank Show

Raymond Snoddy on ITV’s error in letting the South Bank show (and name) go; Sky’s ambitions in arts television; and why opera and football make the perfect combination of enthusiasms…

On Sunday week Melvyn Bragg’s South Bank Show will make a triumphant return to British television. For the opening show of the new series there will be the first television profile of the theatre director Nicholas Hytner.

The series will demonstrate the usual eclectic Bragg take on the arts, with a look at the roots and origins of Grime music in London’s East End, novelist Pat Barker’s fascination with the First World War and the rise of the violinist Nicola Benedetti.

Has ITV finally realised the folly of its ways in pensioning off two iconic brands simultaneously – the Lord Bragg and the South Bank Show?

Alas no. Sky Arts is where you will find the South Bank Show.

ITV compounded its error in winding-up the show despite advertisers abiding interest in reaching “pure” ABC 1 audiences by handing over the rights to the South Bank Show name for free.

Bragg recently attributed such generosity to asking at the moment when ITV felt sheepish at what it had done.

The replacement programme Perspectives has made little impact and meanwhile around 800 South Bank shows that are languishing in the ITV archive – many including profiles and interviews, which cannot be replicated because their illustrious subjects – are dead.

Is Bragg merely doing a bit of topping and tailing in the new series to supplement his House of Lords expenses?

“I will be annoyingly present throughout,” insists Bragg, who says he does not think much of the business wisdom of ITV in getting rid of such an established brand.

Bragg’s Southbank Show probably succumbed to that profound broadcasting philosophy – time for a change – in the certain knowledge that such changes usually turn out to be inferior to what went before.

The present outcome is a coup for Bragg and Sky Arts, although inevitably the move to a minority channel on pay-TV will mean much reduced audiences.

But six new shows are at least there, to be followed by a further six already commissioned and Bragg has been able to call on the services of specialist producers who have made South Bank shows for years. The programme budget, Bragg says, is roughly equal to the money in the last year of ITV Southbanks.

And you can almost always save money in television without it showing on the screen. In Bragg’s case that has meant conducting interviews for three of the programmes in New York during a three day trip including standard airfares.

Apart from a treat for fans of the South Bank Show, the real message of the Lazarus-like return is what it says about Sky’s ambitions in arts television.

The output will never get the profile, or audiences, of the last day of the Premium League but gradually Sky has been building its presence in arts television.

For years at the beginning Sky promised an arts channel but somehow it never happened. The then director of programmes David Elstein said sardonically that somehow the subject never quite rose to the top of the agenda.

Now the Sky Arts channels are providing 48 hours a day of arts programming – including of course heavy repeat schedules. The recent mix has however included the latest season of New York’s Metropolitan Opera and newly commissioned comedies.

The numbers? Here things get more difficult. The Sky Arts budget has tripled but the broadcaster is coy about saying from what to where.

Audiences? Here we enter the magic territory of reach.

Both Sky Arts channels have been elevated on the EPG to the enhanced 129 and 130 slots, ahead of both Channel 4 HD and BBC One HD. The result has been a more than doubling of the reach this year from around 2.5 million a month to more than five million a month.

Let’s not get too excited – that means that more than five million have watched Sky Arts for at least three minutes across a month.

However, the head of Sky Arts James Hunt believes the overall audience is even larger. The ratings only catch live viewing plus those who watch recorded programmes seven days after transmission. Many timeless arts programmes can be watched months later and indeed a recording of Il Travatore awaits the right evening in my diary to watch.

The big question is why should Sky be spending three times as much on arts programmes than it did before, whatever that budget really is?

The reason is pretty obvious. For years BSkyB has been trying to extend its programme reach beyond sport, and football in particular, to reach a wider audience.

Strange as it may seem, there are people out there who simply do not like sport, even though it is obvious that opera and football make the perfect combination of enthusiasms.

Also, there must always have been the nagging worry about what would happen if one day Sky were to be outbid in the battle for Premier League rights or Brussels became ever more interfering.

In current circumstances, with the noises becoming louder and louder, an investment in original British arts programming could be worth its weight in gold.

At the very least the Labour peer Lord Bragg is scarcely likely to get up in the Lords and denounce the unacceptable ownership of BSkyB – though not something he would have done anyway, even before the present relationship.

Without successful criminal prosecutions at News Corporation board level it is difficult to see how the company can be judged neither fit nor proper to hold a broadcasting licence.

The worst that could probably happen, if the political pressure continues to grow, is that News Corp might be forced to reduce its stake in the company from 39% to 29.9%, which is probably something that BSkyB could live with.

Anyway David Elstein is of the view that none of this “fit and proper” stuff makes a blind bit of difference. If push came to shove the trustees of Battersea Dogs Home could hold the Sky broadcasting licence in return for a decent contribution for the dogs and BSkyB, the business, could sail on regardless.

Meanwhile put your feet up next Sunday and enjoy the sight of Melvyn Bragg treading the boards again at the age of 72.