ITV executives are still crowing over snatching Parkinson from the BBC. At the same time, BBC executives were licking their lips over seizing back Premiership football on Saturday nights from ITV. Both are totally deluded.
This may seem counterintuitive. Michael Parkinson's Saturday night chat show is a television legend. Starting in 1971, it ran for 11 years, clocking up over 350 editions. Everyone over 40 remembers the famous programmes with Muhammad Ali and Rod Hull and Emu, the stuff of which Saturday-night archive compilations are made. Successfully revived in the late 1990s by executive producer Bea Ballard, who learned her trade at LWT and then at the BBC from former Parkinson producer, Richard Drewett, the show has run for six years and has featured pretty much everyone who is anyone on the celebrity A-list, from Anthony Hopkins in the moving first show to Meg Ryan, Gwyneth Paltrow and the Beckhams.
Premiership football, similarly, seems an obvious gain for BBC1. At their best, Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea play extraordinary football. The game is bursting with big names and exciting new talent, mostly imported from Italy, France and Spain. Motty, Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen are tried and tested. You can already see the new opening titles: Ronaldo and Henry, Kluivert and Drogba. The BBC can hardly wait for the new season.
This all seems plausible, but is actually wrong, because it misses the point that two of British television's warhorse genres are in crisis. When we think of the great days of Parkinson and Match of the Day, we think of the 1970s. The rules of the chat show and television football have changed.
When we think of the best episodes of Parkinson, what comes to mind apart from the tussles with Ali and Emu? The wit of David Niven and Peter Ustinov, Billy Connolly's first electrifying appearance, the great movie stars from the golden age of Hollywood? Or do we think of the monosyllabic Meg Ryan, the inarticulate Gwyneth Paltrow and Sarah Ferguson puffing her latest children's book?
Celebrity has changed. The great guests on Parkinson in the 1970s were interesting, not because they were plugging their new movie or autobiography, but because they had lived a bit, they were articulate and often smart. They had what Denis Healey used to call "hinterland." Their best days were often behind them and they were looking back, full of great stories. By contrast, today's celebs are too young, because of the political economy of Hollywood. They haven't lived, and stories about agents, cosmetic surgery and the latest diet aren't electrifying.
So chat shows have to fall back on gossip: tell us about the anorexia, the affairs, your friendship with Diana. But Parky can't probe too much, not only because he's a gentleman, but because if he does, no PR firm will return Bea's calls. Their stars are on the show to plug the movie, or the book, or the record. If Parky's researchers give their clients too much grief, they will be calling the C-list for years to come.
The alternatives are either to camp it up with today's C-list and yesterday's stars à la Graham Norton, or to bring a new wit and energy to the format like Jonathan Ross. Parky, of course, is laughing. He's got a great contract for the next two years, at a time when the BBC must have been thinking about dropping his show anyway. It has signed up Norton, and Ross is winning plaudits all over town. Parky was on a one-way ticket back to daytime when along came ITV, fresh from its last disaster with Des Lynam.
Ironically, Parkinson's only chance comes from the fact that it will be running against another 1970s dinosaur, Match of the Day. The over-40s can all remember Match of the Day in the 1970s: giant-killers Hereford against Newcastle, Revie's Leeds passing the ball five times consecutively against Southampton, the mud, the sideburns, Willie Carr's donkey-kicks. We remember it because before live football, that was all there was. Back then, the only live soccer was the FA Cup final and the World Cup. Now there's Sky, the Champions' League and Euro 2004, so who wants to watch edited highlights? And now that Sky has bought up the big matches - meaning the three or four Premiership teams which can really play - who wants to watch edited highlights of Crystal Palace against Blackburn?
And that's only part of the problem. There's the format, too. Most sports on television have been revolutionised in the past five years not by ITV or the BBC, but by Channel 4 and Sky. Football is the one exception. Compare Match of the Day or The Premiership with cricket on Channel 4 or rugby on Sky. Match of the Day belongs to a museum: the predictable managers' soundbites, the blokeish badinage between Gary, Hansen and Mark Lawrenson, the squeaky clean reluctance to give offence.
There is an alternative - to re-invent the talk show and the football clip show. But what are the chances of that this autumn?
