There have been dramatic changes in British television during the Prospect years. Some are obvious, some misunderstood and some barely mentioned.
The most obvious change is the rise of non-terrestrial television. In 1995, satellite and cable accounted for less than 10 per cent of audience share. Now it is one third. Over 15m homes have satellite or cable. This has had a dramatic impact on the terrestrial networks. First, it has hit ratings. BBC1 has fallen from 32 per cent of audience share in 1995 to 22.7 per cent this July. ITV1 is down from 37 per cent to barely half that in ten years, registering its lowest ever share this summer. The people's channel is in free fall and it remains to be seen whether it will survive in any significant form ten years from now. BBC2 and Channel 4 have been hit less hard: the former down from 11 per cent to 9 per cent in ten years, the latter from 11 per cent to 9.7 per cent. However, they have only maintained their ratings at a price. Thinkers have disappeared from both channels; serious arts programmes likewise. Much of BBC2's most distinctive programming has been moved to the little-watched BBC4.
The most highbrow areas of British television have been devastated over the past ten years. While BBC4 celebrates the 30th anniversary of Arena, there is nothing like it on either BBC1 or 2—or on Channel 4. Foreign films have largely disappeared. Religious and current affairs programmes comparable to Credo, Everyman and Weekend World have vanished.
The dumbing-down, though, has been uneven. There is plenty of intelligent programming: political analysis by Andrew Marr and Andrew Neil during the election; US imports like The West Wing and Scrubs; cricket coverage on Channel 4; The South Bank Show and Melvyn Bragg's series on the history of Christianity; Dr Who and documentary series like Adam Curtis's Pandora's Box and, more recently, The Power of Nightmares; BBC4's output under Roly Keating and now Janice Hadlow. This is impressive—as good as anything put out ten years ago. It doesn't mean, however, that television has not dumbed down.
So far, so obvious. Other changes over the past ten years have been less widely discussed but are just as revealing. The increasing availability of videos and DVDs of old programmes has given greater power to viewers to build their own libraries and to opt out of watching programmes live. If you want to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, Monk or West Wing when it suits you, now you can. You may have to wait a few months or even a year but it's worth the wait.
I mention three American programmes for two reasons. British schedulers have had a problem with US imports ever since BBC2 massacred Seinfeld. The last decade has seen the much-debated rise of an American hegemony. Sitcoms, of course, but also science fiction (The X-Files), thrillers (24), cartoon comedy (The Simpsons, South Park), smart cop shows (Murder One, CSI, Monk) and historical drama-docs (Conspiracy, The Gathering Storm). Most interesting, though, has been the playing with genres, a smart mix of comedy and drama that has rejuvenated old genres and created new ones (Ally McBeal, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, Six Feet Under, House). For years we have said that British television is the best in the world. That is no longer true. Creative decline here and a golden age in America, led by HBO, has changed the landscape.
In many ways, the BBC has done well to survive the storm of multi-channel competition. The dark years of Hennessey, Root and Dyke have given way to Grade, Thompson, Keating and Hadlow. BBC4 has survived and no one else will show anything like retrospective seasons of Arena or all three series of Heimat. It has lost the crown jewels of live football and test cricket to Sky, but Wimbledon has never been better, Match of the Day is back and athletics coverage remains first-rate. It continues to discover extraordinary comic talent—from The League of Gentlemen and The Office to Little Britain and the underrated Double Take. No one in Britain makes better highbrow drama. Over the past decade, who else could have made Roger Michell's Persuasion, Our Friends in the North, or Stephen Poliakoff's trilogy, Shooting the Past, Perfect Strangers and The Lost Prince? However, the fragmentation of the television audience has dealt a blow to the BBC as a national institution. "Aunty" is dead. It no longer has the place in the heart of the nation that it once had. For too many viewers, especially younger and immigrant audiences, it is irrelevant.
The greatest achievement of the BBC and ITV, between the mid-1950s and mid-1990s, was to pull together very different audiences, attracted to a wide range of programming, from comedy and sport to drama and natural history. In the last decade that national audience has broken up. A new television apartheid is emerging. On the one hand, smart television—US imports, serious drama and history. On the other hand, celebrity trash, reality television, middlebrow drama. In the middle, not much. Few Prospect readers will have much use for BBC1 or ITV1. This is not just about television. It tells us something more urgent about the national culture.
The ten best television programmes of the past ten years
1. Roger Michell's Persuasion (BBC2, 1995)
2. Father Ted (Channel 4, 1995-98)
3. Peter Flannery's Our Friends in the North (BBC2, 1996)
4. Goodness Gracious Me (BBC2, 1998-)
5. The League of Gentlemen (BBC2, 1999-)
6. Stephen Poliakoff's Shooting the Past (BBC2, 1999)
7. Channel 4's cricket coverage (Channel 4, 1999-2005)
8. Conspiracy (BBC2, 2002)
9. Adam Curtis's The Power of Nightmares (BBC2, 2004)
10. Dr Who (BBC1, 2005-)
The ten best US television imports of the past ten years
1. Friends
2. Frasier
3. Episode One of Murder One
4. South Park
5. Ally McBeal
6. The Sopranos
7. The West Wing
8. Scrubs
9. Will and Grace
10. Conspiracy
The ten best television moments of the past ten years
1. Toby Ziegler's first speech in the first episode of The West Wing
2. The reappearance of the Daleks in Dr Who
3. The first meeting of Jack and Karen in Will and Grace
4. Richie Benaud's farewell to English test cricket
5. The Dreidl song on South Park
6. The English restaurant scene in Goodness Gracious Me ("Give me something really bland, right?"
7. Ben's farewell in Scrubs
8. Papa Lazarou in The League of Gentlemen
9. The one where the friends leave the apartment for the last time in Friends
10. Al Pacino as Roy Cohn in Angels of America
