AXING CRIMEWATCH IS juST CRIMINAL!
After 33 years, appeals from every police force in the country and helping to solve hundreds of crimes including some of Britain’s most notorious cases...
THE police are always warning that the thin blue line is stretched to breaking point so why on earth has the BBC decided to axe Crimewatch? Over the past 33 years the programme has solved many murders, rapes and armed robberies – among them James Bulger’s murder, the killing of Sarah Payne and the M25 rapist’s reign of terror.
There could be no better example of the value of public service broadcasting and yet the BBC has scrapped the monthly show, which recently underwent a revamp with Jeremy Vine as host because its ratings have dropped from 15 million in the 1990s to under two million today. The broadcaster is believed to want to use Crimewatch’s prime-time slot to run more dramas.
The police are shocked by the decision because Crimewatch turned the nation into armchair detectives, with more than 1,000 calls each episode from viewers with vital information.
One in five of the 4,000-plus cases featured on the programme ended in convictions. It is credited with having helped solve 57 murders, many of which will always remain in the public’s memory.
In 1993 viewers helped identify Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, who murdered James Bulger, after the programme showed CCTV footage of them walking with him in a shopping centre. A Crimewatch appeal a year after Lin Russell and her daughter Megan had been murdered in 1996 led to 600 calls – and one of them proved to be the key to ultimately jailing Michael Stone.
NO ONE can forget the day Crimewatch presenter Jill Dando, at 37 one of the best-loved presenters on TV, was shot dead on her doorstep in a London suburb in 1999. Crimewatch reconstructed her murder but although a man was arrested he was found not guilty.
When eight-year-old Sarah Payne was killed while walking home from her grandparents’ home in 2000, Crimewatch carried two appeals and each time the same man was named as a suspect. Fibres from a curtain were found on Sarah’s shoe and a viewer recognised the fabric as she had left it in a van her boyfriend sold to the suspect Roy Whiting, who was jailed for life.
For two years a sex attacker terrorised women around the M25 in Kent, Surrey, London and the Thames Valley, carrying out horrific rapes that included a girl aged just 10. Crimewatch showed a photofit picture of the man and a viewer recognised him as Antoni Imiela. Estate agent Stephanie MURDER: James Bulger Slater suffered a horrific ordeal when showing a mysterious “Mr Kipper” around a house in 1992. She was blindfolded and hidden in a coffin for eight days until a ransom was paid for her release.
Crimewatch broadcast a recording of the kidnapper’s voice which was heard by his ex-wife, who came forward. Michael Sams was convicted of the kidnapping plus the murder of Julie Dart the year before.
Missing people cases have also featured extensively, including the disappearances of Madeleine McCann, Suzy Lamplugh and Claudia Lawrence. Sue Cook and Nick Ross launched the show, which was originally only commissioned for three episodes, in 1984.
Yesterday Ross, who was famous for his closing line in each show, “Don’t have nightmares, do sleep well”, said: “I’m amazed that it’s gone on for so long. They did pretty damn well to keep it going.
“When it started it was revolutionary. Up to that point TV and radio basically talked at the audience. There was no internet and very few phone-ins. This was a programme where the audience could talk back and could actually influence the end of the programme. This sort of revolutionary thing then had a huge impact on television generally and has kept going for 33 years despite all the changes in technology.”
Ross also said falling ratings had had an impact on crimesolving. “If you get 15million people watching a programme and you have an appeal the chance of finding somebody, that one witness who saw something they had no idea was connected with the crime, they can ring in.
“Once your audience starts plummeting and you go back to two million or one million your chances of finding that person are so remote.”
The Police Federation said it was a “shame” the programme was ending as it had shown “the complex side of policing and solving crime”. Simon Kempton, the federation’s head of operational policing, said: “For those wider appeals which needed national coverage it was great and there has been nothing else that has been able to give cases such a wide reach but if people aren’t watching it then you have to move with the times.”
The BBC said: “We are incredibly proud of Crimewatch and the great work it has done over the years. This move will also allow us to create room for new innovative programmes in peak time on BBC One.”