Newsnight’s ‘youth appeal’ stunts are stupid and patronising, says Paxman
IT IS “very patronising” to think young people need comedy skits to liven up their news programmes, Jeremy Paxman has said, as he lamented some “pretty stupid” Newsnight topics.
Paxman, who was at the Newsnight helm for 25 years, condemned a phase on the BBC programme in which Emily Maitlis was “forced” to interview the Cookie Monster and Kirsty Wark had to dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
“They did do some pretty stupid things,” Paxman told the Sunday Times. “I think it’s very patronising to think this is the sort of thing that appeals to the young.”
Both sketches were aired in 2013, with the Thriller dance created for Hallowe’en night playout, and the Cookie Monster interview purporting to be about The Furchester Hotel, a new children’s show. The broadcaster left the show in 2014 and has denied he had friction with Ian Katz, the editor, amid apparent plans to lighten the tone of the show by asking him to interview Russell Brand. Paxman now works for Channel 4 and recently worked on Channel 4’s Alternative Election Night.
“The great thing about Channel 4 is the clarity,” he said “The editorial structure is perfectly clear. The BBC has a weakness for endless meetings with executives you’ve never heard of and don’t know what they do.”
He said he did not want to see the demise of the BBC, but added: “Of course, there is political correctness at the BBC. I would have to say that the BBC is a parastatal organisation. They believe in the State. And not to recognise that there are those issues there is just silly.” On the existence of the licence fee, he continued: “I think it’s completely antediluvian, a tax on one piece of electronic equipment. There’s no tax on that camera over there, or on that computer! It’s antediluvian. So some other mechanism has to be found and it seems to me that if Amazon and Netflix have the ability to do that, it’s not beyond the BBC to do the same thing.”
A BBC source said: “Paxman left Newsnight a long time ago and it seems his views on the BBC are somewhat outdated and antediluvian.”