BBC ‘should axe lifestyle shows for prime-time art’

The corporation’s arts and music chief wants fewer cooking and home shows and more culture

THE BBC should put arts back into prime-time television, cutting programmes about baking and home renovation to put classical music centre stage, the corporation’s first head of music and arts has said.

Humphrey Burton, the Bafta-winning producer who founded BBC Young

Musician, said the broadcaster should reinstate the arts into mainstream programming rather than “tucking it away” on BBC Four.

Speaking at Hay Festival, sponsored by The Telegraph, he said he fully supported the BBC in the face of recent criticism over its scheduling decisions, but said he wished it would commission a regular prime-time arts pro- gramme, as there once was. Burton, who helped launch BBC Two and introduced programmes including Arena, was speaking about his latest biography of the violinist Yehudi Menuhin.

Asked after the speech about the BBC and its supposed lack of distinctiveness, he said he believed the corporation was right to aim for large audiences, but said he wished it would reverse a “change of heart” over the value of arts.

“I’m a good old Reithian,” he said. “I believe you should maximise audiences some of the time but you should also back what you really believe in. Every now and again you get a good arts programme on BBC One. There’s Imagine, but it’s [shown] a bit late.

“I’d like to have a better mix: fewer programmes about doing up houses, fewer programmes about recipes, fewer programmes about knitting because there’s so many of them and there’s no need to have that many.

“There should be a regular arts programme as there used to be.”

He added he believed programmes such as BBC Young Musician could still get high ratings if they were put back on BBC prime time instead of BBC Four.

When asked about the White Paper containing the Government’s proposals for how the BBC should operate and obtain funding, and calls from the corporation’s commercial rivals to compel it to stop scheduling its highest-rated programmes against them, Burton said: “In my opinion it’s senseless to try to separate distinction from competition.

“I want it to be both distinctive and get a big audience.” A spokesman for the BBC said yesterday: “The arts are at the heart of the BBC, giving our audiences a front row seat at some of the most exciting cultural events and access to the greatest writers, performers and thinkers in a way that no one else can.”

The spokesman pointed out arts programmes including the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, coverage of Hay Festival, BBC

Proms, Imagine, Arena and Artsnight. There is also a regular arts slot on

The One Show, the spokesman said.