Arts label is a turn-off, says BBC chief on quest for younger viewers
BRANDING BBC shows as “arts” can be off-putting for audiences, the broadcaster’s head of arts has said.
Suzy Klein said the corporation must find ways to reach a new and younger audience who might associate the term with stuffy programming.
“I’ve hardly ever met a person who doesn’t love music or have a favourite band or enjoy gaming,” Klein said.
“Everybody has their thing, and I think once you call it ‘arts’, it can be problematic.”
The BBC retained a loyal audience who did respond to arts programmes, Klein said. “We fly the flag for the really gold-plated, reputational, public service bit of what the BBC does best, where we can tell stories with context and with nuance and richness,” she said.
“And we know we have an audience for that, and we really treasure and value that audience. What we’re also ambitious to do, though, is to take the fight out to everybody else.”
This will involve making shows for BBC Three that take a more youthfocused approach and encompass a broader idea of the arts.
The first example is a documentary about Virgil Abloh, the first black artistic director of the fashion house Louis Vuitton. Abloh, who died of cancer last year at the age of 41, was also a DJ, and designed trainers for Nike, furniture for Ikea and cars for Mercedes-benz in addition to his fashion career.
Klein said the term “arts” imposed “quite narrow parameters on people’s expectations”, adding: “They expect it to mean visual arts or literature, and not books in general but a very particular kind of literary fiction. There is a hierarchy in the arts.
“It can feel off-putting to certain kinds of people, and can make them think, ‘This isn’t for me.’ My teenage kids and their friends, for example, wouldn’t watch something if it was called ‘arts’.”
The term can also put off people who live outside major cities, Klein added, noting the BBC’S work with arts institutions has been “very London-centric”.
The BBC will continue to make more traditional arts programmes for BBC Two including a profile of Frida Kahlo, a Lucy Worsley series about Agatha Christie, and a series in which Simon Schama charts post-war history through artists, writers and musicians who fought for democracy and equality.
Another documentary will tell the story of Una Marson, a poet, playwright and campaigner who became the first black producer and broadcaster at the BBC during the Second World War.
“People in this country had not heard voices like Una Marson’s and the ones she brought to us, and we take that for granted now. She was an amazing force of nature and she has been quite forgotten. That is part of our job, to resurface those stories,” Klein said.
Klein was speaking as the BBC announced a tranche of new factual programmes. Clare Mottershead, the BBC’S lead commissioner for factual entertainment, said they needed to make “big television” to hook young viewers. “I can’t get my child off Tiktok. We’ve got to do something to bring eyeballs back to our screens,” she said. BBC shows for this demographic include Go Hard Or Go Home, a reality show in which eight young people who feel “stuck in a rut” or are coping with mental health issues compete in a series of challenges on a tropical island.
Celebrity shows include Alan and Amanda’s Italian Job, in which Alan Carr and Amanda Holden renovate a €1 property; Planet Sex, in which Cara Delevingne explores gender and sexuality; and Trailblazers, which sends Ruby Wax, Mel B and Emily Atack in the footsteps of Isabella Bird, a 19th-century explorer who trekked 800 miles across the mountains of Colorado.