ARTS

Television has always tried to live with the arts. On the one hand the high brow traditions of British broadcasting have kept a toe-hold in the schedules for opera, ballet, concerts or galleries. On the other there is the continuing enthusiasm to `cover' the arts in magazine or documen- tary formats. This takes in successes like the old Monitor programme, the South Bank Show, Arena, Omnibus as well as a dozen or more forgotten shows that have perished in the forlorn attempt to make the arts 'lively'.

But there is an uneasiness arising from the conflict between satisfying the elite that is high art's basic constituency and meeting the demands of a mass medium. No televi- sion audience is ever 'small' when com- pared to that for an unbroadcast concert and every arts producer, however up-mar- ket, is obliged to heed the call of the crowd.

Yet it can be done with a reasonably high success rate — look at Monitor or the South Bank Show. And, of course, it should be done; a commitment to the arts, however liberally conceived, is one of the few remaining qualitative demands still holding British television back from the cable-satellite, internationalised broadcast - ing swamp.

This means that the current failure of the BBC in this area is serious. It is failing for one simple reason: the increasingly incom- prehensible survival of its expensive and indulged arts magazine, The Late Show.

The Late Show was launched in January 1989 as a nightly arts and media pro- gramme to go out after Newsnight. Alan Yentob had just become the controller of BBC2 and this was his big gesture, a huge financial and scheduling commitment to an arts flagship. Its first editor was Michael Jackson, now controller of BBC2.

BBC

The not Late enough Show

Bryan Appleyard dismantles the Jennifer's Diary of arts journalism The show has failed on two levels. First it has failed to attract significant audiences, its usual score is in the 200,000-300,000 range. This means that BBC2 has two late night, low-ratings shows glued back to back in its schedules. As a result, the opposition is doing well. At scheduling meetings, Michael Grade, head of Channel 4 and now obviously the brightest and best t elevi- sion manager around, routinely offers up thanks for The Late Show Newsnight combination.

This ratings failure also draws embar- rassing attention to the cost of the show. BBC budgets and overhead allocations are mysterious and any figure is likely to be misleading — estimates range from £11 million to £27 million for the annual bud- get. These may be wrong, but The Late Show is expensive, consuming a damagingly large proportion of the BBC arts' budget.

Complaints about ratings or costs, how- ever, could be brushed aside if the show was good. Unfortunately the show's second failure is that it is not. The Late Show has made little impact. In my personal experi- ence items are seldom discussed the next day and the rather bland, characterless choice of presenters lends the show no authority. The Late Show broadcast on Wednesday 4 May was typical. There was a French theme because of the opening of the Channel Tunnel. The first item was about 'French Culture in Retreat.' This was a complex production involving, among many other things, some moody-arty black and white shots in a graveyard, some naive political analysis, a pointless interview with a disc jockey and another with a dull young novelist. The second item was about the publication of Albert Camus' Le Premier Homme. This was solid news feature mate- rial which was ruined by more moody-arty black and white shots in another graveyard and by a series of bizarrely-posed inter- views and reconstructions, also in black and white. Finally, there was a snide, drawling, fatigued, dismissive and pointless piece by David Stafford about crossing the channel, The whole was 'anchored' by Tracey McLeod, whose script was written in a form of bad journalese that has been the signature of The Late Show from the begin- ning. For example, McLeod described Camus as 'a kind of literary James Dean' and said his book 'instantly became a pub- lishing sensation'. This will irritate the informed, sedate the uninformed and satisfy nobody.

The problems of intellectual level, tone and script all point to The Late Show's most intractable weakness: a lack of focus. There is no sign of a clear brief. Items like `French Culture in Retreat' suck in any old passing material and tie it together with a thesis so vague and so generalised that it must be wrong. And, when studio discus- sions are involved, they seem compulsively to miss points and they take place in a gloomy, alienating, pool-of-light set.

This lack of focus is not an accident, it is ideological. The show was launched with a set of post-modernist cultural attitudes about high and low culture and the intrigu- ing connectedness of things. Some of this occasionally interesting posturing has been abandoned, but an unfortunate legacy of confusion remains. Clearly the programme is going out of its way to avoid the High Art pigeon hole, yet it does not quite seem to want to plunge into the pop culture pool with the likes of The Modern Review. In the resulting confusion it tries to do everything and achieves nothing. It has become a backwater. The biggest arts story of recent months, maybe years, for example, was Melvyn Bragg's brilliant and moving inter- view with Dennis Potter. But it did not go to The Late Show, it went to Channel 4. The Late Show could have had this — Pot- ter is a friend of Yentob as well as of

Michael Grade — but it failed.

None of this will surprise BBC execu- tives. Internally it has been well known for some time that The Late Show is a mess and an increasingly futile burden. Why has nothing been done? One reason must be the entirely justified esteem in which Alan Yentob is held. He is now controller of BBC1, but he is influential throughout the corporation. The man's one weakness appears to be a continuing affection for this programme.

Yet is has to be admitted that The Late Show does exert a peculiar power. It main- tains a narrowly-based constituency of metropolitan arts and media types. And it does benefit from what might be called the `Jennifer's Diary' effect — people like it, or at least suppress their dislike, because they have either appeared on it or might do so in the future. Arts and books publicists in particular love it because it is one of the very few television outlets available to them.

This specialised audience is not enough to justify the show. The BBC now has two options: drop it or change it. Dropping it may be best so that BBC arts coverage as a whole can be reconsidered. But, if they decide to change it, the only option worth considering is to go heavier in pursuit of its own finest traditions rather than hipper in pursuit of Channel 4. The show should be dominated by one or more cantankerous heavyweight pundits to provide some pun- gent flavouring. It should be studio-based and, therefore, cheaper and it should rely on authority and seriousness rather than gimmickry. The 'Jennifer's Diary' audience may be angered, but at least they will feel something. As it now is The Late Show's only message is that nothing much matters and nobody cares as long as the vapid chat- tering can continue to satisfy its sparse band of ludicrously undemanding fans.