The Stage

Three more years for South Bank Show

Published Monday 15 January 2007 at 15:45 by Liz Thomas

ITV1 arts strand The South Bank Show will broadcast, with Melvyn Bragg at the helm until the end of 2009, in a new deal announced today by the network.

The show, which is now moving into its 30th series, is popular with the ABC1 viewers that ITV is keen to bring back to the channel and still pulls in solid audience figures for a late night Sunday evening programme.

Bragg, who over the years has tackled everyone from Paul McCartney to Jackson Pollock to Lenny Henry and William Golding in the show, said that he was pleased that the series would continue for three more years.

He said: “In a recent survey The South Bank Show proved to be ITV1’s most successful programme, in percentage terms, with the ABC1 audience. Looking back at the last year, [it] is one of the very few programmes to hold its slot and not lost its audience share. The team is young and in cracking form and I look forward to taking them round the next lap.”

While he admitted that it did frustrate him to have the show around 11pm on Sunday nights and added that he felt an ideal slot for the series would be on Wednesday nights at 10.35pm, Bragg did say that he felt that ITV1 was the right place for the show and would not want it on any other channel.

Director of television Simon Shaps said: “The South Bank Show is on terrific form and I am very pleased to extend ITV’s commitment until 2009. Thirty years on, this landmark arts show is still as fresh and authoritative as it always has been.”

Michael Grade, who recently sparked controversy by defecting from his post as chairman of the BBC to take the helm at the network, first signed Bragg for the first show in the summer of 1977 when he began to create the format for the series. The first programme was broadcast on ITV in January 1978 and profiled McCartney and Gerald Scarfe.

Grade said today: “Little did I know in 1977 that a risky new arts strand would still be flourishing 30 years later. This is due in no small part to ITV’s great arts impresario, Melvyn Bragg.”