Media

South Bank Show goes to Sky

By | Published on Tuesday 20 July 2010

Sky has bought ‘The South Bank Show’, the iconic arts programme that aired for 33 years on ITV until it was cancelled by their Director Of Television Peter Fincham last year on the basis the programme’s makers had made absolutely no effort to incorporate a viewer phone vote into the format, or at the very least to add a weekly slot presented by a former Spice Girl.

The Melvyn Bragg fronted show will now air of Sky Arts, the one entertainment outpost on the satellite telly firm’s network that doesn’t operate to the “best TV from America meets the very shittest from the UK” formula. The new deal will also see the South Bank Show Awards resurrected, and given a prime time TV airing.

Bragg, who only relatively recently acquired the rights to the ‘South Bank Show’ name as part of a deal with former ITV chief Michael Grade, apparently told Fincham of his decision to take the programme to Sky yesterday, before announcing to the world: “The South Bank Show lives again”.

He later told reporters: “I hope to get the old team together. I just think it’s terrific, and that we can continue to have the awards, which is the only one that looks across all the arts, pop music, classical music, comedy, TV drama, ballet, basically what the ‘South Bank Show’ has been doing. We show what all these people are doing, and put them on screen. Sky Arts are really starting to punch above their weight, increasing their involvement all the time, in live operas, plays, ‘The Book Show’. They have a growing footprint”.



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