And so farewell, `Late Show'

Mark Lawson laments the BBC's decision to kill off the arts programme that comes after `Newsnight'

The two words that have probably been spoken more often in Late Show programmes than any others are "controversial" and "resonant" - the series was there in part to talk about what people were talking about, and to assess cultural impact - so it is appropriate that the Late Show itself should have been both resonant and controversial.

This cannot be an impartial obituary. Since 1993, I have been an occasional presenter and reporter for the Late Show and since January 1994, the regular writer and presenter of "Late Review", the show's Thursday night critics' forum, which the BBC announced yesterday will continue as a separate year- round series - along with Jeremy Isaacs' Face To Face and other spin offs - when the Late Show comes off air at the end of the year.

The "resonance" of the Late Show rests on its impact on television. Although many current affairs magazine series have run for longer than the Late Show's six years, no arts show has approached the nearly 1,000 individual editions which the show will have completed by the time it departs.

The central debate in arts television concerns attitudes towards the subject. In current affairs television, help up to and including legislation is given to producers on this matter: the approach must be "informative", "balanced". Arts television, in the absence of political directives, evolved into a broadly supportive form. BBC1's Omnibus and LWT's South Bank Show, for example, are serious but friendly in their attitude to artists.

The Late Show developed as a cross between the old Sixties BBC2 show Late Night Line-Up (live studio debates and interviews) and the existing documentary strand Arena, which was famous for a more general definition of culture (wide enough to include hotels and the Cortina) and which dealt with them in a way that was "ironic" or "post-modern", in the arts jargon of the Eighties - which was to say "jokily" and "knowingly".

The Late Show also introduced an element of vituperative criticism of the arts, which is standard in newspapers but of which television had been nervous. The bloody-minded tradition by which the entire Booker shortlist would be trashed by a panel of critics in the very middle of the Late Show's coverage of the presentation ceremony has been extended, in the past two years, by "Late Review".

The Late Show has clearly been influential. The head of music and arts who commissioned it and the editor who created it - Alan Yentob and Michael Jackson respectively - are now the controllers of BBC1 and BBC2. A former presenter, Kirsty Wark, now stars at Newsnight. Its former editors and producers are responsible for a range of BBC arts programmes from Bookmark to the Home Front, for the new archive unit, the history unit and a forthcoming series on British and American art. The show's visual awareness (and self- awareness) has spread beyond arts television into news and current affairs.

This "resonance" has been balanced by substantial "controversy". Some viewers and critics have regarded the Late Show as earnest and pretentious. A long-running debate initiated by the programme on whether Dylan's lyrics were better than Keats's poems was viewed by detractors as typical of its style (bearded men and pale-faced women talking arty rubbish) and its ethos: a wilful refusal to distinguish between high and low culture.

The Late Show has also been unpopular within the BBC. It was widely believed to be over-funded in comparison with other arts strands, although given that it produced more than 100 hours of annual programming in comparison to the 20-30 hours of Omnibus or Arena, the Late Show, was per hour, not astoundingly extravagant in television terms.

Another battle internal to the BBC was that the series faced a fight with its nightly predecessor, Newsnight, every time a cultural story went into the mainstream: Stephen Fry, Martin Amis, the affairs of Rupert Murdoch.

For this reason there may have been cheering yesterday among many of the BBC's journalists at the announcement of the Late Show's end. Their jubilation may however, be premature. Michael Jackson reportedly referred in a BBC meeting a few months ago to "the problem of the 10.30 block". This was a reference to his increasing frustration as BBC2 controller with the fact that 90 minutes of his schedule - from 10.30pm, when Newsnight starts, to the end of the Late Show at midnight - was locked up every night. Many believe that from next year Jackson will push Newsnight later.

The BBC's official upbeat line on the changes is that the break-up of the Late Show empire and budget will result in more arts programming at peak time: that a lot of the material was thrown away on a small audience at 11.15pm. From next year, the 40-minute documentaries which the Late Show has run on Monday nights - four of which are being repeated this week - will have a deserved mid-evening series of their own.

Even so a fixed nightly commitment to the arts will have disappeared and the new arrangements will undoubtedly be cheaper and lower staffed: a decision perhaps not unconnected with the BBC's current drive to reduce its bank borrowing, which has resulted in a freeze on commissioning of programmes in other BBC departments.

It is for other, less involved critics to offer their verdict on the Late Show's contribution. But few other programmes, I think, have had such influence on the style and staffing of other BBC programming. Few series at their death have been survived by so many offspring. In fact, the closest equivalent in television history is Man About The House, which spawned both George And Mildred and Robin's Nest. This is the kind of arcane detail and ironic pay-off which they - we - would have liked on the Late Show.