BBC looks beyond middle classes to broaden appeal

The BBC will on Wednesday publish the results of a comprehensive, £2m, two-year review of its programmes.

The review has found that while the BBC is respected, it is predominantly appreciated by the middle-aged and the middle classes, and it needs to strive to attract the young (children and teenagers), the less well-off, people in the north, Scotland and Wales, and ethnic minorities.

The key areas for change include its flagship news and current affairs output to make current affairs, in particular, more accessible to more people. There will also be a greater emphasis on science and technology. The area of children's programming, which has been extensively studied, is seen as needing action in order to attract children who are increasingly entertained by computer games.

However, the BBC's director of corporate affairs, Colin Browne, emphasised that chang-es to its programmes, whether in television or radio, would be "evolutionary rather than revolutionary". And they would be phased in carefully.

This is a signal that the BBC accepts that loyal audiences should not be alienated by abrupt changes, a lesson learnt from the five million audience collapse at Radio 1, and the intense suspicion with which traditional Radio 4 listeners view BBC efforts to tinker with its output. The inquiry, initiated by John Birt when he became director general in January 1993 in an attempt to justify the universal licence fee, was led by Liz Forgan, managing director of BBC Radio, and Alan Yentob, controller of BBC 1.

Because of the length of the review, which Mr Birt insisted should be rigorous, many of the key changes are already making themselves felt by arriving on the screen and on the airwaves.

For example, Here and Now, a 7.30pm current affairs programme dealing with perhaps four topics in half an hour, started last year; Radio 1's change fits in well with the strategy, while Radio 5 has been remodelled in part to attract working-class males who form a ready audience for the football commentaries. Last autumn's drama, Seaforth, was in part aimed at northern audiences, as was its North Sea oil-rig drama Roughnecks.

New-style infotainment programmes - aimed at family audiences, including children - range from How Do They Do That? to Animal Hospital. The report also highlights BBC 1's problematic drama output where it is desperate to match ITV's consistent run of hits.

This explains why programmes such as Common As Muck, about rubbish collection services being privatised, has been put in prime positions in the schedules.

But the key which the BBC has to find is a way of introducing changes while pacifying the articulate middle classes who have in the past two years successfully defended Radio 4 long wave, forced Gerry Anderson off Radio 4, and complained vociferously about the lack of children's programming on radio. These are the very people who lap up Middlemarch and Martin Chuzzlewit: these two programmes are praised by the review.

The review looked at everything from the policy of buying films to ways of attracting young people. Overall, it seems that the BBC is promising less of a nannying tone. But the message coming through is that it does not intend to do anything too radical all at once.

The timing of the review's publication has also been chosen with care: just six days after the House of Commons debated the BBC.