The current affairs conundrum

If you had your fill of shiny floor shows and sensationalist soaps over Christmas, you might just be in the mood to settle down to some serious current affairs (humour me, I realise I am in a minority).  Yet as you scan the TV listings for the well-known strands the genre has to offer, you may discover that they are a little more difficult to find than they once were.

Fortunately, these big beasts are all still roaming the television jungle.   However, schedulers no longer rely on the heft of the brand to pull in viewers to their current affairs output - rather, they let the subject matter do the talking.   To that end, established names like Dispatches, Panorama and Tonight are relegated to sub-titles and are usually absent altogether from on-screen guides - whilst what once would have been an episode title instead takes the lead in the listings.   Only relative newcomer Exposure now dares to maintain its own moniker upfront.

The rationale for this development is obvious.   At a stroke, it eliminates the 'turn-off' factor amongst those who would automatically bypass anything with the whiff of a genre which they assume is not for them.   It is a clever bit of positioning which seemingly works.   A boxset-addicted friend recently revealed, to my surprise, that she had watched an episode of Dispatches.   Of course, she failed to identify it as Dispatches and simply asked if I had seen "that programme about Aldi last night?"   Does she know anything about the series or its heritage?   No.   Would she have watched had the programme simply been billed as Dispatches, even with an accompanying blurb about the content?   Almost certainly not.

My own anecdotal evidence was borne out across the country on that particular occasion, as Aldi's Supermarket Secrets became the highest-rated edition of Dispatches in six years, drawing in more than three million viewers, compared to a series average of 1.3 million.   However, eschewing the strand only gets the programme-makers so far - the substituted title must still captivate in an instant if it is to generate a healthy audience.   

There is no doubt that this device has quickly developed some notable traits.   As in the Aldi edition of Dispatches, there seems to be a preponderance of programmes whose title claims the revelation of "secrets" - something which the best current affairs does by definition, but has never trumpeted so loudly before.   Then there is the (very) direct question - "Are You Addicted to Sugar?" (Dispatches), "How Safe is Meat?" (Tonight) and the forthcoming Panorama, "Can You Cure My Multiple Sclerosis?" - designed to pique our natural self-interest and leave the potential viewer almost obliged to watch.   Finally, if all else fails, throw in the word "Britain" - the subliminal message being:  this issue concerns the whole country, so it must concern me.

So what does this trend tell us about the current state of current affairs?   The template for titles risks setting a tabloid tone, but, mercifully, the journalism remains largely as rigorous as ever.   The topics under discussion can be populist, but there is no shame in being rooted in relevance.   World in Action, the ITV stalwart which should be the inspiration for any current affairs programme, produced groundbreaking investigations about extremism and righted miscarriages of justice - but wasn't afraid to consider more mundane matters like the potential for manipulating the top 40.      

The danger is that the pursuit of ratings and relevance becomes a pre-requisite in a genre which is not always guaranteed to deliver either.   In that scenario, the potential for squeezing out the exceptional public interest journalism which has always punctuated current affairs strands is obvious.   For the most part, such pressure is being resisted - precisely because, for those involved in producing the programmes, it is usually a force exerted from above and not a temptation in itself.

Documentary producer Roger Graef makes the point that he and his counterparts across the industry want their efforts to be seen by as wide an audience as possible.   However, he rightly cautions against an obsessive focus on potential ratings at the commissioning stage, for fear that this creates a stultifying atmosphere which works against generating the kind of popular success that both broadcasters and producers are seeking.

Current affairs, in particular, walks a tightrope between mass-appeal and meaningful journalism.   In the analogue world of the 1980s, ITV licencees were often as interested in the prestige of a programme as its popularity.   Back then, they could afford to be.   London Weekend Television tacitly acknowledged an inversely proportional relationship between the two measures (1).   Today, even the BBC is not immune from considerations of cost and audience share.   It is heartening, therefore, that in multi-platform 2016, 'brave' commissioning decisions are still being taken.

Dispatches editor Daniel Pearl draws a distinction between "programmes where you want a lot of people to watch and programmes where it's not about audience."   It is a mark of the strength of the TV current affairs ethos that such a line has survived the twin pressures of dwindling budgets and a rush for ratings - and remains intact across all outlets.   Accordingly, Dispatches still manages to produce exemplary foreign affairs pieces from warzones, Panorama affords a chunk of primetime to consider the routinely neglected Northern Ireland and Tonight tackles the little-known subject of contaminated cabin air.   Perhaps most extraordinarily of all, Exposure crafts a commercial hour for ITV on the British firms who offer bribes for business abroad - direct relevance to the average viewer may have been close to zero, but it matters that programmes like this are made.

Not everything about television current affairs is perfect - since this blog last assessed the genre in 2012, Panorama has had its investigative wings clipped, almost all the strands have a markedly smaller annual slate and not every edition of every series always hits the mark.   Its stoicism and its scope, however, are worth celebrating and promoting.

Ultimately, chasing ratings in current affairs may be as futile as it is frustrating. The sector's share of viewing has remained static at around 4% for the past decade.   And while there are individual ratings hits, these rarely come from the tougher end of the spectrum - and, in truth, never did. Yet even in the digital age, that fact has not precluded any of our terrestrial broadcasters from exploring challenging and unexpected topics - a victory in itself.   Because if the message ever goes out that certain subjects are off limits to the journalistic force that is current affairs television, then, as citizens, we are all the poorer for it - whether, as viewers, we notice or not.

(1) "LWT in the 1980s," Rod Allen, in ITV Cultures, Catherine Johnson & Rob Turnock (eds), Open University Press, 2005.