Call of the wild

One intriguing statistic from last year’s television went almost unnoticed.

One intriguing statistic from last year’s television went almost unnoticed. In October, an edition of Jonathan Ross’s 9 p.m. chat show on BBC1 had fewer viewers than Autumnwatch. Even though Barbra Streisand was his main guest, the six-million-pound man was defeated by barnacle geese and rutting stags on the Isle of Rum. Autumnwatch took 2.9 million viewers, which is pretty good for a wildlife programme on BBC2, whereas Ross got 2.8, which is pitiful for prime time on BBC1. These days everything that can go wrong seems to go wrong for the poor old Beeb. They have hanging over them Ben Bradshaw, the — in my view — creepy culture secretary, who seems to believe that the corporation has an inbuilt bias towards the Tories and a Cameron government, which yearns to chop the BBC into tiny, harmless pieces — something even Margaret Thatcher didn’t try.

But, then, why on earth did the Beeb decide to put Strictly Come Dancing head to head with The X Factor on ITV this September? While Strictly was stuck in tedious controversy — was Arlene Phillips sacked because she was too old? Is Anton du Beke a racist? (No, just stupid) — Simon Cowell’s show licked them week after week by ever-increasing margins. For the BBC to think its tired, lacklustre show would defeat him was a hubris born of panic, and it’s hard to imagine a more lethal combination. (When the singer Lucie was fired in order to save ‘Jedward’, the Irish twins, and to protect The X Factor ratings, 3,000 people complained to ITV, which is ten times as many as protested about Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time.)