The South Bank Show, popular music and the reframing of arts television

Abstract

This article focuses on the framing of popular music on The South Bank Show (SBS) (1978–2010, 2012–present). Popular culture was central to SBS’s agenda from its very conception, framed by the title sequence by Pat Gavin and the choice of subject matter – the first ever episode was on Paul McCartney, signalling a mainstream cultural appeal and a cultural conservativism given the wider contemporary context of punk sensibility. Therefore, to understand SBS’s approach to popular music, we need to understand the context from which it emerges: the British broadcasting political economy of the late 1970s centred around the pre-choice duopoly and intense rivalry between the BBC and ITV, as well as a production environment centred around Melvyn Bragg. Yet, SBS was not a radical programme, and its focus on popular music over the years has largely been focused on mainstream artists and tastes – speaking to a mainstream audience rather than to avant-garde tastes. In assessing this history, this article considers two programmes from the SBS archive in some detail, as well as reflecting on how production cultures impact cultural outputs.