Value, Form and Viewing in Current Affairs Television: Tonight with Trevor McDonald

Abstract

‘Current Affairs’ has been an important category of work in British television for many years, drawing on the production values and skills both of news programming, with which it has often been institutionally paired, and a range of forms of documentary. As a generic designator, essentially indicating a category of long-form journalism, it has a certain relaxed vagueness which some have found amusing and distinctively British. In her fine exploration of changes in BBC structures and the culture of production, Georgina Born (2004) identifies the recent problems of identity that the area has had, particularly given the rise of popular forms of factual programming. She notes how ‘the very seriousness, the impartial, authoritative and analytical tone of current affairs were perceived as liabilities within and beyond the department’ (ibid.: 400). She is particularly revealing about the tensions with ‘documentary’, which was developing new populist energies from the mid 1990s and was increasingly confident about poaching into ‘current affairs’ territory by an imaginative treatment of political or social issues that were on its agenda too. At the same time, some news programmes were extending the range of feature items and items with a more attitudinal character. A sense of ‘failed genre’ was emerging in some quarters and it is interesting for our own analysis that Born sees the stronger application of narrative (‘the “story” became a mantra’ [ibid.: 400]) as a key part of revival attempts. With some qualification, ‘revival’ is widely thought not to have happened (see the Ofcom ‘Current Affairs’ review document [Ofcom 2004] for a recent survey, with statistics, of the state of area and Holland [2001] for a perceptive and cautiously positive account of generic dispersal and change). Our case study concerns Tonight With Trevor McDonald (henceforth TWTM) often identified, even before its actual launch in 1999, as a key