Why isn't Question Time as entertaining as it used to be & what should be done about it

Watching the recent Question Time reminded me, as a former addict of the programme, that it's been many years since I've watched it more than very occasionally.

There are two reasons why it lost its grip on me, and I'm curious to know whether I'm alone in my disaffection for the show

1. Unpredictable eccentric or straight man?
For me, the first step downhill came when the BBC selected Peter Sissons to replace the late Sir Robin Day in the chair, and the second when they appointed David Dimbleby to take over from Sissons.

I've nothing against Sissons or Dimbleby, other than that they are too straight and predictable to make the programme anything like as entertaining as it was when Day was in charge.

Apart from his quick wit, Day's assets included impatience, irritability and an adversarial willingness to put people in their places, regardless of whether they were on the panel or in the audience - all of which you can see being displayed in a short video of the virtuoso in action on the BBC website a few months ago HERE.

For what it's worth, my candidate for the job after Day retired would have been Peter Snow, after whom I'd have gone for Jeremy Paxman. Different from Day, yes, but both with a degree of eccentricity and unpredictability of the kind that used to make Question Time so very entertaining.

2. Five guests on the panel is one guest too many
The programme was originally conceived as a television version of Radio 4's long running Any Questions, which had and still has four guests on the panel. But some time back, Question Time added a fifth member to the panel.

This has not only reduced the amount of time available for each speaker, but has also made it easier for some guests to hog the conversation to the exclusion of others (e.g Jack Straw in the most recent show).

There are also, as readers of Lend Me Your Ears will know, some good technical reasons why the smooth operation of turn-taking tends to degenerate as the numbers involved increases - and becomes especially tricky once you have six people sitting around a table, as on Question Time in its current form.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT IT?
1. Replace David Dimbleby with Jeremy Paxman of Newsnight or recruit Jon Snow from Channel 4 News (and/or perhaps rotate the chair in the way that's worked pretty well on Have I got News for You).

2. Go back to having four guests on the panel instead of five.

(See also the Not the Nine O'clock News version of QT).

P.S.
Mark Pack has added a good point to this on his blog via BloggersCircle:

'.. for me at least there is a different key factor:with the huge increase in the number of media outlets over the last 20 years, it's just simply no longer as interesting to see politicians being questioned - because you see, hear and read them answering questions all over the place nearly all the time.'

I agree that the increase in media outlets and the fact that we now see more of them being questioned are things I hadn't taken into account.

However, I don't think we see or hear them actually answering questions - with one exception HERE - and their routine evasiveness has been a regular theme on this blog since it started just over a year ago to which a selection of links can be found at the bottom of this post on a duel between Andrew Neil and Yvette Cooper).

You can also link to some more amusing links to classic interviews below:


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Claptrap 9: Broadcasters' bile and SDP sulks


This is the ninth in a series of posts marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of Our Masters' Voicesand the televising of Claptrap by Granada Television.


An earlier posting of an excerpt from Ann Brennan’s speech (HERE) prompted the following comment from Chris Rodgers, a former member of the SDP:

‘I was a member of the audience that day in the autumn of 1984, in Buxton's Pavilion Gardens, as the SDP debated a typically learned (but dry) paper on equality.

‘Then Ann Brennan rose to speak. I can confirm that her well crafted and superbly delivered speech was a breath of fresh air. It was accompanied throughout by applause, cheering and the stamping of feet. When Shirley Williams tried to 'call time', at the end of the allotted four minutes, she was shouted down by party members. Ann Brennan left to a deserved standing ovation.’

BBC approves and disapproves
As the standing ovation got under way, Sir Robin Day, the commentator on BBC Television’s live coverage of the conference, described it as ‘the most refreshing speech we’ve heard all week and the audience would have liked her to go on ...’

Meanwhile, his colleague Peter Snow, who had wanted me to appear on Newsnight after the Chesterfield by-election a few months earlier (see Claptrap 6), had seen us being filmed by the Granada crew as we left the hall - and lost no time in telling Robin Day what was going on.

A few minutes later, Day was almost spluttering with rage as he interrupted a later speech to tell viewers:

"An extraordinary story is beginning to emerge.. it seems that Ann Brennan who's just got a standing ovation was coached by a Dr Max Atkinson, an Oxford don who's an expert in - er - an expert - er -in how people wave their hands about when making speeches - for a television programme being made by Granada Television - and there'll be a tremendous row between the SDP and Granada for interfering with the proceedings of their conference.."

Meanwhile, Peter Snow was hot on the trail outside the hall and had rounded up three delegates to interview live on air.

When he tried to get them to denounce us for what we'd done, the first two seemed quite relaxed about it, saying that they were applauding the sentiment of what Ann Brennan had been saying.

The third interviewee, to Snow's obvious disappointment, rounded off his comment by saying: "In any case, if you can be coached to get a standing ovation, I'd like to have a course of their coaching."

(I hope to post clips of these gems - if and when I ever discover how to transfer video from an ancient Betamax machine to a computer).

Broadcasters' bile
Until then, it had never really occurred to me just how fierce the competition between the BBC and commercial broadcasters was - a fact that was amplified further by an invitation to Ann Brennan and me to appear on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour - that was withdrawn as soon as they realised that Granada would be broadcasting a documentary on it about ten days later.

SDP sulks
After posting Claptrap 1, an exchange between David Cox and me discussed the way the SDP had reacted at the time:

Cox: I think the SDP used the speech on their party political broadcast. I think I'm right in saying more people joined the SDP after her speech as well.

Atkinson: As far as I remember, the SDP never used anything from Ann's speech for a PPB. They did however use Rosie Barnes (in one of the worst PPB's I've ever seen) and a lot of people used to confuse the two of them.

It wouldn't surprise me if new members came in after the speech. What did surprise me was that the SDP leadership, Owen included, were fuming about it. They thought it a disgraceful 'stunt', and I remember trying to convince them that it was excellent PR for them that they should make the most of. If nothing else, it meant that the 1984 conference got far more media coverage than it otherwise would have done.

Cox: ‘Disgraceful stunt' ! What is false or distasteful about giving somebody the skills to communicate and articulate their ideas; after all, Ann was given the training, but the message was Ann’s, and it was Ann who delivered it.
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Question Time wooden spoon: Jack Straw

Until watching the latest Question Time, I'd always thought of Gordon Brown as the current champion among British politicians when it came to being long-winded and packing far too much into speeches and interview responses (e.g. HERE).

But I'm now beginning to think that Jack Straw may have overtaken his boss.

How someone who, as he reminded us, has been an MP for 30 years can be so verbose and undisciplined in his answers on a 60 minute show - in which there are 4 other guests on the panel and a large audience trying to get a word in - is quite beyond me.

Having been invited to speak first in response to the very first question, Straw droned on (aided in various places by notes) for two and a half minutes! So, by the time anyone else got a chance to say anything, he'd already managed to gobble up 4% of the scheduled time available for lesser mortals to say anything.

And that was only the first of quite a few more of his answers that were needlessly long-winded and garbled - but even I am not enough of an anorak to be able to bear the tedium of going through the whole thing in order to work out exactly how much time he managed to bag from everyone else.
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