Why isn’t BBC’s Question Time what it used to be?
Max Atkinson has an interesting blog post on the possible reasons why he doesn’t find BBC1’s Question Time as interesting as it used to be. Even bearing in mind the risk of rose-tinted nostalgia, I think he has a point.
His two explanations – one guest too many and a chair who is too bland – have some weight.
But for me at least there is a different key factor. With the huge increase in the number of media outlets over the last twenty years, it is just simply no longer as interesting to see politicians being questioned. You see, hear and read them answering questions all over the place nearly all the time.
Question Time no longer provides something special that would otherwise be missing.
Thanks for this – and I admit that I hadn’t taken into account the huge increase in media outlets and the fact that we see more of politicians being questioned than in the past.
However, we hardly ever see them actually answering questions, and this has been a recurring theme on my blog since it started just over a year ago. So I’ve added a more detailed comment to yours as a P.S. on the post discussed here, which includes links to further discussions of the issue PLUS some hilarious videos of politicians not answering questions and one exception where Charles Clarke gives the straightest answer I’ve ever heard from a political interviewee.
I share this view, Dimbleby is not the right person for this programme, Paxman would be far more forceful in the Chair. Personally when the programme is renamed ‘Answer Time’ we might actually make some progress.
Fun clips Max!