Pandemic does mean repeats and ‘mixed schedule’, say BBC bosses

The BBC will have to air repeats and the pandemic's effect on schedules will be starker next year, bosses at the broadcaster have said.

James Purnell, director of radio and education, said the corporation is working to get filming off the ground again.

"Yes, we are going to have to have some repeats. The main thing driving that is it's very hard to film right now," he told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

"On the television side, in children's, we have had to cancel quite a significant proportion of the dramas and comedy we were planning to film over the summer.

"We're working very hard with the industry and the DCMS (Department For Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) to get television production back up and running as soon as possible.

"With radio that's a bit easier", he added.

There had been speculation that the BBC might have to revert to a news-only service in lockdown "but the vast majority of the service was up and running", he said.

Of coverage to mark Glastonbury, which has been axed this summer, Purnell said: "It will be repeats, but it will be an incredible archive.

"The same with the Proms ... It may not be the Proms we have been used to but the Proms we need right now and the Proms we can do."

Asked if viewers would "see endless repeats", Clare Sumner, the BBC's director of policy, told MPs: "I really hope not but ... the schedule is going to be mixed."

She added: "I think, for us, it will particularly get thinner next year because of the way that production falls."

Earlier this year, BBC boss Lord Hall said the broadcaster's priority was to keep "our services going".

Dramas filmed amid the pandemic include a new version of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, and Michael Sheen and David Tennant in Staged, while EastEnders is preparing to resume filming.

Shows like Springwatch have adapted, with presenters filming from different locations.

Purnell also denied that Emily Maitlis's Newsnight monologue signalled a shift in the BBC's style of journalism after being asked by the committee if it was the "new norm".

"There has been a huge amount of information, news broadcasting in this period ... I wouldn't accept your premise that there has been a shift overall in our journalism," he said.

"In that particular example, we got the balance wrong and therefore corrected it very quickly."

But he said there are "thousands of hours" which "don't result in clarification of that kind".

He said that "to the best of my knowledge" nobody from the Government contacted the BBC about the monologue.

Purnell said it was right that restrictions on BBC broadcasters tweeting their views on politics should not apply to employees like Gary Lineker, outside the world of news and current affairs.

"It doesn't feel we could apply (those rules) to people who work outside our news and factual programmes," he said.

Sumner said that news jobs – put on pause in the pandemic – will still go at a later date.