FAITH programmes on the BBC won’t be moved from television and radio to solely digital platforms, the heads of faith and ethics have said, because the Corporation this yr marks 100 years of non secular broadcasting.
In a joint interview last Friday, the Head of Religion and Ethics for BBC Audio, Tim Pemberton, and his counterpart for television, Daisy Scalchi, addressed concerns that religious output was being marginalised.
Both emphasised that senior managers were enthusastic about religious programming; but ackknowledged that, because the Corporation faced budgetary demands, there was pressure to make sure that content “goes so far as it possibly can”, across traditional and digital platforms.
An online timeline compiled by BBC History selects significant moments of the past century of non secular broadcasting: from the primary broadcast service in 1924, led by the Revd Dick Sheppard in St Martin-in-the-Fields, in London, to the BBC2 series Pilgrimage, by which celebrities with different beliefs “embark on a spiritual journey to broaden minds”.
Other highlights include the published of a Jewish service from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945; a TV dramatisation of the lifetime of Christ in 1956; the primary broadcast of Songs of Praise in 1961 and of Thought for the Day in 1970; the six-part series Sea of Faith in 1984; and the launches of The Moral Maze on Radio 4 in 1990, and Beyond Belief in 2002.
Mr Pemberton believed that the Covid pandemic showed that religion was as relevant because it was 100 years ago. He is happy with the services that were broadcast into people’s homes when churches were closed, and of the “programmes that handled big ethical thought, and deeper themes about life that helped people navigate their way through”.
Neither Mr Pemberton nor Ms Scalchi was concerned by the decline in church attendance and the secularisation of British society. “Whereas formal religion, church attendance, all of those things, may decline over time — and we all know within the Census it dipped below 50 per cent for the primary time — that’s different to people’s interest in religion and other people’s engagement in spirituality,” Mr Pemberton said. “Our programmes are very buoyant: individuals are still engaging with them and still really like what we do.”
Ms Scalchi said: “When the Census got here out, there was loads of noise around more people ticking the ‘None’ box than ever before. But, actually, once you pull apart that group and what that 37 per cent actually consists of, it’s not a homogeneous group of people who find themselves irreligious or bored with religion. They’re actually a very complex group of people that often are quite warm towards religion, have an actual interest in faith and belief, but they simply aren’t classifying themselves as one thing above one other.
“We’re definitely seeing with our viewer figures that there is certainly no diminishing or reduction in interest in our programmes about faith and belief.”
Mr Pemberton also observed that, while participation in organised religion was declining within the UK, “in the worldwide South, that’s not the story. We must be conscious that there are parts of the world where religion is burgeoning and doing thoroughly.”
This made the necessity for religious literacy more necessary than ever, Ms Scalchi said. “Whether you have got a faith or not, it is important to good social cohesion that we understand different belief systems, different faiths, particularly on the worldwide stage, where the numbers and that overall picture is sort of distinct from what’s happening here within the UK.”
THE BBC doesn’t reveal budgets for specific genres, but Ms Scalchi acknowledged that inflationary pressures had had “a direct impact across all genres. But that just signifies that we’ve got to have a very laser-focus on ensuring our content goes so far as it possibly can.”
By way of examples, she gave the five-part box-set series Love, Faith and Me (TV, 28 April 2023), Being. . . , and A Believer’s Guide to. . . , all of which had “really strong digital support”: a number of the clips received multiple million views on Facebook.
Gareth Malone’s Easter Passion (TV, 5 April), broadcast over Easter, marked the three hundredth anniversary of the performance of Bach’s St John Passion in Germany. This was, she said, an example of “a very pan-BBC offering, the licence fee going so far as it could. We teamed up with BBC Wales, the BBC Singers, the National Orchestra of Wales, Radio 4, BBC One and BBC Two, and the programmes went out across all of those platforms.
“It brought the Passion story to a very broad audience, which I feel is so necessary that in our culture, [where] individuals are perhaps going to church less and will not actually hear a number of the basics equivalent to the Passion story at Easter, we’re ensuring that that stays front and centre of our offering at Easter.”
BBCThe Head of Religion and Ethics for BBC Television, Daisy Scalchi
Mr Pemberton considered digital output as a part of the “pioneering spirit” of the founders of BBC religious broadcasting. “The religion that you just’ll be consuming now, hopefully, you get all sourced on BBC Sounds, BBC iPlayer, and, within the palm of your hand together with your cell phone, you may get loads of non secular content.”
Concerns have been expressed that the Media Bill, which is passing through Parliament, will give broadcasters more freedom to maneuver programmes to digital formats, where the audiences might be smaller (Comment, 19 January). The absence of a reference to religion within the Bill has also provoked disquiet.
The Bill updates the public-service remit of broadcasters, including the BBC, but it surely doesn’t change the detailed requirements of the BBC, set out within the Charter, Framework Agreement, and Operating Licence. In the Operating Licence, Ofcom says that “the BBC should deliver a broad range of output covering different genres and content types, including genres which might be underprovided or in decline across public service broadcasting (including . . . religion).”
Ms Scalchi said that she understood why people could be nervous in regards to the implications for religious content; but “We’re still held to account by Ofcom, with measurable hours, that are still being stipulated there.”
Ofcom requires the BBC to broadcast about 200 hours a yr of non secular content on TV, and 500 hours on radio. Ofcom’s 2022 report said that the BBC accounted for 99 per cent of all religious programming on public-service broadcasters.
Ms Scalchi continued: “I do know that there’s been some concern around programmes moving online, and subsequently being less accessible. But that’s not the plan with religion content: it’s not going to be moved online at the fee of what’s on television; it’s in addition to; so we just must ensure that that what we’re doing is accessible across digital platforms as well. Because that’s where loads of audiences and listeners are finding the content, but it surely’s not at the fee of what’s on television.”
Mr Pemberton agreed: there can be “no trade-off” between digital and traditional formats.
Both executives said that commissioners on the BBC remained committed to non secular content. Mr Pemberton said that he was “all the time surprised the quantity of individuals [in the BBC] who’re interested by religion, and a few who’re signed as much as the several faiths”. Many of them, he said, would attend the Ascension Day service in St Martin-in-the-Fields, to be broadcast survive Radio 4.
“If anything, I might say the commissioners are likely to challenge us — because they’re very hungry for the ideas — to provide you with the ideas that allow them to showcase what we’re doing.”
Ms Scalchi believed that, inside the Corporation, understanding of faith as an important a part of the public-service remit had increased. “It’s definitely not pushing at a closed door; it seems like that door is admittedly open.”
In response to accusations that religious programmes had been pushed out of peak-time slots, she pointed to Pilgrimage (9 p.m., Fridays); Big Zuu Goes to Mecca (9 p.m., Sundays) (TV, 26 April); and Stacey Dooley: Inside the undertakers (TV, 17 November 2023), which “doesn’t necessarily straightaway read as a faith title”, but which handled religious and secular approaches to death.
The proven fact that Radio 4’s Today programme retained the day by day Thought for the Day at 7.50 a.m. also showed schedulers’ commitment to religion in peak slots, Mr Pemberton said. He was happy with Thought for the Day’s “versatility”: for instance, when the war in Ukraine broke out, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a “massively poignant” Thought at very short notice (News, 25 February 2022).
Radio listeners were, nevertheless, concerned in regards to the loss, last autumn, of local Sunday-morning religious programmes in England (Comment, 25 August 2023). The local programmes were replaced by regional programmes, and the 39 local stations were reorganised into 13 groups.
Local radio doesn’t fall under Mr Pemberton’s remit, but a BBC spokesperson said: “We are committed to the representation of the UK’s different faith communities and the supply of non secular and ethical content for audiences across England. Faith stays the main target of all our Sunday Breakfast Shows and we are going to proceed to broadcast services to mark significant religious faith festivals.”
