Nationwide (TV series)
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Nationwide was a BBC current affairs television series broadcast on BBC One each weekday following the main evening news. It followed a magazine format, combining political analysis and discussion with consumer affairs and light entertainment. It ran from 9 September 1969 to 5 August 1983, when it was replaced by Sixty Minutes.
The light entertainment was quite similar in tone to That's Life!. Eccentric stories featured skateboarding ducks and men who claimed that they could walk on egg shells. Richard Stilgoe performed topical songs.
After the introduction and round-up, the BBC regions opted out for a twenty minute section for local news round ups (Midlands Today, Points West, Wales Today etc.). Once they handed back to Lime Grove Studios in London, the regions remained on standby to participate in feedback and interviews to be transmitted across the BBC network.
In March 2006 the BBC announced a 4-week series of a Nationwide-style programme, incorporating the regional news, to start in August 2006.
The show was used in an influential cultural/media studies project at the University of Birmingham, known as The Nationwide Project.
Thatcher On the Spot
Perhaps the most famous of such interviews occurred in May 1983 during a general election special of its "On the Spot" feature. Mrs Diana Gould, a geography teacher from Cirencester, persistently challenged Margaret Thatcher about her ordering of the sinking of the General Belgrano when it was sailing away from the Falklands. Mrs Thatcher either made a verbal slip or misremembered the history and denied that the Belgrano had been sailing away, and Diana Gould therefore appeared better informed. When Mrs Thatcher asked her whether she accepted that the Belgrano had been a danger to British shipping when it was sunk, Mrs Gould told her that she did not. Thatcher then proclaimed that "I think it could only be in Britain that a British Prime Minister could be asked why she took action to protect our ships against an enemy ship that was a danger to our shipping", and was extremely angry about the BBC for allowing the question (Cockerell, 1988:238). Thatcher's husband Denis lashed out at the producer of the show in the entertainment suite, saying that his wife had been "stitched up by bloody BBC poofs and Trots." [link].References
- Michael Cockerell, (1988) Live from Number 10: The Inside Story of Prime Ministers and Television. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN 0571147577
- Jeff Evans, (1995) The Guinness Television Encyclopedia. Middlesex: Guinness. ISBN 0851127444
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