Late Night Line-Up

Late Night Line-Up was a pioneering British television discussion programme broadcast on BBC2 between 1964 and 1972.

Background

From its launch in April 1964, BBC2 began each evening's transmission with a programme called Line-Up, a ten-minute collection of reviews and previews of the channel's output, presented initially by Denis Tuohy. Although intended to draw attention to the considerable variety of original programming on BBC2, Line-Up was perceived as little more than a self-promotion exercise by the newspapers and the viewing public alike. Later in the same year, it was decided that Line-Up be replaced by something of a similar intention but with a more intellectual edge. Instead of a guided tour of BBC2's output, the new programme would be an open and candid discussion among invited guests, transmitted live after the 9.00 p.m. watershed. The new programme was named Late Night Line-Up and took over from Line-Up in September 1964.

The original theme tune was "Blue Boy" by Gerry Mulligan, replaced in the 1970s with a version of "Jordu" by the Dave Hancock Six.

Content

Denis Tuohy carried over his presenter's role from Line-Up but the new programme also brought Joan Bakewell to prominence as a broadcaster. An innovative feature of Late Night Line-Up was that it was deliberately scheduled as the last programme of the evening before closedown. This meant that the discussion need not be constrained by time; topics could be explored as far as the participants were willing to talk about them. (Another open-ended discussion programme, After Dark, began on Channel 4 fifteen years after Late Night Line-Up had ceased production.)

Broadcasting hours on British television were tightly controlled by the Postmaster General in the 1960s, and, for the majority of the 1960s, weeknights on BBC Two were limited to 7 hours of programming in a day (excluding sport, political conferences, schools, religion and adult education which were exempt from the restrictions). As BBC Two would normally only air for 30 minutes in the morning at 11 am with Play School, this meant 6.5 hours were left over, with BBC Two normally starting their evening at 7.00pm, it meant Late-Night Line-Up could remain on the air until 1.30am if they so wished. It never happened, but the freedom for discussion, without worrying about exceeding the broadcasting day allowance made the programme very popular, especially with those who enjoyed watching television late at night, as BBC One and ITV generally closed down by 11.45pm each weeknight.

Participating in the discussion were TV personalities, subject experts and members of the public with relevant experience. For example, a real-life single mother might be invited to discuss a drama themed around single parenthood. Some panelists were deliberately chosen to talk about something outside their usual sphere of expertise. In one edition, the playwright Harold Pinter held his own on the subject of cricket, even when his fellow panelists were a distinguished cricketer and a cricket journalist.

Late Night Line-Up eventually went well beyond its initial remit of examining BBC2's output and came to incorporate interviews, live music and poetry performances and discussions of other TV channels (which meant ITV to all intents and purposes) and even current affairs issues. However, television criticism was always seen as the main focus, a fact which did not exactly endear the programme to the BBC's senior executives. Indeed, presenter Denis Tuohy quotes the then Head of Light Entertainment, Tom Sloan, as saying: "We now employ two kinds of broadcaster: those who make programmes and those who knock them.... Don't ask me why we do it."

On 26 May 2008 Late Night Line-Up returned for a special one-off edition as part of BBC Parliament's Permissive Night.[1] Presented by Joan Bakewell, it featured discussion of the themes and programmes shown over the course of the evening and examined the liberalising legislation passed by Parliament in the late 1960s. Archive programmes shown included editions of Man Alive, Panorama, Twenty-Four Hours and Late Night Line-Up.

Crew of Late Night Line-Up

Episode guide

As with many shows of its era, much of Late Night Line-Up no longer survives. This was not only due to videotapes being wiped, but the programme's usual live broadcast meant they were often not recorded at all. Luckily, some records do survive containing many dates and details of these shows.[2]

1964

1965

1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972
  • Dutch Television 14 January 1972
  • Up Sunday 16 January 1972
  • James Moffatt Interview 21 January 1972
  • Up Sunday 23 January 1972
  • Discussion On Edward Albee 7 February 1972
  • International Guitar Competition 23 February 1972
  • Malcolm Macdonald 15 March 1972
  • Up Sunday – Animation 26 March 1972
  • Women's Edition of Punch – Discussion 27 March 1972
  • Up Sunday – Events Of The Week 9 April 1972
  • The Comedians with Charlie Williams, Bernard Manning, Ken Goodwin and John Hamp – Discussion 12 April 1972
  • Everybody Likes Little Bit Xtr 14 April 1972
  • Ecology – The Club Of Rome 17 April 1972
  • Hetty King 19 April 1972
  • Welcome Little Kangaroo – Eight Years of BBC2 21 April 1972
  • Up Sunday 23 April 1972
  • Steven Scheuer Interview 5 May 1972
  • Up Sunday – Events Of The Week 7 May 1972
  • Sculpture 8 May 1972
  • James Joyce 11 May 1972
  • Harold Evans Interview 17 May 1972
  • Working men's clubs 24 May 1972
  • Up Sunday 4 June 1972
  • Ecology – So Far So Good 12 June 1972
  • World Ecology Conference 16 June 1972
  • An Element In This Country Which I Need 12 July 1972
  • General Võ Nguyên Giáp Interview 28 July 1972
  • Lady Betjeman 1 August 1972
  • All Our Own Work 2 August 1972
  • Little Richard Interview / Francis Fuchs Interview 4 August 1972
  • Cable Vision 9 August 1972
  • Claud Cockburn Interview 15 August 1972
  • Robert Maxwell Interview 22 August 1972
  • Bill Tidy Interview – The Fosdyke Saga 11 September 1972
  • A Profile of Johnny Speight 15 September 1972
  • Pornography, Sex And Freedom 29 September 1972
  • John Houston 9 October 1972
  • Sir Hugh Carleton Greene – Granada Lecture 18 October 1972
  • Vietnam Veterans 19 October 1972
  • Cecil Arthur Lewis 6 November 1972
  • Wole Soyinka Interview 20 November 1972
  • World Speed Trials 23 November 1972
  • Black September 7 December 1972
  • Press Photography 13 December 1972
  • Last Edition (of original run) – BBC2 Discussion With Michael Dean, Tony Bilbow, Sheridan Morley And David Attenborough 14 December 1972

1986
  • Revived for a week to celebrate BBC TV's 50th Anniversary, with Michael Dean, Tony Bilbow, Joan Bakewell and Sheridan Morley.

2008

References
  1. "Bank Holiday means 'Permissive Night'". News.bbc.co.uk. 22 May 2008. Retrieved 27 June 2019.

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