Changes to BBC Parliament & Political Programming

Time for another general election? We’re re-showing the BBC’s #Decision79 election programme 40 years on from May 1979 poll which swept Margaret Thatcher to power.
Watch from 0900 Bank Holiday Monday May 6 @BBCParliament pic.twitter.com/j7ekY4lRIs

— BBC Parliament (@BBCParliament) April 26, 2019

Surprised that's allowed during the Purdah period for the European elections that we may or may not be taking part in.

Purdah only relates to now. You can remind the electorate about policies/tax cuts/'improvements' that parties have already brought in. It's when an elected party bring in something new and herald it as an improvement, or make a radical change during the campaining window, where things get really sticky - and illegal.

The BBC would be alright giving another unspooling to the 1979 Election Night programme. It's hardly a yardstick for the 2019 European Elections...

..and anyway, if you let a 40 year old programme influence your voting decision at the polls next month, frankly you don't deserve the vote!

True enough, but could parties that weren't around then claim undue prominence of those that were?

I suspect the fact it's on a niche channel and only likely to be watched by anoraks who understand the context probably mitigates that though.

Which Election Night marathons haven't been repeated on BBC Parliament? 1979 has been on a fair few times, even partially on BBC Four in 2009. I'm not sure 2005 has been repeated yet though, 2001 maybe only once?

Just a reminder that Cllr. David Boothroyd's YouTube channel is full of all sorts of recordings of election programming.



There's a whole playlist of Vote 2001, including Election Call with Tony Blair:

There's a big table on Wikipedia that suggests they've all been shown at some point going back to 1955, including the Referendum Result of 1975.

2005 was repeated two days later after original transmission as was 2010, 2015 and 2017. The 2001 election was shown at its 10 year anniversary so presumably next year will be a 2010 repeat.

The 1997 one's always been shown as a clean version, without the original graphics, for some reason, which makes it harder to follow (and makes where the end credits are supposed to be just a long pan around the studio!). I seem to remember the picture quality of the 2001 showing was quite poor as well (but it did have the original graphics), looked like it had been coming from a composite source, I remember their showing of the morning coverage beginning without the graphics too, then them suddenly cutting in about half way through them showing William Hague's resignation speech.

Annoyingly won't be able to see this showing, but it must be about the 5th or 6th time they've shown 1979 anyway.

The 1955 showing was only 2 or 3 hours I think (all that exists I think), and the 1959 showing was only the overnight coverage (and that was missing a couple of hours)- David Dimbleby popped up at the end to say they couldn't show the daytime coverage as it doesn't exist, but at least some of it must survive, as there's a clip that quite frequently gets shown of an interviewer running round trying to get someone to talk to him and nobody wants to.

Fortunately somebody has an original recording and it was all dumped on YouTube last year.

As an example, see here at 36:39 from the original show in 1997, you see a red "Labour hold" caption:


The same point in this video from a 2017 repeat is at 2:40:48 without graphics:


(if you wind it back far enough you'll notice they're also taking about the Referendum Party which was set up to campaign for an EU Referendum and the chap in the above video I've pointed you to is James Goldsmith who died not long after the election and his party died with him)

I was only starting to get interested in politics in 97, and knew virtually nothing about the Referendum Party until quite recently. This podcast has a decent bit of backstory for anyone in a similar position.

I watched the 2015 election like that on a rebroadcast by DR as I was in Copenhagen. It's difficult to follow without the lower third graphics even for a Brit so I'm not sure why DR took a feed without lower thirds.

Because it's what was booked to go out to the rest of the world? I was on shift that night but can't remember what we did...