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BBC axe Crimewatch

(October 2017)

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BR
Brekkie
I remember fondly being allowed to stay up late to see crime watch as a child. In those days (late 80s) there was a real urgency to the programme.

Did your parents want you to have nightmares?
DE88, London Lite and Lou Scannon gave kudos
BR
Brekkie
So the BBC are measuring the success or failure of Crimewatch in viewing figures, and not about how useful the calls are for the Police in investigating crimes?

Nick Ross has made a quite valid point though on how an appeal to 15m viewers was far more likely to lead to a lead than airing to 2-3m now.
Night Thoughts and DE88 gave kudos
AN
Andrew Founding member
So the BBC are measuring the success or failure of Crimewatch in viewing figures, and not about how useful the calls are for the Police in investigating crimes?

Nick Ross has made a quite valid point though on how an appeal to 15m viewers was far more likely to lead to a lead than airing to 2-3m now.

Sadly that's the current TV landscape.

Same as something featured in the press, on the regional news etc
SP
Steve in Pudsey
Did all ITV regions show the Crimestoppers appeal spots? These were listed in the TV Times (as a "followed by" line rather than a full listing) so I assume were provided as a public service rather than paid advertising by the charity.

I remember Yorkshire usually showed one before The Bill.
SC
Si-Co
Often the Crimestoppers spot cropped up on Tyne Tees in random junctions and normally wasn’t billed in the TV Times (at least not that I remember). Seen a few examples from other regions which all seemed to use the same musical sting and graphics.
LL
London Lite Founding member
I only remember seeing it on LWT, complete with Shaw Taylor at the end.



Shaw Taylor was also a director of Crimestoppers.
Last edited by London Lite on 18 October 2017 2:35am
MA
Markymark
Surely Crimewatch would have been a very cheap programme to produce. It's mainly blurry reconstruction shots and interviews with the police, with links from a studio.


It used to be cheap in the early days, but the reconstruction films became more and more polished, and we ended up with the same production values as 9pm BBC 1/ITV drama !
IS
Inspector Sands
Surely Crimewatch would have been a very cheap programme to produce. It's mainly blurry reconstruction shots and interviews with the police, with links from a studio.

Surely all you see on air is the swan on top of the water. It would have quite a large production team I'd have thought, teams of researchers and producers as well as the teams making the reconstruction films.

Of course they'd need a lot more if it was weekly rather than monthly
RJ
RJG
Did all ITV regions show the Crimestoppers appeal spots? These were listed in the TV Times (as a "followed by" line rather than a full listing) so I assume were provided as a public service rather than paid advertising by the charity.

I remember Yorkshire usually showed one before The Bill.


For a number of years Border TV's Lookaround featured a weekly police appeal spot, presented by an Inspector (I might have the rank wrong) Bruce Prickett of Cumbria Police.
DE
deejay
There were monthly appeals on BBC Oxford's Friday half hour programmes for a couple of years in around 2006. They didn't include reconstructions though, just e-fits, stills and cctv.
GO
gottago
Surely Crimewatch would have been a very cheap programme to produce. It's mainly blurry reconstruction shots and interviews with the police, with links from a studio.

Reconstructions aren't cheap, research isn't cheap, studios and sets certainly aren't cheap. Pile on top of that they were effectively setting up a call centre each time, probably had their own lawyers to deal with the complex, current cases, were effectively keeping a large team employed year round for at most 12 shows while other factual shows can make half a dozen shows in a few months with the same sized team. Crimewatch will have been one of the more expensive factual shows of its kind on air for sure.
AN
Andrew Founding member
Si-Co posted:
Often the Crimestoppers spot cropped up on Tyne Tees in random junctions and normally wasn’t billed in the TV Times (at least not that I remember). Seen a few examples from other regions which all seemed to use the same musical sting and graphics.


Although the slots seemed random, I bet if this forum had been around at the time, I bet they weren't, and actually turned up at the same times each week.

I can't recall them being billed, although it's the sort of heavy detail that would only appear in the Radio Times.

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