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BBC2 Enters The War Zone
Wednesday, October 31, 2001
By Jessica Hodgson / The Guardian

BBC2 is clearing its schedules for two weeks of late-night current affairs programmes about the terrorist attacks on America and the bombing of Afghanistan.

And the BBC executive producer behind the series claims the current crisis has "irreversibly changed" the public and the media's attitudes to foreign news and current affairs.

Paul Woolwich said the corporation was responding to an "enormous upsurge" in interest in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

A former producer and editor of Panorama and This Week, Woolwich said September 11 and its aftermath had completely changed the focus of current affairs in the British media.

"I agree with [Mirror editor] Piers Morgan in his speech that the age of trivia and celebrity is dead," he said.

"There's this enormous appetite for foreign news and current affairs on behalf of the controllers of BBC1 and BBC2.

"Some people would argue that foreign current affairs were being marginalised before this point. But that has irreversibly changed."

From November 12 the BBC will show a series of programmes, some especially commissioned and some already filmed, under the banner of The War Zone.

Woolwich said the programmes were designed to "put the current conflict and all its manifestations into context, with fresh and varied angles and a wide range of different voices".

The War Zone will range from Hezbollah - Men of God, a programme filmed in 1993 by BBC correspondent Peter Taylor, to Terror Sex and Other New York Stories, which chronicles the responses of ordinary Americans to the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11.

The programmes will be screened at 11.15pm on BBC 2.
(The Guardian News Source)
2001 © Guardian Newspapers Limited.

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