History
The programme was a replacement for Aquarius, LWT's arts series which had been running since 1970. It first aired on 14 January 1978, covering many subjects, including Germaine Greer, Gerald Scarfe and Paul McCartney. It is the longest continuously running arts programme on UK television. From the beginning the series' intent was to mix high art and popular culture. This has remained, and the programme has always focused predominantly on art of the 20th and 21st centuries.
For much of its life, the show was produecd by London Weekend Television (LWT) for the ITV network.
In May 2009, ITV announced that the show was to come to an end. Although it was originally reported that the show was ending due to Bragg's retirement, Bragg later made it clear that he decided to leave after they ended the show, and thought ending it was a mistake; according to him, "they've killed the show, so I thought, I'll go as well."
On Monday 28 December 2009 the final edition of The South Bank Show was broadcast featuring The Royal Shakespeare Company as its subject. Melvyn Bragg announced on this programme, after the final South Bank Show Awards in January 2010, there would be a series of ten South Bank Show Revisited programmes transmitted in early 2010 featuring updates on previous South Bank Show subjects.
Read more about this topic: The South Bank Show
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“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)