KPDS 2006-1 Soru=78

Before he took over the running of BBC4, Roly Keating ----.

BBC4, a comparatively new TV channel, has a
character of its own. From the start it aimed to be “a
place to think”, and it was always designed as
something “that the commercial market would never
do”, says Roly Keating, its controller and formerly
head of arts at the BBC. Its first week's schedule
indeed verged on a parody of non-commercial TV,
with township opera from South Africa and a
performance by a Senegalese singer in a London
church hall. A top-rated show will typically draw some
50,000 viewers – almost negligible in television
terms. Yet that narrow appeal makes BBC4 a model
of what a publicly financed broadcaster ought to do.
It has roamed into territory where its ratings-driven
sister channel, BBC1, seldom dares to tread. Despite
a tiny 35m budget, it boasts an intelligent prime-time
talk show and a world news programme so
internationally minded that its London provenance is
barely visible. BBC4 may wear its gravity a little too
heavily at times, but it supplies a variety and
thoughtfulness unavailable on prime time BBC1. The
more the other BBC channels chase the ratings, and
the more that BBC4 refuses to be dictated to by
them, the more the channel looks like a model for
what BBC television could look like.