Happy Birthday, Songs of Praise

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Oct 9, 2001

The world’s longest running ‘religious’ TV programme celebrates 40 years on the air this month (October 2001). The BBC’s Songs of Praise has been broadcast just about every week over those forty years in a unique celebration of Christian communities around Britain as well as in other countries. The programme is also shown in the United States, Australia, and in Europe.

The programme format is simple – an outside broadcast from a large church, public building or open space where a large choir sings popular Christian hymns and songs, interspersed with short documentary pieces about the community and the people that make it up.

The idea for the series dates back to the early days of BBC Outside Broadcasts, when the technical paraphernalia behind the transmission of television pictures away from studio centres was not as cheap and portable as it is now. The OB department found its equipment was in use Fridays to Sundays to cover sporting events – which in those days tended to happen only at weekends. The rest of the week, the expensive staff and equipment were all but idle. So an enterprising manager came up with the idea for a programme which would use the outside broadcast department during its ‘down’ days – and Songs of Praise was born.

Since those early days, the programme has been anchored by some of the best known names in British television – Cliff Michelmore, Geoffrey Wheeler, Sir Cliff Richard, Dame Thora Hird, Sally Magnussen, Pam Rhodes, Alan Titchmarsh… the list is not quite, but almost endless.

Songs of Praise remains one of the flagship programmes of the BBC’s Religion and Ethics department, now based in Manchester. The unit also produces documentary series such as ‘Everyman’, and ‘Heart of the Matter’, as well as the recent ‘Son of God’ series which was sold right round the world.

I worked as a researcher and director on the programme from 1990 to 1996 – six of the happiest years of my life. Here was a job in which I got to travel all around Britain (and subsequently around the world as well) – and then I got to meet the most interesting people in each community we visited. On every programme I worked on, there were always more fascinating and inspiring stories than we had time to tell. And I got paid! (Of course, being the BBC, I didn’t get paid much, but at least I WAS paid!). Working for a programme like Songs of Praise also meant I was given chances to do things that would never have been allowed in other departments of the BBC. Not only did I research and direct the documentary inserts, I was also given a chance to direct major outside broadcasts, produce pop videos, film light entertainment items and produce entire programmes. It really was a great job to have.