January 7th, 2007
I adored Tomorrow’s World: I was such a fan that I even stuck it out during the special medical-related episodes, which was no small feat considering my aversion to such things, especially when they would cut to a new laser-eye surgery technique without warning, sending me careening off my chair. Actually–that’s just me being melodramatic; they always used to give the squeamish prior warning, but if you had just flipped the channel then you would get the full cut of a lovely uncompromising science show. It was taken off air in 2003.
Today while reading the EDP at work I came across a misleading article about the Beeb bringing back Tomorrow’s World. I came home and was all “They’re bringing back Tomorrow’s World! Great!” But searching for some more information on their website I found that they’re not really bringing back the programme, they’re just usurping its once-established brand and sticking it onto a few in-house BBC blogs.
The EDP journalist had got it totally wrong, as had many other people. It was an easy mistake to make, though looking over Wikipedia it seems the journalist had lifted a lot of the content verbatim, so in that case the mistake wasn’t entirely warranted. But now it seems that the comments directed to Darren Water’s blog post about the subject have provoked discussion in the ivory towers at the BBC. However I don’t want to get your hopes up, all he has said is this:
UPDATE: Tomorrow’s World has clearly sparked a real debate judging by the comments. Just to reiterate what I said in the original posting; there is NO plan to bring back the programme itself. There is a whole series of features on BBC News this year across bulletins, News 24, and online that will use Tomorrow’s World as an umbrella.
But I will make sure that these comments are passed on to the big wigs at the BBC. Who knows what these comments might spark…
My helpful comment–assuming he doesn’t moderate it–referenced a previous blog he wrote:
The solution was simple in the end but still took an hour of messing around with proxy servers.
If the technological editor of the BBC needs that amount of time to configure his connection to use a proxy server, then it sounds like we need Tomorrow’s World back again to offer–much needed–practical advice.