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October 6, 2005updated 22 Nov 2022 5:02pm

Lloyd calls for current affairs investment

By Press Gazette

David Lloyd, former head of news and current affairs at Channel 4,
has called for channel controllers to stop being “passive in the face
of audience figures and overnights” and to realise the importance of
investing in current affairs programming as digital switchover gets
closer.

Lloyd, who suffered a major stroke in 2003, was speaking
on “The Return of Current Affairs” for his inaugural lecture as
professor of television journalism at City University in London.

Dispelling
what Lloyd described as “the gloom that currently pervades almost all
commentary about the present state of television journalism”, he argued
that documentary and investigative programmes being produced today are
more powerful than many of those cited from golden era schedules such
as World in Action, This Week and The Cook Report.

Lloyd said they had often lifted their stories from newspapers rather than carrying out original journalism.

He
ended his lecture by acknowledging the “renaissance” engineered by the
outgoing head of current affairs at the BBC, Peter Horrocks, but called
for the BBC to invest more in independently produced documentaries and
news films, citing Channel 4 as an example of how it should be done

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