Until a change of format in November 2014, the programme featured congregations from churches and cathedrals singing hymns alongside interviews with people from the church from which the programme was broadcast with a exploration by the presenter of that week's theme, all from the same location.
November 2014 saw the programme adopt more of a magazine format. The stated intention[11] was to evolve the series to reflect the wider Christian audience across the country. Music remains at the heart of the series, but is now more varied in style, reflecting the broad range of Christian genres in each programme and across the series; there is no longer a single location where the music and stories come from each week. The series continued to be usually broadcast between 4 and 5pm on Sundays; though as of 2018 onwards, it has generally been broadcast in a lunchtime slot. The new format continues with special programmes marking Easter and Remembrance Sunday as well as the popular two Big Sing programmes from the Royal Albert Hall and the School Choir of the Year contest. The more recent Gospel Choir of the Year began recording in Birmingham Town Hall in 2013 and in 2014 was recorded at The Hackney Empire in London.
Until the relaxation of broadcasting hours restrictions in the autumn of 1972, it was regulated by the government under the control of the Postmaster General that all television broadcasting on Sunday evenings from 6:15 pm–7:25 pm should be "closed" and used only for religious programming on both BBC and ITV. Until 1958, no programmes were broadcast during this time slot, until a compromise was reached between the churches and the Postmaster General, where religious programming would be acceptable to air in this time slot to avoid people from not attending Sunday evening church services. It was under these restrictions and regulations that Songs of Praise was created.[12]
At its inception in October 1961, the programme was broadcast at 6:15 pm. From September 1962, it moved to 6:50 pm and then to 6:40 pm from April 1977 with a daytime repeat, generally shown on the following day with BSL. Religious programming was also broadcast on ITV in the same time slot, but this custom ended in late December 1992. From January 1993, the programme's scheduled broadcast time was changed to 6:25 pm and then 6:10 pm from January 1996. Since then, the time of broadcast has tended to shift slightly earlier, but the precise slot has often varied from week to week. As of January 2021, the programme has now been placed in a new permanent lunchtime slot on a Sunday, after the Sunday lunchtime news, usually scheduled at 1.15pm.
For many years, the series was replaced during the summer months by other Christian-themed programming. From 1977[13] until 1993, a selection of hymns from the previous year's shows, linked by Thora Hird reading requests and dedications, was featured in Your Songs of Praise Choice, which changed its name to Praise Be! in the 1980s. Other summer replacements included Home on Sunday (1980–88)[14] and Sweet Inspiration (1993–94).[15]
A competition was held in honour of the 20th anniversary in which people submitted newly written hymns. Fifteen winners were published in a book New Songs of Praise I.[18]
The programme staged its largest event at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on the first Sunday of 2000.[19] A live audience of over 60,000 people came to sing hymns, with a 6,000 piece choir, an orchestra of 100 harps, the band of the Welsh Guards and an anthem specially written by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. The programme was produced by John Forrest. Ian Bradley said the event had a "wonderful vulgarity" but that it also had an "infectious sense of community"[19]
Each year since 2003, three consecutive weeks of the programme (usually in April) have been devoted to the School Choir of the Year competition – the first two weeks being semi-finals featuring junior and senior school choirs respectively, with the final of both categories in the third week.
In order to cut costs, the Easter 2007 edition of the show was recorded at the same time as the Christmas 2006 edition of the show at Lichfield Cathedral in Staffordshire – with simple changes in lighting and flowers to reflect the two major services. The Bishop of LichfieldJonathan Gledhill, said the early recording was not a "deliberate deceit" but would give "an air of unreality" to the Easter programme, while a BBC spokeswoman said it was "common practice" to film two shows at once due to the costs in setting up lighting rigs, especially in a large cathedral.[20]
The programme's producers have been lambasted on social media as well as by sections of the press and a handful of politicians for 'wasting taxpayer's money' and, for that greatest of all religious sins, of 'becoming political'. In my view, however, tackling this complex humanitarian issue is exactly what Songs of Praise should be doing. The role of the television show, which is essentially about Christian faith, means the only way in which it can authentically fulfil its mandate is to deal with the tough issues of life, alongside the joys, faced by individuals as well as whole communities. Back in the '90s I was a presenter for Songs of Praise. Amongst the shows that I remain most proud of were those we made in South Africa, soon after Nelson Mandela was elected president, about the struggle against Apartheid, and another special programme I co-presented with Sally Magnusson the weekend after the Dunblane school massacre.[24]
Reception and impact
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2013)
In the early 1990s, the weekly reach of the show was about 25% of the British population.[19] In 1998, the average viewership was between 5 and 6 million.[25] Because of the long-time transmission of Songs of Praise following the Sunday evening news, the time slot has become known as the "God slot".[26] The show has been accused of "abandon[ing] its long-standing commitment to straightforward hymns and 'ordinary' people talking about their often very extraordinary lives and faith and becoming increasingly obsessed with celebrities and soft-focus schmaltz".[27]
The show is also broadcast in Australia on the ABC at 11:30am on Sundays, and in the Netherlands on NPO 2 at 12pm, also on Sundays.[29]
Competitive tender
In 2016, as part of their new charter agreement, the BBC announced that they would put all their programmes which were due for recommission out to competitive tender over an eleven-year period, with independent companies invited to bid to make the shows, although the BBC would retain all interstitial property rights. A Question of Sport was the first programme to go through this process with BBC Studios winning the commission and retaining the rights to make the show in house. Songs of Praise followed shortly after but on 10 March 2017 it was announced that the tender had been won by two independent production companies; Avanti Media based in Cardiff and Nine Lives Media located in Manchester who would be producing the show for the next three years as a co-production.[30] Avanti Media also produced its Welsh-language originator Dechrau Canu, Dechrau Canmol from 2006 until 2017 when its production tender was won by Rondo Media (a company which also produces Welsh soap opera Rownd a Rownd).
In May 2022, Avanti and Nine Lives announced they would not renew their tender deal to produce the series,[31] with the BBC announcing that they would look for a new company to produce the show beginning in June 2023.[32] On 31 March 2023, CTVC were announced as the winners.[33]
Aled Jones, is a Welsh singer and radio and television presenter. As a teenage chorister, he gained widespread fame in 1985 with his recording of "Walking in the Air", which reached the UK top five. Since then he has worked in television with the BBC and ITV, and on radio.
BBC Children's and Education is the BBC division responsible for media content for children in the UK. Since the launch of specially dedicated television channels in 2002, the services have been marketed under two brands. CBBC is aimed at children aged between 6 and 12, and CBeebies offers content for younger viewers. Unlike CBeebies, the CBBC brand predates the launch of these channels all the way back to when it was just a children's block on the main channel BBC, when it was also the brand name used for all of the BBC's children's programmes. CBBC broadcasts from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm and CBeebies broadcasts from 6:00 am to 7:00 pm, respectively timesharing with BBC Three for CBBC and BBC Four for CBeebies. The brands also have dedicated websites, social media channels, and over-the-top media services on BBC iPlayer.
See Hear is a monthly magazine programme for deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the United Kingdom, broadcast on Wednesday mornings at 8.00am. The programme focuses on the British and the worldwide deaf community and covers a broad range of topics from areas such as education, deaf people's rights, technology and language. The programme is presented entirely in BSL and is broadcast with voice-over and subtitles in English. This allows both deaf and hearing people to understand the programme. See Hear is currently the fifth longest-running BBC programme.
Simon Andrew Hicks Mayo is an English radio presenter and author who worked for BBC Radio from 1982 until 2022.
Robert Brinley Joseph Harris, popularly known as "Whispering Bob" Harris, is an English music presenter. He is well known for being a host of the BBC2 music programme The Old Grey Whistle Test and as a co-founder of the listings magazine Time Out. He currently presents Bob Harris Country on Thursdays on BBC Radio 2 at 9 pm.
Thought for the Day is a daily scripted slot on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 offering "reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news", broadcast at around 7:45 each Monday to Saturday morning. Lasting 2 minutes and 45 seconds, it is a successor to the five-minute religious sequence Ten to Eight (1965–1970) and, before that, Lift Up Your Hearts, which was first broadcast five mornings a week on the BBC Home Service from December 1939, initially at 7:30, though soon moved to 7:47. The feature is mainly delivered by those involved in religious practice; often, these are Christian thinkers, but there have been numerous occasions where representatives of other faiths, including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, have presented Thought for the Day.
Richard John McNeill Allinson is an English broadcaster with Greatest Hits Radio and Scala Radio and is Creative Director of Magnum Opus Broadcasting. Between 1997 and 2014 he was a disc jockey for BBC Radio 2.
Edward Stewart Mainwaring, known as Ed "Stewpot" Stewart, was an English radio broadcaster and TV presenter. He was principally known for his work as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2, and as a presenter of Top of the Pops and Crackerjack on BBC Television.
Bradford Cathedral, or the Cathedral Church of St Peter, is an Anglican cathedral in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, one of three co-equal cathedrals in the Diocese of Leeds alongside Ripon and Wakefield. Its site has been used for Christian worship since the 7th century, when missionaries based in Dewsbury evangelised the area. For many centuries it was the parish church of St Peter and achieved cathedral status in 1919. The cathedral is a Grade I listed building.
BBC News at Ten is the BBC's flagship evening news programme on British television channels BBC One and BBC News, broadcast weekdays and Sundays at 10:00pm and produced by BBC News. It is normally broadcast for 30minutes, except on bank holidays when it may be shorter and only shown on BBC One.
Paul Burnett is an English radio disc jockey.
Bill Buckley is a radio and television presenter and former actor. For three years, he was a co-presenter of BBC Television's consumer affairs programme That's Life!. He currently presents on BBC Radio Berkshire and has presented shows on BBC Radio Solent, BBC Southern Counties Radio, BBC Radio Devon, BBC Radio Oxford, London talk radio station LBC 97.3, BBC London 94.9 and numerous others.
The Sarah-Jane Mee Show is a weekday news programme in the United Kingdom on Sky News, presented by Sarah-Jane Mee. The slot has been part of the Sky News schedule since 2005, most notably with Kay Burley as presenter until October 2019. It combines rolling-news coverage with debates and interviews on the day's issues plus human interest stories. The show airs between 2 pm–5 pm Monday to Friday. On Fridays, the show title is not used on air, however the same show format is used and presented by Belle Donati.
BBC Radio Manchester is the BBC's local radio station serving Greater Manchester.
Richard Connolly was an Australian musician, composer and former broadcaster.
Dechrau Canu, Dechrau Canmol is a television series featuring congregational Christian singing in the Welsh language. Currently broadcast by the Welsh-language television channel S4C, it is one of the longest-running television programmes on any British television channel, the first edition having been broadcast by the BBC from Trinity Chapel, Swansea, on 1 January 1961. The programme inspired the creation of the similar English-language series Songs of Praise, which began later in the same year.
This is a list of British television related events from 1961.
The Sunday Hour was a long-standing show broadcast on the BBC Light Programme and then BBC Radio 2 in the United Kingdom, broadcast for 78 years between 14 July 1940 and 28 January 2018.
A timeline of notable events relating to BBC Radio 3, a British national radio station which began broadcasting in September 1967.
Thy hand, O God, has guided is a Christian hymn with words by Edward Plumptre and music by Basil Harwood.
↑ "Songs of Praise". Radio Times. Vol.237, no.3085 (Londoned.). BBC Magazines. 23 December 1982. p.71. Tonight, 150 years after the first British settlement, Songs of Praise visits the Falklands to meet some of the islanders and some of the British forces now stationed there, to talk about their lives, their faith and their favourite hymns.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
