TIMESHIFT: TELEVISION & CHARITY
Sunday 12 December 2004 7.35pm-8.15pm
Ever since the BBC first went on air, charity appeals have been part of the Corporation's remit. This programme looks at how charity and television are interwoven from the early days of annual Christmas collections for needy children to the super-successful annual telethons of today.
Contributors include Terry Wogan, Lenny Henry, Esther Rantzen and Michael Buerk, as well as Ben Jackson (Shelter) and Simon Gillespie (The Charity Commission).
Comic Relief
BBC charity raising money for projects in the UK and abroad
Children in Need
Information on past and forthcoming events raising funds for the BBC children's charity
Shelter
British charity campaigning for homeless and badly housed people
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Tom Ware
Time Shift Series Editor
Over the last 30 years television's role in expanding and defining our attitudes to charity as a society has been extraordinary. Apart from the enormous sums of money these appeals and telethons are now regularly able to raise, the access that TV has given charities to the hearts and minds of the public has both changed the way they present themselves and the way that we perceive them.
But the price of this access has been to force charities to polarise their message, competing to sell their "product" in an ever busier marketplace - much to many people's distaste in a world where "charity fatigue" has replaced philanthropy. In Julia Foot's insightful documentary, the history of this complex relationship is laid bare.
