Time has been called on the South Bank Show. This moment gives us pause for thought. ITV has announced that it ‘will … be looking at opportunities for new arts programming’.  What might those be?

The South Bank Show has brought different arts experiences to millions. For every 5m annual visits to our most popular galleries, 1-2m watch arts programmes weekly. TV is an important route to cultural experience. But as times, TV and our ideas of the arts and culture change, can we go further?

Peter Bazalgette suggested a new broadcasting body that links ‘existing online offerings of museums, galleries, theatre companies, opera houses and concert halls and funds content from them’. This stretches across the different means by which people engage with culture.  

Digital TV has opened the way to more participative viewing habits; TV networks are as recognised by their websites as their broadcasts.  People expect to shape and personalise the media they consume.   TV has become as much about expression as reception.

Our ideas of what culture and the arts are have also changed, encompassing a greater range of forms than more orthodox opinion might acknowledge.  A TV drama is as much a creative form as a Titian. Consumption has changed too: we have moved from a model of ‘learning from the experts’, to one of shared experience and enabling personal response.

The switch to Digital TV by 2012 is an opportunity for TV to platform the nation’s wider creativity as well as that of broadcasting professionals. Cultural media of all forms will play an increasingly important part in people’s lives and aspirations, and new collaborations must be formed between broadcasters, formal and informal education and cultural professionals that enable this.  

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