Countryfile BBC
Countryfile has been 'hijacked'. So says Jeremy Clarkson, presenter of the BBC's Country Life, which «used to be very good». Before his 36th birthday, Clarkson criticized him for alienating mainstream viewers, calling Countryfile «a smorgasbord of everything you need to run a modern television programme».
Clarkson, whose series Clarkson Farm is currently back on Amazon Prime, may once have been an unlikely oracle on a program about rural life. But after trading Top Gear for tractors, he largely gained the trust of the farming community, and his deep understanding of the realities of farming appears to have highlighted Countryfile's shortcomings. In recent months, criticism of the program has come from both viewers and farmers.
“The real rural people are quite dismissive of it — those of us who are actually part of the rural economy,” says the farmer. and writer Jamie Blackett, who owns 1,250 acres of arable and dairy land in Dumfries and Galloway. Countryfile «from a rural perspective, it can be virtually guaranteed to be on the wrong side of every argument.»
Blackett was angered last month by a story about solar panels that he said «helped spread the myth that you can still herd a few sheep on solar farms while still farming and producing food, which is really only a half-truth » ; It’s kind of a quarter of the truth.” There was little damage to biodiversity caused by covering the ground with solar panels, he adds. “You will lose all your larks, lapwings and barn owls.”
Controversy also arose around articles dealing with hunting and conservation issues; A visit to the wetland reserve in January led to accusations that the show is now a «mouthpiece for climate change». (Clarkson also criticized the article praising the benefits of badgers in the wild and its reference to the gestation period of «humans» rather than «women.»)
“They [have] some on the hard left and some on the soft left,” Blackett says of those featured in Countryfile. “Very rarely will they have someone like me on their program who will say something they don’t want to hear.” Michael Oakes, a dairy farmer on the outskirts of Birmingham and former chairman of the National Farmers' Union's (NFU) National Dairy Council, adds that during his tenure «we made formal complaints to Ofcom several times because we didn't feel there was a balance.» .
In 2022, the program was part of an internal review carried out by the BBC, and a then-insider told the Telegraph that «Countryfile has to deal with some controversial issues that bring different views… the kinds of issues that Countryfile covers make it a good barometer of impartiality.» A BBC spokesman said: «Countryfile is watched by millions of viewers every week, with each episode reporting a wide range of views, perspectives and analysis of issues affecting rural communities… Of course, there will be occasions when people will have their own opinions about the content.» programs, and we have well-publicized ways for them to share with us.”
Countryfile began as a Sunday lunchtime show in 1988 as a replacement for the Farming show, which ran for 30 years. “There was some criticism from the farming community at the time because apparently their program had been removed and they weren't happy about it,” Oakes recalls. In short, “farmers don’t like Countryfile,” says Anna Jones, who worked on the series from 2006-2021. “There's an instinctive expectation that this should be an agricultural program, but it's not. This is a program about rural life for a wide audience.”
During Jones' tenure on the program, the show moved to the Sunday evening prime time slot and accordingly the focus shifted, with many subjects taking on a more entertainment nature; Famous presenters Julia Bradbury and Matt Baker were also invited.
Countryfile presenter Matt Baker Photo: Pete Dadds
Naturally, the change in gear led to a rise in viewership, and at its peak in 2016 the show had 9.6 million viewers — more than The X Factor, Jones notes. “I'm not naive, I know there will be plenty of people who will want to talk to you about how rubbish Countryfile is and how crap it is… [but] it's done an amazing job and really put the countryside on the map.”
< p>Jones is a farmer's daughter and the author of «Disruption: The Crisis of Urban-Rural Relations.» In her opinion, it was this split that caused the hype around the show. «There's a huge gap between town and country and they're not necessarily cultures that understand each other very well… Countryfile could do its best and try to do everything it could, but it wouldn't be able to bridge that cultural gap,» says Jones, who «gets hit in the neck» at every farm event she attends. «A lot of people who don't even watch it have written it off as 'Towniefile.'
This divide has become more pronounced given the tensions currently plaguing those responsible for growing our food, who believe the show should do a better job of communicating these issues to the masses. Terrible weather, labor shortages, “a real lack of profitability and a lack of profitability in the supply chain” have hurt farmers, Oakes says. “The vast majority of farmers don’t realize that [Countryfile] relates to some of the struggles they go through… [it] tends to focus more on the soft and fluffy stuff rather than the realities of food production.”
Adam Henson was the show's longtime host. Photo: Pete Dadds
Other segments also caused anger and confusion. Viewers were recently baffled by a segment about the difficulty of finding a doctor in rural areas, a problem they say affects much of the country, as well as a segment on ancient relics that some less generous social media users described as «scratching a barrel.» » One viewer told me that after years of watching, he has tuned out in recent years because the show «feels like it's made by the city elite for the city elite… Programs like Countryfile do a lot to turn off a lot of viewers.» rural population and may partly explain the aversion many have towards the BBC.»
According to Roger Tabor, who presented the show in its first two years, these criticisms of Countryfile reflect something larger. “The reality is that the public will change just as the countryside itself is changing,” he says. “When we came here, farming was very different from what it is now… We are experiencing huge losses in terms of our rural wildlife. Bird populations are declining sharply. so these are the kinds of things that Countryfile should now clearly reflect.” Rural life is “not static,” Tabor adds. “So there will definitely be changes.”
One of the show's most enduring elements is the presence of Adam Henson, who has helmed Countryfile since 2001. “He's certainly not someone who I would call in any way politically correct or woke or anything like that,” says Blackett, but “he probably has to bite his tongue a little bit at Countryfile and he probably , cannot say what he might want to say. I think producers have quite a lot of power.»
Regarding external intervention, Tabor says that “there are limits [to what can be covered]. And sometimes the government comes under pressure from the outside world,” noting that during his appearance on the show, the then-Agriculture Minister “leaned on the program… because I wasn’t saying exactly what he wanted me to say.”
Do presenters have to follow the rules? “Certainly I don’t remember in the early years when I was doing this that we were told what we should or shouldn’t do. But, of course, this is not just a presenter’s program.”
Naturally, this is where Countryfile separates itself from the Amazon giant, Jones says, because «Clarkson's Farm is a farm owned by a really famous guy who people follow because it's Jeremy Clarkson.» While Farmers can praise the broadcaster for highlighting the community's concerns, she believes he has his predecessor to thank. “I don’t think you could have Clarkson Farm without Countryfile,” Jones says. “It was a pioneer.”
Jones may be right. But as the gap between city and country widens, even this pioneer may have to reconsider how to bridge the gap.
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