Life & Wisdom Quote by Jonathan Dimbleby

There is a particular British sting in the verb “deplore”: polite enough for the airwaves, forceful enough to register as a moral complaint. Dimbleby isn’t just mourning a few canceled programmes; he’s invoking an older promise of the BBC as a cultural steward, not merely a ratings machine. By naming BBC One and Two, he points to the flagship channels that once treated arts coverage as part of the national diet, not a niche add-on shunted to the margins.

The subtext is about class, legitimacy, and what public service broadcasting is supposed to do when commercial pressure and political scrutiny tighten the screws. Arts content is expensive, slower, and less easily packaged into “event television.” Its disappearance signals a shift in institutional priorities: from “we’ll bring culture to everyone” toward “we’ll chase the biggest possible audience and call it democracy.” Dimbleby’s lament carries an implicit critique of managerial thinking - that culture is a luxury line item rather than a core civic function.

There’s also a defensive nostalgia at work. Dimbleby’s generation grew up with the BBC as a gatekeeper of taste, a place that could make a concert, a play, or a documentary feel like shared national property. His choice to single out One and Two hints at anxiety over fragmentation: when arts move to digital channels or on-demand silos, they stop being part of the common conversation. The “loss” he deplores isn’t only programming; it’s a thinning of the cultural public square.