Channel 4 has bought a tent
Pop culture interlude.
Well phooey. I only just discovered The Great British Bake Off last fall, and now they’re leaving the BBC for Channel 4, plus the two presenters are leaving as a result, and I liked them.
Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc will step down as hosts of The Great British Bake Off when it moves to Channel 4.
The duo have fronted the show since it began on BBC Two in 2010, alongside judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood.
They said in a statement: “We made no secret of our desire for the show to remain where it was… we’re not going with the dough.”
…
The statement continued: “The BBC nurtured the show from its infancy and helped give it its distinctive warmth and charm, growing it from an audience of two million to nearly 15 [million] at its peak.
“We’ve had the most amazing time on Bake Off, and have loved seeing it rise and rise like a pair of yeasted Latvian baps.
“We’re not going with the dough. We wish all the future bakers every success.”
The production company that makes it demanded more money than the Beeb wants to pay.
On the news that Giedroyc and Perkins were leaving, former contestant Kate Henry, who was on the show in 2014, told the BBC News channel: “I’m quite sad that future contestants won’t get to experience the joy of Mel and Sue in the tent.
“They really make it a fun experience rather than painfully stressful.”
She said it would be an “utterly different show” if Berry and Hollywood were also to leave.
Richard Burr, a finalist on series five back in 2004, tweeted: “Without Mel and Sue it just isn’t Bake Off. @Channel4 has just bought a tent.”
Also? Channel 4 is a commercial station. Guess what that means.
It is not yet clear what time slot the show will have on Channel 4 or whether it will be cut or extended in length.
“A lot of viewers have been asking if it will be reduced to 42 minutes long with 18 minutes of adverts, or could be extended to one hour and 20 minutes long to make room for advertising,” Bryan said.
“I don’t think they could squeeze everything that happens in an hour into 40 minutes. They could take some things out, like the history bits or some analysis, but they would still have to cut a challenge or scale one of them down quite significantly.”
Hey, so they lose 18 minutes of content for the sake of advertising, so what? So everything, that’s what.
Ah well, I have a lot of back episodes to watch.
Not that I watch that show, but you can pretty much guarantee that any warmth and fun will be leeched out of it, and it will become yet another dreary competitive cooking show, emphasising drama and manufactured rivalries over the actual cooking.
I’ve only seen three or four episodes, but I found the warmth and fun highly appealing. It’s a funny kind of thing to like, really, because most of it should be utterly tedious…and it in fact is tedious enough that I wouldn’t want to watch more than one at a time, but it makes lovely wind-down with the dog tv.
I love the Bake Off, almost as much as I love the Great British Sewing Bee!! On both of the shows, everyone is so sweet and kind, and everyone is sad when one of the contestants gets eliminated. There is no drama beyond the normal drama of baking – will it rise? will the layers stick together? will it come out the same shape as when I put it in the oven?
Now that is drama.
Oh yeast!
{sorry, nevermind}