“There was a time when Question Time maybe asked too many questions that were of a narrow interest. Now we take broader issues and try to make them more understandable and enjoyable. What counts is people who have opinions and who influence the opinions of the people at home,” he says.”Boy George generated a big response. He was on when Section 28 [prohibiting the 'promotion' of homosexuality by local authorities] was being scrapped in Scotland and we had him on with Brian Souter, the Stagecoach boss [who opposed repeal]. Boy George has first-hand experience of gay rights and brought a very valid set of opinions.”Pisani has a breadth of experience that reflects the new-look Question Time. He was made editor two years ago after a career that included working at Sky with both the blunt-speaking Richard Littlejohn and its political editor Adam Boulton, and he made a range of adventure travel programmes.
He thinks this helps: “You bring different points of view and maybe a slightly more populist touch.”Pisani dismisses a suggestion that David Dimbleby is to leave his chair and walk the studio. This was tried several years ago, and Pisani says it is, in fact, easier to bring guests and audience into the debate from where Dimbleby sits.But there will be innovations. Remote cameras will be introduced to widen the range of shots. The recent policy of visiting a wider range of towns and cities will continue. Three years ago, there were six outside broadcasts in a series; this year there were 14.Pisani believes the show can still make waves, as it did when Arthur Scargill and Michael Heseltine went head to head during the miners’ strike. He cites Frank Dobson’s “Go on, make my day” challenge to Ken Livingstone to run for London mayor as an example.
A floundering performance by the First Minister of Scotland, Henry McLeish, may have contributed to his downfall. “I think the level of discussion is better than ever,” Pisani says “We’ve changed, but there’s nothing dumbed down about it.”. Conrad Black is not known for his stealth or humility. Yet he seems almost chagrined by the brouhaha surrounding the decision by his Hollinger International company to invest in a new newspaper in New York.
Indeed, we probably would not have known anything about it but for the news being scooped last month by The New York Observer.Details of the project are slowly coming into focus. If all goes to plan, the paper, to be called The New York Sun, will launch in the spring. It will hit the stands five days a week, will be only about six pages thick, and will be edited by Seth Lipsky, a columnist of The Wall Street Journal and former editor of the Jewish Forward weekly It will be distinctly conservative in tone. Of course it will, otherwise Black would hardly have been interested.
The impending incursion of Black – now Lord Black of Crossharbour – into Gotham is not an event that the rest of the media community is going to ignore. It comes as he completes his withdrawal from the Canadian newspaper scene and finds himself with extra time and money And it may be his third time lucky. He failed in 1993 to buy the Daily News in New York, and two years ago made a doomed pass at The New York Observer itself.Hollinger has done its best to help downplay whatever Black is up to.
