The Mash Report will not be coming back for a fifth series. A BBC spokesperson told The Sun (Why The Sun first ?) it had run its course. There is no press release.
The suspicion is that new DG Tim Davie agreed with The King of Broadcasting, Andrew Neil, who condemned the show in a series of tweets from the wine-rich South Of France back in 2018. ‘If you think Mash or the Now show is funny as opposed to contrived ideological commentary then we have a different sense of humour'. When someone said the show also featured right wing stand-up Geoff Norcott, he wasn't impressed : 'For three minutes out of thirty minutes of self satisfied, self adulatory, unchallenged left wing propaganda. It’s hardly balance. Could never happen on a politics show. Except this has become a politics show.’
There's no evidence of failure in the audience figures - largely better than slot average for BBC2 at 10pm. And it's proved useful to chunk up in the pandemic, when Newsnight had to move to 2245. Indeed, the chunks of the MASH report are amongst the BBC's most successful bits on social media. 12m Facebook views for Gender Equality; 42m Facebook views and 2.1m YouTube hits for Rachel Parris on sexual harassment; 6.4m YouTube for Northerners accused of saying 'hello'. Even Andrew Neil can stomach chunks.
This is very funny, despite what some will see as the calumny against PC World and its managers. https://t.co/Hy1v5GUY3y
— Andrew Neil (@afneil) May 9, 2020
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