Tragically, Tomorrow’s World has been cancelled by the BBC.
This is a terrible state of affairs, leaving no popular science programmes on mainstream terrestrial television. We have hour long specials with Horizon on BBC2, and that’s about it. We’re told that the programme name will remain for specials, but the problem with these is that they’ll concentrate on single issues. Science is becoming more and more important in society and yet there is no programming on television covering it.
Only this week, China has announced its first manned space mission, and a dodgy religious sect claims to have cloned the first human. This is the tip of the iceberg, and a science correspondent on the news is not enough.
BBC News Online recently broke out Technology from the Science and Nature section which would suggest that they’re both popular sections. Intrinsically people want and need to know about this stuff.
Certainly ratings have been poor, but then it’s up against ITV’s biggest programme, Coronation Street.
I am well and truly shocked.