BBC scraps 'confusing Omnibus' but stands by arts

The BBC insisted yesterday it remained committed to serious arts coverage, despite announcing it was scrapping its flagship programme Omnibus.

The public broadcaster is to drop the arts magazine show, which has won 12 Bafta awards in its 35-year history, after market research revealed viewers were confused about what it did.

Lorraine Heggessey, the BBC1 controller, has until now used the programme to counter criticism of the corporation's commitment to in-depth arts coverage.

A spokeswoman for the BBC said yesterday that the programme was being scrapped because its name was not encouraging people to watch it. She said: "It was really about renaming it and using a word that appealed to a broad audience. Some viewers did not understand what Omnibus was."

The show will be replaced next year by a series of 12 arts programmes a year, provisionally called Imagine, which the spokeswoman said would continue Omnibus's tradition of serious arts coverage. The BBC, which has been accused of relying on celebrity for ratings success, has commissioned a second series of Rolf on Art, in which Rolf Harris discusses painting. The first series had an average audience of 6.1 million, the largest for a series on visual arts. Last week's edition of Omnibus, featuring the writer Patricia Cornwell investigating the identity of Jack the Ripper, had an audience of 3.3 million.

Yesterday Sir Jonathan Miller, the editor of the BBC arts programme Monitor in the 1970s, said the new series would continue the emphasis on celebrity. "There is no real coverage of the life of the mind any more. If it is covered there has to be starry names involved. There is a perception that unless there is a 16th- century artist like Michelangelo featured no one will watch it because they will not have heard of the artist. It is not simply a patronising view of audiences, it is inaccurate," he said.

The BBC said it was committed to investing £50m in arts programmes this year, taking up 250 hours of air-time.