“We felt betrayed by the BBC,” said Barnes, “and we thought, ‘We’ll show them.’ We wanted to give the management a black eye.” Blue Peter and Play School were at the forefront of the battle and the children’s department was restored three years later. Together, they also staged a fightback when, in 1964, BBC television’s children’s department lost its autonomy, and a new “family department” was formed out of children’s and women’s programmes. He insisted that if, in her quest for perfection, she was ruthless, it was “on behalf of the audience”. Barnes was a great defender of his boss, who held an authoritarian grip on the show. The following year, when Baxter was made the show’s editor – a new title – Barnes and Gill became producers. In 1964, the show increased from one to two episodes a week and added John Noakes alongside Trace and Singleton. Viewers voted to name her Petra, the female form of Peter, and she became the first in a long line of Blue Peter pets. There’s no point in upsetting children needlessly.” In freezing snow, he and Baxter drove around London pet shops in his Mini and found a lookalike in Lewisham. “We’ll have to get a substitute,” said Barnes. Instead, Leonard Chase assumed the temporary role, with Barnes assisting him, and hired Valerie Singleton to present alongside Christopher Trace.
Biddy Baxter, who landed the job, had to serve three months’ notice in her BBC radio producer’s job, and fought off a suggestion that Barnes should produce Blue Peter until her arrival, concerned that he would not want to give way to “a girl from radio”. Caretaker producers tried to steady the ship while the search went on for a permanent replacement in 1962.īarnes, then working on other BBC programmes as a production assistant, was turned down for the role.
He was an occasional floor manager during the show’s first four years as it sailed choppy waters with the departure of two presenters and its original producer. He put John Craven, dressed casually in a sweater, in the presenter’s chair, initially for a six-week experiment, and the programme went on to become a BBC institution, even breaking major international news stories such as the disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.īarnes, who has died aged 92 after contracting Covid-19, also made a significant, long-lasting contribution as one of those who might be described as a godparent to Blue Peter, which was launched in 1958.
He launched the news programme for young viewers in 1972, after discovering that only 0.7% of his target age group watched TV news: “It was a man in a suit, talking, and it was boring,” he said. Edward Barnes’s greatest innovation, before he became head of BBC television children’s programmes from 1978 until 1986, lay in creating Newsround.