contacting us this time was gary stewart and hejoins me now. thank you so much, gary.t prompted you about that item on gladiators to contact us? having turned on the news and seen the severity of what is happening in the world, i do appreciate that a lot of news programmes will have a lighter announcement at the end of the programme. but that for me is something like what i would call skateboarding duck type territory and to have the self—promotion and self—congratulation, which is what it felt like of putting on the gladiators final — inserting it into a news item — i do not think that was event appropriate. gary, i'm going to put to you an argument that it's been a big success with multi—generational audiences, which is quite rare in television these days. and several news organisations did cover the success of gladiators as a cultural story. even allowing what you said, could you make the exception that this was fair enough in this case? no, i believe this is light entertainment. my concern would be, where do we stop with this? do we say who won this week's house of

contacting us this time was gary stewart and hejoins me now. thank you so much, gary.at it was much more the bbc saying to itself, "we've had a hit revival. now let's self—promote and say how fabulous it all went for ourselves." if i wanted to know who had won that, i would watch the programme and i did not. yeah. as you heard that other viewers complained about items on the drama this town and on the david attenborough series. do you think there is an issue with the bbc�*s self—promoting masquerading as news more often? i am concerned that i am seeing more and more of this occurring within certainly the news items. and if you watch the news channel, there are certain promotions prior... for example, between the weather and the news upcoming. and i'm watching this thinking, well, am i watching a commercial station here or am i watching the bbc? so that sort of self—promotion is disturbing. i do feel there are genuine programmes that can be talked about something like a panorama or when they have an issue that they're there alerting us all to. it's important that that i