Why the Booker should be breaking news
The UK's terrestrial television channels have lost confidence in the Booker prize, but the award has become a global phenomenon and should be celebrated at home
Robert McCrum - The Guardian

Once upon a time in the last century, when new fiction was fashionable, the Booker prize (now the Man Booker) was considered Breaking News, upending television schedules, sprawling over newspaper front pages.
Not any more. Yesterday, as I looked through the Sunday papers over breakfast, my thoughts began to turn to Tuesday's prize-giving ceremony in London's Guildhall. Which TV channel would be covering it this year?
Flicking through the schedules, it's as if none of the terrestrial channels is prepared to touch it with a barge pole.

On BBC1 it's been relegated to a segment on the Ten O'Clock News, squeezed in between Holby City and a programme about autism entitled The Autistic Me. On BBC2 there's no space for a programme devoted to one of Britain's cultural highlights. Masterchef, snooker and the Tories dominate the night, with only the prospect of a brief interview with the winner as part of Newsnight.
Turn over to Channel 4 and it's the same story. C4 is devoting Tuesday evening to How to Look Good Naked, Jamie Oliver in the USA, The Big Food Fight and the illusionist Derren Brown.
What about radio? BBC Radio 4, generally a stalwart champion of literary culture, will probably allude to the prize in its news bulletins, but there's no dedicated Booker item, despite the excellent literary journalists on Radio 4's roster such as Martha Kearney. This is all the more remarkable because the chair of the Booker jury is the veteran broadcaster James Naughtie. Where is Jim (or Melvyn Bragg) when we need him?
Not quite able to believe this, I looked a little closer, and discovered a rather different picture, one that speaks volumes about changing cultural perspectives.

If you want television coverage of the Booker prize ceremony, you won't find it on national television – you'll need to join the global audience for a half-hour show to be broadcast on BBC World and the BBC News channel. New fiction may no longer be newsworthy in the UK, but the Booker is still a global phenomenon, and more so, in some senses, than ever before.
This confirms what I've been told by Kate Mosse, the brains (and energy) behind the Orange prize. Kate says that the Orange (and no doubt this is true of the Booker too) inspires new women writers to seek publication in English. Writers and readers apparently respond to the prize in a highly creative way. In other words, she believes the prize has a dynamic effect on literary endeavour that's enhanced by its global audience.

Read the rest of McCrum's piece at The Guardian online.

Footnote:

The 2009 Man Booker Prize winner will be announced within a few hours from now in London and The Bookman will carry the result on this blog as soon as it is announced.