Jeremy Vine stepping down from Panorama

Jeremy Vine is stepping down as presenter of BBC One’s current affairs programme Panorama after four years in the role.

Jeremy Vine is stepping down as presenter of BBC One’s current affairs programme Panorama after four years in the role, reports Media Guardian. Vine took over presenting duties on the investigative programme in 2007 when it was moved to a prime-time Monday evening slot by then BBC One controller Peter Fincham.

The show had been moved out of a prime-time slot in 2000 when the BBC moved its 9 pm news programme to 10 pm, the slot that Panorama occupied on Monday evenings. It was moved to Sunday nights following the news in a slot the critics attacked as “graveyard”.

Panorama has recently been criticised by some within the press for broadcasting an edition of corruption at Fifa days before a decision on the 2018/2022 World Cup. Critics have claimed that the UK lost the bids for the World Cup because of the show but considering only two members of Fifa voted in favour of the UK its likely Panorama had nothing to do with the lost vote. Also The Sunday Times had also published a similar article some weeks before which also criticised Fifa.

Vine’s exit from Panorama as a regular presenter – he will return for specials – will coincide with a planned revamp of the current affairs programme by editor Tom Giles.

Panorama is the longest-running current affairs programme in the world having launched in the 1950s and been presented down the years by Richard Dimbleby, David Dimbleby, Robin Day and Fiona Bruce. World In Action/Tonight on ITV and Dispatches on Channel Four are widely seen as their respective broadcasters answer to Panorama.