Hotel Babylon was a 1996 late night music programme hosted by

Dani Behr Dani Behr is an English former singer, actress, voice-over artist and television presenter. Early life Behr was born in Mill Hill, London, of South African Jewish descent. Her father is a partner in London estate agents Behr & Butchoff. Behr ...

, and made by

LWT London Weekend Television (LWT; now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm (7:00 pm from 1968 ...

for the

ITV network ITV, legally known as Channel 3, is a British free-to-air public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television network. It is branded as ITV1 in most of the UK except for central and northern Scotland, where it is b ...

's '' ITV Night Time'' strand. It was created jointly by the production company

Planet 24 Planet 24 is a television production company, which produced ''The Big Breakfast'' and '' The Word'' for Channel 4. It had an animation division called Impossible TV, founded in 1997. History Bob Geldof and Tony Boland (television producer) fo ...

& brewer

Heineken Heineken Lager Beer (), or simply Heineken (), is a Dutch pale lager beer with 5% alcohol by volume produced by the Dutch brewing company Heineken N.V. Heineken beer is sold in a green bottle with a red star. History On 15 February 1864, ...

. The premise of the programme is a mock

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

where musicians and bands visited, and would be invited to play in the hotel's lounge and be interviewed in the adjected bar.

Controversy

Hotel Babylon was noted as one of the first commercially associated programmes on broadcast television in the United Kingdom. This is where not only the sponsor just sponsored the programme which was common on commercial television, but actually have some significant control in way it is directed. This was before the rules on commercial sponsorship and

product placement Product placement, also known as embedded marketing, is a marketing technique where references to specific brands or products are incorporated into another work, such as a film or television program, with specific promotional intent. Much of t ...

were liberalised in 2011. Before the programme was about to launch, a fax from the head of the advertising department of Heineken's headquarters in the Netherlands to programme's British producers was leaked to the ''Independent'' newspaper. In the fax, it criticised the programme by saying that the programme in question didn't emphasise the company's signature products, that the studio audience was too edgy with not enough "normal people", and had too many "

negroes In the English language, the term ''negro'' (or sometimes ''negress'' for a female) is a term historically used to refer to people of Black African heritage. The term ''negro'' means the color black in Spanish and Portuguese (from Latin ''niger ...

". This caused an outrage both within the programme and outside with noted black MP

Bernie Grant Bernard Alexander Montgomery Grant (17 February 1944 – 8 April 2000) was a British politician who was the Member of Parliament for Tottenham, London, from 1987 to his death in 2000. He was a member of the Labour Party. Biography Early ye ...

asking for an explanation. This led to a heavy cloud over with the programme, and it only broadcast a single series.

References

External links

*
''Hotel Babylon''
at

BFI The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves filmmaking and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, d ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hotel Babylon (music programme) Hotel Babylon (music programme) Hotel Babylon (music programme) Hotel Babylon (music programme) Hotel Babylon (music programme) Hotel Babylon 1996 controversies Advertising in the United Kingdom