Oh good, it's time for the blog's first visit of 2018 to the BBC Genome. This time round, the search phrase was "harry potter", but what I was particularly interested in was the way the launch of each new book was covered.
For the first two books, anyone vaguely familiar with the franchise's history may not be totally surprised to learn that they didn't get any coverage on the BBC (as far as I can tell). The first mention of "Harry Potter" in the listings (apart from orchestra conductors in the 1930s who happened to have that name) is in February 1999, five months before the release of Prisoner of Azkaban, when J. K. Rowling does an interview for Blue Peter. Sure enough, Prisoner is the first book where the release gets any kind of coverage, popping up on Saturday Review. Other items of interest start popping up around this time too, with J. K. appearing on Front Row to discuss "the publishing phenomenon of the year" and choosing her favourite poetry and prose on With Great Pleasure.
Goblet of Fire also receives Saturday Review and Front Row coverage (the former on the day of release!), and also a Newsround special. It also shows up again in Saturday Review's end-of-year round-up.
There was, of course, quite the gap between books 4 and 5. In the interim, J. K. appeared on Blue Peter again to take viewers' questions, and, of course, the first two films came out. Such was the anticipation for the first movie that it's noted in the listing for John Hurt's interview with Michael Parkinson months before it comes out. The films get all the coverage you'd expect, with CBBC running 'Wizard Week' - presumably a tie-in, as that week's Blue Peter included coverage of the film. I wonder if the advertising standards agency got involved there. Film 2001 and Newsnight Review both review it, and Ian Hislop gives his verdict on Front Row. There's even a special documentary on BBC One, JK Rowling: Harry Potter and Me. There's even a related challenge on The Generation Game. Much the same coverage is repeated for the second film, with Saturday Review noting that only those on another planet would be unaware of its existence.
Fast forward to 2003, and in March French and Saunders inflicted upon us their Comic Relief spoof, Harry Potter and the Chamberpot of Azerbaijan. Moving swiftly on, in June Order of the Phoenix hits the shelves, and it's marked with a Newsnight special. Various things of interest crop up after that, including the franchise's first appearance as a Mastermind specialist subject. The RT also seems to take every time Stephen Fry appears on television to remind us that you can buy him reading OOTP on CD for £70, or cassette for £60. The thing I find most surprising about this is that they were still releasing things on cassette at this point.
Later in the year, the BBC ran The Big Read, a survey of the public to find the nation's best-loved novel, with celebrities recording TV shows advocating their top choice. Fay Ripley off of Cold Feet promoted Goblet of Fire for this purpose. Other celebrity advocates included Alan Titchmarsh promoting Rebecca and Lorraine Kelly for Jane Eyre. Goblet of Fire finished fifth after over 750,000 votes were received, being beaten by The Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, His Dark Materials, Pride and Prejudice and - the overall winner - The Lord of the Rings. The first three books also featured in the top 25, at positions 22 through 24 (Order was ineligible due to being released after the competition started). The franchise ended the year on the BBC with Home Secretary David Blunkett choosing the novels as his specialist subject on Celebrity Mastermind. He did not win.
2004 saw the release of the third film, with publicity from all the usual places; later on, the show appears as a Mastermind subject for the third time in less than a year, this time on Junior Mastermind, and a bizarre-sounding documentary narrated by Tom Baker tells the story of The Man Who Banned Harry Potter. Finally, on Christmas Day the first film premieres on BBC One. The release of the third book in 2005 is curiously muted, seemingly with only Blue Peter getting in on the action; there's also not that much beyond a Jonathan Ross interview for the fourth film. At the end of the year, though, J. K. Rowling is interviewed by Stephen Fry for Radio 4, a programme you can still listen to on iPlayer at time of writing.
With no film or book released in 2006, it's a quiet year apart from the Children's Party at the Palace, which features pre-filmed contributions from the cast in character as part of the Hunt for the Queen's Handbag. 2007, as you can imagine, is a big one, with J. K. being interviewed on Jonathan Ross and a Blue Peter special. There were three films after that, of course, with promotion on much the same channels, but most of which we can't cover due to the Genome cutting off at the end of 2009. So that's the end of that.
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