BBC Arena

Arena
Genre	Documentary
Created by	Humphrey Burton
Written by	Various
Directed by	Various
Opening theme	"Another Green World" by Brian Eno
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	over 600
Editor(s)	Anthony Wall (1985-present) Anthony Wall and Nigel Finch (1985-1995) Alan Yentob (1979-1985) Leslie Megahey (1977-1978) Various (1975-1977)
Production company(s)	BBC
Release
Original network	BBC Two (1975-2011) BBC Four (2003-present)
External links
BBC Four - Arena

Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC since 1 October 1975. Voted by TV executives in Broadcast magazine as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has produced over six hundred episodes directed by, among others, Frederick Baker, Jana Boková, Jonathan Demme, Nigel Finch, Mary Harron, Vikram Jayanti, Vivian Kubrick, Paul Lee, Adam Low, James Marsh, Leslie Megahey, Volker Schlondorff, Martin Scorsese, Julian Temple, Anthony Wall, Leslie Woodhead, and Alan Yentob.

The current series editor is Anthony Wall, who has edited Arena since 1985.

The arts strand Arena was initially created in 1975 by the BBC Head of Music & Arts at that time, Humphrey Burton, when he founded a magazine named Arena exploring art, design, filmmaking, and theatre. In 1977, under producer and director Leslie Megahey, the strand divided into Arena Theatre and Arena Art and Design, and Arena became less of a magazine and more a home for short, distinctive and stylish films about mainly British theatre and visual arts. In 1978 Megahey became editor of Omnibus and Alan Yentob, who had been supervising Arena Theatre, took over and the two themes were merged. The series, relaunched in January 1979 and renamed simply Arena, began to adopt a format of single subject essays. It earned great critical acclaim for its enthusiasm for the popular as well as the high arts. During Yentob's time as editor, Arena had six BAFTA nominations and three BAFTA awards.

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