Sir David Frost: 6 ways he influenced the broadcasting landscape

Sir David Frost's broadcasting legacy - from TW3 to Frost Over the World.

Tributes have been paid to Sir David Frost, who has died suddenly at the age of 74.

During his lengthy career, Frost was at the forefront of major changes in broadcasting and used his skill, creativity and persistence to provide viewers with some of the most memorable moments in television - and in some cases, world history.

Digital Spy looks back at six ways in which Sir David Frost made his mark on broadcast media below.

Sir David Frost, born 7 April 1939, pictured here in 1972.
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1. That Was the Week That Was (TW3)

That Was the Week That Was - or TW3, as it was often known - made politicians and the establishment fair satirical game in the early 1960s at a time when the Profumo affair was dominating headlines. Commissioned by the BBC, Frost was chosen to anchor the programme by its creator Ned Sherrin.

TW3 lampooned the class system, Britain's waning influence on the world stage (as in the clip below) and foreign affairs, subversively challenging racism, sexism and intolerance along the way. The show frequently overran its time slot, and the BBC's attempts to rein the cast in by scheduling repeats of The Third Man afterwards were thwarted when Frost decided to start reading out plot synopses of the drama at the end of each episode of TW3.

You could argue that TW3 laid down the roots of satirical political comedy which spawned programmes such as Spitting Image, Have I Got News for You, 10 O'Clock Live, Not the Nine O'Clock News and The Daily Show. Its writing team included John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Bill Oddie, Roald Dahl and Kenneth Tynan. The broadcast landscape, and popular culture, certainly would have been very different without it.

2. The Frost Report

After That Was the Week That Was was axed in 1964 due to the rather quaint notion that political satire would unduly influence the result of the UK general election, Frost joined the team for a US version of the series. After TW3's follow-up on the BBC - Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life - failed to find success, he returned to the corporation with The Frost Report in 1967.

Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker on &#39;The Frost Report&#39; in 1968

The programme was credited with introducing John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett to our television screens - the trio's infamous 'Class' sketch has gone down in comedic history. Notably, all of the members of Monty Python bar animator and filmmaker Terry Gilliam worked as writers on The Frost Report, developing their own distinct style and effectively paving the way for Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Frost's charismatic yet authoritative style is in evidence here, as he sends up his own industry's visual failings in a sketch that becomes progressively more absurd over the space of just 60 seconds.

3. The Frost Programme

As his profile increased on both sides of the Atlantic, Frost began to take a more serious direction in the titular Frost Programme for ITV, interviewing political heavyweights and entertainment industry luminaries. One of his most memorable interviews - a half-hour grilling of controversial businessman Dr Emil Savundra, who was later jailed for fraud - has been labelled the first example of 'trial by television' and made shockwaves when it was broadcast in 1967.

Frost starts by setting out the facts for his audience, then gradually turns up the heat on his interviewee, becoming steadily more exasperated by Savundra's lack of remorse as he dubs the studio audience "peasants" and accuses them of asking questions that lack intelligence. "I'm afraid nobody is a peasant," Frost says. "I'm afraid they're the people who gave you your money."

As Savundra repeatedly obfuscates, challenges audience members to take him to court and accuses Fleet Street of misrepresentation, Frost takes him to meet people who lost money as a result of the failure of the Fire, Auto & Marine Insurance Company. Savundra provokes his victims - some of whom lost loved ones in car accidents - and says he has no moral responsibility towards them.

The duo's subsequent face-off ranks among the most dramatic moments in current affairs broadcasting history, and set the tone for a more provocative interviewing style later epitomized by broadcasters such as Robin Day, John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman.

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4. The Nixon interviews

Perhaps Frost's most famous career achievement - and certainly the moment for which he is best known - the Nixon interviews have crossed over into popular culture as a result of Peter Morgan's stage play Frost/Nixon and its 2009 movie adaptation directed by Ron Howard.

Much has been written about Frost's six-hour, four-episode one-on-one with the disgraced former US president, which was filmed over the course of a month. Nixon's publicist believed that he could use television as part of a plan to return to public life after the Watergate scandal and his resignation, and the former president was struggling for money at the time.

David Frost with Richard Nixon in 1977

Frost's decision to pay Nixon for the exclusive interview dissuaded the US television networks and the move was branded an early example of chequebook journalism. So, Frost funded the project himself - selling his shares in London Weekend Television - in the hope that he would make the money back from syndication rights later on.

In an interview with The Guardian two years ago, Frost - who filmed 28 hours of footage with Nixon - recalled: "I said something to him like, 'I think we've not so much been through an interview as been through a whole life', and he said, 'Bit tough for you, was it?' - which was so Nixonian; that the person who was really under pressure was me, not him."

5. Through the Keyhole

Frost would reinvent himself again in the 1980s as host and producer of light entertainment stalwart Through the Keyhole, a show indulging an obsession with celebrity culture that seems ten-a-penny nowadays (and that recently spawned a Keith Lemon-fronted revival on ITV). Frost's co-host Loyd Grossman was given free rein to tour the (always suspiciously tidy) homes of the rich and famous, exhausting the world's supply of adjectives by describing the minutiae of superstar abodes in unnecessarily great detail as he moved from room to room.

Originally conceived as a segment on breakfast TV station TV-am, where Frost was part of the launch team, Through the Keyhole became a stand-alone show in its own right by 1987. Its original run was immensely successful, and the programme had the rare distinction of airing on ITV, Sky1 and BBC One during 20 years on air.

6. Frost Over the World

In later years, Frost became one of the preeminent personalities on Al Jazeera English, the 24-hour news and current affairs channel and sister to the Arabic-language Al Jazeera. His Frost Over the World show, which launched just after the network came on air in 2006, was notable for featuring interviews with prominent international politicians and thinkers - his first episode featured a revelatory and headline-grabbing chat with then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who admitted during the show that the 2003 Iraq War had been a disaster. Blair has since said in a tribute to Frost that "being interviewed by him was always a pleasure but also you knew that there would be multiple stories the next day arising from it".

Frost's unaggressive, almost laid-back interviewing technique again came to the fore during the shows, but, as with Blair, he was not afraid of asking tough questions if the subject warranted the scrutiny, lulling them into a false sense of security before going for the jugular. His great experience, talent and gravitas also helped make Al Jazeera English's name, and Frost Over the World, then a series of one-off interviews by Frost, continued pulling in viewers and producing in-depth, noteworthy conversations until 2013.