Can the lame walk?

BBC bosses ordered Endemol to improve dramatically the programmes they are producing for the Fame Academy. A BBC spokeswoman confirmed there would be changes to the show's format starting on the second Friday show.

Rumours had indicated that a senior manager at the BBC thought the first show on Friday was "f*****g crap". Judging by the language that was probably Greg Dyke, the BBC's director general. Even head teacher Richard Park thought the first show was dreadful. He said on Radio 5 Live: "We are 3-0 down at half-time. I give Friday's show 15 out of 100."

The BBC has committed to run Fame Academy, now tagged Lame Academy, to run for another two months. The series is costing £4.5 million. Fame Academy started on 4th October with over-excited presenters and songs from the students sung out of tune. The audience was a disappointing 4.6 million. That had sunk to 3.6 million by Thursday's show, only 18% of the available TV audience at 7 o'clock.

The shows on BBC Choice have been even worse and mostly feature a couple of presenters chatting to each other. The students themselves are rarely seen. One guest on the first show informed us that Chris was a "plank" before we had even heard Chris perform anything on his own.

The second Friday show did turn out to be much better than the one the week before. The presenters were less manic and the singing was very much improved. But Endemol clearly have still got a lot of work to do. The production team showed Patrick Kielty chatting to someone during a live song - and at the end of the show a single production assistant was handing out microphones - after the song had begun.

Head teacher Richard Park, looking and sounding more and more like Alan Hansen, said: "We can do a lot better."