On This Day, 1975: The birth of Arena
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Spitting Image creators Peter Fluck and Roger Law were featured on Arena in 1980
On 1 October 1975, the very first edition of Arena was aired on BBC2.
The programme was billed as the "first regular television series to be devoted exclusively to the theatre", while it also had another strand covering the visual arts.
The two stands merged into one in the late 1970s, and the series has become synonymous with its thought-provoking documentaries drawing in a whole host of arts luminaries, including Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol and Clint Eastwood.
The programme's famous opening title sequence has been judged to be one of the most influential of all time.
In more recent years, it has developed an online presence called the Arena Hotel, allowing visitors to enjoy some of the wealth of material it has produced in the last 40 years, amounting to some 600 films.
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