The Money Programme is a finance and business affairs television programme on BBC Two which ran between April 1966 and November 2010. It was first broadcast on 5 April 1966 and presented by "commentators" (financial journalists) William Davis, Erskine B. Childers and Joe Roeber. The programme's theme tune was a version of the main title theme from The Carpetbaggers (1964) (which appeared on an album by jazz organist Jimmy Smith). By 1989, the programme was updated with a new theme by George Fenton.
The programme used a magazine style starting in the 1980s, but changed to a single subject documentary in 2001.[1] More recently the programme has formed a partnership with the Open University Business School. The Open University provides input into programmes and supplementary materials written by OU Business School academics.
On 1 June 2007, an episode of the Money Programme called "Virtual World / Real Millions" became the first full BBC programme to have been broadcast inside the virtual world Second Life.[2] That episode featured an interview with Second Life founder and CEO Philip Rosedale amongst others.
This programme was parodied in Series 3 of Monty Python's Flying Circus as the opening sketch of the third episode in that series first airing on the BBC on 3 November 1972.[3]