Joan Maureen "Biddy" Baxter, MBE (born 25 May 1933) is a British television producer, best known for editing the long-running BBC TV children's magazine show Blue Peter from 1962 to 1988.
[2]: 21 She was educated at Wyggeston Girls' Grammar School, Leicester and St Mary's, a women's college at Durham University, where she studied between 1952 and 1955.
[4] After graduating with a social sciences degree, Baxter joined the BBC as a studio manager in 1955, becoming a producer of schools' English programmes in 1958,[5] and of Listen with Mother in 1961.
First broadcast on 16 October 1958,[6] Blue Peter had originally been devised by John Hunter Blair, but it was Baxter and her deputy Edward Barnes, later head of BBC children's television, who developed the format into a successful programme, initially on a budget of only £180 per edition.
[11] After returning from Hong Kong in 1993, Baxter continued to work for the BBC, as a consultant to directors-general Michael Checkland and John Birt.
[18][19] In September 2008, Baxter expressed dissatisfaction with the way Blue Peter was being run and said that she believed that the BBC was trying to close the programme down.
Her choices were "Deo Gracias" from A Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten, the final chorus from the St Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach, "Milord" by Édith Piaf, "Beat Out Dat Rhythm on a Drum" from the musical Carmen Jones, the "Andante quasi lento e cantabile" from the Carol Symphony by Victor Hely-Hutchinson, the Allegro from the String Quintet in C Major by Franz Schubert, the Allegro from the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo and the "Papageno Duet" from The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.