Entertainment For Lively Minds
BBC radio - a self-made crisis
I know the Beeb is running scared from its enemies in the media and their incoming Tory government chums, but their "plans" for BBC radio start to look less like a strategy and more like a panic response with every passing day.
Having justified the absurd recommendation to axe 6 Music - a distinctive radio station with no viable commercial alternative - with a vague promise to make Radio 2 more appealing to 6 Music listeners, Mark Thompson then comes out and says Radio 2 should primarily be appealing to "the over 55s". Huh? And now they've taken the even more insane decision to cut the contribution of Radcliffe and Maconie - Radio 2's most distinctive, musically literate broadcasters - by 25%.
Exactly which chimp is calling the shots here? It's like they've listened to criticism that the BBC shouldn't be stepping on the toes of commercial radio and then taken an axe to all the stuff that explicitly doesn't do that.
Any why even start down this process of self-disembowelling anyway? The BBC is the finest radio broadcaster in the country, possibly the world (have YOU ever heard a British non-BBC station that wasn't utterly unlistenable? Of course you haven't) and now they're deliberately putting a match to all that's good about their output, instead of standing up to their critics and mounting a passionate defence. It's the broadcasting equivalent of self-harming.
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I agree with that man ^^^^^^^
The BBC currently is led by a cabal of cowards who can't see past the next Murdoch paper spread. They are also run by telly people; Tim Davie the director of audio (and therefore ultimate radio boss) is a former marketing man who has never in his life worked in the radio.
This means that radio has no effective protection from within the BBC from people who actually understand the medium through working in it. Jenny Abramski, his predecessor, was a former Today programme editor who appreciated the contribution radio gives to UK cultural life, who cherished the fact that it gives a lot but costs very little in the larger scheme of things and who protected it ferociously within the corporation. Tim Davie? Talks a bunch of managerial jargon. That is all.
Still. BBC 3 ought to survive...
Bah
That explains a lot: he appeared on Feedback on Radio 4 and I was aghast at the fact that here was a bloke in charge of all BBC Radio who didn't actually appear to like the medium very much, to judge by the things he said.
(In the back of my mind, I could hear the voice of Alan Partridge saying "Let me be on the telly...I want to be on the telly").
Utterly, utterly perverse
...really, words fail me. They've won several awards; surely, the rational thing to do is capitalise on that?
18 months ago I ditched my telly, mainly because of the repetetive, formulaic crap on BBC1 & 2. Then the 6 Music cancellation, now this... it just confirms that the BBC isn't interested in my demographic anymore.
yet still
somehow the BBC find the money to make "Hotter Than My Daughter"
plus
!Snog, Marry, Avoid".
Clearly not for very much, I give them that.
Avoid
I prefer to choose option three.
All the logic is flawed
The main thrust of the Strategic Review seems to me that the BBC should not be catering for 6Music listeners at all. It's not really a case of them transferring the listenership to Radio 2 as the SR also states that Radio 2 should appeal to an even older demographic than it does at the moment and that one of the ways of doing it is to reduce the music output to 50%.
Obviously this is all going to happen as surely they wouldn't have spent huge sums on the review without ensuring that a. there is a commercial broadcaster that thinks they can "be" 6Music, and b. this is what the licence payers want.... would they?
All we can do...
...is make our voices heard. If you haven't filled out the consultation on the SR, do it now:
https://consultations.external.bbc.co.uk/departments/bbc/bbc-strategy-re...
I've been hectoring all my Facebook friends about this for weeks, and hopefully a good few of them have done it. It's the only way the licence fee payer gets a voice. If the Trust chooses to stick its fingers in its ears, well, at least we tried.
Obviously it is time
to commission Monkey Tennis:
"I'm under a cow!"
Well, if it all goes belly up, at least there's the corporate market for ex-BBC talent to fall back on...
Dumb Britannia.
It would seem that the yardstick for British culture is increasingly becoming how dumb is the stupidest citizen and setting the artistic achievement bar just below it.The rot set in long ago.As a nation many are ill educated or just plain suspicious of anything that smacks of the intellectual.We erect statues of Kings,Queens,Generals and Politico's not Artists,Philosophers or Thinkers.The philosophy of Market Forces has permeated areas of the Nation's life that should be protected from it's malign influence and poisoned the well.We are in real danger now of becoming a Nation that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.Depresses the hell out of me.The connection to the thread may seem tenuous but I believe this mindset drives much of these infuriating,badly conceived ideas.