Axing of BBC Singers and related cuts

[EnemyoftheStoat]

The release indicates the money will be spent on different things vs not spent at all.

Aye, right...

[french frank]

Lots of tweets about this on twitter, will be interesting to see what exactly the bbc are intending to spend the money now available on.

Not that interesting. It clearly isn't going to be spent on anything to do with the Performing Groups or classical music. The whole point of the cuts is to make savings, to spend less, not to spend it on something else.

[smittims]

Really something should have been done about the licence fee as soon as the BBC was no longer the sole broadcaster, i.e with the start of ITV. But it kept being put off and of course it's only got worse with Satellite TV and the internet.

The unfairness of making the BBC pay for the free over-75 licence is that originally it was nothing to do with the BBC as such, but was a Government initiative about loneliness, it being reckoned that over-75s relied more on TV for contact with the outside world; it wasn't primarily a financial thing.

And the estimate of the cost is based on the assumption that all those people would buy licences if they weren't free. A lot of them wouldn't, and have said so (among other things in a Radio Times survey), because they feel too much TV just isn't for them but for younger people. I regard my TV licence as paying for Radio 3. If I didn't share a house with someone who loves TV I wouldn't renew my licence, because BBC TV has nothing to offer me. .

[antongould]

Not that interesting. It clearly isn't going to be spent on anything to do with the Performing Groups or classical music. The whole point of the cuts is to make savings, to spend less, not to spend it on something else.

True, very true indeed ff

[Vox Humana]

The only reason this is happening is because of this government's continual obsession with penny-pinching. I ask again: with public expenditure for all publicly funded bodies being cut, cut and cut again, How, exactly, are we benefiting from all this cost saving? Is anyone's lifestyle improved and, if so, how? If they sacked Gary Lineker, they could employ the BBC Singers at least twice over and still have money to spare. I know where my priorities would lie.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The only reason this is happening is because of this government's continual obsession with penny-pinching. I ask again: with public expenditure for all publicly funded bodies being cut, cut and cut again, How, exactly, are we benefiting from all this cost saving? Is anyone's lifestyle improved and, if so, how? If they sacked Gary Lineker, they could employ the BBC Singers at least twice over and still have money to spare. I know where my priorities would lie.

The reason that the Beeb is obsessed with keeping Gary L is because Match Of The Day and to a lesser extent GL himself gets high approval ratings from C2DE especially midlanders and northerners. That’s a demographic the BBC scores pretty badly on. Of course his latest tweet -fest might damage those approval ratings. I wouldn’t want to presume the opinions of that demographic on the refugee issue but I suspect that they are not wholly in alignment with Lineker’s. He could earn double what he’s earning now at Sky or BT sport. He knows that and his current. “employer” (without prejudice to his multi million pound tax case ) knows that,

[kernelbogey]

Deleted post

[Simon B]

The release indicates the money will be spent on different things vs not spent at all.

To borrow a quote from the documentary series (as it turns out) W1A: "Good luck with that".

A few broader things:

i) The full text of the BBC release on this is an absolute masterpiece of a genre recognisable to anyone who's worked for a large organisation - that of "Resounding Bollocks".

ii) While the news is deeply depressing to the waning set of us who care about such things, it's surprising that anyone is surprised by the broad upshot. Big cuts to the BBC performing groups have been mooted for some time - this may be just the start. IMV the impact of what is already announced is being underestimated.

iii) An aspect of the broadest context is "interesting" - to me at any rate. The current govt is clearly itching to abolish the license fee/govt-funding-via-some-other-route, if not the BBC itself. They are largely inextricable in the end. In terms of a Public Service Broadcasting justification for the very existence of the BBC, there is little it still does which is more PSB-ish than R3 and the performing groups. Taking an axe to these thus seems an effective way to alienate some of the diminishing band of people who are natural supporters of its continued existence. The question "What's the point of it?" becomes harder still to answer. Whether this is cause or unintentional effect is instructive to consider...

In summary: This is probably nothing compared with what might be expected come 2027...

[Frances_iom]

...Big cuts to the BBC performing groups have been mooted for some time - this may be just the start. ...
In summary: This is probably nothing compared with what might be expected come 2027...

I have suggested this for some time - all the noise from the present Government indicates that they believe this is a vote winner for them as well as removing a nominal 'impartial' media outlet without restraining in any way the right-wing tabloids whose owners in many cases have a financial interest in those channels that would benefit from the demise of the Beeb.

I don't however think the Beeb will disappear, merely revert to a profitable disney-lookalike serving the intellectual equivalent of junk food with a right wing bias in a very watered down news output.

[kernelbogey]

I'm not a great follower of the Govt v BBC shenanigans. But it seems to me that cuts have been forced on the BBC by Government actions and implied threats. It's not remarkable that popular and populist broadcasting would be protected by BBC management in order to placate the Government philistines, and reward the licence fee payers who want Gary Lineker and lots of soaps - et cetera. There is also the BBC's 'we know best' syndrome often remarked on in this forum. I don't believe that it's helpful to regard these moves as being against the arts or against music. More like the BBC managers pushing against the point of least resistance.

[Bryn]

This was recently posted on FB by Ilan Volkov: https://slippedisc.com/2023/03/exclu...of-excellence/

[Bryn]

Again, as linked o by Ilan Volkov: https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-pl...35603030-en-US

[Dave2002]

I despair of this country. This is an act of utter vandalism. I know that the BBC Singers have been criticised - and perhaps at times correctly - but there are very few groups anywhere that can perform complex works with such professionalism and accuracy.

[peterthekeys]

Petition against the closure here: https://chng.it/LVKdstCZBH

We could also do with one against the cuts to the orchestras.

Something crossed my mind about this.

Obviously the suits who put the plans for the cuts together would have known that by far the most controversial of them was the axing of the BBC Singers. They would also know that it would save the least amount of money.

So maybe the intention all along has been to lay out the plans, wait for the storm to build up over the BBC Singers aspect of it, and then say: "OK, we've listened to you all - it was a bad idea and we're really sorry", and reinstate the BBC Singers. Whilst all the other cuts - the ones which from the bean-counting point of view really matter - go through with little challenge, as everyone was looking in the other direction.

Would they do something like that? Ermmm - yep. Most of the current crop of BBC top honchos seem to have been bankers before they joined the Beeb. 'Nuff said.

[Pulcinella]

Good letter in today's Times (unable to post link) from John Bridcut, who has been working with the BBCSSO on a Tippett documentary.