Chris Patten on Night Waves 26/10/11

[aeolium]

Just an alert that CP is on NW tonight after the Po3 finishes, around 10 pm - supposedly the discussion includes the role of the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0167v0q

[french frank]

Thanks. That's about as close as anyone will get to the BBC Chairman.

[aeolium]

What a poor interview that was. Disappointingly it spent a lot of time on Patten's earlier career and the Hong Kong period. Even when it got round to the BBC it was a mixture of nitpicking and I thought rather irrelevant questions from Dodd and platitudes from Patten who at no point really defined what he meant by quality public service broadcasting and at no point had any critical comments about any BBC programming. Dodd is in any case an extremely irritating interviewer, thrusting himself into the foreground of any interview and throwing out literary quotes and metaphors rather than focussing on a simple and direct approach.

[PatrickOD]

Exactly, aeolium. I didn't like to say so, but that was what I thought too. Chris Patten had to struggle at times to get back to the question asked. And the whole interview never looked like getting near to a specific point that would interest R3 listeners.

[DracoM]

Dodd is the most exasperatingly deaf interviewer. He seems to go into every interview with screeds of notes, bons mots that he is going to get into the footage come hell or high water, and once he's done this bit he seems to be spending time reading his notes for the next segment while the interviewee is answering a question Dodd seems already to have forgotten he asked. The interviews are all about him, and not the issue. Love to have heard Patten being interviewed by Andrew Marr.

[french frank]

And the whole interview never looked like getting near to a specific point that would interest R3 listeners.

And given that it did focus so much on his past career, what was the motive for inviting him on to a Radio 3 programme just at this moment? (Call me cynical ... ) Dodd clearly hadn't been told to focus on DQF - which would have made sense - and what there was wasn't very enlightening.

[aeolium]

Love to have heard Patten being interviewed by Andrew Marr.

But Marr, like Dodd, is someone too much enmeshed within the BBC - is he really likely to ask penetrating questions about the BBC's direction, and the role of the Trust? I'd rather have had someone (or more than one) from outside the BBC interviewing - Gillian Reynolds perhaps.

Dodd clearly hadn't been told to focus on DQF

Or do you mean, Dodd clearly had been told not to focus on DQF?

[DracoM]

At one point Dodd very specifically said that he did NOT want to get involved in local details which, I imagine, is precisely what most listeners to R3 DID want and which all R3 managers did NOT want. So guess which set of questions we got?


Pah!