Good thinking, FF.
Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate
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Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View PostGiven the genuinely adult-adult presentation skills of Attenborough, Al Khalili, Beard, Wood, Graham-Dixon, Pappano, Bartlett, Don (and many others) the nearest equivalent to the SK presentation style is closer to Kirstie Allsop at best.
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Originally posted by french frank View PostOne plan of action might be guerrilla attacks on R3's Facebook page, seizing every opportunity (they are limited) to complain. Right at the beginning, Breakfast was one of the key programmes that they were regularly flagging up until the complaints became deafening and they diplomatically stopped mentioning it at all. There is probably more impact in posting there than here. If enough people were doing it, they would find it harder to ban everyone.
I think the nincompoop who runs the FB page has blocked me.
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Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View PostI couldn't possibly comment.
I think the nincompoop who runs the FB page has blocked me.It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.
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I can't find the Breakfast section(has it got merged with EC by default?) so this grumble will have to go here. As some of you will be aware I have a higher tolerance of the failings and irritations of the morning offerings than others who post on here, but even I ended up shouting at the radio this morning.
As Hull's city of culture tenancy finishes shortly there was mention that it would no longer feature on the weather forecast. Fair enough, but then what happens - open up a debate as to whether it should continue to feature. Cue lots of time wasting tweemail readings about that and other towns' claims to be featured.
What has any of this got to do with R3? It's the sort of exchange that belongs on local radio. I've never really seen the point of the four 'capital' weather readouts anyway, as 4 spotchecks can't give anything approaching a usable take on the weather in any given area,and this farce highlighted just how redundant they are.
Added irritation came from a bad outbreak of Petroc's habit of arbitrarily breaking up a sentence at points completely unrelated to the sense of the text, so that we had '....tenor Simon Lepper playing the piano.' as the singer's name had got attached to the previous bit of the sentence. Read the words before you say them for heaven's sake man - it's what you are paid for.
Apologies for grumpiness, but even I have my limits.
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Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View PostI've been thinking about this since I read it, Richard - along with Dude's (otherwise excellent post) "SK is fluent and impressive on television" - and I just don't buy it: in what sense is the gurning to camera, the sub-Worsleyan dressing up, the frequent factual errors and misleading assertions "adult"? Given the genuinely adult-adult presentation skills of Attenborough, Al Khalili, Beard, Wood, Graham-Dixon, Pappano, Bartlett, Don (and many others) the nearest equivalent to the SK presentation style is closer to Kirstie Allsopp at best.
RT admits that he might have overstated the virtues of SK on television, and my guess is that he did so not least because of a feeling that an excess of Kleinbashing is less than life enhancing. I too may have been guilty of overstatement, but I can't really recant any more than that. In my life as a television director, as well as much drama I made a number of arts documentaries, albeit at a time when the genre was both more common on the schedules and also had less requirement to be of excessively popular appeal. Oh happy days. But even then I think that SK would have been sought after as a presenter, because most television is about storytelling, factual every bit as much as fictional; and for this practitioner/viewer at least SK is a professional who can perform to the camera, one whom the camera likes, and one who can tell a story.
Unlike the radio microphone, the camera regularly changes its angle and the size of its view, and the skilled presenter understands and is able to adjust facial and bodily gestures to suit the intimacy or distance of the shot. What appears to F to be gurning might well appear to another viewer as a simple animation to underpin expression, an animation which informs and enhances the energy of the performance. And without energy there can be little audience engagement. Yes, I think that SK's ego is well developed, and that she has a range of performative tricks which you either like, tolerate or dislike: the same applies to most successful presenters and to most successful actors. It's showbiz in the end, less truthful I don't doubt, and much less intimate, than radio where the voice alone is the carrier of the message. SK, while different from the arts practitioners and critics with whom I worked and perhaps less diligent in checking her sources, is a person who animates her subjects on screen in a manner which is a fit with the medium and, like it or not, the zeitgeist of the medium.
You are, of course, entitled to say that this represents the triumph of style over content and that radio requires a greater engagement on the part of the listener as well as a greater engagement on the part of the presenter who has to focus her/his words on a single imagined listener. The actor has another actor off whom to play a line, can sense when to pause, can judge when to alter the pace and intensity of the words. The radio presenter has to create the person whom s/he is addressing and imagine her or his reactions. Which medium is more worthwhile? That’s up to each individual. I am glad to have both, but even although my time as a broadcaster was about matching or counterpointing images to words I am reminded of the apocryphal word of the child who said that radio was best because the pictures were nicer on radio. And to return to the subject, ’de gustibus': there really is no point in comparing SK with other presenters. Their subjects and expertise are different so it's not much more useful than trying to compare apples with pears even if it makes for a good put down.
This is probably too lengthy an excursus from the business of discussing a radio programme, but given the criticism which SK generates I thought it worthwhile to put a programme maker’s slant on the difference between a successful screen career and one in front of a microphone. It is possible to combine both, but, as is the case here, success in one is no guarantee of success in another. It's a pity that R3 executives do not seem to realise that, nor do they realise that the story of EC should be the music and that the storyteller should not become the story.
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Originally posted by oddoneout View PostI can't find the Breakfast section(has it got merged with EC by default?)
The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place.It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.
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Another very thoughtful (professional) reply from Dudelsack. It clarified my own feelings in quite a different direction from the topic in question - i.e. why I'm just not keen on television at all, as a medium.It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.
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The problem for me is that , in a situation where we are paying the wages of the presenter, and allowing them their very favoured status and lifestyle, I really can live without having their very fortunate situation, ( and it IS fortune, there is plenty of talent out there that never gets its chance) rammed down my throat. Displays of ego, vanity, prejudice should have no place either on air, or elsewhere in the media to which BBC presenters have access.
You'd have thought that the BBC might have learned about the dangers of a powerful star system by now, but since the twin pillars of overpaid management and over rated stars ( supported by a very large public revenue stream) still seem to hold the whole edifice up, this apparently isn't the case.I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
I am not a number, I am a free man.
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Originally posted by frenchieAnother very thoughtful (professional) reply from Dudelsack.
Originally posted by Dudelsack View PostWhat is for certain is that we all bring our own unique perspectives and experiences to bear in judging what we think praiseworthy or not; and opinions are just that, not statements of absolute and provable veracity however strongly held.
most television is about storytelling, factual every bit as much as fictional; and for this practitioner/viewer at least SK is a professional who can perform to the camera, one whom the camera likes, and one who can tell a story.
Unlike the radio microphone, the camera regularly changes its angle and the size of its view, and the skilled presenter understands and is able to adjust facial and bodily gestures to suit the intimacy or distance of the shot. What appears to F to be gurning might well appear to another viewer as a simple animation to underpin expression, an animation which informs and enhances the energy of the performance. And without energy there can be little audience engagement. Yes, I think that SK's ego is well developed, and that she has a range of performative tricks which you either like, tolerate or dislike: the same applies to most successful presenters and to most successful actors. It's showbiz in the end, less truthful I don't doubt, and much less intimate, than radio where the voice alone is the carrier of the message. SK, while different from the arts practitioners and critics with whom I worked and perhaps less diligent in checking her sources, is a person who animates her subjects on screen in a manner which is a fit with the medium and, like it or not, the zeitgeist of the medium.
there really is no point in comparing SK with other presenters. Their subjects and expertise are different so it's not much more useful than trying to compare apples with pears even if it makes for a good put down.
It's a pity that R3 executives do not seem to realise that, nor do they realise that the story of EC should be the music and that the storyteller should not become the story.[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]
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Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post:The point is that I believe that the repertoires of the Western Classical traditions merit serious treatment, with the same attention paid to accuracy of fact and respectful presentation of difficult ideas and concepts that is demonstrated in other documentary programmes.
I think that while you and I might happily continue to find common ground while disputing other areas in a continuing dialogue, that would best be done 'off air' as it were. If what we have both written is able to contribute something to the thinking of other contributors to this thread then that should be enough for now.
I hope that you will agree.
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Again, apologies for the off-topic reply, but in my #2712 and #2728, I was referring specifically to (and replying to comments previously made by others including yourself) SK's television presentation, rather than Essential Classics. I would also add that my appreciation of all the presenters I mentioned in those two posts (including the "and many others") is very high, and that I have no wish "to be vocal in the view that the barbarians are at the gate and well and truly through it", leaving aside any attempts to trivialise - again - contradictory comments with such clichéd caricatures.
My position is rather that of someone who demands of Music Documentary programmes made by the BBC the same standards of factual accuracy and expertise that is demonstrated in and expected of documentaries about History, the Sciences, Visual Arts and even Sports commentary - programmes which also face the same "compromises" and confront the same "realpolitik" that you mention, but which do so with far greater integrity and respect for the intelligence of the audience - and with far less glee at "the cutting of corners".[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]
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