Songs of Praise to get a 'makeover'.....

[ardcarp]

...as it was reported on the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme this morning.

Apparently the Beeb is worried that most of its current viewers fall into the 70 and over age-bracket. Under its new format there will be more Gospel, more 'Praise Songs', more interviews and more chat. The programme will no longer be recorded in a cathedral or a single church, but will be a compilation from various locations.

I hardly ever watch SoP, but I know that a lot of folk, maybe those who cannot get to church regularly, love it and make a regular date with the TV on Sunday evening. If those fall into the '70-and-over', so what? That particular demographic is rapidly growing, and if the Beeb cuts them out of SoP (which it surely will) I don't see a vast army of evangelical teenies rushing to fill the void.

See also: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30070899

[french frank]

In theory, yes. But NB from a few months ago.

[Nick Armstrong]

In theory, yes. But NB from a few months ago.

A French relative who was here for 2 months over the summer was desirous of going to Mass every Sunday. It led me to go to a range of RC places in London (and a couple elsewhere) which I've not done before, and it was indeed striking that people of non-Western European heritage seemed to make up the bulk of the congregations, and indeed in a couple of cases, be taking the lead in running everything alongside the priest.

As for SoP, haven't seen it for decades, save for a en passant minute or two changing channels, but surely the multi-cultural/faith writing was on the wall with the appointment of the "BBC's head of religion and ethics, Aaqil Ahmed"? Judging by the sort of cloying, pious-version-of-Blue Peter style I saw on the odd occasion (stand up, Aled Jones), so much the better!

[ardcarp]

I'm having terribly wicked thoughts about the C of E, evamgelical worship and UKIP. Get thee behind me....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Why don't they call a shovel a shovel and call it 'dumbing down'?

in my experience, most of the 'teenies' in happy-clappy services are only there because their parents have dragged them, on the pretext that "young people like it". Some of them may well do, just as some of them like other forms of cultural mass-hysteria.

[DracoM]

Yes, church congregations and their practices in many denominations are necessarily more and more heterogeneous as core indigenous attendees vote by their absence / disbelief, and / or die off, so it will be that there are new and different forms of worship and praise. Whether a tracks, tweets, interviews format so beloved of BBC to show how in touch they are [as they have done with The Choir on R3] will be an adequate substitute / grateful addition to - ahem - SONGS of Praise, I cannot guess. Most of the music being written for new forms is so embarrassingly simplistic around crass doggerel, the Beeb may have given themselves a truly impossible job of bigging up what cannot bear very much examination.

[Mary Chambers]

Why don't they call a shovel a shovel and call it 'dumbing down'?

.

It's been dumbed down for ages, and a straightforward 'Anglican service' is very rarely part of it. I used to enjoy it occasionally when it had what I think of as proper hymns (i.e. not happy clappy 'worship songs'), but recently I've been switching off quickly. There's a tendency to use the Katherine Jenkins type of singer when they have solos.

[french frank]

Why don't they call a shovel a shovel and call it 'dumbing down'?

in my experience, most of the 'teenies' in happy-clappy services are only there because their parents have dragged them, on the pretext that "young people like it". Some of them may well do, just as some of them like other forms of cultural mass-hysteria.

Isn't it as much a question of cultural changes in society than an attempt, exclusively, to get a much younger audience ('teenies'). I think the magazine format is more idiotic than widening the range of music and venues. In fact, totally idiotic. Like the change from Choirworks to The Choir as it has become now.

"We want to appeal to a different Christian audience, who may not necessarily have seen themselves every week on Songs of Praise in the past. Sometimes you have to find a way of reaching out to that audience to say, 'this really is for you.'"

Probably okay?

The show will also change to a magazine format that reflects what the programme describes as the reality of Christian faith across the country.

[ardcarp]

I think a crumb of comfort was tossed....

The programme will still feature the more traditional choirs and hymns of worship for its current audience, in the hope that it will be able to celebrate many more years in good voice.

.....the last half of which might be open to interpretation.

[amateur51]

SoP always seemed to mark the end of the weekend when I was a teenager - it seemed to coincide with bathnight (yes!), wet hair, unfinished homework and a test in something-or-other the following day

[alycidon]

My association with SOP goes back to the 1960s and IMO it has just been a process of gradual deterioration. I deplore all the interviews, and other time-wasting devices. The programme is only thirty-five minutes long, so is it too much to ask that we just have hymns and nothing else, which was how the programme went in its heyday.

I also watch the S4c hymn-singing programme, Dechrau Canu, Dechrau Canmol, and it, too, is beginning to go along the interview line - in the space of twenty-five minutes we are lucky to get five hymns sometimes.

Anyhow, if anything happy-clappy, one more step along the world I go, shine Jesus shine, rubbish comes on, I hit the off button pronto. I am not looking forward to 1610hrs this afternoon!

[ardcarp]

SoP always seemed to mark the end of the weekend when I was a teenager - it seemed to coincide with bathnight (yes!), wet hair

Yes, and I'll bet you had clean underwear at least once a month.

[mangerton]

I took part in my first SOP in 1970. I've just searched for the choir's name on the Radio Times genome, and it's interesting to see what we did all those years ago, either in churches, theatres, or - more usually - in the BBC studios in Queen Margaret Drive Glasgow. It was a "proper" programme then, recorded more or less in transmission order, with very few re-takes, and then only for technical reasons. There were also quite a number of SOPs which were "Scotland only", as BBC Scotland frequently opted out of the UK wide programme. These don't appear, yet anyway, on the RT genome, as it uses London's RT.

[Nick Armstrong]

SoP always seemed to mark the end of the weekend when I was a teenager - it seemed to coincide with bathnight (yes!), wet hair, unfinished homework and a test in something-or-other the following day

That's a very familiar scenario...! It formed part of the lugubrious sequence of programmes on BBC1 on a Sunday, exemplified here:

http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1973-10-21

As well as SoP, another religious programme, a charity appeal, Ask Aspel, often that adult literacy programme On the Move with Bob Hoskins , the tea time serial (sometimes this was exciting, like Tom Brown's Schooldays - but usually I recall it being Pollyanna or Ballet Shoes ), and then the evening serial like Onedin Line, The Brothers or Owen MD which were dreary but one watched faute de mieux... And then early to bed, school tomorrow


PS mangie, this has obviously set us off simultaneously having a ferret round the BBC genome site!

[french frank]

I think a crumb of comfort was tossed....

The programme will still feature the more traditional choirs and hymns of worship for its current audience, in the hope that it will be able to celebrate many more years in good voice.

.....the last half of which might be open to interpretation.

So with R3. One might add:"If its current audience bothers to listen to a programme clearly targeted on others ..."