Last word additions to closed thread by 'The Management'

[Beef Oven!]

I'd take Ian Skelly over Richard Baker any day of the week.

I'd rate Reginald Bosanquet shead and holders above them all......

Jokes aside, he was the best of the lot and a professional that would wipe the floor with any of today's presenters.

[Ferretfancy]

with all due respect to the late Ms Hughes, I'm not convinced that her musical knowledge was any greater than today's presenters, but she could certainly read a script in a posh voice - which in those days seemed to be the number one priority

I well remember attending broadcast rehearsals at St John's Smith Square and watching Patricia Hughes preparing her script. She was certainly not short of musical knowledge, not a professional musician but very well informed. At the time she had been diverging a little from her normal activities by giving some readings of Jane Austen and it was a measure of her self criticism that she was anxious to know whether they worked for the listeners.

As for the posh voice, do you mean a balanced delivery that broadcasts well? In that respect she was in the league of others such as Cormac Rigby and the wonderful Joy Worth.
Compare these with the entertaining Andrew McGregor who snatches the beginning of each sentence forte and then allows the rest of the phrase to die away. I wonder if he has ever had microphone training

[Serial_Apologist]

Do you blame the restaurant owner for shoddy table service, or the garage proprietor when the mechanic fails to tighten your car's wheelnuts back on?

Remember these announcers are getting bl**dy well paid; if they can't even be bothered to check their facts it seems its about time they were served with the return of their P45.

I think your analogy is over simplistic; in the cases you cite it would depend on who took the announcers on - the respective proprietors or the on-site management, assuming the latter to be different persons from the former, which would not aply to the BBC's recruiting department.

[Beef Oven!]

Do you blame the restaurant owner for shoddy table service, or the garage proprietor when the mechanic fails to tighten your car's wheelnuts back on?

Blame?

I'd hold the the restaurant owner or garage proprietor responsible.

[Sir Velo]

Compare these with the entertaining Andrew McGregor who snatches the beginning of each sentence forte and then allows the rest of the phrase to die away. I wonder if he has ever had microphone training

The man's a menace when listening in the car or on the Walkman!

[Sir Velo]

Blame?

I'd hold the the restaurant owner or garage proprietor responsible.

Yeah, professional pride in a good job well done's a thing of the past, innit?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The man's a menace when listening in the car or on the Walkman!

I see we're knocking the good guys now.

[Nick Armstrong]

Reginald Bosanquet ...

... shead and holders...

That sounds like a line from one of the vulgar humourists who used to take him off, playing on the "Boozalot" nickname.

I have to say I always found him really mannered and odd-sounding when I was growing up. Dumbstruck, though, to discover that he was 3 years younger than I am now when he died ... RIP Reggie.

[Nick Armstrong]

Verity Sharp, John Shea, Alyn Shipton, Jonathan Swain..................as well?

Oh yes: they were included within my "..."

[Dave2002]

Remember these announcers are getting bl**dy well paid; if they can't even be bothered to check their facts it seems its about time they were served with the return of their P45.

That is what I was trying to ascertain. I am not convinced that they are all very well paid, and since transparency in the UK is somewhat partial it's not easy to be sure. In some parts of the world individual's pay is made publicly availabe, not just that of a few people who get investigated by Daily Mail reporters.

The quality may, arguably, be in inverse proportion to salary, or at least not directly proportional.
However, in some parts of the BBC there are presenters and teams who are doing a very good job. Let me recommend trying to get tickets for the forthcoming semi-final and final rounds of Counterpoint on R4. I went to a recording of a previous heat a few weeks ago, and I was surprised at how good Paul Gambaccini was. He really is very good. He is very quick witted, very professional, and also rather knowledgeable. Also, when challenged he is quick to make changes and adjustments so that the final broadcast is mostly problem free. There are also consultants and other staff on hand to check details and problem issues. However that is for a programme which is pre-recorded, and clearly there are sufficient resources. Doing live programmes will inevitably be harder. R3 may not have the budget to do all the programmes in the same way as R4.

[Dave2002]

Yeah, professional pride in a good job well done's a thing of the past, innit?

Maybe you never watched Fawlty Towers

The idea that there was a sort of golden age for service and professionalism does not correspond to what I remember. It was probably always rather mixed.

[Serial_Apologist]

Maybe you never watched Fawlty Towers

The idea that there was a sort of golden age for service and professionalism does not correspond to what I remember. It was probably always rather mixed.

... having myself been a waiter at well-known establishments in the 1960s...

[Nick Armstrong]

... having myself been a waiter at well-known establishments in the 1960s...

Picturing the scene, S_A, picturing the scene.....

[P. G. Tipps]

Blame?

I'd hold the the restaurant owner or garage proprietor responsible.

Correct ... the proprietor is certainly held responsible in law for the running of his/her business!

[ahinton]

'Gaffes' are the logical result of ignorance or carelessness. Of course none of us knows everything or are ever-careful and we all make gaffes from time to time. However, the amateur listener like myself can reasonably expect a professional presenter to be up to speed with basic facts about a particular subject before broadcasting. Nowadays it seems that management actively encourage presenters to adopt a 'chatty' everyday tone which is supposed to attract new listeners and, sadly, accurate factual information is no longer the highest priority that it once used to be. We also see this in many other areas of society. Shop-workers, for instance, are no longer taught product knowledge but simply instructed to constantly parrot 'have a nice day' and 'can I help you pack?' to each and every customer irrespective of circumstances. Again, 'equality' rules!

I don't think that the shop worker example always fits (think farm shops, Waitrose / John Lewis and plenty of other examples) but otherwise I am broadly in agreement with what you write here.

We are part of modern society, aren't we, ahinton?

Yes, but that doesn't mean that we have control over BBC!

Of course you and I may not be personally to blame but, as part of society, we must accept our share of responsibility in exactly the same way as I believe that R3 Management should accept responsibility for lower employee standards!

Here I do not agree. Members of BBC management are paid to do the job for which they're contracted, but you and I are not their contractors, nor do we have influence over who does the contracting or is contracted by those people to do what, how and why at BBC.