Turning-point for the BBC? - the new DG

[french frank]

They can say what they like, but there will be a post mortem [sic], Caz. Plenty of well-focused, thoughtful comment needed that gets beyond the 'What a load of inane drivel!!

Thinking about it, Radio 3's concentration on listeners and performers, their personal reminiscences, thoughts, likes dislikes, is the same thing: Prima la musica, as the saying goes.

[Bryn]

Well I have no complaint to offer regarding the BBC's coverage of these events that I watched.

[gurnemanz]

I do believe that this the new spirit at the BBC which is insidiously creeping into Radio 3.

The BBC has historically been slow to embrace the latest trend and often been criticised for it ("Auntie BBC"). When I was a teenager in the 60s they made almost no effort to produce any programmes which might cater to the burgeoning pop culture. I and my friends listened almost exclusively to pirate stations and Radio Luxembourg. By the time they started Radio One, I was 18 and getting into classical music. I was moving over to the Third Programme - later Radio 3 - and wasn't that interested in listening to their Radio One.

I am still a great BBC fan (especially when attacked by the Daily Mail) and I realise only too well that they will get some things wrong - as they did when I was 14 in 1963. With their "new spirit", in comparison with then, they now increasingly often get it wrong in the opposite direction, by embracing the lower standards of others rather than setting a better tone.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Which reminds me of a story Stan Tracey told about Stan Getz: "He always washed his hands before having a pee, because he held that particular part of his anatomy in such high regard"

Well, he did have lovely hands!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCdeJwGs818&feature=related

[Mr Pee]

I must say that Sky's coverage of today's events has been absolutely top-notch so far, full of interesting facts and information about who's who and what's what, without resorting to tittle-tattle and B listers, as the BBC seem to prefer.

[french frank]

Well I have no complaint to offer regarding the BBC's coverage of these events that I watched.

Nor me, Bryn!

[pilamenon]

The BBC has historically been slow to embrace the latest trend and often been criticised for it ("Auntie BBC"). When I was a teenager in the 60s they made almost no effort to produce any programmes which might cater to the burgeoning pop culture. I and my friends listened almost exclusively to pirate stations and Radio Luxembourg. By the time they started Radio One, I was 18 and getting into classical music. I was moving over to the Third Programme - later Radio 3 - and wasn't that interested in listening to their Radio One.

I am still a great BBC fan (especially when attacked by the Daily Mail) and I realise only too well that they will get some things wrong - as they did when I was 14 in 1963. With their "new spirit", in comparison with then, they now increasingly often get it wrong in the opposite direction, by embracing the lower standards of others rather than setting a better tone.

A very reasonable post, in my view. And in fairness to the BBC, there really wasn't that much going on - boats processing slowly down the river for hours in pretty miserable conditions, so I can understand the need to find other Jubilee-related diversions. I don't agree with the posters who would have inflicted the severe, austere tones of bygone commentators to make it even drabber viewing than it already was!

In any case, the shift towards the bland, youthful presentation style exemplified by Matt Baker and Alex Young is too deeply entrenched in mainstream TV culture for any of the suggestions being made to be more than wishful thinking.

She's probably not up to too much walking these days, but it must have been boring as hell for the Queen standing watching that for so long. She looked frozen and rather miserable. Most of the other Royals also looked as if they were struggling a bit. And then they had to endure that toe-curling concert of artists mainly a long way past their peak.

It does strike me that the British really will go to ANYTHING for a bit of a day out.

[Nick Armstrong]

Nor me, Bryn!

Which events are we talking about now?!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Which events are we talking about now?!

Took me a couple of minutes to get it, but I think Bryn and frenchie are making an oblique reference to the fact that they didn't watch any of the offerings?

I'm in the same boat.

[Lateralthinking1]

What is again clear from this Jubilee is that many of the "ordinary" public like to have something to respect. It lifts them up out of their humdrum lives. One can argue forever about the appropriateness, or not, of respecting the royal family. The chasm in terms of wealth, privilege and influence is crystal clear. That though is the case between most of us and the average nob in a seven bedroom house. Whether some like it or not, it is the Queen rather than he or her who enables feelings of connection.

Most television managers are actually that aforementioned man or woman. Whatever their professional commitments, their personal outlook tends to be formed behind electric gates. It is exactly the same with economists and politicians. Most have chosen that difference in lifestyle, rather than simply having been born into it, and their distance from normal people turns the latter into caricature. We must be the poor people of limited brain who the terrible Windsors keep firmly in our place. The broadcasters' answer is to find the lowest common denominator so they themselves can be raised further in their ivory towers.

This is not simply a BBC blight. In fact, Sky is the minor independent school, its reputation enhanced by the fact that it is fee-paying and not much else. It has stolen some of the better "teachers". But it is as guilty of low rate dross as any service. The remit of all of them generally is to bludgeon the spirit. We are battered down by them all via 24 hour news coverage of corruption, political ineptitude, inequality, injury and annihilation. Very regrettably, that is a significant part of their power.

The BBC could have done better with the flotilla. Anna's post which emphasised the history was completely accurate. There were a million stories to be told. We could have had far more information about the groups of vessels and more of an overview as, when the cameras were rolled back, the scale of it was stunning. But I think some of the complaints - for example, those from a well-known celebrity who has presented film review programmes - displays problems certain people had with the concept. While unusually visionary, it lacked speed, razzmatazz, superficiality and glamour. Well, hard luck. That was so much for the better.

[teamsaint]

A very reasonable post, in my view. And in fairness to the BBC, there really wasn't that much going on - boats processing slowly down the river for hours in pretty miserable conditions, so I can understand the need to find other Jubilee-related diversions. I don't agree with the posters who would have inflicted the severe, austere tones of bygone commentators to make it even drabber viewing than it already was!

In any case, the shift towards the bland, youthful presentation style exemplified by Matt Baker and Alex Young is too deeply entrenched in mainstream TV culture for any of the suggestions being made to be more than wishful thinking.

She's probably not up to too much walking these days, but it must have been boring as hell for the Queen standing watching that for so long. She looked frozen and rather miserable. Most of the other Royals also looked as if they were struggling a bit. And then they had to endure that toe-curling concert of artists mainly a long way past their peak.

It does strike me that the British really will go to ANYTHING for a bit of a day out.

re you last line......thats the way the people at the top want it.

[french frank]

Which events are we talking about now?!

The events 'that I watched' ...

Though I'm sure your acute legal brain will pick fault with my 'logic'

Ah, fhg there before me ....

[DracoM]

" A very reasonable post, in my view. And in fairness to the BBC, there really wasn't that much going on - boats processing slowly down the river for hours in pretty miserable conditions, so I can understand the need to find other Jubilee-related diversions. I don't agree with the posters who would have inflicted the severe, austere tones of bygone commentators to make it even drabber viewing than it already was! "

Except that for such a massive operation as this, there had to be a priori decisions about style, content, editorial attitudes way, way before they knew about the weather. What they produced was not an accident, but a fully considered and calculated editorial policy. And if they can think for months about it and work so hard to get it so woppingly wrong reveals quite a lot about the currrent state of the BBC's confusion about who, why, and what it is.

I'd love to think that the DG has on his carpet as I write the perpetrators and is giving them several pieces of his mind.

But I bet he isn't.

[mercia]

it amused me [yes I'm easily amused] to find this from 2002

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2002/jun/07/bbc.jubilee

[french frank]

And in fairness to the BBC, there really wasn't that much going on - boats processing slowly down the river for hours in pretty miserable conditions, so I can understand the need to find other Jubilee-related diversions.

This suggests that they did realise well in advance that it wouldn't be the sort of spectacle that was worth hours of coverage. And there must have been massive expense involved.

I think I'd probably have preferred (a supposition) some well chosen (relevant to the Thames, the buildings, the bridges) archive film of the 60 Glorious Years, interspersed with what was going on on the river when the barge was passing through key places, and done without the presenters and studio stuff. But perhaps they did that too?

It does strike me that the British really will go to ANYTHING for a bit of a day out.

Or watch in on the telly...