Trails

[Honoured Guest]

Wow! I've just read about the imminent BBC Ballet Season on BBC2 and BBC4, which sounds as though it could be fantastic for people like me who have enjoyed watching some ballet and would like to learn more about how it is made and its history. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/lat...et-season.html

This seems to me to be the perfect way of covering ballet on tv - much better than simply televising entire stage productions and bunging them on at Xmas, with little context for people who have little knowledge or experience. And I think that a season like this has much more impact than if the programmes were scheduled at long intervals across the year.

But it's important to get the word out about such a special and out-of-the-ordinary season of programmes. It would be such a wasted opportunity if people missed it because they weren't properly aware of it in time. So, please tell your friends - maybe over supper in some trattoria with Classic FM playing in the background. But, I'll personally be disappointed if there's no Trail Blitz for this season - with Radio 3 as one of the stations playing the trails - because I don't see how else it can be effectively publicised to reach the most people who would enjoy the season.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, and I'll be interested to read those of y'all ...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well HG R3 is advertising on the telly [dimensions just total tack innit]

repetitive banal trails are a recent imposition along with deceit by RW about coverage, personalised idiotic presentational styles from people who are better than that and other gubbins like slicing the jazz schedules at will to play American opera &c ... [what is your definition of a live concert?]

and the reach and listening figures are down last quarter

please do not believe that many of us moan from mere dissatisfaction and distemper; the current regime and its approach is a major strategic threat to the survival of R3 and arts broadcasting on public service radio .... some of us believe in that mission quite profoundly

i repeat we are not disgruntled; offended certainly - but seriously concerned for what, for most of us, is a life time relationship with the national treasure that was Radio 3/Third Programme ... it is now being debased to the point of dangerous vulnerability to awkward questions in just the sort of review that the well educated chapesses and chaps in the civl service/broadcasting house/politicos spads & cronies [not to mention lobbyists fro commercial networks who love to put any knife into Aunt's corsets] all like to take part in ... go figure Hon G!

[Old Grumpy]

well HG R3 is advertising on the telly [dimensions just total tack innit]

repetitive banal trails are a recent imposition along with deceit by RW about coverage, personalised idiotic presentational styles from people who are better than that and other gubbins like slicing the jazz schedules at will to play American opera &c ... [what is your definition of a live concert?]

and the reach and listening figures are down last quarter

please do not believe that many of us moan from mere dissatisfaction and distemper; the current regime and its approach is a major strategic threat to the survival of R3 and arts broadcasting on public service radio .... some of us believe in that mission quite profoundly

i repeat we are not disgruntled; offended certainly - but seriously concerned for what, for most of us, is a life time relationship with the national treasure that was Radio 3/Third Programme ... it is now being debased to the point of dangerous vulnerability to awkward questions in just the sort of review that the well educated chapesses and chaps in the civl service/broadcasting house/politicos spads & cronies [not to mention lobbyists fro commercial networks who love to put any knife into Aunt's corsets] all like to take part in ... go figure Hon G!

Well said, Sir!

[Stillhomewardbound]

Sadist that I am, my radio is on pretty well throughout the day and always tuned to Radio 3. I've worked out that on some trails I can be exposed to them something like 12 to 16 times. Invariably they are pretty crassly produced and always feebly written in a tiresome 'awe and wonder' voice; and all this virtual molestation of our ears for audience gain that can only be measured in the thousands.

Madness.

[french frank]

Yes, well said da Jazbo there! But, just for the record, I've looked up the Green and White Papers (DCMS 2005 & 2006)

P 5. [Green Paper] Key reforms:

"The BBC needs to change to meet the public’s concerns. While the BBC has a high overall satisfaction rating (75%), the public is far from uncritical. [...] People question the number of repeats, the amount of onair trailing for BBC programmes, the perception of ‘dumbing down’ and the lack of accountability to licence fee payers."

p 36. [White Paper] Cross-promotion

"The Government believes that it is important that the BBC should continue to promote its services on-air so that licence fee payers are aware of specific programmes and the breadth of the BBC’s overall offering. [...] Research by BBC and Ofcom suggests that the BBC’s on-air promotion is not excessive in comparison with other broadcasters, and that viewers and listeners generally find on air promotion helpful, though there is a small number who are annoyed by it."

The 'research' by the BBC (!) and Ofcom finds the BBC is no worse than commercial broadcasters. So there goes the 'Key reform' of the BBC changing to meet the public's concerns.

As for my suspicion of BBC intervention to get the original 'reform' reversed, I find a BBC response (2005) to the Green Paper, devoting six paragraphs (p 71) to defending its 'on-air promotional activity' (backed up by its own research, presumably). As far as I know, the BBC marketing department plays a large part in dictating what should promoted where and when.

BBC 10 - Public 0

[Honoured Guest]

French Frank, I read the above as the Green Paper listing some people's concerns and the White Paper, with the aid of research, weighing these concerns in the balance with their related benefits and reaching a belief based on the full picture. Obviously, the "small number who are annoyed by [on air promotion]" will continue in their annoyance, but "viewers and listeners generally find [it] helpful."

One of the main thrusts of Delivering Quality First is to make BBC content accessible to as many people as possible who might enjoy it by telling them what's available where. Hence, cross-channel trailing planned strategically across all BBC services. It's a BBC Trust decision (in response to BBC management proposals, as you always say) and it would be odd if Radio 3 were singularly exempted from this BBC policy, particularly as it's one of the BBC services least able to attract a general audience.

And I don't think Radio 3 would be allowed to continue in its old form with its hermetic audience and a broadcasting style apparently cultivated to exclude everyone else.

I exaggerate very slightly for effect.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

it was not in the least hermetic, perhaps the odd programme may have been hermeneutic, it captured the minds of many young people who, like me, became life long listeners and know whereof &c

why do the apologists for R3 and RW always resort to such phraseology [hermetic/elitist] ... we might as easily say knowledgeable, didactic, classless [in fact to my young ears quite unlike the Home Service /R4 and R2] and indifferent to age [unlike R1] and challenging ... i first heard Berio and Schoenberg as a teenager in the sixties on the Third Programme and rushed out to buy a Kathy Berberian lp [second hand] and make yet further suggestions to the recordings dept at the public library ... even as my ailing pa fell asleep to the Mozart concert on the radiogram [he did not like electronic music; what he liked was that i was exposed to it on the Third and showed interest] ....

Sadist that I am, my radio is on pretty well throughout the day and always tuned to Radio 3

... do you make other people listen to it then Stillhomewardbound and then go into the next room?

[Thropplenoggin]

You'd think Roger Wright (Honoured Guest) would have better things to do than defend the indefensible on For3. Is this a worthwhile use of public funding? I think not.

[teamsaint]

Can't say I am ever very impressed by smart people defending the indefensible, as @noggo puts it.

you can ALWAYS find somebody really sharp, and in need of a pay day, to argue a very clever line.

What really matters here is what is being done for us, to us, in our name, with our money, and having some integrity and ambition in an imperfect world.

[french frank]

I exaggerate very slightly for effect.

Yes, thank you

Whereas you and I know that you are not literally Roger Wright, you do have the sure-fire BBC response to any criticism of what is being done deliberately (rather than inadvertently). Some people don't like it but many people do (you forgot to add "And you can't please all the people all the time"). Your words about trails have been used by management on many occasions. No evidence is adduced to demonstrate these assertions of the 'some' and 'many'.

Obviously, the "small number who are annoyed by [on air promotion]" will continue in their annoyance, but "viewers and listeners generally find [it] helpful."

This is the usual BBC straw man. It confuses the repeated, unvarying 'built trails' and giving out information about forthcoming programmes in an informative way, as if they must, necessarily be the same thing. They aren't.

And I know all about 'BBC research' on this topic. They ask the question, 'Have you ever listened to a programme as a result of hearing about it in a trail?' Since the innocent listener doesn't really understand the import, s/he thinks hard and remembers a programme that was mentioned in a trail. Yes, I did once hear a programme ... You did? Yippee! Listeners and viewers find trails very useful QED.

[Honoured Guest]

"Some" - the Green Paper was just listing the concerns of some interested parties, with no attempt to judge their statistical significance.

"Many" - the White Paper was founded on professional research into the general public opinion on the issues raised by these individual concerns.

"BBC straw man" - I was quoting from (your quote from) the White Paper, accepting "research by BBC and Ofcom", i.e. Government acceptance of research by the BBC and the independent broadcasting regulator (not of the BBC, I know).

[kernelbogey]

It seems to me to be psychotic to believe that every moment broadcast by a national radio station is aimed personally at you as an individual, and that any output not to your personal taste should be removed. Louis XIV, toi?

You have a very strange understanding of the term psychotic, HG.

[Sydney Grew]

. . . a husky-voiced woman who pronounced 'Saint' to rhyme with paint, rather than the 'sunt' which is the usual pronunciation with saints' names.

This voice is familiar from R3 trails and I'm fairly sure I heard the same voice in a trail on Radio 2; and since I've never heard her broadcast I therefore assume that she's someone used by the marketing department just for trails. I always think she sounds like a teenager trying to sound mature.

A couple of weeks ago I heard a "trail" in which the same kind of female employée spectacularly failed to pronounce "Hiawatha" - it was obvious that she had never heard of him. Is the Song of Hiawatha still taught in schools?

[Serial_Apologist]

A couple of weeks ago I heard a "trail" in which the same kind of female employée spectacularly failed to pronounce "Hiawatha" - it was obvious that she had never heard of him. Is the Song of Hiawatha still taught in schools?

It was when my mother was there - in the 1920s!

[Honoured Guest]

Current ministerial guidance from Michael Gove is that school study of English language literature should focus on British heritage. The shores of Gitche Gumee are now beyond his pale.