Results tagged “bbc”

Some of the factors that can affect driving are well known: alocohol, drugs, using a mobile phone, even listening to sport.

Having listened far too many times than I'd ever want to to Michael Gove being interviewed on the radio - particularly using his favoured technique of criticising the BBC rather than actually answering questions - can I recommend that, in the name of road safety, he is also banned from being on the radio?

This is a guest post by

6Music has been saved by the BBC Trust. Fantastic! Great!

A real cause for celebration? Not really.

In essence, 6Music provides the output which Radio One should actually be fulfilling. Instead, Radio One is chasing listeners in the manner of a commercial radio station: repetitive playlists, “out there” presenters, and a constant refusal to air anything during its day and primetime schedule that might appeal to anyone with the most basic of musically diverse taste.

If you wanted to listen to paint-by-numbers indie, commercial dance and dire pop music there are many commercial stations, which can cater for you. Radio One doesn't need to do it.

Indeed, Radio One has a commitment to provide 60 hours of “specialist music” per week. In reality, this commitment is buried in the depths of the schedule, between 10pm and 5am. The only prime time nod to any specialist output is Zane Lowe’s evening show, which comprises mostly of commercial indie, rock and dance music, but throws up the occasional track of interest.

Radio One now occupies a space already filled by a plethora of commercial stations, pumping out the very worst quality music and programming, and is the aural equivalent of BBC3 - not, I'd suggest, a good thing.

It seems to follow that in order to appeal to a younger audience, you must also pick hip young things to present your shows. Everybody seems to have forgotten that John Peel was particularly popular with 19-35 year olds, and that Giles Peterson and Pete Tong (44 and 49 respectively), both known for supporting eclectic new music, have been pushed to the most unpopular reaches of the schedules. The one sole survivor seems to be Jo Whiley, who remains in a weekend slot, despite her obvious sycophancy and hideous presenting style.

Simply put, Radio One has abandoned its commitment to new and specialist music, playing it only when it’s sure no one will be listening.

Which is where 6Music comes in. Its own statement of programming policy looks rather dry and unimaginative, but actually, the station plays a mix of new and old, across genres, and commissions new artists sessions. Much of the new music is from unsigned bands. If you were to apply this programming to Radio One, you would have a radio station that truly did believe that it trusted in new music.

My only gripe with 6Music is that it has let its pendulum swing too far back - Lauren Laverne and Nemone are its only flagship female presenters (from a field of twenty), and isn’t exactly heaving with black and Asian presenters either. On balance, its output is of high quality, and isn’t interested in Fearne Cotton’s knickers, Peaches Geldof or Katie Price.

So what have we learnt? 6Music is great, but all that it is doing is what Radio One should already be providing. Sophie Heawood how she believed that John Peel would have loved 6Music. I have no doubt that he would have loved it. More to the point however, I think he would be disgusted at the debasement of his beloved Radio One.

By contrast, the loss of the Asian Network is not just sad, but a travesty. No other radio station provides either the breadth of music or the quality of programming. Other commercial Asian (or desi) stations provide only easy-listening output, mixed with some religious content. Just one show on the station, fronted by Bobby Friction, covers everything from new unsigned Bhangra, to music from Lahore and the Punjab.

Its loss will be felt not only by British Asians, but the South Asian diasporas worldwide. The Asian Network is listened to all over the world, which should tell us something about how unique it is. To remove the only outlet for these artists seems to me to undermine the entire premise of the BBC: to provide a public service which is not available on a commercial basis. The closure implies that the BBC doesn’t care about this station, and doesn’t care about cultural diversity and inclusion.

Bravo Auntie.

I'm a near-absolutist on free speech (like Oliver Kamm, who notes the exceptions).

In and of itself, this is the right position.

But it's also a sensible position because, for those people who say unsavoury things, they so often show themselves to be idiots and not worthy of the hoo-ha they often generate. More seriously, they also inevitably reveal (in the cases where they're trying to hide it) the nature of their values and beliefs.

Take just today the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin. The Independent takes up the :

British National Party leader Nick Griffin said today he was unable to tell if a caller to a radio phone-in was British as he couldn't see what he looked like. He told the man, who said three of his grandparents were born outside Britain, that he could class himself as "civically British" but not "indigenous British".

During the phone-in, Sean Fowlston from Nottingham asked: "Would you be good enough to tell me whether I am British or not, given that three of my grandparents were foreign-born?"

Mr Griffin said: "It doesn't matter where on earth they come from, obviously I can't you see you down the radio."

However he tries to justify it, Griffin demonstrates in that one comment - "I can't see you down the radio" - what the nature of his belief is. I therefore welcome the opportunity the BBC gave him today to clearly, and to a larger audience than his beliefs should rightly attract, show himself for what he is.

I don't hold the upcoming leaders' debates in very high regard. At best I think they'll be a boring and stale debate in which the leaders rehearse focus-group tested lines irrespective of the questions they're asked; at worst, I think they'll be a turgid slanging match in which the 3 leaders trade insults and draw dividing lines, the results of which will be to turn the public off voting at all.

But, aside from the politics of this, there is the whipping up of the debates by the media due to the vested interests all media entities have in the debates. For example, I suspect it is highly like both Sky and ITV have an advertising-revenue-driven reason to inform this frenzied speculation about the debates.

And I believe the media's view to be out of step with the public's.

Little pointers inform this view. Take, for example, this from the Guardian:

Today's poll suggests 60% of people are planning to watch at least one debate, with 29% saying they plan to watch all three. Only 39% of voters said they would not watch any of them.

The word 'only' in the last sentence doesn't correspond to the weight of the percentage it describes. Very nearly 4 in 10 of all voters don't plan to watch any of the debates. That's a percentage which would seem unimaginable, given the attention the press is already paying to the debates, and certainly doesn't warrant the descriptor 'only'.

Many people take the view the leaders' debates will be central to the 2010 General Election. My view is that these people are primarily in the media; a significant minority don't think this is the case at all.

An excellent post from Chris Dillow:

The BBC’s proposal to cut 6Music and the Asian Network is, I fear, a portent of coming cuts in government spending - because it shows that when a top-down organization makes cuts, it does so on the basis of power, not efficiency.