On Saturday night BBC2 broadcast a documentary double bill of two 1.5 hour programmes about Live Aid. The first programme looked at the run up to the day, and the second covered the day itself.
A few observations from the programmes. Like the C4 documentary of the new Airbus 380 earlier that evening, these programmes were obviously made to be aired a week apart or so with information repeated from one show to the next. (In the case of the Airbus doc, it was obviously a two-parter thrown away by C4 in one go – they have a habit of this).
The programmes were made by the highly respected Brook Lapping. But Brook Lapping is now a division of Ten Alps, which is Bob Geldof’s own production company. In many respects the programme felt very fair with Annabel Giles offering plenty of anti-Bob fare about Midge Ure being sidelined at Live Aid, and Andy Kershaw’s views about the lack of Africans being aired. It’s just that it feels a little uncomfortable using your own company to make an objective documentary about something you yourself did.
There were a few places in the script that things jarred a bit. They described television technology as being in the “stone age” in 1985 in regards to satellite technology, yet this obviously wasn’t the case. This may have been a remarkably sophisticated project technically, yet the Olympic Games isn’t simple, and neither are other sporting events or even things like the Eurovision Song Contest.
And every time they talked about either 1.5bn or 2bn people watching, this was obviously complete nonsense. The main acts in the UK were aimed at UK audiences largely (however widespread British music is around the world), whilst in America, the only full live coverage was on MTV, with ABC only showing a few hours.
It was also a shame that the programme ended at the conclusion of the British leg of the concert. As we viewers knew, the coverage then continued in the US, although my memory of watching is that I didn’t stay up all that late watching it as the bands weren’t really to my liking.
Overall, pretty good fare, but it could have been slightly better.