I’m just spending my lunchtime flicking through FT Creative Business (you need a subscription to read it!), and there are a few thoughtful articles.
* An interview with Radio 3 controller Roger Wright. Sadly this is a bit on the defensive since the usual mentions of not enough classical music on the station and too much world and jazz are made. Can’t we get over this? And the “friends” of Radio 3 get another mention. There’s loads of classical music on the station – they really shouldn’t be so restrictive in their outlook on serious music.
[NB The Radio 3 website’s been given a new look in time for the Proms]
There’s also a large piece on Channel 4’s forthcoming Hall of Fame – another big Endemol production with requisite premium rate voting, E4 spinoff, CD, book, DVD and kitchen sink. The author (Carlos Grande) refers to mentions C4’s remit in the 2003 Communications Act:
3) The public service remit for Channel 4 is the provision of a broad range of high quality and diverse programming which, in particular-
(a) demonstrates innovation, experiment and creativity in the form and content of programmes;
(b) appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society;
(c) makes a significant contribution to meeting the need for the licensed public service channels to include programmes of an educational nature and other programmes of educative value; and
(d) exhibits a distinctive character.
Is this really Channel 4 at the moment? It’s certainly distinctive, although not necessarily in a good way. The first series of Big Brother could be argued to have been innovative and experimental. By series 5 it’s not. Culturally diverse? An over-reliance on Friends morning, tea-time and night is not exactly multi-cultural is it? And Hollyoaks isn’t set in, say, Bradford is it? I suspect that C4 will be able to produce figures to show that these programmes appeal to a wide culturally diverse audience. Is that enough? How about educational? We’ll exclude schools programming as that’s catered for elsewhere in the bill. There’s a good degree of history programming, if a tad populist sometimes (is there anything else about the Nazis we don’t yet know?). But let’s mention some of the highlights of C4’s recent science, as listed by their Head of Science and Education, Simon Andreae in last week’s Broadcast:
The Autopsy, The Man Who Ate His Lover, The Boy Who Gave Birth To His Twin, Human Face Transplant, The Truth About Killing, Human Mutants, Fat Girls and Feeders, Jump London, Body Talk, Sars: Killer Bug, My Foetus, Rogue Gynaecologists and Dying To Be Apart.
I didn’t leave any programmes out of this list to make my point incidentally, a list which was part of a paean to a producer at C4 called Nick Curwin.
I think that list really says it all doesn’t it? It’ll nearly all count as science hours.