Tuesday 26 July 2011

The Move to Manchester

Back in 1999 I was the Chairman of the BBC North Regional Advisory Council and, as such, represented the BBC North region on the BBC English National Forum, reporting directly to the BBC Governor with responsibility for the English Regions, Ranjit Sondhi.   Ranjit had mentioned to me in conversation that he and the other Governors were aware that the BBC appeared to be serving its London audience quite well, but that the rest of England failed to be responding to the same extent.  As a previously London-based employee of the BBC, now living in the North of England, I knew what he was talking about, so I suggested that I look into it.

Over a couple of months I researched and wrote a report "Poor Perception of BBC Services in the North of England", examining how the 'non-Home Counties' English audience regarded BBC services.  I found it fascinating.  I was given a lot of anecdotal evidence which, when combined, revealed an antipathy to the way the BBC presented itself.  Everything the BBC did, from assuming that estuary English was an accepted norm to the disgrace of its newsroom handing over to its 'North of England correspondent' (which it still does - one correspondent for 16.9 million people?), left audiences living over 100 miles from London feeling that the BBC was content stewing in its metropolitan juices and, whether they liked it or not, that was the way things were expected to stay.

(A year ago, and to illustrate this to Richard Deverell, the BBC executive responsible for coordinating the move to Manchester, I gave as an example of the BBC's London parochialism their tendancy, when showing what a bus stop looked like, to use one with the London Transport logo and the numbers 72 and 220 on it.  "Good heavens" he said, "I used to get the 72 to work..."  Of course he did: that's the bus stop in Wood Lane outside BBC Television Centre.  I suggested to him that it was probably what everyone in the BBC imagined bus stops to look like because none of them were aware of the world beyond White City).

The BBC was London. ITV wasn't because, even as the network de-federalised itself to become London-administered, the mainstay of its output remained diversely situated - and, also, a high proportion of its air-time (the ads) was local. The same applied to Channel 4.  Satellite television was perceived as having no geographical remit.

My report was circulated among the Governors and brought to the attention of both Andy Griffee, the Head of English Regions, and Pat Loughrey, Head of Nations and Regions.  I was invited to present the report to the two of them and was glad to find them so galvanised to respond to its findings.  Pat Loughrey instigated the BBC Northern Task Force which, with a budget of £24.5m, set about solving the problem of setting the BBC once again at the heart of its provincial audience.

And they completely missed the point.

My report revealed that people wanted local and regional production, which represented local and regional voices, interests and sentiments. Everyone now sniggers at the notion of 'Nationwide' ("Here in Norwich, we can do even better than that!") but, oneupmanship apart, it was seeing local colour make up the mosaic of the country that everyone wanted.  Something relevant to a family in Devon is relevant to a family in Cumbria.  What has happened now is that the BBC has dumped a whole load of departments into one location in Manchester - exactly the same as when it dumped Science Features into Kensington House back in 1970, or News and Current Affairs into Lime Grove a decade earlier.  Worse, and for some totally incomprehensible reason, it has decided to move London-based staff away from the capital to do this.  In possibly one of the BBC's worst-ever examples of metrocentric patronisation, it assumes two things: a) that only London staff can create BBC programmes (i.e. the rest of England lacks talent), and b) that it has solved its problem of provincial representation.

It hasn't.  Where are the local voices, the regional issues and the sentiment?  Still out there, one presumes.  They certainly won't be travelling up from W12.

During my research, I spoke to the widow of the drama producer Alfred Bradley who, in our conversation, said "One day, when Alfred was doing a radio play in Leeds..." and I thought that, in that one simple phrase, there was possibly no better way of encapsulating the whole, sad, missed, point.   Media can be produced anywhere these days.  It can be, and should be.  Greg Dyke was Director General at the implementation of the Northern Task Force and, although he stated that the days of the great regional studio centres were gone, he was vehement about modern technical kit and the advantages it would offer local talent and production.  He saw new technology as the catalyst for a resurgence in local and regional production - by any- and everyone, from any- and everywhere.  

Many other towns across the North also provided specific material for my research, yet all except Manchester fail to register on the new BBC radar.  The whole point of the research has been missed. BBC has created another of its distant, self-centred monoliths.  It has totally forgotten what the initial impetus was for its move up north.

Expect little change...

Friday 22 July 2011

But Is It Art?

It appears that, for a series entitled “At Large”, I’m spending a disproportionate amount of time discussing Art.  The question of ‘what constitutes ‘Art’’ is the basis for a project I am currently developing, so there was every chance that issues arising from the work I’m doing on that will provide the basis for something to talk about here.

We had a day of high culture last weekend, spending Saturday in a rain-soaked Middlesbrough, taking in its exceptional public art, and then visiting MIMA, the town's very impressive Museum of Modern Art.  Way back, around 1970, as a student living there,I remember Middlesbrough holding its first contemporary art exhibition. Radical, different and often unsettling imagery, presented in the converted doctor’s surgery that was Middlesbrough Art Gallery at the time, wasn’t something that this A-level Art student expected, but it was the precursor of a constant, innovative and improving engagement that the town has with contemporary art.  Today’s public art in Middlesbrough includes work from internationally acclaimed artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Anish Kapoor.

Bottle Of Letters
Oldenburg’s Bottle Of Letters (which, in my typically inattentive way, I’ve always known as Message In A Bottle - and you'll see why), graces one of Middlesbrough’s earliest central land clearances, and today is attractively surrounded by a lake and green open spaces.  More recently, and perhaps to create a lure to the proposed dock-side development scheme, Anish Kapoor was commissioned to produced his giant work Temenos, the first part of the world’s largest public art project which will straddle the Tees Valley.  It is huge.



Middlesbrough has always been at home with giant structures.  The famous 100 year old Transporter Bridge and, up the River Tees, the Newport Bridge are surrounded by equally dramatic flare stacks, blast furnaces, cranes and the ephemeral leviathans that make up the hardware of the steel, shipbuilding and chemical industries - massive, intriguing shapes, all of them. And it was these that reminded me of my unanswered question ‘what constitutes Art?’ and prompted me to think further.
Temenos

Temenos is a commissioned sculpture, a work in steel and wire, which are materials indigenous to Middlesbrough.  Yet adjacent to the sculpture is a shipyard's travelling crane. Redundant, and consequently derelict like so many of the tools of Teesside industry, its huge dimensions equate to Temenos, its lines clean and forceful, its effect on those who study it possibly equally profound.
Not Art

But does anyone ever actually study it?  It was never constructed to be ‘Art’: it’s a crane.  If Andy Goldsworthy can make an ordinary tree ‘Art’ by putting a frame around it, why should the crane - designed and crafted out of steel and wire by artisans - not be ‘Art’?   Or is Temenos only ‘Art’ because it set out to be in the first place and someone tells us that it is? 

Our day of high culture ended by savouring Teesside’s contribution to the world of haute cuisine, the Chicken Parmo.

But that's another story...

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Aphrodite At The Waterhole


Many years ago, as a distraction on a wet afternoon, I thought a visit to the local Art Gallery with T. might be a good idea. T. was in a push-chair and I think that it would be safe to say that, at the age of two, he was not particularly interested in the finer aspects of portraiture undertaken by Royal Academicians of the late 18th century.  Imagine my surprise then, as we turned a corner in the gallery and I propelled T. into view of a vast oil painting of luxuriantly endowed reclining nude.  “Whaaahay!” T. exclaimed loudly with a manic grin, squirming delightedly in his pushchair and waving his tiny grasping hands in the air.  The twelve-foot long splayed and voluptuous female torso obviously had a profound effect on him.

T. is now 20 years old and has an even greater opportunity to demonstrate excitement at work by the same artist, although I hope, in my heart of hearts, that he doesn’t (or, if he does, that I won’t be there with him). The art gallery, here in York, has recently mounted an impressive exhibition dedicated to the work of that same local artist, a painter who went on to national acclaim, William Etty.

Aphrodite At The Waterhole?
There is certainly a high incidence of gratuitous nudity in Etty’s work, and the exhibition takes an absorbing look at how such representation was accepted back in less relaxed times.  Providing there was a moral behind the image, it would be generally be acceptable.  The Bible, and the better known Greek tragedies came out well, but the imagery in one or two lesser-known fables was lambasted for its prurience, even if the technique used in its execution was perfectly adequate.  Yet strangely, this technique, although totally based on observation, does go awry on occasions.  Proportionally, some of Etty's figures are dubious, with giant thighs, extruded arms, small heads, rheumy eyes and strangely located ears.  But it’s a worthwhile exhibition, and a well-curated one. 

One particularly nice touch, garnering the involvement of visitors of all ages and abilities, is the positioning of this well-lit statue (not by Etty) for them to draw, much along the lines that he and other RA students would have done in years gone by.  I’m afraid I don’t recall the name of the work (although one might consider as a suitable appellation “Aphrodite At The Waterhole”, whom Tony Hancock set out to immortalise from a giant block of stone in ‘The Rebel’ - with Irene Handl as his model), but it is an attractive classical representation offering to the onlooker a combination of life drawing and still life opportunities.

Your Author's Rendition
It is encircled by benches, on which sketchbooks and pencils have been provided, and the statue has now been drawn many times from throughout 360º by visitors to the gallery.  The variety in drawing is impressive, from naïve scrawls and quick graphic doodles to observant and skilful tonal drawing.  I sent a suggestion to the Art Gallery that they use these images to make a lapsed-time animated sequence, travelling around the statue.  Whether they will or not, I’ll let you know.

In the meanwhile, here’s the statue, plus my own effort at recording it for posterity.  A bit presumptuous of me really because, if you think about it, whoever created the statue created it to do precisely that in the first instance. 

And even then, it was probably a copy.



Monday 11 July 2011

The Sky Monopoly - A Brief Background

The journalist and writer William Shawcross has been a lone voice of support for Rupert Murdoch, whose institutions and their working are so much at the forefront of news coverage these days.  Unfortunately, I think Mr. Shawcross's recent praise of what Murdoch has done for British media over the years is a little short of the mark, and I feel that some clarification and corrections are required.

On Sky News, and In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, Mr. Shawcross claimed that it was Murdoch who took on the print unions and therefore was responsible for dragging the industry, kicking and screaming, into the late twentieth century.  Certainly the virtriol flowing at the gates of News International (NI) in Wapping back in the 80s was as a result of Murdoch introducing new technology and working practices, but it was Eddie Shah, and his newspaper Today that instigated the new approach some time previously.  Murdoch had simply been watching from the the sidelines.  As Shah took all the initial flak (from which Today was to eventually succumb: it was later absorbed into the NI empire and subsequently closed down) Murdoch bided his time, before moving forwards in the smoother waters of a wake that had been cleared for him.

And it was a similar strategy that Murdoch used with Sky Television.  Mr. Shawcross claimed Sky broke the 'monopoly' (sic) of the BBC and ITV: he is wrong.  Since 5th November 1982 Channel 4 was also on the scene, and the UK had four, not two, national terrestrial channels.  Yet other channels also existed, and the fact that Murdoch unscrupulously eradicated all of them - or forcibly absorbed them into his own empire - has gone unmentioned in the current melée.  So let's look at Sky, within Mr. Shawcross's context that monopolies are a bad thing.

Sky Television was not Rupert Murdoch's idea.  Invented by a British scientist, it began life as Satellite Television Limited, and was a single channel uplinked from Molinare in Foubert's Place in Soho. Initially the channel was then downloaded and redistributed by cable television service providers across the UK.  In the mid-80s these were few and far between - Westminster had one, Milton Keynes another etc., - and media entrepreneurs saw the chance to create their own branded 'channels' which would be distributed across these small networks without having all the usual regulatory and transmission difficulties.  These channels were often little more than repeated two-hour compilations of old cinema films and outdated TV series, delivered - by road, on cassette - to the cable head-ends for distribution to homes. The opportunities then starting to arise, of delivering via satellite to the cable operators, would offer flexibility, cost-effectiveness and a greater number of markets for the same product. Business plans relied on an ever-growing number of subscribers, the subsequent increase in revenue from which would be invested in better quality programming: a virtuous circle.

Then Astra came on the scene, a satellite operator offering broadcasting directly to domestic receivers.  Only when the opportunities offered by this 'Direct-to-Home' (DTH) satellite broadcasting arrived, did NI enter the fray.  It bought out Satellite TV and renamed it Sky.  At the same time, the US networks who had recognised the potential of the UK's cable systems, also saw the possibilities offered by DTH in the UK and Ireland, and started their own services.  MTV, TNT (as CNN, TCM and Nickelodeon), Discovery and others gradually bought space on Astra.  DTH had been identified as the future of TV in the British Isles.

Inevitably, the British Government, meddling for no good reason, stuck its oar in here and decreed that any UK regulated DTH should be transmitted using D2MAC, a more sophisticated (i.e. complex) transmission system than the PAL system already in use terrestrially.  Murdoch took a risk: he had set up Sky as a pan-European channel and did not need to comply with the notions of the UK government. He  rented transponders on Astra and broadcasted in PAL.  It worked - and was cheaper and more acceptable to the market because it used technology everyone already had.  Four times as expensive, the 'squarial' based D2MAC system was dead in the water.  British Satellite Broadcasting, a consortium of major ITV broadcasters, publishing groups and UK technology industries championed by the UK authorities, stood no chance as, for a short time, the two incompatible systems ran side by side.

No-one benefitted.  Eventually, and as money haemorraged from both operators, the authorities, committed to encouraging satellite broadcasting but determined to be able to regulate it, forced a merger.  The 'Satellite' in BSB became 'Sky' and the essence of what we have today came about.  Murdoch currently owns 39% of BSkyB.

However, in his desperate race to achieve the critical market saturation NI desired, Murdoch threw money at product: he bought out film studios, movie catalogues, a US TV network and changed the face of sport - not least UK football - forever.  In doing this, he also ruined any chances for other UK based organisations to seek to provide alternative programming.  Priced out of programme markets, any channel lacking the funding Murdoch could contrive to lay his hands on would disappear from sight.  They disappear even to the present day, as NI continues to pay over the odds for programming and rights, not just to ensure an audience but to eradicate all chance of competition.

Remember Superchannel?  It, with others such as Premiere, Matinee and HVC were among the first to go as Sky forced its presence onto the market.  Following the formation of BSkyB, its channels Galaxy, The Power Station (with Chris Evans presenting chart shows from the seaside on sunny days), The Movie Channel, The Sports Channel and Now soon disappeared.  Ever since, alternatives outside the Sky monopoly have been short lived, their survival dependent on either being absorbed into the Sky empire or paying through the nose to be delivered via the Sky transmission platform (and its lucrative electronic programme guide).  Powerful operators such as Discovery, MTV, National Geographic and Turner are too big to stay in Murdoch's sights at the moment and their programming currently complements Sky output, but others such as Setanta, U>Direct, Men & Motors, Virgin/Channel One and Bravo have all since passed into oblivion, manipulated into extinction by Sky's obsession with being the sole provider.

Bearing all this in mind, Mr Shawcross' s claim that Rupert Murdoch did wonderful things by breaking the BBC/ITV monopoly rings a little hollow.

Thursday 7 July 2011

An Inappropriate Acronym

I've just been updating one or two aspects of my website (www.w3kts.com, for those of you who didn't get here by means of it) and, in these days of joined up thinking - or, rather, the aspiration to be considered a joined-up thinker - I thought it wise to include details of the other ways by which I and my work can be accessed.

So, on the 'contact' page, in addition to my company address, land-line and mobile telephone number I now include an 0845 number.  This has been allocated to me, at no cost, by my telephone service in the hope that callers from beyond my local exchange area will use it, to the financial benefit of my service provider. All well and good - an enterprising initiative.

And there are other contact details for me to include.  This blog that you are reading now is relevant, so I've created a hyperlink to it which can be accessed by clicking on the 'Blogspot' logo.  My professional details and CV appear on my 'Linked In' listing, so there's another hyperlink to that, accessed by clicking on its logo.  And, for those with a relatively short attention span - i.e. around 140 words or whatever it is this week - there's my Twitter account, available by clicking on the twitter icon.

Naturally, as I claim to have a designer's orderly mind, I have arrayed these logos in alphabetical order. And that's where the problem arises.

My website now proclaims "BINT".





'Bint' isn't a particularly attractive word.  It is a corruption of the arab word meaning 'daughter' and its current definition ranges from "a naïve female, often considered stupid" to stronger terms for the derogatory "tart". Hopefully, people who know me will a) know me to be the wrong gender and b) wouldn't in any case have thought of me that way, even before I brought it to their attention. Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive.

Besides, I've now added a You Tube icon to the row to lessen the impact.