Posted by Dave Bull at 9:41 PM, September 17, 2013 [Permalink]
Something a bit different this evening - nothing to do with woodblock printmaking ... Will you help me try to 'save' a favourite source of music?
I have mentioned many times in this blog (and in my Story A Week) that I frequently listen to music while working. I have plenty of music in my own collection, going back to the first LPs I purchased as a teenager, but of course this is never 'enough' and I depend on the radio too.
The 'dial' of my internet radio is set pretty much permanently on the BBC iPlayer. The BBC offers an absolutely wonderful service, streaming all their stations live over the internet free to anybody on the planet who wishes to listen. But what makes their service far more useful - given the time difference between here and London - is that all their programs are available 'on demand' for seven days after the initial broadcast.
An endless flood of music, of all possible genres, and all free to all. Fantastic - and much appreciated.
So it pains me to have to report that I am quite upset with something that the radio controllers have been doing in recent years. Simply put, in recent years they have cancelled one after the other, nearly all the programs that I listen to! They clearly have a policy in place that favours music for the 'youngsters', and everything aimed at people in my age group (I am 61) is headed for the chopping block.
This happened again just this week, with the announced cancellation of one of the mainstay Sunday evening programs devoted to listeners like me - the Russell Davies Songshow, which delves into the stories and culture behind the creation of much of the material in the 'American Songbook'. The program now has just two weeks left to run ...
This will leave just two programs in this 'slot', the ones hosted by singer Clare Teal and (temporarily) lyricist Don Black.
So what is to be done about this 'progress'? Well, probably nothing. It's a young crowd now in charge over there, and they know what they like, and they don't feel any particular responsibility to people like me.
But a few people are trying to fight back a bit, and one listener has initiated an online petition to the BBC to reconsider their decision. This is just spitting in the wind I guess, as the new lineup is presumably already settled, but perhaps if there are enough people registering an opinion, it may postpone the next fall of the axe ...
So if you have a minute, and if you care about this sort of thing, please head over to the petition page and add your name (you don't need to login or 'join').
Thanks! And remember, a happy Dave makes better prints! :-)
And if you would like to taste these three programs, here are links to this week's episodes (active only for the rest of the week):
(Each stream starts with the hourly news, which you can skip by dragging the time slider to the 4:00 mark after you begin the playback ...)