You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Today’ tag.
For all the chat about Thought for the Day’s promotion of religion, some have detected an anti-Christian bias on the airwaves, it was revealed today.
On Radio 4′s Feedback show earlier, presenter Roger Bolton heard complaints from religious listeners who claimed BBC comedy shows single out Christianity for criticism.
The Reverend Simon Douglas Lane, phoning in from Staines said: “In recent weeks, I’ve noticed an unremitting assualt on the Christian faith in the 6.30pm slot. Whether from Jeremy Hardy in the News Quiz, Andy Hamilton in Old Harry’s Game, and in the Now Show, which has an extended pop at Christianity.”
A brief listen to Andy Hamilton’s send-up of life in Hell illustrates the Reverend’s point nicely. Large chunks of the series are close-to-the-bone pisstakes of Christian belief. As the complainants said, would the BBC have aired similar satires for Judaism or Islam? No chance.
Acting head of BBC Radio Comedy Gareth Edwards admitted that Christianity was picked on in particular.
An aetheist myself, I can see the Christians’ point. After such a self-consciously exhaustive exploration of all things Darwin this year, its broad-mindedness is hard to dispute.
Indeed, BBC Religion does have a tough job balancing faith representation across the output, but it may be too busy defending pluralism to remember Britain’s largest faith group too.
Auntie should know what's good for you, apparently
The BBC’s under fire again, this time for being a ‘me too’ broadcaster trying to compete in a saturated market.
Its remit should be reduced to only making programmes that commercial broadcasters do not provide, according to a report by right-leaning think tank the Centre for Policy Studies published today.
The report’s author, Martin Le Jeune, said a scaled down BBC would respond to “what the consumer wants, and what the BBC can uniquely and legitimately provide – we’d be looking at a smaller and more focused BBC.”
Apparently commercial broadcasting has reached new levels of sophistication and breadth, making taxpayer-funded content unnecessary, and even damaging the freemarket. As James Naughtie said through gritted teeth on this morning’s Today, it’s a familiar argument.
There is a case for it though. Some believe the ongoing battle for audiences has meant dumbing down, increased celebrity programming, and a flavour of commercialism hitting standards at the Beeb (Strictly Come Dancing was cited on Today). The Ten O’clock News, for instance, now carries an entertainment or celebrity story as standard.
The BBC also has unique and soaring levels of online funding, meaning other organisations risk being squeezed out of that growing market. ‘iPlayer’ has become part of the cultural lexicon, while the word ‘Kangaroo’ has not, after the competition commission quashed a joint online video venture between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4.
Yet Today’s all-too-short debate on the subject was hardly convincing. Le Jeune, a former head of public affairs at Sky News (Naughtie himself highlighted this Murdoch-connection), said the BBC had become a Godzilla-like creature, subsuming all commercial media trends. Sound like a conglomerate we know?
BBC director of strategy John Tate put up a tight defence, claiming if the Centre for Policy Studies had its way, Auntie would be delivering ” Cod Liver Oil” programming to audiences.
I’m inclined to agree. Surely that BBC would be harder for Britain’s audiences to swallow than the supposed Godzilla we have today. Or is the BBC going to act as a life-support for commercially unviable programmes from now on? BBC Model Railways Show anyone?
That’s when licence fee payers (or Le Jeune’s tax payers) will really start to moan.
Theo Hobson aired a refreshing view about Thought for the Day in the Grauniad this morning.
Many see TFTD as a morsel of religious rot in the Today programme’s otherwise balanced journalistic diet. Yet Hobson claims it offers a holiday from the “subtle tyranny of secular-speak”:
Why? Because this is a different sort of voice from those that strut through the media: witty-rude columnists, worldly-wise experts, with-it arts critics, etcetera. Blue, in contrast, feels free to speak about his inner struggles, his sense of fear, of need, of guilt, and so on. You don’t get that from Simon Jenkins or Zoe Williams.
He may have a point. Between John Humphries barking down the phone at suspect ministers, Robert Peston eeeeelong-aaaating his vowels over the recession, and Sarah Montague enunciating too ruddy well for that time of morning, the dulcet tones of a Lionel Blue or an Indarjit Singh come as welcome respite.
And voices aside, after hearing the bad news stack up over the half hour since getting up, you need TFTD as a window on a slower, more measured dimension. It helps you slightly unclench your cereal spoon fist for just three minutes every morning.
I thought Ariane Sherine’s humanist TFTD replacement was weak on that front.
But how about Jarvis Cocker’s triumphant alternative, when he guest edited Today on 31 Dec last year? It’s a speech from philosopher and interpreter of Zen Buddhism, Alan Watts, who died in 1973:
Download: 7805882.stm
Would you like to hear more of this?
Recent Comments