The BBC’s two London orchestras are in real and present danger of extinction. So too is their under-used studio building which, occupying almost the entire length of a Maida Vale street where one-bedroom flats fetch £800,000, must be worth £200 million to a property developer.
The only thing that can save the orchestras would be a national strategy where BBC ensembles are deployed to plug geographic gaps between regional orchestras that are funded by Arts Council England (ACE). That’s the common-sense solution. But the BBC and ACE have refused to coordinate their musical assets and Davey, a former ACE chief executive, is in a squirmingly ambiguous position when it comes to saving BBC orchestras. The likely outcome is that two will go. The Proms without a solid core of BBC musicians will not be the same again.
BBC Television has failed the Proms year after year, shunting them in 2015 to the bywater that is BBC4, away from mainstream viewing and live excitement. The recorded concerts are often a week old. No surprise that the audience is minimal.
As for Radio 3, its fate is now in the hands of known enemies. John Whittingdale has named Darren Henley as one of eight advisers who will “work closely with the government over the renewal of the BBC charter”. All eight are in varying degree anti-BBC, but Henley, a former head of Classic FM who now heads the ACE, has trenchant id-eas on which popular parts of classical music should rightfully belong to private enterprise, and which crumbs should be left to the BBC.
In these troubled times, not one hint of support has been heard from the BBC’s top floor. In fact, the trouble actually began at the top when Lord Hall, a bland, ill-advised director general, put classical music under an extra and altogether unnecessary tier of management called BBC Music, hastening Wright’s departure. Hall’s close adviser and “creative director” Alan Yentob has no sympathy for classics. In the coming Auntie vs Tories battle for the BBC’s survival, classical music will be treated as collateral damage.
What I have described may be a worst-case scenario, but it won’t be far from the final outcome. Defenders of culture will blame a philistine government but the fault lies in Lord Hall’s failure to fight for our heritage as a core BBC value. His recent predecessor Mark Thompson was an active Proms-goer whose passion was respected by his executives. Now, Visigoths rule the roost.
The budgets I have laid out above for the Proms, five orchestras, and Radio 3, amount to less than one-third of the £204 million the BBC agreed this year to pay a greedy Premier League for an hour or so of edited football highlights on Saturday nights. ITV, exercising sound commercial sense, declined to bid.
The BBC has lost any sense of real-world value and, critically, the innate balance of its triple mission to “inform, educate and entertain”. The Proms exemplified all three ambitions of the BBC charter. The Proms must now pay for the BBC’s greater failures.
The only thing that can save the orchestras would be a national strategy where BBC ensembles are deployed to plug geographic gaps between regional orchestras that are funded by Arts Council England (ACE). That’s the common-sense solution. But the BBC and ACE have refused to coordinate their musical assets and Davey, a former ACE chief executive, is in a squirmingly ambiguous position when it comes to saving BBC orchestras. The likely outcome is that two will go. The Proms without a solid core of BBC musicians will not be the same again.
BBC Television has failed the Proms year after year, shunting them in 2015 to the bywater that is BBC4, away from mainstream viewing and live excitement. The recorded concerts are often a week old. No surprise that the audience is minimal.
As for Radio 3, its fate is now in the hands of known enemies. John Whittingdale has named Darren Henley as one of eight advisers who will “work closely with the government over the renewal of the BBC charter”. All eight are in varying degree anti-BBC, but Henley, a former head of Classic FM who now heads the ACE, has trenchant id-eas on which popular parts of classical music should rightfully belong to private enterprise, and which crumbs should be left to the BBC.
In these troubled times, not one hint of support has been heard from the BBC’s top floor. In fact, the trouble actually began at the top when Lord Hall, a bland, ill-advised director general, put classical music under an extra and altogether unnecessary tier of management called BBC Music, hastening Wright’s departure. Hall’s close adviser and “creative director” Alan Yentob has no sympathy for classics. In the coming Auntie vs Tories battle for the BBC’s survival, classical music will be treated as collateral damage.
What I have described may be a worst-case scenario, but it won’t be far from the final outcome. Defenders of culture will blame a philistine government but the fault lies in Lord Hall’s failure to fight for our heritage as a core BBC value. His recent predecessor Mark Thompson was an active Proms-goer whose passion was respected by his executives. Now, Visigoths rule the roost.
The budgets I have laid out above for the Proms, five orchestras, and Radio 3, amount to less than one-third of the £204 million the BBC agreed this year to pay a greedy Premier League for an hour or so of edited football highlights on Saturday nights. ITV, exercising sound commercial sense, declined to bid.
The BBC has lost any sense of real-world value and, critically, the innate balance of its triple mission to “inform, educate and entertain”. The Proms exemplified all three ambitions of the BBC charter. The Proms must now pay for the BBC’s greater failures.
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