New year and Radio

 

(Pix credits W-T-O/Ai @ UR forum)

We formally enter the New Year having at on Wednesday and watched the New Years Day concert from Vienna which is usually a very Strauss driven but fun affair that I always did from my earliest days.

Indeed I used to record it on reels of tape and when I had a Hifi VHS video recorder on that too in full blown stereo as at the time that machine was wired into my hifi for classical and pop commercial video replay apart from anything I recorded usually on TDK HS tape.

I'd of loved to have gone for a pleasant walk but it is raining cats and dogs here as I type having got a bot damp dealing with the rubbish earlier on.

(Pix credits: BBC)

It was announced on Tuesday, the BBC DJ Johnny Walker had died after leaving Radio 2 in October last year, aged 79.

Like many of that generation he came from the "Pirate" stations that challenged the BBC's lack of broadcast pop music especially hit records in the 60's with only the odd show broadcast and that lead to the founding of Radio 1 in 1967 and he joined that.

As a young boy he was one of the DJ's I listened to a lot although his passion for music was such he was known not to care for much of the music of the early to mid 1970's we liked and did get in trouble at times for refusing to follow the "playlist"which was mainly the chart hits where he'd sooner play album tracks and the like.

He came back the BBC in the 80's doing the Saturday afternoon show playing what we call today "classic rock" much of which was being issued on the Compact Disc that lead to resergence in interest of some of these artists before going on to present retrospective chart countdown shows of the short I do enjoy to hear as they bring back associated memories.

These days I mainly listen to Boom Radio but he is missed by many of us.

65 Years of Blue Peter

Somethings are just constants in your life such as having a daily newspaper, listening to the news bulletin but how many tv shows have you watched for decades which included the period this massive Bush TV125 "dual standard" 405 and 625 line black and white tv was in the lounge?

Well actually it wasn't quite black and white more a bluey white for those of us who remember that era well.

In October 1958 the children's tv magazine show Blue Peter started originally for 15 minutes going up to a half hour not that I was around in 1958 but as soon as was able to take in what was going on, I started watching it with my siblings and it's continued ever since.

Of course over the years things have changed such as presenting styles, adventures and makes are more subject to "health and safety" than they were when I was younger and BBC programming cuts have cut the episodes per week down to one although there is internet content on the CBBC website that tops up the show.

Last Friday the sixty-fifth anniversary was marked - you might recall the entry on here for the sixtieth - so former presenters Matt Baker, Lindsey Russell and Radzi returned as the show took a look at past episodes and presenters although ideally a little more time was needed for that bit.

Abby and Joel, the current presenters, took part in a white water rafting challenge and Radzi had one to do as well.

There was a pancake make Matt, Radzi and Lindsey did that involved tossing them that had a few hair raising moments.

Henry the dog was discretely ushured out the way for the presentation and cutting of the birthday cake with candles on.

His Royal Highness Prince William was interviewed in the Blue Peter garden about his work for the environment and climate change encouraging projects using technology to reduce our impact in practical ways on the planet.

He also co-presented the post wall, a long standing feature of the show where viewers draw, write and make things that are posted the pick of which which are displayed and can gain you a iconic "regular" Blue Peter Badge whose theme this week was the environment.

All in all I felt the edition was enough to make marking this event memorable which it deserved.

Saving children's television

This week we are going topical by talking about a proposal likley to affect children in the next three years that was announced by The BBC director general, Tim Davie last Thursday to a good deal of controversy.

In a response to the funding settlement involving the UK's Television license by the Government, he issues a raft of proposals dressed up as repurposing the BBC for the modern age and this envisioned moving to a "digital" online only system involving the iPlayer where the programs would be listed to be watched at any time rather than having programs scheduled in linear time going out as a channel.

One channel outlined for this approach is CBBC, Children's BBC, which grew out of children's programming segments for family viewing from the earliest days of BBC tv when there was just a single BBC channel on tv and as we moved into the 1980's the establishment of a Children's BBC Unit with strands of labelled programming.

As the UK moved toward digital multichannel television in 1998 with the advent of digital terrestrial and satellite boradcasting children's only channels started to emerge and into this came ITV Kids and in 2002 CBBC which simicasted cbbc linear tv content from the main BBC1 channel and added extra programming.

When during the period 2009 through 2012 the analogue terresterial service was turned off, it was decided to move all children's programming to dedicated channels so anything of pre-school audience went to Cbeebies and all else went to CBBC exclusively.

CBBC is the home of some iconic shows such as Blue Peter and Newsround  and does show or have produced for it UK produced programs including drama such as  Jamie Johnson, So Akward and Almost Never and some specialist programs.

They include Book Club which is designed to introduce and get children talking about books which is not something that commercial channels touch and involve a good deal of interection between the audience and the show.

Some have suggested that actually to loose the channel but keep the programming online isn't a big loss but it does cut into interactivity because an audience often asks questions in real time on a show creating an air of suspense and surprise which if people didn't know when it was "live" it couldn't happen.

A big part of CBBC is the sense of community - the sense everyone is together watching - from the days of "The Broom Cupboard" with Gordon the Gopher and Edd the Duck to todays HQ (Headquarters) with Hakker T Dogg.

In real time quizes and appearence by stars of CBBC happen between the programs born of the old continuity announcer links that children interact with today online but in the past by letter and phone calls.

In a very real way it makes CBBC a "homebase" for children supplimented by things such as Blue Peter Fan Club where they talk about and during the show with each other and afterwards with presenters.

It may seem odd perhaps to broadcast a whole channel when between say 8:15 in the Morning to around 3:30 in the afternoon most schooldays the audience is at school and like all the BBC's services it is sent out in so-called Standard and High Defination feeds which is costly.

The times you as child looked for extra programming were school holidays and weekends simply because at all other times unless you were poorly you were in school.

Many children themselves have pointed out the numbers of families with poor or no internet, a shortage of devices big enough to watch on for period of time without squinting  and in some households a combination of Mum or Dad working from home, an older sibling playing multiplayer games and younger members tring to watch could lead to freezing.

This was one reason Ofcom, the regulator ruled out a regular tv switch off until 2040 when the infrostucture might be ready.

There is the also the increasing concern over screen time increasingly younger children are spending stearing at small screens and unlike the past they may well of looking at screens also in school.

Perhaps one sensible way that some grown ups have suggested is to run first showings between 3:30 and say 6PM which gives you two and half hours a day into which as most childrens shows are half hourly allows for five shows a day and most shows only have one episode a week.

You could then show 25 shows on schooldays backed up by the iPlayer for later viewing, keeping the HQ interactivity and critically access to all while tackling cost issues.

Such an approach does mean a return to idea of BROADCASTING, making things for wide appeal and sharing spaces rather than the niche NARROWCASTING that has left daytime BBC 1 into lifestyle tv about makeovers, buying houses with bar like quizes and antiques with the odd soap tossed in.

That's similar to what we had before but if idea of transmitted linear channels is to provide it needs to do something other than just playing out shows, it must be for all and be involving directly an audience while those who do want to pick and choice from lots of shows even from decades ago are able to too.

I'm not so convinced a entirely virtual digital world is where we all are when we know sales of records have increased, that despite the use of electronic readers, even children read physical books and magazines of which there is much competition for rack spaces still sell and where live contact is still valued.

We need to find  away offering this that does fit in with the digital world  too rather than just scrapping an actual transmitted channel and identity (and BBC4).

Thoughts one year on about John Noakes

Just over a year ago, May 29th 2017 a man who was a part of the backdrop of my boyhood died aged 83 years from Alzheimer's complications.
You see ever since I was able to take in television, I'd always watch Blue Peter, the very long running BBC Children's program which at the time had a massive viewing and certainly I can recall seeing it from 1970.
The presenter John Noakes was a very much a hero to me cos he did things of extraordinary skill and bravery like climbing up Nelson's Column to clean it with no safety gear or Bob-sleighing at a truly hurtling rate of knots along the course.

Of course it did also help he had a dog called Shep, pictured and the pair were inseparable leading to the catchphrase, "Get down, Shep" because we could relate to that  and John while quite shy off camera had a lot of boy dare devil instinct which most certainly appealed to me in an era of fairly tame presenters.

This was 'the' classic line up of presenters from the mid 1970's going from left to right, Peter Purves, Lesley Judd, Valerie Singleton and John Noakes complete with pets.
It probably says a lot about what the show meant to me that I still have many of the yearly Annuals from this era, with just the odd pencil mark stored carefully.