No comment
I am actually unable to comment on the current ructions at 6 Music, but I'd welcome yours. You'll have read about the sacking of Leona McCambridge (my producer for two years at the station and a friend) over the Liz Kershaw show pre-records, and the resignation of director of programmes Ric Blaxill (my boss there for three years). These come on the back of the sacking of Blue Peter editor Richard Marson, over the editorial decision to choose another name for the cat Socks (above) when the one chosen by viewers was deemed either inappropriate or not very good, depending on your source. (The Times said it was a "variation on Puss", which seemed to be their coy way of saying, "Pussy", but this hasn't been confirmed. Others reckon it was "Cookie", which is more baffling.) I don't mind admitting I'm angry about what I see as a massive over-reaction to some minor - in a broader perspective - misdemeanours, but what pisses me off most is the reaction of certain people on newspaper message boards. BBC-bashing is a national sport, and it's clear why the media conglomerates in the private sector who own all the newspapers have a bee in their bonnet about the licence fee (many of them have fingers in the commercial television pie), but the very commentators who effectively call for the licence fee to be revoked, thus creating a level playing field, would be the first to complain when the Today programme had ad-breaks. I've added a couple of very general post on the Guardian boards, under my whole name, as is my wont, just to counter the view that people who work at the BBC despise the public, which of course they don't. I can't really go any further, as explained, but I thought you might like to read the venomous response I had on the Times boards. Certainly, Mr Murdoch would be proud of the work of Mr Berra, or "Fuming of Leatherhead". (I'm not going back to the Times boards again in a hurry. They're scary.)
Anyway, this is what I posted (in repsonse to an earlier purple-faced post from a bloke in Oxford):
I can promise you, having working at various bits of the BBC for the last 15 years, that there is no "culture of contempt", so please don't cast that particular stone. It's just a whole load of people, many of them not well paid, just getting on with their jobs, and working under ridiculous pressure, not least the pressure brought to bear by the commercial sector of the media, who demand that the BBC competes for the same bums on seats whilst operating as a monastery. BBC employees are licence fee payers too.
I can't comment on the individual case, as I know the people involved, and it's ongoing, but I will say that it's not very attractive to applaud when people lose their jobs - especially when you don't know the full facts.
Andrew Collins, London
And here's the reply:
Andrew Collins above personifies the blinkard [sic] mindset so prevalent at the Beeb. First he puts his colleagues forward as 'martyrs' for the cause, like they should really achieve sainthood for the work they do, when in fact they are more than overpaid for the poor quality, biased reporting and copycat and repeat programming, instead of fulfilling their mandate and promoting quality creativity.
He sees the Beebs' [sic] obligation is to satisfy the commercial media pressure and not the public remit of fulfilling its charter FIRST AND FOREMOST [his capitals] - without exception. And finally, he tries to be our conscience telling us what's right and wrong, when HE SHOULD BE EXAMINING HIS OWN AS WELL AS THAT OF HIS COLLEAGUES.
It's your mates who have been found wanting. Your license [sic] fee payment is what you get for working there; We get corruption for ours.
Ted Berra, Leatherhead, Surrey
I won't pick it apart. But if I'm on one side, and he's ON THE OTHER, I can sleep soundly in my bed tonight. I wonder if we might have a reasoned and non-abusive discussion about this. (You won't be having one on the 6 Music message boards, which, last time I looked, had been taken down en masse. Bit of an owl goal, that.) I repeat: I cannot and will not comment on the individual cases. But there is a general problem here, and it all started with the Iraq war.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 8:35 AM
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An owl goal?
I see the Daily Mail in particular is laying into the Beeb this morning. Paragons of virtue themselves of course...
Blue Peter's latest excuse seems to be that they thought the vote was rigged. Whatever - the core of the problem is the recent obsession with meaningless interactivity. [Was it Mitchell and Webb who sent this up recently?] Can anyone tell me what it adds to the quality of a programme? Or does it just engender a rather hollow feeling of ownership among the audience?
Perhaps a blog is a rather glassy type of house from whcih to throw that particular stone, of course.
I find it very worrying and fear for the future of the BBC. The BBC makes mistakes like everyone, it is hit by the same occasional inept management and cost cutting drives that most businesses face, but at it's best it produces world class output to a wide range of audiences.
Sometimes I think it tries too hard to be 'The BBC' and takes a stance which brings it into conflict with the Government or key organisations and it should be a little more tactical and subtle sometimes but I think that is the price you pay for all the very good stuff.
Why are people happy to pay £35 per month for Sky and not resent it, yet feel that the licence fee is so unfair?
I know people who work for the BBC and they get frustrated at the politics and management (like in most jobs) and I have not yet met one that is on any kind of mission to be subversive and change the world.
Worrying.
AnonoNick
ps must nip over to the message boards and bate the 'angry of leatherhead's......
Whatever about the BBC scandal, it pains me to listen to a lot of the shows on 6Music these days.
They made a massive mistake getting rid of you, Andrew. Your show was one of my favourites. The new presenters they have brought in are appalling. Shaun Keaveney's "talent" is better suited to local radio, Jon Holmes is just crude and unsuitable on 6Music, George Lambe...well, he was recently rather surprised to find out that Bjork was in the Sugarcubes. 6Music used to be about presenters (and listeners) who are passionate about music, not playlist slaves!
If I wanted to hear the same song three times an hour, i'd tune to Radio 1.
Listeners have been very vocal on the 6Music boards about the fact the station is going down the toilet, and yet they have been repeatedly censored by moderators. No personal abuse of presenters has been dished out, but it would appear the powers that be cannot take criticism.
I used to listen to 6 Music all day in work, now i find myself increasingly listening to last.fm and Radio 4. Hopefully management realise they've made a lot of mistakes before they alienate much of their listener base.
I really don't understand the issue some idiots have with the licence fee. It's dirt cheap. And you get loads of great stuff for it.
I'd pay just over a tenner a month for BBCi alone. Add Radio6 and BBC4into the mix and you have yourself a bargain.
Compare it to other TV packages (Sky, Virgin) and these petty complaints are a joke.
Hello Andrew,
I agree that the BBC has been on the back foot since the Iraq war/sexing up the dossiers debacle. There has been a reluctance to stand up to the ever louder Daily Mailisms thrown at it. The BBC seems to becoming more and more paranoid instead of standing up for itself.
On the other hand, the Blue Peter cat/Liz Kershaw show incidents seem to reflect a combination of stupidity and arrogance resulting in (another) spectacular own goal. The downing of the message board only makes matters worse.
The BBC is better than this. It has the chance to make it's case and it should do so loud and clear and stopping running scared of tweps like Mr. Berra. It's not as if it has no access to the media :-)
DaveB
I was wondering whether it would have been appropriate to mention this anywhere on your blog yesterday and I’m glad we’ve got the opportunity. I don’t know enough about specifics on the case but I will say that when ever I had any (brief) e-mail correspondence with Leona she came across as very friendly and likeable.
As for the BBC bashing it’s quite alarming to see The Daily Mail board reaction (I’ve stopped reading the comment’s for Peter Hitchens and Dick Littlejohn) that obviously it should be broken up and not get state funding because having the entire mainstream media in this country run by News International would be a good thing.
I've justr realised I've echoed AnonoNick's thoughts above - soz.
The point about the Mail is particularly pertinent - I'm sure that the majority of people would think 'so a show was prerecorded, and no-body actually won a copy of the Kaiser Chief's new album - so fucking what?', but as usual the Mail (who like EVERY other media outlet in the country, almost certainly make up most of their letters) puts on this false indignation, assuming that that's what their readers want to hear. Not because it's the actual opinion of any one person. just because it's 'what they do'.
The entire media in the UK is any good purely because a long time ago somebody realised that most of the general public are actually rather dull when you put them in front of a mic/camera/keyboard - so 'real' letters pages would be as interminable as the comments section on each post in the Guardian blogs - no-one could possibly want to read that. So they edit them, bring together 3 or 4 different letters to make a point, or make one up because it's a way of giving the other side. And nobody really cares, because at the end of the day, they are still getting a range of interesting opinions from their media, and are getting them in a well-written concise way.
Move this to radio, where it's all about entertainment, and getting your mates to phone in and sound interesting strikes me as a great idea, when you're there to make good radio. Listeners seem to enjoy competitions, but nobody wants to hear some poor stammering, mumbling bloke trying to answer questions and failing to sound excited when he finds out he's won the Hard-Fi album. So you get your mates to do it, people do still phone and email in, but the end result is 90 seconds of entertaining on air banter.
I used to write for a small music magazine - EVERY letter I ever responded to in print was a fake. All of them were based on actual conversations I'd had about the subject, but none of the words-on-paper letters I got were remotely printable, written as they were by nerdy musicians who couldn't string a sentence together (a bit like that loser on the Times forum.)
It's part of the media culture, isn't a bad thing, and makes radio/TV/mags/newspapers way more interesting.
The high horse the newspapers have clambered onto reminds me of when Martin Bashir did the MJ interview, and everyone piled in saying how terrible it was that he'd been pleasant to him on screen. Somehow that was lying, even though any good journalist is nice to their subject to get a story. They were all just fuming that Martin got the highest profile interview of the decade (again), and meanwhile they were off trying to find more people who may or may not have shagged George Michael on Hampstead Heath.
The double standard is insane, and utterly transparent, and the practice is nowhere near as problematic as it's portrayed as being. Poor Leona and Ric have been stitched up, because blaming it on individuals means the top brass at the beeb don't need to say 'oh for fuck's sake, it's ENTERTAINMENT! was the show entertaining? Yes? then shut the fuck up.'
grrrrr
Steve x
I wouldn't class myself as a media junkie by any stretch, but probably 80% of what I do watch (other than any sport, where your choice of channel is dictated for you) is BBC-based. There's a lot of stuff on BBC channels I don't like, but hey, it's a democracy - lots of people probably don't like the stuff I watch. People seem to have the idea that TV should be a personal iPod-style entertainment playlist and if any programming deviates from your personal taste it's time to flame the BBC on a message board somewhere.
Oh, and I know its a cliche to use the Today programme as the ultimate arbiter of BBC quality, but it's also a truism. I don't get chance to listen to radio in a morning as a rule, but the other day I had a very early morning 200 mile drive - the Today programme kept me entertained and informed for about 150 of those miles and the journey flew by. A welcome reminder that it's not all phone-ins and talent(less) shows at the Beeb.
I think openess is important. I think getting people to pay to call in when the show isn't live is wrong, it was wrong at the inital planning meeting and wrong when it went to air, it wasn't a minor mistake, the people involved should have not done it. Whether they should have got sacked is a mute point. I like the BBC and want it to stay, I would like it to be ale to attack it's accusers in the way they attack it, the mendacity of SKY and the mail knows no bounds, but the Beeb should own up when it makes mistakes. The sad thing about all the people slagging off the BEEB is that is if it didn't exist tv and radio in Britain (and the world?) would be crap and many of the people who complain would be whinging even more. Has SKY ever produced anything of any lasting value? Does anyone cherish DVD boxsets of anything it has directly produced?
There seems to be culture of accountability gone mad and theatrical over reaction at the BBC.
With this latest phone in fraud being rumbled, it seems an inappropriate time for C4 launch a new drama, “Dubplate Drama,” that allows viewers to vote on it's ending.Do they really think we're stupid enough to think our vote will count?
It's all been blown way out of proportion. I'm amazed it taken this long for 'fakery' to have been exposed. But so what - it's just what programme makers do to make things less tedious for us viewers and listeners.
And all this BBC bashing is fake in itself. The minute there's a big news story everyone abandons any other media outlet and is glued to the Beeb, because in their hearts they know they can trust it. No amount of kittens or noddies will change this.
For the record: Liz's show is not part of the "phone-in scandal", as the competition was not a phone-in competition. Anyone who knows 6 Music will know that phonelines are not used, as it doesn't have the staff to cope with answering phones. The competiton in question, Ruff Riff, was entered by email or text, mostly email, and the winner was invited on air to reveal the correct answer. Nobody, as suggested in Dave Hepworth's blog, was prevented from "getting through". (Also, important point, if a pre-recorded show goes out, a producer is in the studio at all times, ensuring that the pre-recorded show - still a very rare occurence - plays out correctly. The presenter may not be there, but the producer, or a producer, is, effectively working twice the hours for the same money.)
Really, come on, who gives a tinkers cuss if the cat was called Sootie, or whatever, or if shows aren't really live, or if Lord Haw Haw wins a radio competition...
It’s so pedantic, anyone with half a brain will see this for what it is, mere tish and fipsy. Personally I’m a little more troubled by the genuine lies told by our own government that were used to wage a phoney war in the middle east, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands. Hilariously I’m still waiting for someone to show me where those WMD that the late Saddam Hussein was supposed to have had.
I'm sorry to be an idiot but I can't help being vexed by this comment: "I'd pay just over a tenner a month for BBCi alone. Add Radio6 and BBC4into the mix and you have yourself a bargain." I would agree that £10 a month was a complete bargain, I certainly wouldn't pay for any of the ITV channels. It's just that for everything else you want you are forced to spend more money. First off, you can listen to 6Music without a licence fee. I bought a digital radio last year, the website said I would get 16 digital stations at my postcode, I only really wanted 6music but I thought "hey, I can get sharper signals of normal channels". Anyway I didn't get any digital stations so was back to using my laptop - more energy used, need to pay phone bill and broadband. The thing is, there are a lot of radio stations on the internet, as well as other sources of entertainment - I just want to hear great music while I'm in a car, at work or doing the washing up. Radio 1 used to provide this before they started trying to find out what everyone under 19 years old did last night.
Then the TV, living in Wales we couldn't get Channel 4, only S4C, which was very frustrating - I had to give up Six Feet Under because I had to be up for work in the mornings, Christmas films, like all films, were shown a fortnight later than in England and sitcoms meant for 9pm on a Friday were shown at 11.30 a week later or moved to Saturday. We weren't supposed to get Channel 5 but still managed a reasonable picture, so long as the weather wasn't bad, which was enough for the one or two programmes a week we would watch. Then over a few years every channel became unwatchable with interference. My Dad resorted to getting Sky about two years ago. Freeview unavailable in my area. He had the money, but I would not pay for a new TV and Sky. I live alone now and don't have a TV.
Radio 4 is the ray of light. I just wish they had a music show. I do think the BBC is over reacting to this tabloid pressure and I don't really believe the public in the main gives a toss. They would like to be treated with more respect though, and couldn't daytime TV be just a bit better? I'm sure it wouldn't take much to come up with something watchable instead of this tranquilizer TV they shove on now.
For what it's worth, I'm with 'piqued' on this one. This is a storm in a teacup.
Sad to see Leona go, as I enjoyed a few of the programmes she produced (Andrew's and, more recently, Gideon's) -- though she clearly made an error of judgement. I still love 6 Music, though again I agree with some of the comments made above about new presenters.
So I remain happy to pay my Licence Fee for BBC radio alone (sorry, TV lost me a few years ago, when I briefly couldn't get reception and found out how much better my life was without it).
Summary: the Beeb could be, and has been, better -- but it's still not bad at all.
It just seems that while using a pre-recorded show is perfectly acceptable, trying to pass it off as live and interactive is, at best, foolish, especially given the current level of scrutiny the BBC is under.
I'm sure Liz Kershaw and her team wouldn't have received any flak if she'd just announced that 'we recorded today's show earlier because...' and treated their audience as adults. There's a difference between the usual 'smoke & mirrors' of entertainment and claiming to be live and interactive when it's not.
I agree that the sacking was an extreme over-reaction that ultimately reflects badly on the BBC and only reinforces my impression that it's becoming almost paralysed by paranoia.
DaveB
Exactly! totally agree with the last post.
The Liz Kershaw incident is about a controversial as finding out that Radio 1 DJ christmas Dinner broadcast was pre recorded, it's blown up over nothing.
I'm so glad that there are little havens of sanity, such as the replies on this blog, while so many other places seem to go into meltdown over such relative trivia.
Ever since the explosion of instances whereby shows on TV or radio insist on immediate interactivity with the audience, I think it's no surprise that there are numerous instances when corners are cut, mistakes are made and decisions made border on the inappropriate.
It's right and proper that the people in positions of responsiblity take a look at such things and ensure the audiences are properly catered for but the over-reaction (from all sides) seems staggering to me.
From a personal (and completely impartial) perspective, I believe that the licence fee remains great value for money. The BBC provides 8 distinctive, ad-free TV channels, numerous national and local radio stations and the most comprehensive website you could possibly wish for. So long as I know that there are sensible controls in place, then I'm happy.
The BBC are undeserving of the vitriol as much as these employees are undeserving of the boot.
There's a fine line in TV 'deception'. I'm fine with shows being recorded so they sound live, as long as no one says "we're live" when we're not.
Equally, I'm quite happy for Paxman's questions to be filmed after the answers have been filmed, as is often the case when the team can only afford one camera. But I'm unhappy with giving the impression that Alan Yentob interviewed all these people, when he actually didn't.
Faking competitons is unfair to those who entered, believing they were in with a shot. Equally I think all the kids who voted for 'cookie' have been conned out of their money.
But I also think that BBC News has given this story too much prominence. It may be a big story in the media world, and deserves to be covered in some way, but giving it top-3 billing is a bit much.
It is a fine line, and we probably all have different views as to exactly where it should be drawn. But the actual incidents here seem almost laughably trivial to me. And I don't think, as David Hepworth suggests, that they suggest the programme makers have contempt for their customers. In fact, much of this seems to stem from producers trying a bit too hard to do what (however misguidedly) they think is right. Various explanations (a possibly off-colour name, voter fraud) have been offered for the Blue Peter incident - but, whatever the true one, I don't imagine the editor did it just as an amusing jape at the expense of the young audience. Similarly, Leona McCambridge presumably thought, rightly or wrongly, that listeners would prefer the illusion of a live show to the reality of a pre-recorded one - and, given that this is pretty much standard practice across all the (popular) music radio I've ever heard, I can't see that it was such an outrageous decision, even if you don't happen to agree with it.
And let's not forget that in the halcyon Reith-hued days of the 1960s, Blue Peter covertly replaced dead dogs and tortoises to avoid upsetting the young viewers. How is that different, exactly?
The thing about the Big Ted’s response is that, like a lot of people who have a bee in their bonnet about something, he wasn’t really addressing the AC message at all. He was projecting all his issues with the BBC onto it and just having a big tant. Like most of the anti-BBC propaganda it is hysterical and unreasoned and, from the Daily Facist camp anyway, it dates to long before the Iraq war. It’s written into its mandate.
And yes as usual these ‘media lying’ stories have become flavour of the month right now, along with dangerous dogs stories (again) and, no doubt, which building society is next. Some of the phone scandal stories were pretty serious (not that I could be arsed to care though) but some of the Beeb ones are just ridiculous. Some of it is just post production stuff (If I sound like I know what I’m on about there I’m lying too). If they did away with the programmes would be crap (hmmm).
There was a great piss take of how low this can go on Armando Innanuci’s Charm Offensive show last week with a joke about Jeremy Isaacs having to own up to the ‘nodding’ cut away shots that TV reporters have to do after they finished interviews (well it was funny the way he told it). Mark Radcliffe has been quite amusing about having to be whiter than white on his evening show this last few weeks too. Big Ted would be calling to have his balls chopped off if he’d heard it.
Like Mitchell I was going to comment on the sacking yesterday before I even knew the producer was your pal Leona... it's just another error of judgement to sack someone for a small incident that didn't hurt anyone. Makes you want to do a Jeanette Winterson, who went round to the house of a critic who slagged her off, and have it out with the bully who took the decision. A cultural change is needed so that honesty is valued over slickness, and now there's a great opportunity to do that.
Slightly random point: whenever outtake shows have a fucked-off reporter trying to do a piece to camera who keeps stopping because of minor distractions like passing motorbikes, attention-seeking passers-by etc, I just think, stop wasting time/film (or whatever), what do you expect, you're in the street, just do it, don't worry, it's what you're saying that matters. I don't want the BBC to be slick.
The stuff on 6Music was wrong. Especially out of order because 6Music listeners do have a sort of bond with their station. But to be fair to the station Ric Blaxill has taken the flak and stepped down. The chiefs earn enough, they should take the responsibility and Blaxill at least did that.
Mark Thompson on the other hand.. Would you receive the email he sent to all staff today Andrew? He is the most weak and craven little gobshite ever to walk the earth. Greg Dyke made mistakes (nowhere near as deadly as those made by the government of course) stood up to the bullies and he took the blame. Thompson on the other hand is pathetic. Always apologising when the BBC has nothing to apologise for. You want lies? Try two weeks-worth of newsprint about a shark in Cornwall.
The BBC should answer all these accusations by simply saying. 'Have you watched The Story of India with Michael Wood on BBC2?' I watched it last Friday. Fascinating, full of stuff I'd never heard before, relevant, and no other broadcaster in the world would make such a brilliant programme.
I think that the various premium rate phone line scandals are somewhat more serious than whether or not somebody wins a cd. Back when Andrew's show was on the air, I had a couple of emailed in contributions read out and once won a dvd and some goodies. It didn't cost me anything, and the cost to the BBC was only the time of the producer going through the emails and then posting off the prize (which I think was stuff that the programme had been given for free in any case). It really made my day when I won and the package arrived a few days later.
The community air that the show had certainly kept me and I would imagine quite few other listeners coming back every week. Surely with the huge spectrum of digital channels available there is space for shows to foster this sort of interactivity without having to chase ratings with premium rate competitions?
Interesting that you say the general problem started with the Iraq war. It does seem that the BBC has been wearing the gimp mask ever since.
Presumebly that is why we had a three part series, a Newsnight Review special and numerous radio interviews to publicize Alistair Campbell's diaries.
Their arses must be red roar.
"Their arses must be red roar."
This must now be the dictionary definition of a Freudian slip.....
It's not beyond 6Music, or other BBC stations for that matter, to produce interesting, entertaining and amusing shows that make no effort to fool the listener into thinking it is live. They already do!
So why pretend?
Oops.
Tis the eternal dilemn of working for an organisation funded by the public. Everybody feels they have a right to comment on it. The compensation for putting up with that is that people fuck things up all the time but are never fired for it. I can name five managers off the top of my head who everybody knows are incompetent in my section of the council alone. But none of them are sacked they are sent to do meaningless reports and other thinfgs that do not directly affect the day to day running of the council.
The difference is the BBC has too many enemies with very loud voices. It is terribly unfair but with public money comes responsibility.
I hate to say it Andrew but David has it right. Why bother to say you are doing something when you are plainly not ? Its just crazy. Sacking is extreme and I understand how difficult it is to see a friend being treated so. But the council method of moving people around to make it look like action is not an option for the beeb.
By the way I am not implying your friend/colleague is not competent just very unlucky. Which I doubt is much compensation.
Well, as someone who has won stuff from 6Music and had an email I sent in to Gideon Coe read out this week, I was rather shocked by the news of people being sacked. Seems like an overreaction to me.
Please send my best wishes to Leona.
I would like to agree with the comments made by Mitchell Sterling. I too had a couple of very brief e-mail conversations with Leona after winning things on your show, and found her to be helpful and funny. I was intrigued as to what your take on the story would be, and I will wait with interest for your full view, possiblty at another time.
However, I cannot help but feel this is indeed just another stick with which to flog the BBC, maybe literally as well as metaphorically should the daily press have their way. Too many are oblivious to the agenda of the majority of the press of today. Editorials written to please the point of view of their owners, owners who usually have many fingers in many media pies. And not just pies, television companies too.
Nothing would please these Media "barons" more than to see the BBC being sold off to, well, probably themselves.
Yes, mistakes have been made, and yes the BBC clearly feel that things not only have to be done, but be seen to be done, but there has been far too much self flagellation on Auntie's part. And making scapegoats of over stretched employees isn't the answer. And good producers are hard to find.
On another point, sort of related, I do miss the old 6Music. Can't we organise a bloodless coup and have it back the way it was? I miss hearing The Blue Nile on a regular basis.
Making up winners for competitions that no one entered doesn't bother me. Disregarding entries from previous competition winners is dishonest but those regular entrants are probably not surprised to discover it happens. However, holding a competition on a pre-recorded show really is dishonest and a con. If I'm going to contact 6Music I'll almost certainly have to go to the trouble of booting up my PC and spend a minimum of 5.5p on a dial-up email. If programme makers don't think that matters then that does represent contempt for their audience in my opinion. Part of the key to good music radio is that you can come to regard the presenter to some extent as a friend. And it's never good when you find out a friend's been lying to you.
It's not a massive fraud. It's not like the producers of a reality show taking large sums of cash from the public in phone votes and then ignoring the results, or failing to declare their financial interest in (er, say) an actress they're presenting as merely another contestant. But it's still a con and just because I like 6Music I'm not going to pretend it isn't. Of course certain hypocritical sections of the media are going to use these "revelations" as a stick with which to beat the BBC, but the correct response to this is to grin and bear it and to try to make sure they don't get the chance to do it again. Any other response will come over as defensive, self-righteous, and in my opinion weak.
Should Leona McCambridge have been sacked? Not unless everyone else who knew what was happening was too - including Liz Kershaw. Personally I think Liz's on-air apology should have sufficed. However if Ric Blaxill went of his own volition then respect is due to him.
Sorry if this seems overly outraged, naive, or pompous. I do know that radio presenters are just doing a job; they're not actually my friends. And I know that when Marc Riley occasionally plays a 20-minute Genesis track it's not actually out of some commitment to public service broadcasting but because there's a big footie match on and he wants to watch a bit of it. But then I also know that when he generously gives people a longer period to enter a competition it's because the show I'm listening to is pre-recorded (even if he doesn't spell it out).
And can I just say that if the current atmosphere of transparency and honesty at the BBC was in any way responsible for my being allowed to win (the lovely and much-maligned) Shaun Keaveny's (much-maligned) Fictional Headline Game six times, then I'm all for it.
Two points if I may.
The fact that Sky / The Daily Mail / whatever gutter press are apparently hypocritical in their criticism is irrelevent to me, as I don't read or watch them, and it's irrelevent to the argument. The perpetrators of these breaches of trust cannot deny that they well know that the BBC enjoys a unique position of trust in the eyes and ears of its audience.
Also, since when was it OK to lie to and cheat members of the public, just because your boss said to, or because it's in the culture? Or worse still because you're "under ridiculous pressure"?
The junior producers etc. in question should certainly take responsibility alongside top management. I'm not sure whether a change in culture is enough to improve those who lack moral fibre. Maybe indeed a change of personnel (at all levels) is the answer.
Blaxhill "resigns" and therefore leaves the station with a perception of having done the honourable thing, allowing him to walk straight into a job at Virgin/LDN/ whoever.
McCambridge is "sacked" - which leaves her with a different looking CV when she goes looking for work.
Somehow that just doesn't seem fair
Mentioning this in the same breath as the Iraq war sounds a bit melodramatic. I've spent time in Iraq. The war and events surrounding it are on a rather different scale from a minor scandal over music radio phone-ins.
But there is maybe one sense in which the fuss over the Gilligan report is relevant.
Panorama had it right there. Leave the accuracy of the report itself aside -- Greg Dyke bet the farm on it without investigating properly. That was sloppy and gave a lot of people a big stick with which to beat the BBC. If you're going to up against powerful people, you'd better be sure you have your facts straight.
It may well be that that mistake continues to embolden BBC bashers and still leaves the BBC feeling defensive and prone to self-flaggelation. But, as other people have said here, all of that seems slightly beside the point, especially here in Washington DC, where I am missing out on much of the furore back in the UK.
At the risk of sounding melodramatic myself, this is about deception. I'm interested in that, not what the Daily Mail is saying. I returned to live in the UK a few years ago after a decade abroad, discovered 6music and loved it. As I was settling back in, it was a welcome new friend (I mean that, corny as it sounds) and I particularly liked Liz Kershaw's show. She's a great presenter and her weekend shows had a great sense of community about them. That's the thing about radio, of course. It is a very intimate and personal medium. And as a station with a relatively small, niche audience, 6music probably had that even more than most. I think that's why listeners felt really let down when this came to light.
I kept listening to Liz Kershaw's Saturday show even after I moved to the States. Once again it was a friendly and funny link with home. When news of the competition deception broke, I was pretty hacked off. And I really think 6music should have said something publicly, prominently, on its web site. I basically stopped listening to the show after that. I was interested to read here that Liz Kershaw apologised on air. I would have been very interested to hear what she said. Can anyone fill me in? I certainly think the idea that whatever went wrong can be blamed only on a producer when you have someone of Liz Kershaw's experience and profile presenting the show is a bit off. It's her show after all, her name's in the title. I'd like to know what she's got to say about it and I certainly think she should be at least as accountable as her producer.
Trite as it sounds when we're basically talking about people playing pop music, 6music and that show in particular, created a bond between broadcasters and audience, as the best radio does -- a feeling that we are like-minded folk. So when you find out you've been deceived, and you realise we weren't so like-minded after all, that's not a great feeling.
The ridiculous thing about the deceptions (6Music's, the World Service's, and Blue Peter's) is that they seem to stem from a sort of show-must-go-on, can't-let-the-punters-know-we-screw-up-sometimes mentality. I doubt if that was ever justified, it may have seemed okay in a different age, it's certainly not appropriate today. It might not be contempt for the audience but it certainly implies they can't be treated like intelligent human beings. It's also not very imaginative. What was wrong with saying "you know what, we're on tape this week" or recording a special show with a particular theme that doesn't have the normal competitions? Why didn't Blue Peter just say "our phone-in system went on the blink, that's what happens in life sometimes"? Or "we suspect the online poll was rigged, we're going to re-do it?" That could have been the most useful thing they ever taught kids. A lot more useful than anything involving sticky-backed plastic.
Finally, let's go easy on the idea of BBC people being underpaid and under pressure as a reason for any of this. I used to work in commercial radio many years ago. Unless you're Johnny Vaughan or one of a handful of people on big money, that's where people really are underpaid in radio and each of them does the jobs of about five people in the BBC.
None of this is meant to say Leona McCambridge should have been sacked. As you say, Andrew, we don't know the full facts. (Mind you, you are inviting us to comment, even though we don't know them.) She is clearly a very talented radio producer and a lot depends on how much she was acting on her own initiative. And, frankly, whatever her offence, she doesn't deserve to be flailed endlessly in public or to be unemployed for years. She made a mistake, as we all do. To get back to where we started, we're not talking about the Iraq war here. Nobody died.
I would echo a lot of the comments about the changes to 6Music over the last couple of years. I was an avid listener since it's inception but have stopped listening gradually as it is seems to have lost its heart.
I was really disappointed to hear about the pre-recorded incidents on Liz’s show, as this has been one of my faves. I often entered the competitions myself, and it isn't about the money but the deception of the listeners, especially on a show that seems to thrive on a sense of community. Whether somebody should be sacked, I just don’t know.
I love the BBC and am just surprised that staff would give its many many detractors so much ammunition, especially in these times where the once unthinkable notion of getting rid of the license fee seems to getting onto both the political and public agenda. Why though is the Daily Mail and its ilk seeming to forget that much worse act of ‘deception’ happen on a wider scale at other channels?
Thanks for your long and considered post, Far From Home. Some good, heartfelt points there, and I can see why listeners might feel disappointed after investing so much in a particular, favourite programme, but you'll have to believe me when I say there is never any disrespect meant by the occasional deception. It's all in the name of keeping the show on the road - however problematic that may seem to you now. You're right, it would be better to say, Hello, you're listening to a pre-recorded show for the next three hours, I'm not really here - but it's weird how wrong that would feel to do on a live music radio network. Because listener interaction is at a minimum on Radio 4, most of its output, bar news, drama and continuity, is pre-recorded and skilfully edited, but it's still implicitly presented as if it's happening now. There are no claims made that it is live, but I don't know about you, as a listener, I still feel it's happening live. We like to think radio is happening right now, don't we? (Perhaps continuity announcers should be used on music radio for when shows are pre-recorded?) It's a debate that needs having. Without competitons and interactivity, it wouldn't be such an issue, but these are what drive modern radio. I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying that Chris Tarrant used to pre-record the first bit of his breakfast show on Capital - I read that somewhere, it's not inside information - because few people called in at 6am, so there was no need. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, but it does happen and it's always happened, and never with contempt.
I do have the full facts about the 6 Music case, but it's not for me to divulge them when a claim is ongoing into the dismissal. (Also, I am still officially on the subs bench at 6 Music, and will be deputising for George Lamb in October and Gideon in November.) I invited discussion on the general subject of whether sackings are apporpriate and what you think about BBC-bashing. I've enjoyed hearing your thoughts, and it's a world away from the Times and Daily Mail, which was my ardent hope!
Far From Home, you say that those working in commercial radio are just as overworked and underpaid as BBC employees. I have no doubt about that, but the pressure in the private sector is different to that at the BBC. You only have your bosses (and by extension the advertisers) to answer to. At the BBC, it's the whole of the rest of the media! One false move.
Mark Lawson wrote candidly when all this first started of being pressured to choose a winner for a radio competition who wasn't from London, so as not to appear "Londoncentric". This is a very different kind of pressure that comes from within the BBC. It's cultural. (I only mentioned that many who toil for the BBC, especially in radio, are underpaid, because Daily Mail readers prefer to think that their licence fee is being lavished upon hundreds of staff who sit around being fed peeled grapes while chuckling about how much they despise the viewers and listeners. One person on the Times boards even suggested, with purple-faced indignation, that Leona and Richard Marson would be handsomely paid off for their troubles, fundamentally misunderstanding the concept of "sacked", and perhaps mixing them up with Jose Mourinho.)
I don't have a transcript of Liz's on-air apology, but it was honest and sincere and very well worded, I thought. She said she regretted the small number of shows that were pre-recorded, in particular the Ruff Riff competition. Far From Home, you lay a portion of the blame at her door - well, she's been off the air ever since and it's her photo that keep appearing in the papers, forever tying her in (along with Konnie Huq and Pudsey the bear) with this wider story. I feel sorry for her. There won't have been any malice on her part. But as I've written before, it's still easier for presenters to move on from these matters than behind-the-scenes staff like producers and editors.
Oh, and I didn't compare these matters to Iraq. I suggested that Iraq is where the war on the BBC began. I'm currently reading Fiasco, about the Iraq war, and I'm totally up on what went on there. A different scale of deception indeed.
Thanks so much for taking the time to reply to my post, Andrew. I really appreciate it.
I take the point that listeners want to feel the programmes are live. It goes back to that idea of radio being an intimate medium, a companion or a friend. You don't want to know your friend has actually bunked off for the weekend and left you with a recorded message. But it's one thing to say nothing about whether you're live or not and another to invite people to contribute to a programme they can't actually contribute to. That's a con, frankly. A small-time con maybe but still a con. If a presenter can't do a show, why not take advantage of that talented subs bench you mention? I'm sure the boy Collins would have played a blinder in Kershaw's position. I'm not saying I don't understand the problem, the need to be live and interactive, I just think there are many smarter ways to deal with it.
I actually think Liz Kershaw had such a rapport with her listeners (I'm assuming they weren't all members of the production team) that she could have done a recorded show and made a joke out of it, as Wogan has done in the past. She could have invited people to suggest what she was doing with her day off, and read out the best of them the following week. Okay, that's a pretty lame idea, but I'm sure she could have come up with something better.
I also agree that the BBC is held to very high standards, scrutinised and attacked by rivals and unable to hit back as it might like. I've no doubt that can be very frustrating but commercial stations are subject to their own pressures. Most presenters there would be delighted to have a producer at all. To address Mark Lawson's point, I'm sure there's pressure even in a local station to make sure the competition winners don't all come from the main town in the transmission area so I'm not sure that's such a great example of the unique stresses of working for the BBC.
I'm sure you didn't mean to compare the problems of 6music directly with the first major war of the 21st century. I just thought the phrase "but there is a general problem here, and it all started with the Iraq war" was a bit melodramatic and open to misinterpretation. As I said, I agree that the way the BBC handled the fallout from the Gilligan report may have emboldened its critics and put the corporation on the back foot. But that situation didn't really start with the war, it started with the way the BBC handled its reporting of the war. The mention of Iraq may look appropriate from where you're sitting, with the Mail on your lap and Sky on the TV, but it didn't seem very proportionate from where I am and where I've been.
Thanks for opening up, and contributing to, a really interesting discussion, which I think has shown how much people care about the BBC, about 6music and about radio in general. That's all good news as far as I'm concerned. If no one gave a monkey's, then it would really be time to worry.
I'd still got a recording of the show and I don't mind a bit of typing. So this is the main part of the apology:
In 2005 I presented 250 shows on 6Music, of which 243 were live. Seven were recorded because either staff were on holiday, or I couldn't be here because of my kid's birthdays, or because I was live on Radio 2 at the same time.
Now lots of radio shows are recorded. This one has been singled out for scrutiny - quite rightly - because in order to make my show sound live, the Ruff Riff competition went ahead and I was asked to get you to take part, when in reality on those seven occasions nobody could really win. Now if you took part you probably feel cheated, quite rightly. I never saw your texts, but I read all your emails and I did feel troubled and uncomfortable that you believed I was here when I really wasn't. And I even replied to some of you. But I never spoke out to stop it, so I apologize to you - the license payer who pays my wages - unreservedly for being a coward. I'm sorry.
Now some of you will be listening for the first time because you've never heard of this show before but you've seen the show flagged up, and all those old pictures of me - thanks to the press, I don't know where you got those from - and you're curious. Well you're very welcome. We do have a good time on a Saturday morning and I hope you stick with us. And there'll be those of you who've never liked me - always thought I was a charlatan - and are tuning in to hear me squirm. Well I am a bit, so enjoy your schadenfreude.
And there'll be those of you who do feel betrayed and want to know what the hell I was thinking of. So please wait for all the facts to come out - that's all I can ask - and then make your mind up about me.
Sorry again for being part of a charade that deceived you.
There are shades of "only obeying orders" about it, in my opinion. And I can't believe that presenters are really ruled with a rod of iron by their producers. But it's an unusually full and frank apology. Like I said, I think that should have sufficed, although perhaps an apology from the whole production team responsible, or from someone higher up, might have been better.
If it was (is?) an accepted 6Music practice to con listeners I certainly cannot see any fairness in Ric Blaxhill being allowed to jump while Leona McCambridge has been very publicly pushed. At the very least, the other way around would be more appropriate. I sincerely hope BECTU are able to help Ms. McCambridge.
Doesn't reflect well on 6Music whichever way you cut it though. Being state funded of course others will race with glee to give the BBC a kicking. And why not? Mistakes have clearly been made. There is also no similar commercial broadcasting monolith, so it's easy to bring together errors across the wide spectrum of BBC output into a more general complaint. Perhaps you should take a crumb of comfort from the fact that it has garnered such a strong response. Some tinpot local station that fakes a show isn't likely to be national news.
I don't find your reasons for these deceptions particularly comforting though. What external neccessities are there that require 6Music to be a "...live music network..." over and above a requirement for it to be a 'music network'?
The fault at issue is not that some shows are/have been pre-recorded, but that they pretend to be live. By crafting a programme that seeks to imitate a live one you are relying on the listeners being fooled. And patently 6Music would rather fool it's listeners then be honest with them.
Dave,
Thanks so much for typing out a transcript of Liz Kershaw's apology. As you probably read, I live in the States at the moment so I've missed some of the twists and turns in this and I didn't manage to hear that show on Listen Again.
It's a shame 6music didn't post that, or something like it, on their web site right at the start. Watching from afar, it was their silence I found appalling, even if an investigation was going on. Like the act of faking the competition, it was all very 20th century, to put it as kindly as possible. There may have been a time when Auntie knew best, or thought it did, but in the age of Facebook, Myspace and all the rest, when the public are sophisticated consumers and producers of media products themselves, being deceptive about how interactive your programme is and not keeping your customers informed is a pretty poor show.
Maybe Andrew can pass that comment on to the BBC's PR people if they ever get round to some "lessons learned" from the whole saga.
That's ok, Far From Home. I really do have nothing better to do on a Saturday night.
Just on the general point of pre-recording: I can understand entirely why the makers of a show that is normally live and thrives on listener interaction would try not to let on that they're pre-recording. I understand that a pre-recorded show like that is going to be somewhat dead and in actual fact less entertaining. And clearly being entertaining is the point. But I don't like the idea that the production staff or the presenter think that they can generate/fake the sort of input that the listeners would otherwise provide. That in itself shows a certain disregard (perhaps even contempt) for the audience, and in particular those who would and do normally contribute.
I accept there's a problem for the production staff but frankly I really would prefer it if the presenter simply announced the show was pre-recorded rather than having listener contributions being faked. And you know, those New Year's Eve shows aren't fooling anyone. (I can state that with some confidence since I'm fairly sure I'm the only person who hears them.)
From a slightly different perspective, as someone from outside the UK, I'd gladly pay the license fee to listen to BBC radio (which I now listen to online for free). I appreciate the current 'climate' where the BBC needs to be over-sensitive to fairness and transparency, but at the same time, I work in publishing and I realise the reality of coordinating timing with the audience; and if something needs editing, twisting, re-presenting for the sake of continuity/entertainment, I'm fine with that.
The presenters don't owe me anything - it's THEIR show and I'M tuning in ... because I like the shows. I heard one case of a TV show where viewers entered a competition via text messages, at their own financial cost, where they had NO chance of winning. In this situation I would expect an immediate addressing of the situation. Otherwise, I feel the show belongs to the presenter - not the listener.
The only trouble with that, domboy, is that those of us who do pay the licence fee are paying the wages of everyone who works on these shows. That doesn't stop it being their show and it doesn't mean I get to demand Liz Kershaw's removal just because her apparent love of Springsteen and hatred of McCartney infuriate me (though a lot of the 6Music message board users do appear to think this way). But it does mean they owe us something. At least it means we deserve to be treated fairly and with honesty.
And the only difference between the TV show you mentioned and the situation here is that the financial cost to the listeners was much smaller and none of that money went to the BBC.
I should point out that despite appearances I'm not obsessed with this, nor particularly outraged. And I'm no more surprised by the "revelations" than I imagine most people here were. I only keep butting in because I'm having possibly the most boring weekend of my life. Apologies for that.
Oh yeah, and I liked Liz Kershaw and her show. It's been a bad couple of months for that family.
I just thought I would add a few thoughts here.
1. I've been a 6Music listener from day 1 and I've entered and won loads of competitions. If I'd found out that any of them were false I really wouldn't have cared. In fact I'm pretty certain that I never even received my prizes a couple of times but apparently no heads rolled on those occasions!
2. 6Music has more listeners than it used to. I believe there are two reasons for this. a. More people have access to it than before. b. More people are aware of it than before. I am steadfastly convinced that it is not because it is better than it was, in fact quite the reverse. The overall output of 6Music is far more important to listeners than a few indiscretions that make no difference to the sound of the station. Sacking people that were involved during 6Musics halcyon days seems a very odd way of reassuring listeners/licence payers that they have our best interests at heart. If the same effort was put into improving the station that was put into this investigation/witchhunt perhaps the listeners would benefit and after all is said and done, it's the listeners and viewers that the BBC is there for.
3. We go to a lot of BBC radio recordings and once we're in place in our seats we normally enjoy them immensely. The free tickets are very good value for money! The problem is almost always the the way the audience is herded about. If you talk to any individual member of the Audience Services staff they are normally very pleasant and helpful but as a team they appear to treat us with contempt. This suggests to me that it is a BBC attitude. Again though I accept that, although the methods appear to be unnecessary (they are unnecessary because not all the commercial companies making programmes for Radio 4 behave similarly - take a bow TVRecordings), the main point of me being there is for my applause and laughter to be recorded for transmission to a much larger audience.
4. Andrew, it's interesting to hear you say that presenters bounce back more quickly than the back room people, I would have expected it to be the complete opposite but both Ron Atkinson and Rodney Marsh were the same prime time Sky One show last night. I'm sure we haven't seen that last of Jim Davidson either.
5. On the Blue Peter cat affair, a quick scoot over to Dictionary.com to find out alternative definitions of Cookie is educational.
6. Your illiterate respondent on the Times board my have unwittingly invented a new word "Blinkard" def: Some one with a blinkered attitude"
I just received this reply from the message board moderators, in response to an email I sent last week asking why the message board was taken down for at least 12 hours.
"Thanks for your email. The messageboard hasn't been removed from the
site at any point since it launched, so I'm confused as to what would
make you think this was the case.
As for moderation, posts are never removed if they're merely critical of
the station or presenters - have a look at the board and you'll see
several posts are less than complimentary! However, they will be taken
down if they break any of the house rules, which users agree to abide by
when they sign up."
Would it have really seemed 'odd' to the listener for Liz to have said "I'm on tape this week, so I won't be able to read your texts and e-mails, but I promise I'll get round to them next week" and "The Ruff Riff's just for fun this week - don't send me your answers, I'm not here"?
Just thinking of other stations, Eddy Temple-Morris and James Hyman regularly used to do that on their Xfm shows - other than a little loss in interactivity, it didn't alter the experience for the listener all that much and is surely preferable to actual deception.
Liz's bluff manner's such that she could have pulled it off easily: she could even have made it into a joke, with (very obviously) fake, ridiculous comments and e-mails being read out.
There's something about the media mindset that is a smidge worrying.
You don't deceive an audience by accident.
Time has been taken and effort expended to pre-record radio shows with the intention of conning the audience. If the staff thought it wrong why stand for it more then once?(I sincerely hope some internal complaints were raised.)
I'd hazard a guess that if the shows passed without complaint at the time, the staff involved would be chuffed - and rightly so, their combined talents had produced a show indistinguishable from the real thing.
Doesn't make it right and it does display a contempt for the audience. If actually being there was so important a stand in should have been sought.
Hi Andrew. The BBC are also a legitimate target since the revelations of salaries. I am a fan of BBC radio (& some TV) and a cheerful licence fee-payer, but I really was p'ed off by some of the figures quoted. Not only the Ross/Wogan ones, but just how unnecessarily high they all were and how it was an untruth to say in explanation that they needed to pay at this level to compete. Utter rubbish. I also get mightily peeved when all-and-sundry will go around the world at our expense, eg FiveLive presenters going out to World Cups. Regards, Roger
No-one approves of these deceptions. The BBC is trying to stay apart from a media-wide culture. With a bit of imagination the bosses could've seen they needed more than a few guidelines. It looks like a collective failing to me. An understandable one.
When I made my previous comment I didn't know who had sacked Leona McCambridge; I've since read who did but can imagine that that person might have been under instruction from someone higher up - obviously I don't know, but from other stuff I've read it's apparent that the top bosses want to be seen to be 'taking action'. Well, that's not the sort of action I want and I've entered plenty of BBC competitions. And there doesn't seem to be one listener/competition enterer here that approves of the sackings, despite us all resenting the deceptions. But there was the Tory spokesman saying that he 'welcomed the disciplinary action taken'. (Fill in your own insult here.)
What's the point of the sackings? I doubt it's incompetence or likelihood of repeat transgression, and the possible reasons of deterrent to others/retribution/PR are all divisive and callous; there are other penalties available. I guess the BBC is sending out a message that 'this sort of practice won't be tolerated'. So those sacked to date have been used. They should treat their staff like adults, and change collectively. Another thing I read: 'BBC sacking hits staff morale.'
Really this whole thing is ridiculous, and the fuss made about it by the Murdoch press is astonishing.
If someone can be fired without warning for "gross misconduct" surely there has to be something in their contract that covers what they did. It doesn't seem likely that either "deceiving the listener" or "pre-recording shows that are usually live" would be in there. I'd be very surprised if the BBC can get away with this.
There might be something in the contract about bringing the BBC into disrepute.
I think there's too much of an emphasis on listener interaction on 6music.
Skilled DJs like Andrew Collins, Gideon Coe and Marc Riley will often pick out amusing and relevant emithers to read out. In these cases, something special is added to the show, but when it comes to some of the others like Nemone reading out that Wendy in Reading hopes to have chips for her tea then it's quite clear that there's no need for listener interaction. Marc Riley hinted that his show was being judged by the amount of texts that he received, this is a ludicrous situation.
There is also the other end of the spectrum where Radcliffe & Maconie only read out correspondence from about 6 people, I think this makes their show seem exclusive and cold to the people who've tried to contribute.
It's a tough balance to strike and not many DJs should bother.
Should a producer have walked? No.
Should producers put up a fight against management demands for too many playlisted records and too much listener interaction? Maybe.
From the outside, Ric Blaxhill seemed like a quango. Lesley Douglas seems to be pulling the strings, however, she seems to have remained distant from this issue. I'm quite sure anyone with the facts could right this last view.
It's a personal shame for those involved when jobs are lost and I agree with the posts who point out that Leslie Douglas appears to be hiding in a bunker somewhere hoping that it'll all go away.
My own personal hope is that this is thing which gets her moved as far away as the station as possible.
More and more comedians at the expense of people who are passionate about music can only sound the death knell of what was once the best music station in the UK.
Andrew said: You're right, it would be better to say, Hello, you're listening to a pre-recorded show for the next three hours, I'm not really here - but it's weird how wrong that would feel to do on a live music radio network.
Russell Brand does this practically every week on his Saturday night Radio 2 show because of his stand-up shows and it does not detract in any way from the listener experience. He makes it abundantly clear that he is not there (in fact he doesn't stop going on about it!) and so the audience know where they stand, which is the important thing I think. If shows don't make this clear then, intended or not, as a listener you're going to feel like a bit of a mug for entering a competition that you had no chance of winning.
The ongoing BBC witch-hunt and much of the media reaction to it is deeply depressing on the whole, but I had to laugh at the following contribution to the Times board - either the work of Chris Morris, or just a spectacular mixture of illiteracy, pomposity, and ignorance. Insert your own “[sic]”s.
“Quite the shame that Blue Peters image as a wholesome show is being slowly but surerdly, erroded, by these peoples such as Kevin Bacon and Leona McCambridge. In the 70s this appears not to be the case. Does this give an indication on media business as a whole. The deception and breakdown of civilised behaviour and procedures, can only tarnish as it does the reputation of the group. People will look upon the BBC and feel that something is lacking, integritory. One hand we are the flag of civil reason and honest broadcasting, the other quite the opposite.
Peter Hagan, Liverpool, England”
Seems a bit unfair to blame Leona for the Socks scandal, let alone Kevin Bacon, even if he’s never more than six steps away from anything.
Faking a competition in order to pretend a pre-recorded show was live was obviously a bit silly, as has been acknowledged. As a 6 Music listener and participant in many competitions in the past perhaps I should feel betrayed, but I just can’t get worked up about it. Competitions on the station were always a welcome diversion from work and occasionally a chance to get some smartarse remark of mine read out on air. If in some cases there was actually no chance of winning whatever crap promo CD happened to be on the producer’s desk that day, well so what? Leona’s sacking seems grossly disproportionate, especially if, as has been suggested elsewhere, the minor deception was volunteered to BBC management as an example of past bad practice under a supposed amnesty.
I’ve become exasperated with 6 Music recently as it seems to be losing many of the qualities which once made it special, with knowledgeable and witty presenters being edged out, often to be replaced by dull, glib, Smashie and Nicey clones. For this reason I initially had mixed feelings about Ric Blaxill’s departure, and if I felt his going would help reverse the decline I’d probably welcome it. But ultimately I suspect most of the blame for the worsening state of the station belongs elsewhere, and in any case he’s going for the wrong reasons. Worst of all, the fact that a relatively senior member of staff has been “allowed to go” will doubtless be used by Lesley Douglas and her bosses to try to make the unfair punishment handed out to Leona McCambridge appear more justified.
Good luck to Leona with the appeal.
Leona is a producer, which means she produces the show. She does not get to choose when a show goes on air surely?
If my boss(es) wanted to do something specific, it is not my place to tell them they are doing something which is morally wrong or deceptive etc. It's my job to do my work as the bosses have laid it out.
It angers me that she's been sacked, Ric got to resign and presenters are continuing on.
Producers don't make these decisions (well, not in the case of 6music anyway).
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