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8 9 week@work Belinda artingstoll special feats producer at Radio Cumbria, has a week of health, wealth and happiness WE’vE BEEn running county shows for many years, but this summer we wanted to find a way of reaching into urban Cumbria – places like Carlisle, Whitehaven and Barrow. Our initial idea of a health roadshow (a touch too worthy?) evolved into the Health, Wealth and Happiness Tour – three days of activities, advice and information. With health in mind, we invited the NHS along to give people lifestyle advice and free healthchecks. They were joined by local alternative therapists who provided head massages and reflexology. The Citizens Advice Bureau, Credit Union and BBC Raw Money set up stalls advising on ‘wealth’ and to ensure ‘happiness’ we had everything from cookery demonstrations and gardeners’ question time to dancing and make-up advice. Although we’d had articles in the Radio cumbria’s Health, wealth and happiness roadshow at whitehaven sHamElEss PLUG u stEPHEn gamEs, formEr radio 3 PrEsEntEr My anthology of John Betjeman’s scripts brings together 60 of his films for the first time and looks at how he transferred his poetry skills to tv. The poet laureate spent years trying to get a job at the BBC, but it was only after he made a series of shorts for ITV in 1955, that he was spotted by director Ken Russell and started work on the BBC’s television arts series Monitor. Betjeman had an instinctive understanding of what television could do – and a poet’s sense of rhythm and flow in the writing of his own scripts. He regarded the BBC films he went on to make as as ‘satisfying and stimulating as any work in prose or verse I have ever done’. Betjeman’s England by Stephen Games, John Murray, £18.99. u WitH digital Britain promising endless rivers of broadband streaming from the information taps of every UK citizen, it’s conceivable there will come a time when almost all the population has an online presence, one that will live on when their physical form has ceased to function. It’s ‘Foreverism’ in action, says Trendwatching.com. Blogs, profiles, videos, everyone you have ever even vaguely known, they’re all there and they can all be traced, forever trapped like flies in the oozing amber of the internet for future investigators to observe and puzzle over (and local paper and had plugged like mad online and on air, we were nervous in case no one came. But when we opened the doors at the first event in Carlisle, they flooded in – and stayed for hours, watching the demonstrations and chatting to our presenters. The NHS tables were mobbed. At the first roadshow they referred more than 40 people to their GPs as a result of checks they’d had that day. In Whitehaven the NHS actually sent two people to the emergency out of hours doctors’ service. The visitors’ feedback forms were overwhelmingly positive and a lot of people asked when we would run it again. One of the great things was that we had all our new BBC branded gear, which looks fab. Last year we had one working pull-up banner, but now we have a press wall, flags, table skirts and banners galore. There were some funny moments of course…in Whitehaven EIGHT members of St John’s Ambulance turned up to provide first aid cover. We’d only asked for two but they said they all wanted to come because it was a BBC Cumbria event. I told them they would frighten the punters away and that some of them would have to leave. Which they did eventually... cHanging PLACES Radio Shropshire’s weekend presenter mattHEW carr (pictured) leaves the BBC after 23 years... Brand strategy exec JEnny rEdman moves to training and development... laura ZEttErBErg, currently in the corporate press office, joins the news publicity team... Radio Gloucester bj ruPErt uPsHon becomes an sbj at BBC Hereford and Worcester... colin rooBottom becomes West Midlands news editor... He replaces nina JonEs who starts a three month attachment at the radio reporter pool at TVC. sPEEcH PATTERNS perhaps resurrect your identity with some toad genes a la Jurassic Park?). But your life is still proceeding, and its digital work is never done – there is always one more ‘friend’ to add, one more hilariously observed comment to tweet to the world. Tiring isn’t it? Welcome to foreverism fatigue. IF YOU HAVE A sUggEstIOn FOR wHO OR wHAt sHOUld bE In wEEK@wORK PlEAsE EmAIl lAURA scARROtt BBc IN ACTION coming UP u 6 Music presenters Adam and Joe will feature in a new comedy series for BBC Two. Based on the pilot, tHE scum also risEs, the 6x30 minute series will be made by Bwark. It was commissioned by Lucy Lumsden, controller of comedy commissioning, and will be exec produced by Simon Wilson. It is expected to tx later this year. u Controller of CBeebies, Michael Carrington, has commissioned a children’s cookery show for the channel. The 26x15 minute series called i can cook will teach u cEntral london boroughs are offering free cycling lessons to people wanting to improve their confidence on the road. Anyone living, working or studying in Kensington and Chelsea, Camden or Westminster is eligible for the lessons. The classes are run by former children how to grow, cook and eat food. Made by Initial it will be exec produced by Sarah Colclough and is expected to tx in the autumn. u Children’s book tHE gruffalo is to be turned into a 30 minute animation for BBC One. The programme, which will be made by Magic Light Pictures, will form part of the channel’s Christmas schedule and was commissioned by controller of drama commissioning Ben Stephenson. It will be exec produced by Poly Hill. World Service producer Philippa Robb who works in partnership with the councils. For more information email philippa. robb@googlemail.com u sPottEd tHE BBc sYmPHOnY ORcHEstRA anywhere unusual this month? now in its seventh year, bbc Proms Out and About has been travelling around london this month to take classical music to a wider audience. From a full orchestra concert at london’s westfield shopping centre to a string onE milE RADIUS u Jo garvin, BJ, radio sHroPsHirE If you’ve got a free lunch hour, it costs nothing to visit the tiny church to the east of Radio Shropshire – st mary magdalene or battlefield church as it’s known. Here you can stand and relive the Battle of Shrewsbury, described as the bloodiest battle in English history, which was fought between the Percy family of Northumberland and the Lancastrian King, Henry IV in 1403. In a mass grave under your feet lie the bodies of the hundreds of soldiers who died there. It’s an amazing and spooky place steeped in its violent past and is perfect for spending a quiet half hour imagining the scene all those years ago. sPEak EASY toPical uPdatEs from tHE Pronunciation unit Two frequently mentioned names in the news this week include Iranian president mahmoud Amadinejad and presidential candidate mirhossein mousavi Khamaneh. Ahmadinejad is commonly mispronounced to sound like ‘I’m a dinner jacket’. Based on advice from native Persian speakers, BBC Persian and BBC Monitoring we recommend Mahmoud Amadinejad is pronounced mah-MOOD ah-mad-in-uh- trio taking up a position with diplodocus at the natural History museum, Proms learning manager Ellara wakely says: ‘It’s a way of letting people know that the Proms are about having a relaxing and enjoyable summer’s evening.’ Pictured here are violinists Anna smith and Kate Read and cellist michael Atkinson. ZHAAD (-zh as ‘s’ in measure, -aa as in father, stressed syllables in upper case). A common mispronunciation of Mousavi is to put the stress on the second syllable. Instead it should be on the first: meerhuuss-AYN muuss-av-EE khaa-muh-ne-E (-uu as in book, -ay as in say, -ee as in meet, -kh as in Scottish loch, -e as in bet, stressed syllables in upper case). If you have a pronunciation query contact pronunciation@bbc.co.uk / 02 82277 / pron. gateway.bbc.co.uk PHOtOgRAPH: sUE FOll WHat TO wEAR u ElainE Watson, local radio administrator, BBc tEEs, and assistant to HrlP nortH East & cumBria where did you buy the outfit you’re wearing in the photo? The shoes are from Clarks, the blouse is from Marks & Spencer Autograph collection and the pinafore was a bargain sale purchase from Wallis for £12. It fits beautifully, making me appear thinner than I am. where have you taken inspiration from? Princess Diana – she had such style and presence. Are you experimental in your style? No. I’m quite old-fashioned and conservative in the way I dress – I don’t dare experiment because I know I’ll get it wrong. whose wardrobe would you most like to rummage through? Mary Portas – she has style and isn’t afraid to dress a little outrageously from time to time. I’m sure she’d have something in that wardrobe for me. what’s the worst outfit you were made to wear as a child? I once had to borrow a school friend’s leotard for a gymnastics show because I’d forgotten mine. It was horrible and made from some sort of scratchy material. I didn’t stop scratching all the way through and I was covered in red blotches for days afterwards. blog bites monday speak - er, erm? The Speaker is dead, long live er, erm, someone who’ll do it better. Westminster has waited and watched in the hope that someone would emerge as a strong consensus candidate to fill his seat. No one has. In part, this is because the Speaker is being asked to fill a bewildering array of roles – parliamentary figurehead, presiding officer, protector of parliament’s rights, reformer, backbench shop steward, public spokesman, chief executive and saint. nick Robinson, political editor bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/ tuesday breakfast at wimbledon There is always a lot of exaggerated hope for British tennis players during the Wimbledon fortnight but somehow this year seems a bit different....or is that me just falling for the same old hype again. I’m trying not to get too carried away but having a World Ranked number 3 player in Andy Murray - someone who has just won the Queen’s title – somehow makes this year’s excitement seem a touch more justified. Olie d'Albertanson, assistant producer bbc.co.uk/blogs/fivelivebreakfast/ wednesday The plan is still to launch Freeview HD on December 2 at the Winter Hill transmitter serving Manchester and Liverpool... As with any major technical project, there is always a risk of slippage due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. However, there is industry-wide commitment to rolling out Freeview HD as soon as possible, and good progress is being made on all fronts. graham Plumb, head of distribution technology, bbc Operations group bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/ thursday do big brains stem from cooler climates? Big brains need cool climates to evolve, according to journal Climatic Change. If you’ve been wondering who to thank for your extraordinarily large brain thank the Earth’s last 50 million years of chilly weather, says David Schwartzman, chief author of the report. Without it, our savannah-savvy, toolwielding ancestors Homo habilis and Homo erectus might not have emerged. Why? Because big brains generate a lot of heat, and we get rid of heat much more easily when the climate’s cool. Burning fossil fuels and warming the planet will make it harder for our struggling brains to cool down. shanta barley, online researcher bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/ Friday michael Jackson tributes If you’d have asked me yesterday I wouldn’t have thought that the intersection of Michael Jackson fans and Glastonbury attendees on the great musical Venn diagram would be particularly large, but our BBC News colleagues have reported ’shock and disbelief’ among the drenched hordes here. Emily Eavis announced on the official Glastonbury Twitter account that ’There will be tributes all over the site all weekend’. Any guesses at what those tributes might be? I reckon the E-Street Band could pull a pretty tasty Billie Jean out of the bag and I imagine that Jarvis Cocker, ever the showman, will pay his respects in his own particular way. nigel smith, senior content producer, A&m bbc.co.uk/bbcmusic/
10 Opinion/Analysis aview ANDREW HARVEY Top slicing that would be bold If there’s One Issue where you will not find agreement from top to bottom it is the assertion that the BBC needs to pay super wages to attract executives of sufficient talent to run the organisation. Publication last week of the salary bands of the 50 highest paid people was greeted with surprise and even anger in some areas – and this from a staff that has long been used to reading about bosses whose pay outstrips their own. Mark Thompson is unmoved. In an interview with Ariel, he gave the classic defence, namely that the BBC had to operate in a market for talent whether this was to sign its stars or its support service executives. You won’t get rich at the BBC, he implied although that may depend on who’s doing the counting. In the present climate where commercial media businesses are in trouble, the BBC can appear more than usually insulated. The pension pots of the long serving seniors add to a picture of a privileged organisation – and to judge from the audience at Any Questions on Friday the public is far more exercised by what the BBC pays its top people than the expenses they claim. While you can’t allow every public show of hands or media furore to dictate internal policies, there is a case for greater restraint from the top tier than simply sharing the pay freeze that will be felt all the way down to £60k. It would be a brave move by those above £150k to accept a level of salary top slicing. But it might be for a greater good. if the public takes hold of the ‘bloated BBC’ line they’ll be less likely to defend the licence fee from similar treatment. Phew! it’s 34º WIth A thrOWAWAy cOmment during the round-up of the newspapers on Today, Evan Davis put his finger to an old tabloid foible. The Daily Mirror was reporting that temperatures inside Wimbledon’s centre court had reached 93 degrees. ‘Why do they always say Fahrenheit?’ mused Davis. ‘It’s stupid, we use centigrade now.’ He’s right. 93F is the same as 34C and we all know that’s a hot day with no need to hark back to the temperature table of a generation ago. You wouldn’t expect to hear someone complain they had just been charged 18 shillings and sixpence for a cup of tea. We’re with Davis on centigrade (or celsius to be strictly accurate) and while he’s at it, he might like to clean up weather reporting on his own programme where we continue to get random conversions into Fahrenheit. Radio 4 is a forward looking station complete with blog and podcasts. Whatever is it doing clinging to the past? Television weather is always in celsius and if forecasters on radio did the same the remaining listeners who haven’t yet made the adjustment would soon get the message. Andrew Harvey is editor of Ariel > IF YOU HAVE A VIEW ABOUT THE TOPICS ON THIS PAGE, PLEASE EMAIL ariel mailbox a 30·06·09 We should treat religion with the same fervour as football sOmetImes A WhOle broadcasting genre goes through a kind of renewal. It happened to science in the 1990s. Not just new formats, but a whole new approach seemed to emerge that allowed science to leap from the margins to the mainstream where it belongs. I’m hoping and praying that the same thing will happen to religion on tv. If that is going to be born again, programme-makers will need to take note of some of the significant changes that have happened over the past two decades. In greater London for instance, more than half of Sunday morning church-goers are black or Asian. You would hardly guess that from the portrayal of Christianity on television. Patterns of believing have changed. Fewer going to church When I was a child I went to church on Sunday mornings with my family. So did 6m other people in Great Britain. In 2009 the number has fallen well below 4m. For a lot of people in my parents’ generation, going to church was simply what you did – part of the routine along with Sunday roast and The Archers. In many ways the decline in church attendance represents an increase in honesty. Nowadays almost no one goes to church because they feel they ought to. There’s been a sharp decline in religiosity – and I welcome it. To acknowledge publicly that you are a Christian is counter- cultural. Most of the religious life of the UK takes place outside of the walls of any church. And large swathes of the Christian community are far more passionate, engaged and subversive than anything Dot Cotton would recognise. At its worst this expresses itself in mistrust, hatred and exclusion. But at its best – and it mostly is good – it turns into great acts of self-sacrifice, passionate campaigning and creativity. It is never, never dull. But somewhere along the line a doctrine seemed to emerge that nothing should be broadcast in the name of religion if it might offend anyone. Tony Blair, speaking to this month’s Church and Media Conference, described this as the negative narrative of ‘thin religiosity’. I suspect commissioners find this ‘lowest common denominator’ approach so bland that they As Aaqil Ahmed prepares to join the BBC as head of religion and ethics, Andrew Graystone senses an opportunity for some new thinking Peter Owen Jones in Ethiopia for Around the World in 80 Faiths ... but did he catch the fire don’t want it on their channels. Or if they do feel a residual duty to commission, they place it in the margins of the schedules. Religion on tv ought to be as dangerous as the stuff it depicts. Too often, when believers of all shades watch televised religion we don’t recognise our- I’m not looking for programmes for cardcarrying believers selves. We don’t see the compelling, energetic, mysterious stories and experiences that draw us in to faith. Instead we often see ourselves portrayed as freaks, geeks or antiques. Many of us feel cheated. Some give up and opt for the narrow religious channels. Let me be clear. I’m not looking for programming that will only be of interest to card-carrying believers. Sometimes people of faith are treated like a special interest group – like vegetarians or train-spotters. (Every now and then it’s our duty to make a programme for them...or should that be a programme about them?) Of course the BBC has a mandate to reflect the life of the nation. And in the last census only 16 percent of the population said that they had no religious affiliation. But I would reject any suggestion that the BBC ‘owes’ coverage to various faith communities in proportion to their numerical strength. People of faith are not ‘them’ but ‘us’. The central questions of belief – why are we here; where are we heading; are we alone; don’t belong to conventionally religious people, but to everyone. It just won’t do to treat religion as a historical artefact or an anthropological specimen. It’s a living reality for millions of people. So although I enjoyed Around the World in 80 Faiths and I’m looking forward to BBC Four’s History of Christianity, what I really want to see is programming that captures the fire of contemporary lived religion with all the energy of a football commentary. Religion is made up of all the stuff we love, hate, worship, hope for and believe in. It can’t be put in a box. That’s why it crops up in drama, music, arts and current affairs as well as specialist factual programming of the sort that the BBC’s Manchester department can do so well. Journalists don’t understand The complaint I hear most from people of faith is not that the media is biased against religion – though some people feel that way. More often I hear complaints that journalists simply don’t understand what they are reporting. It’s frustrating to hear fundamental mistakes in a report on a subject you care about: roles misunderstood, names mispronounced and so on. When religion hits the news it often seems as if journalists don’t quite know how to handle it. So they turn to the same models they use to report politics. Differing faiths or religious groups are portrayed like political parties – competitive, confrontational and vying for public support. Ideas are represented by personalities – the owlish archbishop versus the strident professor of atheism. The implication is that religion – like politics – is ultimately a battle for influence, with success measured not in votes on a ballot, but bums on pews. That’s why BBC One’s The Big Questions – surely the bastard child of Question Time and a 1970s late night ITV show, falls flat. Thank God it’s shown on Sunday mornings when most Christians are otherwise engaged! Aaqil Ahmed, who takes up his job as head of religion and ethics in early July, has an opportunity to build on the BBC’s existing expertise and authority. Creating understanding of people’s beliefs is a core part of the BBC’s public service function. There’s a particular opportunity to grow in understanding of British Islam and smaller faiths. The European elections demonstrated just how vital that is. The revitalisation of religion on tv is imperative, Andrew Graystone is director of the church and media network, secretary to the standing conference on religion and belief and a producer/presenter on Radio 4
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