"It's all a bit depressing. If they think it is too posh now, goodness knows what awaits us. Assuming that by "posh" they mean anything remotely challenging. Fairly recent tv innovations such as the Culture Show and BBC4 scuttled swiftly downmarket at a bewildering rate. With BBC4, I think it is maybe more a question of finance than policy but I don't see where the Avengers, Life on Mars or the League of Gentlemen ( to mention three current regulars on the schedule there ) fit into the original remit of the station. The Culture Show seems a more definite decision to go for the student market."

There hasn't been a shift on BBC4 content, as far as I can tell. I wouldn't like to think of BBC4 as an oasis for some idea for "upmarket" programming, as I hate that division. Anyway, one thing about that channel is that it does pick up on arts programming that used to be broadcast after Newsnight on BBC2, say, and gives it a more primetime slot. But also, they do tend to repeat lots of old television. I can't remember a time when this wasn't the case - I've been enjoying "League of Gentlemen", but also catching terrific stuff like "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". "The Avengers" I first caught on years ago on C4, but BBC4 have also broadcast "The Prisoner". Its all about showing old bits of culture, it maybe driven by budgets but isn't everything ever :-)

"The Culture Show" is the exhibit no.1 when ans the question posed at the beginning of the thread - def "no". In its 1st series it ws really trying to introduce all sorts - interview w/Elliott Carter one min, short TV essay on high rise buildings the next - really ok stuff. If anything I think they've lost a bit of faith with that approach, w/the second series phasing some of the essay stuff out for many more interviews (the questions are often not v interesting, but there'll always be footage so you could sample the bit of art under discussion) and polls about er, whatever bits of culture that could be grouped together. The approach to make things more attractive for a new audience is ok, mind you things DO get lost (too sampledelic, politics are always skimmed) and its far from perfect. But at least people are getting introduced and can pick anything up from there.

Storyville still continues, and for the last couple of fridays they have broadcast performances and talk about Haydn's string quartets (w/opinions on the string quartet as democracy, etc). They are also repeating "The art of eternity" (fine 3-part series on early Christian Art). I think Charlie Brooker is ok - whether it is or not is beside the point - reviews of TV are just the kind of thing BBC4 does.

Now I'm not saying the documentaries on music are all that - some of the ones on popular stuff (Funkadelic and Hawkwind) follow an awfully boring pattern - usually centering on 'freaky' personalitites that come together, do 'something' that everyone loves, then relationships collapse (usually its the drugs, etc.). Complete lack of any attempt at broader analysis (the Soul Britannia strand didn't seem to get beyond the word 'Soul', for example) and so on...but its not like docs aren't being made.

Fair enough re:Gubaidulina - did anyone ask the BBC for an explanation for that? Contemporary music has always been given the roughest ride, I'd say - but I think there are many reasons for that. I've never seen any interest shown by any broadcaster in most contemp music since the mid-90s (when my TV 'memory' starts).

"The Culture Show" has always had a 18-30 audience in mind. I disagree w/yr remark about film - BBC4 shows one foreign film a week, and "The Cinema Show" used to be a really watchable cinema magazine show, great range and everything. That ws changed to a very odd series centering on a theme - on war films, love films, british pop movie, etc.

There could be budget constraints, sure - but all I'm saying is that the picture seems mixed.

I only saw the first part of "The Art of Eternity", so I'm glad that's getting a repeat. One thing I do like about BBC4 is that they recycle their repeats very quickly -- normally a bad thing on other channels, but very useful on a channel where the programming slots are quite irregular and you can easily miss something good.


Regarding music dicumentaries:

Isn't that a trend of *all* popular music documentaries, not just on BBC4? In popular music the personalities are perceived as more important than the works. I don't know whether it's because journalists consider "pop" music as too shallow to subject it to musical analysis the way you might analyse a symphony. Or maybe because they think their audience doesn't want or understand a deeper analysis. (From personal experience I can say this isn't true -- at any gathering of serious progressive rock fans the talk is more likely to be "Is this organ solo quoting Bach?" than "Who is was the singer sleeping with when he wrote this?".

Personally I would like to see a proper "musical" anlysis of rock music. As a fan, I already *know* about the drugs and collapsed relationships, but as a non-musician I find explanations of why music works fascinating. But I have a feeling that such an effort would degenerate into "Why did you write Space Ritual in this particular way?" "Well, we were on drugs..."

I don't think "shallow" would be the word, but it is true that most pop music consists of relatively short pieces which are relatively stereotyped and simple in terms of structure and harmony (in ways that a Mahler symphony isn't), so that the vocabulary of musical analysis, which has largely evolved in order to deal with exactly those musical dimensions, finds itself lapsing immediately into platitudes, while being unsuited to deal with other areas (like timbre and improvisation) which might be much more central to the conception of the music.

"Isn't that a trend of *all* popular music documentaries, not just on BBC4? In popular music the personalities are perceived as more important than the works. I don't know whether it's because journalists consider "pop" music as too shallow to subject it to musical analysis the way you might analyse a symphony. Or maybe because they think their audience doesn't want or understand a deeper analysis."

Depends, some of them I feel quite satisfied - I remember that doc on Captain Beefheart that had some good input from some of the musicians (as in I got a snapshot of the music was made, although some of the concepts seemed a bit alien, really) and people who dealt with him, some of the fans (a snapshot of the time), lots of great footage. Not sure how much musical analysis you could put on a TV program...but in this example I felt the people who made it actually LIKED Beefheart and did the work to get the right people to talk.

I can't say the same for the one on Funkadelic - just a list of LPs, and lots of ppl saying the word funk a lot, or so it seemed to be - now surely there ws a bit of room to tell a bit on how funk worked, how it came about, something about the dynamics of it. With soul and funk there is so much to be said but its cast into something quite mystical - either you have soul/funk, or you don't - and that's a disservice to musical styles where particular skills have been developed - there is CRAFT here, so why not talk about it?

(I'll revise my prev post a bit and say that personalitites can/do shape the way a sound is created so its perfectly valid to talk about, then the effect of x drug on the music is fine though do tell us a bit about brain chemistry why doncha..so yeah, lots of stuff that is hinted at, sometimes not talked about when it could be)

Thanks - related to that essay is the following discussion in this msg board on women and electronic music.

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=41&threadid=56938

...not to mention that analysis of rock music is probably anathema anyway, because its very existence is (partly) borne out of a desire to rebel, and analyses are inevitably institutional (actual or imagined).

With very, very few exceptions, I've found rock music writers to be the most snobbish bores, capable of out-gibbering even the most pretentious of modern art critics. Which is why John Peel's passing was so greatly lamented; the industry could ill-do without him.