Do visit my site again, won’t you ! One person has been into it nearly 40 times in the last eight days - transpires he was one of the original MWYW contributors !

Amazingly, it is 14 years since we last heard piano recitals on Radio Two. Surely the BBC could afford that. For decades now the same mindless rubbish has been churned out by the BBC. It seems that it is unfashionable to have anyrhing resembling a tune ! I now rarely listen to Radio 2 - all the music that I want to hear is on my collection of tapes and discs.

I feel strongly that the BBC are in breach of their responsibilities as broadcasters, by largely ignoring the generation that grew up with them. Whilst it is true that certain broadcasters such as Titchmarsh and Jacobs do cater for those with more than one brain cell, these are record programmes and do not employ studio musicians. They are also in the evening - daytime transmissions
being a barren wilderness of banality.

For those of you who have given up on Digital Spy’s constant bickering -

My 1st posting:
I think that Radio 2 is NOT fulfilling its Service Licence Agreement because it is not providing popular music of enough variation to cover the many specialist, albeit minority, genres. Pop music there is in plenty but it overlaps far too much with Radio 1 and the commercial stations. Radio 2 should be giving us music which is not available elsewhere. A great job is done by Desmond Carrington, Russell Davies, Alan Titchmarsh and David Jacobs and the occasional series e.g. Benny Goodman and the current Dance Band series. But where else can we go to hear good, popular (as opposed to pop) music? Radio 2 may pride itself on being the most listened to station but it is placing quantity above quality.
Personally I enjoy a wide range of different types of music from jazz, big band, 50s/60s pop, 30s/40s dance bands, musicals, ballet, light (Eric Coates, Robert Farnon, Leroy Anderson etc.), music hall, the Great American Songbook, Gilbert & Sullivan and even (a little!) opera. This is because I grew up with the Light Programme which was on most of the time at home and I couldn’t help being exposed to all sorts of different types of music. The BBC was doing its job then to ”inform, educate and entertain”. The other BBC radio stations seem to do this, but Radio 2 seems to have lost its way.

My 2nd posting:
The Office for National Statistics states as follows:
(1) The population of the UK is ageing. Over the last 25 years the percentage of the population aged 65 and over increased from 15 per cent in 1983 to 16 per cent in 2008, an increase of 1.5 million people in this age group.
(2) The fastest population increase has been in the number of those aged 85 and over, the ’oldest old‘. In 1983, there were just over 600,000 people in the UK aged 85 and over. Since then the numbers have more than doubled reaching 1.3 million in 2008.

Perhaps the problem with Radio 2 is that it is aiming at a target audience aged 35 and over. Bearing in mind the UK’s ageing population, that covers 2.5 - 3 generations. I am sure it is true that many 60 year olds enjoy and are happy with the current Radio 2 output but these days the age of 60 is only two thirds of the way into one’s life. Where can people in their 70s and 80s go to find the sort of light music they would enjoy? Shouldn’t BBC Radio be catering for them too? Apart from Carrington, Titchmarsh, Davies and Jacobs plus a handful of other evening programmes, there is not much else, and they are likely to be at home all day and probably, I say probably, not internet-savvy.
This is a polite request for ideas and information.

My 3rd posting:
Yes, the market has to be taken into account but on the other hand people up to the age of 75 pay the same licence fee as everyone else (and have done so all their lives or since licensing began) so should be considered an important, if minority, group.
I should also have added in my 23:44 post of yesterday that if us “oldies” (I’m 67) were given our kind of music at some time during the day, you could well find younger people tuning in out of curiosity or by mistake and suddenly thinking “Hey - I like that! Why have I never heard that before?“
This would not turn them off their usual music of choice but could make them aware of the wealth of good popular music of years gone by which didn’t succumb to the “hear it, enjoy it for a while then throw it away to make room for the next new fashion.”
Well - it’s a thought.

“The Great British Songbook is not restricted solely to the Sixties to the present, but we had to start somewhere. We thought that the 1960s was an appropriate initial start point since that particular decade saw the rise and ultimate world domination of songwriters such as Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards and The Bee Gees etc.

“However our ultimate aim is not to ignore the decades before. The Great British Songbook is an ongoing project and so over the coming months and years we intend to reflect the period pre-1960… so please continue to suggest your pre-1960 British songwriters here.”

and how nice of them, they’ve now created a forum thread for pre-1960s songwriters.

John

As stated in the main article about BBC Eight Light ( a marvellous idea if it could come to fruition) you could indeed rebroadcast daily programmes of ‘Music While You Work.’ I’ve got nearly 600 of them -it was my favourite programme and I have even written a book about it (see my website). I have given about 40 to the BBC Sound Archives, not they are ever likely to be aired! I also have many editions of other instrumental programmes such as ‘Bright and Early’,'Morning Music’ ‘Melody on the Move’,'Marching and Waltzing’,'Grand Hotel’ etc. I would happily put complete programmes on my website but for the fact that I would probably find myself falling foul of the law! If a radio station such as ‘Angel Radio’ would really like to rebroadcast these programmes I could certainly provide some! Although I get many requests for copies of programmes, I find that the best way to make them available to people is to regularly deposit them with ORCA ( Old-time Radio programme Collectors Association) which is a lending library, enabling members to borrow recordings for three weeks, (again, full details on my website).

As a teenager in the fifties, I became hooked on light orchestras and dance bands - I was never a great fan of vocalists. I also tended to avoid record programmes as I preferred to hear the hits of the day played instrumentally as such programmes seemed much more real - indeed most of them were live ! I also took the view that I could always purchase a record that I liked. whereas I could not purchase a ‘Music While You Work’!

Actually, back in the fifties, record programmes were very much in the minority and certain daily programmes ( Morning Music,Bright and Early,for example) would have a record programme perhaps once or twice a week, mainly in order to keep within the shows’ budget! There were few DJs, as in those days, it was often the role of announcers to present record shows. Unlike today, the presenter was not regarded as more important than the artists he/she introduced !

Although not everything that ‘Radiocafe’ promotes is to my own personal taste, I applaud its aims to provide radio listeners with ‘grown-up’ material. Radio Two is a mere shadow of the wonderful Light Programme. I wish I had a time-machine that would take me back fifty years !

Mike.