Thursday 9 January 2020

Ramblings Of A Silly Old Man - CHAPTER ELEVEN

CLOSE DOWN THE BBC

The Marine Offences Act 1966 such folly smashing pop radio in Britain. The double blow came with opening of Radio One aka radio Boring.  When Radio One first started broadcasting it had a jingle:  



Radio One is wonderful - Bee - Bee - Cee



We teenagers rewrote it:



Radio One is wonderful - Like MIGRAINE HEADACHES !



The BBC began as a utilitarian radio station the British Broadcasting Company on Monday 18th September 1922. In charge as dictator was John Reith. His efforts elevated him to The House of Lords.



During World War Two The BBC served a good purpose as a public information service and morale booster. Radio of course, no television. Well there had been an early version but the war shut that down until 1946. It was at this time the licence fee was introduced.



Radio sets were large, usually in wooden cabinets and powered by valves ?  Do you know what a valve was ?  No not a radiator tap !  I don't have time to go into all that so check it out on Google. Those radio valves took time to warm up so there was a pause between switching on and getting any sound out of the loud speaker.



When I was a kid there were three BBC radio stations the Light Programme, The Home Service and The Third Programme.


The Third Programme was basically what Radio Three is today, playing classical music. I play classical music on the radio station I work with and I hope I make it a  lot more entertaining and inspiring than the BBC either back then or today.

The Light Programme, a little bit like Radio Two today. Music for the older generation, well hang on a moment I am the older generation and I can tell you Radio Two is totally NAF - big time.

The Home Service, today's Radio Four - probably the best of a bad lot. Radio Four has the world's longest running soap with The Archers first broadcast on 29th May 1950. OMG that is even older than me ! The world's first soap before a programme was ever branded a soap opera.   The Archers used to be sub titled The Every Day Story Of Country Folk, not politically correct today. Stupid !  There was a time when I used to listen to it, that was before I got myself a life. It was once a not bad programme but now it has just become a real soap with ridiculous melodrama and non-realistic story lines which certainly have nothing to do with country folk.

Soap, by the way, is taken from American garbage stories sponsored by low grade soap manufacturers.

Where was I ? BBC The Light Programme. As a very small kid I used to listen to a programme Listen With Mother. As far as I remember I enjoyed it.

Now today The BBC has more radio stations than a porcupine has spikes. Radio Five Live, Radio This and Radio That. What is the point ?

Radio Boring could be such a powerful force generating exiting new music and restoring much of the culture it set about destroying post The Marine Offenders Act.

Flowers In The Rain by The Move, the very first track played on Radio Borning by Tony Blackburn. I am fully certain he comprehended what he was playing but I doubt the producers understood a single word.

San Francisco, The Flowerpot men. Radio Boring loved the fact that a British group was celebrating the hippies in The City By The Bay. Their naivety assumed the group took its name from the kids TV programme about Bill and Ben The Flowerpot Men. Doh ! Flowers as in flower power, flowers in your hair. Pot as Cannabis, wacky backy.

I play ten hour of music with my own five radio shows each week, that's around one hundred and fifty tracks. I chose every song myself while I build up my own playlists for each and every show. These are not carved in tablets of stone, I can change, I can mix and match as the mood of the individual broadcast required.

I have done guest spots on BBC local radio. Oh dear, I could never work there. I love playing music on the radio, I would hate playing it on The BBC. Playlists are handed down from on high, playlists deeply carved into boring tablets of stone. Outside there is a producer, aka dictator, who pulls the strings of the presenter as if he or she is a puppet.

All that, of course, is radio. When it comes to television the farce is amplified by BBC1, BBC2, BBC 4, there is no BBC3 these days, BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, CBBC, BBBBC, BCCB, BBC this and BBC that.

Never forget that it is against the law to watch a single second of any programme without paying a rip off licence fee. Television in the twenty-first century has an infinite number of channels funded through advertising but it is illegal to watch any without  having paid for BBC licence !

You watch anything you like on a computer or your phone but watch anything you ar breaking the law if you do not have a BBC television licence.

In the 1990's I did a spot on a local TV station in California. Hosted by Doctor Who, I came out of the Tardis to be interviewed about British television. Te audience could not believe me when I talked about the BBC licence fee.

BBC - Biased Broadcasting Corporation. That first B in BBC also refers to bovine excrement. Let me ramble across the idea of biased. The evidence is clear, BBC Television is biased. Based against democracy when it came to Brexit, failing to give an objective view but instead highlighting the remoaners.  In news coverage the BBC clearly leans towards the left.

Loony Left or Ultra Extreme Right, The BBC can not be everything to everybody. Why should Jeremy Corbyn have to pay for a television licence so he can watch Boris Johnson on BBC Parliament ? AH !  Jeremy Corbyn does not to have to pay does he ?  He is old enough to qualify for the senility exemption so gets his licence free of charge.

Bovine Excriment !  I object to having to pay for Dead Enders, I mean East Enders. If I want to watch such depressing rubbish I can watch Coronation  Street where gullible advertisers foot the bill with their bars of soap.

What would Lord Reith think of The BBC today ?  I am sure he would use the words CLOSE IT DOWN !





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