Bring back Reginald Bosanquet

I came across this clip on Youtube. It is a fairly random clip, a few adverts , a trailer for a UEFA cup tie (Johann Cruyff's last) and a few minutes of News at Ten with Reginal Bosanquet. When this clip was aird I was sixteen. At the time we had three TV channels. My Dad had a Ford Capri, which was probably as good as it got for a working man.


 I found it fascinating.watching the clip. It is interesting watching Reginal Bosanquet read the news. I realised that at the time the Newsreaders on News at Ten were real superstars. I don't think I could name a single one now. Was Reginal Bosanquet better at reading an autocue than the current lot? Ws Gordon Honeycomb sexier than the bloke on BBC news as I write this?

In truth, no. What has happened is that our viewing habits have changed. The thousands of channels we have has diluted our ability to pay attention. On BBC London today there was was a discussion as to whether we have a shorter attention span than a Goldfish. I suspect we have. When I was a teenager, I'd listen to albums (vinyl) all the way through. Now my kids get bored, even with tracks they like and are constantly fiddling with their iPADs. Why I wonder. The answer is because they can. I do wonder if any of us can focus for more than 20 seconds on anything. It occurs to me as a musician that I should maybe release an album of 20 second long songs.

The Fall sang a song in 1977 called 'repetition'. The Hook was "there's repitition in our music and we're never going to lose it". It is pretty clear to me that Repetition and drudgery is out of vogue. If Reggy Bosanquet had been a newsreader today, the only way we'd have heard of him had he been selected for Big Brother or I'm A Celebrity. It is odd the way the world evolves. In 1978, I assumed that by 2015, we'd be taking holidays on the moon. I sort of thought we'd have 24 hour news channels, having been vaguely aware of cable TV in the USA, but I assumed this would spark a deeper interest in News and foreign affiars. In fact, what happens is we watch the news channel for 2 minutes when something else finishes, before the next program starts, As such the news channels are trite and bland. The clip shown, we have a lead story about a second rate cabinet minister in dispute with the British Waterways Board. Can you imagine that making the news today? It was only watching this I realised just how dumbed down we've become. Now its all style over substance.

Come Back Reggie - all is forgiven.

If I were Richard Desmond, I'd back the Lib Dems

The Daily Express used to be the newspaper with the largest circulation in Great Britain. It used to sell four million copies a day. Today it sells just over half a million. Why? Because it has lost touch. Earlier this week Leo McInstry wrote a whole page of comment explaining why the Lib Dems are a bad idea. Now whilst he's entitled to his view, if I was his boss, proprietor Mr Richard Desmond, maybe I'd take a different view. There's no shortage of papers spouting right wing nonsense, most of whom do it far better than the Daily Express and to a far wider audience. I wonder if Mr Desmond has considered how many people vote Lib Dem, either in Council or general elections. There are many millions. None of these have a newspaper which supports their views. There is a whole mass market which is being ignored. There's a chance (increasing every day) that the Lib Dems will play a massive role in the new parliament. It is a copper bottomed, once in a generation opportunity. If I was the owner of a national newspaper and I wanted to catch the public imagination, what better way to become the story and set the agenda. What better way to show that you have reconnected?

There was an interview in the Guardian on Monday with David Yelland, former editor of The Sun. This details how the national papers ignore the Lib Dems. Given the millions of supporters, I just can't believe that it would be bad business for a tabloid to give these voters the choice of a paper which reflects their views.

Dyke is Tory Media Guru

Fascinating story on the BBC website. Greg Dyke is to chair a Tory think tank review of Creative media. What interested me is the make up of the committee.

Ex-Sky executive Elisabeth Murdoch,
Carphone Warehouse's Charles Dunstone
Brent Hoberman, Lastminute.com's co-founder
Lucian Grainge, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Group International
Kip Meek, board member of Ingenious Media
Alex Hope, managing director of Double Negative Ltd
Ian Livingstone, life president of Eidos
Rupert Dilnott-Cooper, former Carlton executive and former chairman of the British Television Distributors Association
Ex-BBC new media chief Ashley Highfield, who is now managing director, Consumer & Online UK, part of Microsoft

It seems that Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt wants the review to "turn Britain into the world's creative and digital hub". Well I guess none of us would want anything else. I just have doubts about these panels. The guys who set up Twitter & Blogspot were not inspired by creative media task forces. The best British inventions have always been made in sheds by mad inventors. I suspect that if the Government wants to protect & nurture creative genius in Great Britain, they should

a) Protect back gardens and stop people building flats on them
b) Make every shed in the country a listed building

If you lock any boy aged between 6-12 in a shed with a video camera and a load of shed stuff, you will nurture far more creative genius than a million Government worthies sipping Cappucinos. If there is a problem here it is that people aren't encouraged to think independently. "Sniffin Glue" magazine published three chords with a rallying cry, "now form a band". We did in our thousands, most of us still do. I doubt that any panel would have inspired Mark P.

I don't believe for a second these think tanks ever achieve anything in the creative media arena. All of the best artistic movements are not the product of teams, panels or any other scheme. They are the result of like minded people getting bored with the rubbish they are being lumbered with and doing their own thing.

These ideas then take off and get a life of their own. No government panel would have invented punk rock, pirate radio, Picasso's art or even Twitter. The idea that the bloke who invented Roland Rat could transform the fortunes of British Media is ridiculous. Even in the realm of TV the best British TV was never the ideas commissioned by panels, it is the programs made by mavericks. People Like Lou Grade were succesfull because they realised this.

The most successful commissioners of programs are those with the balls to take risks. I'm sorry to say that people on the panel such as Elisabeth Murdoch come from backgrounds were cash is king at Sky TV. Will they take chances and let ideas develop if there is no instant payback? My guess is that whatever great media innovations emerge from this country in the next 20 years, none of them will emerge from this panel of media hacks.