Double yikes! I’ll baffle my US readers by delving into a fresh controversy of today; venerable BBC Radio 2 disc jockey Ken Bruce is leaving in a move freshly announced this week. No big deal, right? But times are always changing, and Bruce’s departure from his weekday show, which commands 8.5 million weekly listeners, marks the end of the culture of national radio. Given that licence payers were forking out nearly £400,000 a year for Bruce’s talents, and an extra £50 grand on top of the occasional use of the recently departed Steve Wright, it’s hard to get too tearful about goodbyes to people out of sync with the Covid-reduced world we live in, but it’s also worth looking back to see where this indulgent culture began.
This 1970 doc from the BBC’s Man Alive season is something of a time capsule, and if you can spare 50 minutes for a trip back in time, might just be the most British thing you’ve ever seen. The subject is the dangers of pop, and what the age of pop might mean for the staid old fuddy-duddies at the Beeb. A posho, plummy-voiced VO narrator informs us that these new fangled ‘disc jockeys’ once accepted low wages to work at the BBC due to the perks; scenes of Emperor Roscoe and groupies make it fairly explicit what these ‘perks’ are, although cardinal offender Jimmy Saville is nowhere to be seen. John Peel, Jimmy Young, Kenny Everett and other examples of ’theatrical, bouncing’ presenters are interviewed, while we contrast their forced jollity with the Nietzschean affirmation philosophy of DJ Tony Blackburn.
Blackburn was presenting the coveted morning show on the BBC Radio One at the time this film was made, and we’re given bona fides as to his good behaviour as he pretends to have a real dog called Arnold on air; he’s ‘the son of a doctor’, and he ‘votes Conservative’, so we know our nation’s youth are in safe hands. Less so the dark and maverick forces that lurk within the seemingly upright Jimmy Young, described here as ‘a lonely man’ who ‘peddles’ his music and chat show to the masses. ‘Is he over-cheerful?” is the burning, reductive question the narrator asks as Jimbo chats to Raymondo the Duck about todays recipe.
‘It was not so long ago that BBC announcers had to wear dinner jackets to work,; admonishes the judgey VO, but this film shows them as they guzzle coke, stripped to the waist, or taking part in such dubious extra-curricular activities as ‘judging a beauty content’. The culture of celebrity quickly tarnished the BBC’s image, leading to the kind of no mark presenter picking up huge wages today, a trend towards the dull that Everett describes as ‘porridge’. With the licence fee looking set to be abolished soon, the era of the household name has ended, and that’s probably a good thing; as with social media, if public trends go unheeded, the results are disastrous prove presenters and listeners alike.
I don’t have to worry. Or care. The blandishments of Radio 2 passed me by. But I do remember when we – the young listener – bigged up the new DJs, thinking this was a revolution, not realising it was opening the doors to exploitation, and notches on the bedpost. That said, I was never one for sticking a tranny (transistor radio in case you get the wrong idea) up to my ear all the time when I could be playing vinyl or that new idea, the cassette, and listening to what I wanted to listen to a) as often as I wanted and b) not having to listen to monotonous chat and invented dogs in between.
What do you do in the car? Obviously I’ve been BBC Radio since the days when they put a bottle of wine on the mixing desk for each guest on the review show; you can imagine how that ended up…but when I’m driving, I’m stuck with the official mind-curdling Pravda of BBC Radio, and it makes me feel that Kowalski got it easy, at least he had some decent tunes and chat to listen to….
Talksport with Alan Brazil, Ally McCoist and Jim White does it for me. Moslty, though I’m listening to movie soundtracks.
Matilda; The Musical?
Can’t stop that music. Been non-stop on the speakers.
I can dig it.
Been stopped on occasion and told to turn the music down.
Is radio not free in England? We have satellite radio here which you pay for, but fm and am stations are all sponsor supported and I can turn my radio on in the car and go from 88.1 up to 107.9 and potentially get a new station on every 0.5. Almost all crap though, so I rarely listen….
Bbc radio is included in the licence fee. Yes, we pay over two hundred quid a year for tv and radio we never watch or listen to and isn’t made for us anyway…
What happens if you don’t pay? Or is that even an option to go without?
Prosecution, then jail. I kid you not. You either like the bbc or go to the slammer.
Ouch!
Can you choose to opt out altogether?
Only if you don’t have a tv. Even if you just watch your dvd of Muppets, you still have to fork out 200 bucks…
Yeah, that would make me into a Captain Jack for sure 🙁
I’m am a bit baffled, as you predicted 😉 Sounds a bit like our NRP radio here, which is still where I get most of my news, though it podcast form today. The film sounds a bit like early Stephen Colbert when he played a conservative host on his show.
The bbc news service may be biased, but it generally accurate if it ever stops promoting itself. Unfortunately everything else about the bbc is a screaming nightmare, and we all have to pay £165 a year for a streaming service that coughs up one decent show a year if that. Colbert could probably do a good impression of the BBC’s posho outlook…
With Ken going that’s me finished with Radio 2 now. He’s off to Greatest Hits radio and they pay more than the Beeb.
Things were hanging by a thread in that Popmaster was all that remained, but that was then, this is now, I thought Ken Bruce would last forever, and now he is gone. Never heard of Greatest Hits radio, is that a south of the border thing?
No it’s National but cuts in with regional news. Simon Mayo does his drive time show on it exactly the same as he had on Radio 2 and Matt his sidekick went with him. Ken Bruce is doing the mid morning show from April, and taking pop master with him.
I’ll just have to live without Popmaster then. I flick right through the dial every time I get in the car and never hear Greatest. We have Sunny Govan radio, and Nation Radio, and Smooth, Heart, Talk, Clyde, Capital and BBC.
I’ve just been told that Greatest is some kind of digital station so we probably don’t get it due to the hills and glens…
https://www.bauermedia.co.uk/news/greatest-hits-radio-expands-into-scotland-as-the-countrys-first-national-commercial-station/
Oh, Bauer are utterly shameless chaos-agents, they own Radio Clyde up here, which is something of a joke station. Football commentary is people not being allowed to comment on a game they are watching, has to be hear to be believed. Going to Greatest Hits radio= vanishing into the mists of time.
Moan moan whinge and whine. I listen to Mayo and will listen to Ken, don’t care a fig about football commentary. Pfft.
BBC Scotland have a choice of listening on Saturdays. Football commentary by people who can see the game, or football discussion with people who can’t see it. That is your choice, there is no alternative. That is diversity in 2023.
Wouldn’t know, don’t do fotball, I’m listening to Planet Rock on Saturdays.
How much does Planet Rock cost?
Nothing, it has adverts, though if you sign up for a free account there’s less adverts, and there is a subscrition where you can have no adverts, but I’m signed up for the free one and I don’t mind the occasional ad.
Well, I’m paying through the nose for stuff from another planet like six hour football commentaries when there’s no match on, or Claudia Winkleman. The sooner the abolish the licence fee, I’ll be straight to planet rock…
I just checked and it’s owned by Bauer too 🙄
Sigh. You can have any colour you want as long as it’s black.
Double yikes is right. I didn’t make it to the one-minute mark.
The BBC had a dj making 400,000 pounds a year?
More than one!
Is the correct answer.
Several. Steve Wright would give a shout out to NHS workers during Covid, yelping ‘We’re all in this together’ as he coined in half a million a year for playing records….