It’s been a bad week for the British Broadcasting Corporation, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in grand, self-congratulatory fashion, beating its drum and trumpeting its accomplishments, with PR pennons hoisted high all through 2022. In the meantime, it has been doing its underhanded best in recent years to build its gallows high, dumbing down its programming, chasing the lowest common denominator, and instituting cuts across the board.
Most flabbergasting was the recent announcement that it would disband the BBC Singers, the only full-time professional choir in the UK and one of the most respected ensembles of its kind. The outrage with which this decision was met, from musicians, listening public, and politicians alike, miraculously has caused the BBC (the organization, not the choir) to issue a reprieve, if not a mea culpa.
Press releases issued by the organization have been disingenuous, ladling on the upbeat spin in an attempt to convince that all its boneheaded decisions are in the name of creating a more robust musical environment with greater educational opportunities. But this kind of talk fools no one. People aren’t buying it, and rightly so.
In truth, the BBC has strayed so far from its founding principles to inform, educate, and entertain at this point that it will never be what it once was. Kind of like American PBS or any of our classical music stations. There’s very little integrity left in arts and educational media anywhere, it seems, which, like everything else, at the end of the day, is all about the $$$.
Even now, the jobs of one-fifth of all musicians in BBC-managed orchestras remain on the chopping block. “Tough decisions” can be blamed on funding, of course. Even so, as is too often the case, most of those entrusted with steering the organization have no classical music background.
The BBC Singers, founded in 1924, has worked with many of the great conductors and composers of the past century, has given notable premieres, and has recorded prolifically. A stay of execution for the ensemble is a battle won, but the war continues. The issue will be revisited in the coming years.
The latest BBC annual report states that, within the last financial year, £25m was spent on orchestras and performing groups. If I’m not mistaken, that’s about $30.5m US. The average annual salary of a football player in the UK is £3m, more than $3.5m US. So the yearly budget of one of BBC’s live performance groups is less than the combined salaries of eight of England’s star football players. That’s infuriating.
Aside from the hope and enrichment the arts bring to our existence in an increasingly bleak and unstable world, they also bring hope and enrichment to local economies, as people who attend performances and exhibitions tend to spend money. They eat out, they shop, they make it a day.
Yet the income generated is frequently overlooked in favor of the flashier, often-televised gladiatorial thrills of sport. The roaring crowds may pack the stadiums, but those stadiums are self-sufficient organisms, largely segregated from area businesses. Revenue from sporting goods and broadcast are not doing the hometown all that much good.
BBC orchestras, on the other hand, enrich the community on multiple levels, without the rioting and vomit in the streets.
My love of English music is well known. I salute the BBC for its past efforts that have cultivated such a proud history and a rich literature. But really, I have very little faith in its current management.
As cellist Julian Lloyd Webber (brother of composer Andrew) stated in an article that appeared this week in Radio Times, “The dereliction of its core principles has happened stealthily, over many years and with a lack of transparency that has eroded trust both inside and outside the organisation.”
Be that as it may, let us enjoy the current victory. To conclude on a positive note: Vivat the BBC Singers!
The BBC reports on the BBC
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