I'm ashamed I don't listen to BBC radio more often. Parts of it, at least, demand greater engagement than most stuff on telly. For radio is more than telly without pictures. Take news broadcasts. On BBC 3 (mainly classical music and "high" culture) the announcements last a mere two minutes, all I need when I'm in a Brahms mode. However on BBC 4 (more popularly based) the main 6 pm news lasts a full half-hour. Quite astonishing and here's why.
Radio news readers work at 180 words/minute so that's 5400 words between 6 and 6.30 pm. An info level dense enough to cover the world quite comfortably. Whereas, with telly, once you've stripped out the pictorial filler (bombs bursting, street crowds shouting, buildings containing meetings, daffodils as background, etc) you're reduced to a quarter that total. Radio tells you more.
It doesn't end there. Sports commentators must be more inventive and less prone to cliché. Low costs allow one-off niche-interest programmes. Language is emphasised and poetry heard to advantage. The atmosphere is cosier, more intimate. BBC 3 is known to be stingy about paying guests but this doesn’t discourage big names in music dropping by for a chat. With no images - frequently unnecessary - you have to concentrate, and that’s good. You can listen while ironing.
Of course radio has disadvantages. Playwrights are forced into scene-setting detail which can be tedious – though not with Shakespeare, you’re supposed to know his plays. You do need faces. If you find a voice uncongenial well, tough! – that’s all there is. Maps, charts and other graphics help with difficult subjects.
But never mind. I enjoy being treated as an adult. Freed from repetition because it’s assumed I know things. Dinna forget: telly used to be called The Idiot’s Lantern.
I listen to the radio in the car line, waiting to pick up my grandson from school. I look forward to that time alone with the radio waves.
ReplyDeleteI used to listen to public radio while getting the kids ready for school or before dinner. Have to say that I got tired of my husband explaining all the ways the medical topics were incorrect, and tired of my own frequently critical opinions of the subjects I understood. Then began wondering if it was all just "sort of."
ReplyDeleteI don't care for television, though I will watch something just to be with my family when the progeny are home and want to see something--same deal goes for movies. I'll go out to dinner and then to a movie I don't like in order to spend an evening with my children. I chalk the movie up to understanding pop culture a bit better. When you live in the Utter Boondocks, there are no good movie theaters, though we have a good film festival and also some good films in a series or two hosted at our museums.
This is a clever tuner - https://radio.garden/
ReplyDelete"telly used to be called The Idiot’s Lantern." It still is, increasingly so, in my opinion. There are so many TV companies filling their many slots with utter drivel and trash, because to survive they have to fill them with something.
ReplyDeleteMore means less, I think. Radio increases "brain visualisation".
Colette: The BBC (British Broadcasting Company) is a TV/Radio organisation that is independent of the government. Broadcasts are commercials-free and all households pay a mandatory annual license fee of about £130 (unless, like me, the major householder is very old). It is generally considered to be one of Britain's greatest cultural assets and during WW2 its international news broadcasts were considered by the international resistance to Fascists to be the only one which told the truth. The Tory party hates the BBC for ideological reasons since the licence fee means that viewers/listeners aren't exposed to a marketing rationale (ie, commercials).
ReplyDeleteThe BBC runs three major TV channels, an Iplayer system (for re-playing broadcasts), podcasts, etc etc. But my posts dealt only with the BBC's radio transmissions
When I was in the the USA I listened to PBS which, like the BBC is free of commercials. However unlike PBS it doesn't have that persecuted "controlled" atmosphere.
BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 are a mix of pop music programmes and phone-in chat shows which I have never heard.
BBC Radio 3 is predominantly classical music with programmes which also edge into broader cultural matters. Today's list include the following: Essential Classics (introduced by a woman pianist who plays to concert-hall standards and who also interviews professional musicians), Time Traveller (A quirky view of history), Composer of the Week (Shostakovich this week), Lunchtime Concert (always live), In Tune (Classical snippets for commuters driving home), The Verb (a discussion about an aspect of language that is "as big as America").
BBC Radio 4 is harder to summarise. Today's list: a regular, early morning programme directed towards farmers, Tweet of the Day (about the song of the whinchat - a bird), Yesterday in Parliament, BBC Inside Science Shorts (including: how the craft of creative writing engages deep psychological impulses), The Devolution Decades, Gardeners Question Time, The News Quiz (often very funny and always well regarded), The Archers (the longest running radio soap in the world; deals with rural life).
I have explained the BBC because it is almost always misunderstood by Americans. Most think it is controlled and run by the government, it isn't. The concept of the mandatory licence fee horrifies them. My best US friend, having heard BBC Radio 4 for an hour or two, dismissed it as being "too varied".
I'm pleased you use radio as often as you do for the reasons I outlined in my post. The point I'm making is that if you were listening in the UK it might be necessary to elaborate a little about what you were listening to.
Marly: Perhaps you would be better served by BBC's radio programmes (see my detailed response to Colette, above).
ReplyDeleteYou say you don't "care for television". But it is merely a method of passing on audio/movie material. BBC regularly shows Shakespeare plays, broadcasts by poets and about poetry (who jump at the chance of a wider audience), language, all aspects of history from academic lectures to historical reconstructions, interviews by psychologists, foreign-language movies. All without commercial breaks. I too live in the boondocks but that's because I'm unsociable; BBC TV/Radio keeps me "plugged in".
MikeM: Alas, the link provided a page of bright blue, a circle and the words Planting Radio Garden. Then nothing. Not that I'm complaining, silence is often welcome.
Avus: I had thought Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells had gone to his deserved rest. Now I see he's popped up as Antagonistic of Ashford. Why foam at the mouth about phenomena that are so easily avoided. - ie, cancel your subscription to Radio Times, although it does help with more detail about radio concerts.
Some of what I posted is tongue-in-cheek. It would be hard to imagine The Blue Planet as a radio programme. Or ITV4's coverage of the Tour de France. But I do agree about more being less. On the other hand, BBC 3's The Verb (22.00 tonight, Friday) wouldn't profit from added pictures.