Thoroughly Good

Andrew Mellor writes in the Guardian bemoaning how BBC orchestras are under-exploited by the Corporation, which he says concentrates exposure during the Proms season but should be doing a lot more to utilise orchestras outside of the summer-long programme.

“The attitude towards in-house orchestras from senior leadership at New Broadcasting House suggests confusion over their purpose. You are unlikely to catch the BBC’s ensembles broadcasting on TV outside the Proms – broadcasts that are seasonal, look the same and certainly, in the case of the Last Night, bear little resemblance to those orchestras’ year-round, country-wide activities. Each of the BBC’s ensembles is a colossal resource filled with talent and opportunity. Their broadcasting potential is massively underexploited.”

Mellor compares the BBC with Danish broadcaster DR which, he says, faced a similar challenge with reduced licence fee funding and shifting audience appetite. The Danish government’s answer was to replace the licence fee with a media tax, securing funding for DR. Less a commitment to public service broadcasting, more a tilt into DR being a state broadcaster albeit with a stated commitment to editorial independence. Mellor’s point is that DR’s commitment to showcasing orchestras all year round proves there’s audience appetite as well as management will. So why can’t the same thing happen here?

The BBC has been squeezed for years, the Licence Fee long held up as an unfair and unrealistic way of securing the necessary funds to commit to the myriad public service activities it’s known for. It’s sold off nearly all of its existing London property portfolio, seen its expensive presenting talent off thanks to a mixture of reputational car crashes, natural wastage, and successful competitive bids, and cut well-loved programmes with struggling audience numbers, in order to improve the balance sheet. Most recently it’s had the pressure released having to foot the bill for the 40-language World Service, with some top-up funding from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. But by and large, it is having to do a whole lot more with a whole lot less and no real confidence that the Licence Fee will eventually plug the gap.

Within all of that, orchestras and classical music count for a small proportion of the BBC’s output. That’s partly because audiences aren’t calling out for it. Sport and entertainment is the Corporation’s most potent way of connecting with and representing as big an audience as possible. And that is its priority – if it doesn’t do that, it can’t demonstrate it’s meeting its Royal Charter. Paid for by the audience means it has to show it’s meeting the audience’s needs. Orchestras are a tiny proportion of that.

It seems obvious that the BBC has, after a long period of evaluation, doubled down on the Proms as the most potent way of getting audiences consuming orchestral – and therefore classical – music. The Proms by and large remains untouched by swingeing cuts seen in other areas of the Corporation. That isn’t an accident. The Proms gets more eyeballs and more engagement than Radio 3 outside of the season. Radio 3’s audience share sits at a fraction of one percent during the rest of the year. That isn’t because orchestras aren’t on TV – it’s because audiences don’t choose them in large numbers.

Committing to more television outside of the Proms would see a low return on investment. Television costs far more to make than radio. Orchestras aren’t cheap, and orchestras on television come with an additional price tag. If you’re a commissioning editor you’re going to want to know that spending all that money will bring in Proms-level audiences. It’s not going to happen. The Proms is event television. If you want more BBC orchestras on TV, you need more events. Simply sticking an orchestra in front of cameras won’t bring an audience.

Maybe it’s different in Denmark, though I’ve a hunch it’s not as different as Mellor thinks. A few months before the Proms began, a press release from the BBC’s Arts team announced a partnership with European Broadcasting Union members – a project in which different broadcasters produced concerts and shared the content across the EBU. Each broadcaster makes one concert. That’s not lack of appetite, that’s pragmatism. No broadcaster can do this alone. The fact the scheme exists suggests every PSB is facing precisely the same difficulties as the BBC.

It seems unlikely now that the BBC would, after the glorious clusterfuck that the BBC Singers announcement turned out to be, go anywhere near the BBC ensembles again. It’s worth noting the BBC Singers were only saved through a partnership agreement with VOCES8. Out of all the ensembles, justifying both the BBC Symphony and BBC Concert Orchestras feels difficult given they both cover the South East. It would also be odd to cut them given the Corporation has just invested in new rehearsal spaces in East London. It’s not like the BBC hasn’t shot itself in the foot before of course, so maybe it could still happen. But if the story around 6 Music is anything to go by, the ensembles are safe.

“There is no apparent commitment to have the ensembles broadcast on television, in varied formats, all year round,” writes Mellor. “Surely, the unique potential of these ensembles is to reach not hundreds via outreach but millions via mainstream broadcasting. It is the reason they exist.”

This is simply not true. The BBC orchestras were originally set up to protect musicians when recorded music threatened their livelihoods in an emerging broadcast landscape. The Musicians’ Union played a pivotal role in establishing them. That they evolved into contributing to the BBC’s public service remit – with performances featured daily on Radio 3, though Mellor doesn’t mention this – is how we see them today. But it’s not why they came into being. They are, to a large extent, proof of how influential the MU has been in protecting its members.

The BBC suffers from its audience, fans, and detractors all holding an image of what it should be. It used to be able to be all things to all people. But broadcasting is different now. It no longer has the same power it did. It’s part of a curated experience for people in search of content. If costs are rising and audiences are dwindling, is it really television’s responsibility to fill the gap left by government vandalism of education policy? For some commentators it will always be so. But if commentary is to be serious, it should avoid reducing inaction to simplistic reasons, and show curiosity for the bigger picture.

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