Forum for former BBC staff

Forum for former BBC staff
http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> News and Comment >> Swearing on air http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1308396877 Message started by Roundabout on Jun 18^th, 2011, 11:35am

Title: Swearing on air
Post by Roundabout on Jun 18^th, 2011, 11:35am

Can somebody more savvy than I please explain why Paul Mayhew-Archer a senior radio producer Radio 4 quoted in last weeks Sunday Times is right about swearing on the radio and I am wrong for being offended by it?
He was explaining to a listener who had complained why he had allowed a four letter word beginning with a 'c' to be used on a daytime programme...........
"My job was to balance the offence it might give some people to the DELIGHT (my capitals) it might give to others.

WHAAAAAT?

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by david en france on Jun 18^th, 2011, 10:27pm

You are not alone, my friend, even though we may be called fuddy-duddy reactionaries or whatever!

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by Administrator on Jun 19^th, 2011, 9:09am

The Mail and the Sunday Times whipped this into something bigger than it really is. It went out many weeks before the stories appeared and the actual swear word was not used on air. There was no evidence of widespread offence - only two complaints were received from listeners. I'd suggest the newspaper coverage was more offensive than the original, questionable, editorial judgement.

More background here.

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by JohnW on Jun 20^th, 2011, 2:50pm

I, for one, was delighted with the one-liner Sandy used in the programme!
"It was the Tories that put the 'n' in cuts!!"
Far from it being "swearing" on air, I thought it a rather clever pay-off.

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by John on Jun 20^th, 2011, 6:26pm

Seems a strange thing to be 'delighted' about, obscene language being broadcast. Irrespective of what people think of politics, it was out of order.

John

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by david en france on Jun 20^th, 2011, 7:14pm

Surely what all this is about is "dumbing down". If there is one recurring theme that seriously concerns me about the old girl I fought so hard to be a part of, it is the abandonment of any kind of standard in the haste to appeal to "everybody", whoever he, she or what, is. On Have I Got News For You last TX, two weeks ago, the panellist used a by-pass phrase rather than the obscenity...that loathsome Jo Brand then said the whole F word. It didn't improve my education, it didn't inform me, and it certainly did not entertain me. Dumbing down IS a political process and it patronises the electorate. It is sectarian. It is divisive. It destroys what we know as culture. Don't you get it? You have only to see the day-by-day reduction of "journalism" to gossip and gobbledeygook on BBC News On-Line to have the evidence revealed that we have actually gone backwards by more than half a century in the last five years. Local Radio in the 80s had more guts, more integrity, more challenge than anything I hear today on the networks. And it never, ever, relied on C words, F words or smut. I rest my case.

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by burgmanman on Jun 21^st, 2011, 12:32pm

DUMBING DOWN! I agree entirely. The unnecessary and intrusive music yet another example. Got to keep the P.P.M. waggling away at 6 just in case we lose your attention.
The many types of programme where the format is somebody "conquers" someone else just as in a Roman amphitheatre. Contestants in these "things" all seem to want to be famous and want this instantly without any real graft involved.
No wonder Dad's Army or Porridge are still so popular.
Grammar and spelling probably poor due to anger.
Dave

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by Amigo on Jun 21^st, 2011, 1:16pm

PPMs don't waggle around "6" any more, the needle is wrapped round the end-stop so often it's welded itself to it.
Or the red LEDs are burnt-out.

See posts in "For Those Of Sound mind" regarding incessant music.

I am trying to form a new club:-
M.I.M.E.

Music Impairs My Enjoyment.

We do not need music to 'point-up' a scene change.

Let My Ears Breath. Give me silence, let me hear the birdsong, don't cover it with 'music'.
"The One Show", "Countryfile", are the sort of programmes with items that are bought-in, and dubbed by ... ?

And the item destroyed by...?

Thank goodness for subtitles.

Nobody cares anymore. :(

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by JohnW on Jun 21^st, 2011, 3:51pm

To Amigo - I don't think that's true. There are plenty who care - about both the content and the quality. Regrettably few of those are presently employed by our 'alma mater'! Even fewer can actually do anything about it.

In reply to 'John' above [Seems a strange thing to be 'delighted' about, obscene language being broadcast.] perhaps you could be so kind as to explain exactly what "obscene language" was atually involved here?
I quoted the exact line used in the programme, and - apart from the (agreed) "innuendo" - no swearing or obscene language was broadcast.
Heaven forbid that we should be prevented from broadcasting such - after all, who didn't chuckle over the Jim Naughtie "Jeremy Hunt" instance recently - and there the same "suggested" word WAS broadcast live! That incident even became viral across the web! And, by inference, a lot of people DID find that amusing.

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by John on Jun 21^st, 2011, 6:53pm

The Jim Naughtie incident was a slip of the tongue and as such can be forgiven.

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by Russell W. Barnes on Jun 22^nd, 2011, 10:51am

John wrote on Jun 21^st, 2011, 6:53pm:

The Jim Naughtie incident was a slip of the tongue and as such can be forgiven.

Indeed; it typified human vulnerability and we all laughed at what we've all done ourselves.

As opposed to swearing deliberately... No longer shocking and 'edgy' - just tiresome; filling in for the lack of articulacy in many cases. A swear-word is a weapon that should be kept in the vocabularic armoury and used sparingly, where needed, to best effect.

Mind, having said that, I remember being on the MIC at Kirk o' Shotts in the early 1980s and watching a live microwave feed of 'The Beechgrove Garden' from Aberdeen studios to Glasgow studios. The cameras stopped rolling but the feed remained live, and the two presenters sat down on their dung-heap, puffing on their fags and punctuating their breaktime conversation liberally with effs and blinds!

An eye-opener for a whippersnapper like me, who, up until then, thought ALL broadcasters behaved off the screen as they did on!

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by John on Jun 23^rd, 2011, 5:41am

John W seeing as you have asked, telling someone how to spell a word is really no different from saying it. For instance, put the p in sell and you get spell. Knowing you are, or appear to be, a word-smith I have done my best to ensure that my example is accurate.

Finally, I maintain that to delight in scripted items such as this is to deprecate the BBC's standards.

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by chriswest on Jun 23^rd, 2011, 6:46pm

Take a look at the single "concerned listener" who made the original complaint. He's a former Daily Mirror manager who delights in complaining and stirring things up generally, and seems to have succeeded here. Perhaps he comes from Scunthorpe.....

Title: Re: Swearing on air
Post by JohnW on Jun 24^th, 2011, 10:11am

LOL! ;D