, according to today’s Daily Telegraph:
The BBC faced accusations of “ageism” from its own employees yesterday as a Daily Telegraph inquiry revealed mounting anger from local radio staff who claim they have been told to keep old people off the air.
At the heart of their resentment is an imaginary couple created by Corporation bosses called Dave and Sue, to whom all presenters are told to aim programming…
They emerged from a BBC study called Operation Bullseye, which concluded that older people are getting younger in their attitudes and interests. Literature distributed to local radio stations said: “Dave and Sue live in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural England”. Dave is a self-employed plumber, Sue a school secretary, and both have children from previous marriages. They shop at Asda, wear T-shirts and fleeces, and grew up in the Beatles generation. They have lived through a period of change. One of their children has entered a mixed-race marriage, although the BBC calls this “mixed heritage”.
The article, by Stewart Payne, follows up on his article from November, also highlighted by Biased BBC, BBC radio phone-in silences the elderly.
So much for public-service broadcasting when the BBC spends its time competing with commercial stations for already well-served audiences and with commercial stations for staff. The BBC, it’s what we do.
Hat tip to commenter SiN.
Age descrimination? Of course.
TV has always tried to keep audience reaction shots “young” for years. Teenagers are shuffled to the front and older folks moved to the back – a subtle operation which takes much skill.
An old BBC joke used to run thus
Q: What has 64 legs and smells faintly of urine?
A: The front row of a “Pebble Mill at One audience”.
Cruel? Of course but the Beeb has always been blind to the nature of its core audience. Radio 4 is a prime culprit, never truly reflecting its quietly fuming listeners. Why do they continue to listen? Well, R4 (for them) is the only game in town – or perhaps they are the ultimate optimists.
More seriously the disconect is the result of producers being younger and brasher than the people they ‘serve’.
I had noticed that late night on News24 the political reporter was a rather plain chap. Perhaps he had been forced onto a permanent night shift so as not to frighten the peak hour audience.
The only reason that local BBC gets away with such astonishingly amateur broadcasting skills is that only the elderly listeners will tolerate it. Younger listeners demand better.
BBC Radio Solent never gets through an hour without crashing jingles, periods of dead air or just journalistic incompetence. (Yesterday we had a traffic muppet reporting on delays caused by a broken-down ‘arctic’ lorry. Brrrr!) It’s the radio equivalent of watching ski-jumping: you only do it to see the falls.
Perhaps a reason is that older people often espouse rather conservative views that conflict with the BBC’s trendy, left wing stance. The elderly are conveniently ignored as a ‘victim group’ by the Beeb. The same may be said nowadays of the working class.