I’m getting rather behind with putting work on My London Diary, and so far I’m only somewhere in the middle of May and its June already. Yesterday I did manage to finish putting up pictures of a demo outside Broadcasting House to stop the BBC cutting a couple of stations, 6 Music and the Asian Network – more pictures here.
Broadcasting House is truly an ‘iconic building’, a phrase that seems to have come into the constabulary vocabulary here to mean almost any large building in London, but at least I had no problems in photographing it. But the building as a whole is perhaps a little difficult to integrate into pictures taken more or less next to it, though I did try once or twice. But really it worked better when I concentrated on the significant detail of the Eric Gill statue above the main doorway. Here’s another:
And of course, as so often with demonstrations it helps to get the message in the picture.
6 Music isn’t a station I listen to – it just doesn’t appear on my radio as it doesn’t broadcast on FM, though I could of course listen on-line. But what little I have heard of it seems to me admirable, very British and very quirky, and this showed in the slogans, placards, banners, dress and performances at the event, and I hope too in my pictures.
Although I took some straightforward portraits of the station’s presenters – who were of course appearing in their capacity as licence fee payers rather than presenters, it was a couple of pictures of Liz Kershaw bounding up onto the stage that interested me more; the first image unfortunately I didn’t get quite right, but the second (and there wasn’t time for more) I think catches her well.
It’s exactly as I saw and framed it – I seldom crop, though it’s not a religion, just usually things are stronger if I get it right when I take the picture. And this is 100% of the frame.
The BBC Trust would seem to have decided 6Music should stay “we do not think a convincing case has been made, as presented, for the closure of 6 Music. The Trust does not agree that there is a consistent strategic rationale for closure on grounds either of promoting digital development or
market impact.”
Outlook for Asian Network is rather less promising:
“We acknowledge the Asian Network is performing poorly and the case for closure could be consistent with the strategy we are setting; we would consider a formal proposal from the BBC to close it but would need to be convinced that any alternative proposed would be a clear improvement in terms of overall public value for British Asian audiences. “