Sixty years on

 We'll see how the weather pans out this week but before that great big depression lands we'll look at a couple of things.

Things on my mind this week looking more around the history of this blog are laws coming in next month that coverimage usage such as any that may connect minors with fetishes or kinks and permissions and these appear to be retrospective.

The other element is Googles revised policies and thing they have in common is while you wouldn't wish to include material that clearly was portraying someone - could be legal adult - enaging in any fetish or sexual acts some areas remain problematic such as depictions even fully clothed of say a spanking that in our day we'd of seen ourselves in publications if we didn't get them first hand as it were and this blog owner certainly did.

Unless any image clearly crosses the line, I'm leaving historic posts in but it would be unlikely I'd consider using *any* image however tame today for a new post.

The other thing is something if you're a member of a coal mining family you know too much about and that is the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster near Merthyr, South Wales which still upsets me deeply to be honest,like.

It hit areas like mine with substancial amounts of Welsh mining families hard, my own grandad worked in the North East Wales coalmines before move up here and we recall the very sudden tidying up of coal waste piled up around our coal mines, no doubt fear what sadly had happened there could of happened even here with industrial villages immediately downstream of them.

Nothing really felt the same as much as life has to go on amid the recriminations and justified bitterness around how the families were treated.

Thus today, just take a moment to reflect on that loss.

Radio Radio

Travelling about can be fun with talks of station improvements, closures of stops and so on so I'm keeping abreast as it were although I have my tickets at the ready.

We were talking a bit last week about broadcasting with the focus more on television but much has changed from the days we had BBC National Radio, Local Radio and the then new exciting Independent Local Radio looked after the the IBA producing different programs funded through advertising of often with a local bent.

I still can recall the Ads on Beacon Radio with their strong Black Country feel, unspoilt by progress compared to the more glitzy ones on the likes of Piccadilly Radio in Manchester but most of that has gone to national shows with a computer sorting the music and just a few minutes per hour of local news.

In recent years the BBC has imposed a de facto regional programming selection on it's stations where ours (Stoke) was heavily into community as was WM in South Staffs/Black Country and Brum.

It's no secret I like Boom Radio as a national station - the mix of music with no genre restrictions or playlist only mentalities and presenters who engage with the audience is up my alley - but they dropped the experimental Boom Rock after September 30th.

I liked the idea but if you don't want just a playlist that Spotify and the like can give you anyway you need lots of presenters, ideas for specific shows and that will cost money plus it was internet/streaming only.

That's sad but I feel they're better concentrating on the core brand which will have national tv ads in November and Boom Light which the more 50's and light music which there is some demand for maybe looking at something like a rock hour or two in the evenings presented by someone who knows it well and so produces a show for the evening with topics and featured artists.

I tend to find just the same 100 songs per decade stations do little for me as when Boom plays Beatles or Bowie they often go for an album track rather than the obvious hits giving a bitter insight into the artist.

Changes on the airwaves

 Broadcasting is going through a period of rapid change and restructuring presently, we've talked about it elsewhere as it applies to children's television and radio with programming being offered over the internet that the user selects. new entrants who can produce and distribute programming without the associated costs of legacy linear channels broadcast from antennas and satellite.

On the top of of the periodic review of the BBC right to raise funds and for what with the licence fee they collect money for, d,  the new BBC Director General is looking with some might say a more harder nose than most at what it does.

The programs and the (legacy) extra linear channels most of which started in various forms from around 1998/9 as a early ONdigital subscriber I remember well from the days of BBC Knowledge and Choice starting on channels 7 and 9.

They became BBC 3 and BBC 4.

ITV and Channel Four started sidebar channels back then such as ITV2, E4 and FilmFour so the BBC were not unique in it but what may of made sense at the turn of the century may not some twenty-five years on.

BBC 3 started in 2008 and was really targeted at those in their late teens to early thirties with a good number of freshly commisioned programs, some that were successfuly like Gavin and Stacey and others not.

Even back in 2016 it was found most of these viewers were watching via the iPlayer so given the expense of putting it out over antenna and satellite decided to make it online only.

The BBC Board of Governors reviewed it and decide it was to go back to being broadcast in 2021 arguing this audience had a right to a specific broadcast channel.

Leaked suggestions and internal redundencies are set up now suggesting this could go yet again with an announcement in a week or with talk of BBC Scotland a seperate Scottish channel for non Gaelic scots  going to attracting miniscule viewing figures but very much backed by Scottish politicians.

In an age when much can be found online can channels with poor viewing figures and a struggle to generate new content can you continue to pay for things few watch and in the instance of BBC 3, could not the programs go on BBC2 when we have seen a high proportion of repeats never mind repeats of repeats?