Category Archives: Blog

British, Bold, Creative – for all of us in Wales?

September 8, 2015Blog, Industry, Television, Uncategorizedangela

British, Bold, Creative: a catchy, punchy title for the BBC’s statement of its plans for the next decade and beyond but, read from the point of view of the Welsh bit of ‘British’, the contents are something of a curate’s egg.

One sees the effort to engage with the Nations and Regions. There are suggestions about reconfiguring the delivery of news and about opening up platforms for a wider sharing of materials. The aspirations are right, as in section 7.3 Entertaining the whole UK:

Firstly, we will improve how we portray and represent the different Nations of the UK on our pan-UK network services. Secondly, we will strengthen the services for each Nation.

Then comes a very big ‘but’:

But significant new investment in a broader range of programming, such as drama, comedy and entertainment, cannot be delivered within the current Budget agreement with the Government… funding these ambitions would require additional income. Continue reading British, Bold, Creative – for all of us in Wales? →

Broadcasting for the Nations

September 7, 2015Blog, Industryangela

Broadcasting for the nations – on the agenda at last

The First Minister’s letter to the BBC shows a new urgency on the plight of Welsh broadcasting. August 2015

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The Welsh Government’s decision to go for broke by demanding an extra £30m from the BBC licence for broadcasting in Wales, is a matter for both relief and rejoicing. In the last decade it has been strangely reluctant to take up the issue of service deficiencies in Wales. In the face of the decline of the ITV service, unending cuts at BBC Wales and reductions in S4C funding it has been tepid in its responses to calls for action by both the Institute of Welsh Affairs and the National Assembly’s own committees. Continue reading Broadcasting for the Nations →

Beyond Rhetoric – IWA Media Policy for Wales

August 4, 2015Blog, Industry, Media, PortfolioTelevisionangela

“as slow to be set on fire as a stomach”

I wondered, while listening to Rhodri Talfan Davies speak this week on two occasions at the National Eisteddfod, if some version of that sentiment ever entered his mind. It certainly entered mine. It’s a striking phrase coined by George Eliot to express her frustration at her contemporaries’ failure to grasp the spirit of the times. How slow we are – those of us not touched by genius such as hers ̶ to see the writing on the cultural wall in front of us. A new dispensation is coming and we need the ideas to meet it.

Continue reading Beyond Rhetoric – IWA Media Policy for Wales →

Scampi and the Meaning of Life – TV and Culture in Wales

July 21, 2015Blog, Industry, Televisionangela

I don’t know if anyone ever addresses Lord Hall of Birkenhead, Director General of the BBC, as ‘butt’. I suppose I’m unlikely to find out as he probably has more pressing questions to answer in these days of Charter Renewal debate. Nonetheless the question came to me as I reflected on a blog I wrote yesterday attempting to unpack what Tony Hall meant when he used the word ‘culture’ in a speech in Cardiff in 2014.

there are some aspects of national life in Wales that are not sufficiently captured by the BBC’s own television services in Wales, and I would include comedy, entertainment and culture in those categories

Tony Hall

I don’t want to treat that speech as some gospel to be mined for esoteric meanings and yet light did dawn, and the clue was an in example of one of the genres whose erosion he lamented in that text. He named comedy, entertainment and culture as genres whose production has been eroded, in the last decade, on English language television in Wales. I found myself thinking about a comedy series which, in my view, is one of the best BBC Wales has ever made. Continue reading Scampi and the Meaning of Life – TV and Culture in Wales →

Hungry Wales in an Age of TV Plenty

July 20, 2015Blog, Industry, Media, Portfolio, Television, Uncategorizedangela

If a thing is repeated often enough it begins to be as persuasive as though it were true.

We’ve never had it so good, apparently. We live in a televisual Age of Plenty with digital wares piled high in the marketplace and so it’s time for the BBC to withdraw from universality and to stop disadvantaging the commercial sector by its scale and success; the level of public funding gives the BBC an unfair advantage over its competitors and the BBC should become more ‘distinctive’, confining itself to things the market can’t or won’t provide.

Continue reading Hungry Wales in an Age of TV Plenty →

TV for Wales – in both languages

July 15, 2015Blog, Media, Television, Uncategorizedangela

It’s not just S4C that is threatened by potential changes. It is television for Wales as a whole, if the latest BBC Wales Annual Review 2014-15 by Audience Council Wales is anything to go by.

This Review, for 2014 – 15, makes alarming reading, particularly as it comes hot on the heels of Ofcom’s recent special additional report on PSB in the internet age: The Nations of the UK and their regions and the bombshell about funding burdens for the BBC lobbed by the Chancellor while no one was looking. It appears the day before the Green Paper on BBC Charter Renewal is expected but it shouldn’t get lost in the sturm und drang that that is likely to produce because it has significant things to say about television in Wales. Continue reading TV for Wales – in both languages →

My Headers – Journalism, Opportunism and Commissioning, 1486

July 6, 2015Blog, Mediaangela

My Headers – Journalism, Opportunism and the Commissioning process, 1486

One of the most audacious acts of shameless, straight-faced opportunism ever to have been imagined in the world of communications.

I’ve chosen a Crivelli painting from 1486 as the image source of my headers because it is such a cheeky picture and always amuses me. Continue reading My Headers – Journalism, Opportunism and Commissioning, 1486 →

Faith and Violence – the journalist’s role

May 31, 2015Blog, Dialogue, PortfolioPrint, Print, Teacher, Teaching, Uncategorizedangela

On New Year’s Day this year the Western Mail published an article by the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Wales, Saleem Kidwai. He claimed that a precious achievement in Welsh cultural life is in jeopardy and that a generation have felt ‘rejected by their fellow Welshmen’.

Welsh-Muslim youth who thought themselves like any other Welsh person got a rude awakening post-9/11 — a sort of cultural shock that they were not like any other Welsh person. Overnight, they were the other, the enemy…

As Mr Kidwai set out the traumatic ramifications of this tragic dissociation I felt the force of his appeal that, “As a society… We have to reject any attempts to marginalize Muslims as second-class citizens” but I was perplexed as to how to go about that.

Until I perceived a potential response from the world of journalism itself – from journalism in Wales.

silent rally — Silent rally in Cardiff in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings

Continue reading Faith and Violence – the journalist’s role →

Passion and Policy – Documentary in Wales

May 25, 2015Blog, Commentator, Media, Uncategorizedangela

On Friday 29^th May Documentary Wales/ Dogfen Cymru is holding a symposium in Cardiff:

to discuss the future of documentary film in Wales. Drawing together a range of talent from Wales and beyond, the day will be an opportunity to meet a diverse collection of individuals who share your passion for documentary. The focus of the day will be on:

Strengthening the community of documentary film makers currently working in Wales

Exploring ways of building the audience for documentary film in Wales

Discussing future plans for supporting documentary film within the Welsh production sector

Without good policy no social endeavour flourishes as it might. Structures start from policy. Policies are not made by machines but by people and people have beliefs and values and prejudices, all of which can be discussed, debated and shaped into principles on which actions are based. Those actions influence both what is possible in the social sphere and what becomes impossible.

To make Wales a place in which documentary flourishes we need policies which build sound platforms for documentary. That means taking an interest in policy for broadcasting, digital media and cinema – at least. Continue reading Passion and Policy – Documentary in Wales →

Documentary practice – a secret room of golden light

May 25, 2015Blog, Media, Teacher, Teachingangela

In the hour-long class I gave to Michigan State University students we had to use a large teaching room in order to have space to dance. On the back wall are four posters which I designed last year for the teaching I did on the Documentary Pathway which is an option on the M.A. in International Journalism at Cardiff University. I stopped teaching on this course last year but the posters are still there so I took advantage of them briefly. The posters were an experiment in displaying some basic principles of practice. I’d like to focus on one of them here. It’s from an interview given by the late great American documentarian, Albert Maysles (Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens et al).

He addresses something which documentary-makers do not, in my experience, speak about often or readily. Maybe this is merely symptomatic of the fact that I’m of a generation that learned on the job and that revered good practice but talked little about theory. (Perhaps I’ll get a chance to explore that in the upcoming Wales Documentary Day, of which more in another post.)

Maysles talks about the gaze. Continue reading Documentary practice – a secret room of golden light →

Angela Graham

Writer