[QUOTE][Perhaps some reality TV programme, with 'real' people showing life on a squadron - Engineers, loggies, scribblies etc as well as the aircrew might help to redress the balance of understanding. /QUOTE]
In 1998-9 I was engaged by the BBC to assist in making a series of the programme Airshow. The main thrust of that series was to outline that capabilities of UK air power. Big day-long meet at Beeb HQ with reps from RAF, FAA and AAC. Outlines of what we wanted to do were presented and we worked out a reasonable, doable, series-plan and overall scenario.
Everybody, from Wg Cdr level on down was helpful in the extreme, in all three Services. As for the RAF, everybody from Wg Cdr on up got increasingly blunt and anal. One Gp Capt (who ISTR wrote a series of boring air power lectures for Air Clues) insisted we wrote the script using AP3000 terminology, which the audience would not have understood. In the end we had to ignore him as he disappeared in a vortex of his own memos.
Restrictions on cameras in cockpits were rife, even after beng shown the latest in mini-cams (size and weight of a Biro, with a lead to a digital recorder about the size of a Walkman) not ideal, picture quality wise but entirely adequate for a couple of minutes footage. But no, The Rules, probably written in the 1960s, were dusted off and they said that any cockpit mounted cameras had to be trialled by Boscombe.
In short, the RAF made it so difficult, while the FAA and AAC made it so easy that the producer had a very difficult time in maintaining a fair tri-Service balance. The 20 or so folk who worked on that series will now be senior camera/sound men, assistant producers or a producers in their own right. They will remember the weekly grief and like as not, will never want to repeat it.
To the layman, the RAF has everything it needs, in spades, to make an exciting TV show. The
PR org at MoD kills it stone dead. Splinter in your finger TV ad anyone?
Otherwise Cumbrian, good idea.