I’ve hesitated to dip my toe into this maelstrom, but I feel I have to. One of my problems has been that I have a foot in both camps - I was proud to be ‘in’ for 20 years, and I’m now a broadcaster, journo and commentator, specialising in aviation. I appear on the Beeb - and on anybody else’s screens and microphones who cares to pay - and that’s part of how I earn my living.
First of all, a matter of fact. Although the programme was on the Beeb, it was made by an independent production company called Prospect-UK. I understand that the RAF was happy for them to get the job because they could offer some of the same production people, including the Exec Producer, who made the acclaimed ‘Above Enemy Lines’.
I should also say that I was on the shortlist to be the narrator for ‘RAF at 90’. But, having not got the job, I approached the show fully prepared to dislike it. Childish, I know. My excuse is that I was deeply disappointed.
I have to say though, that, against my expectations, I thought it was rather good. As a 90-minute feature film (90 mins, 90 years, etc), it came over as clever, artistic and rather well-themed. I thought the several reprises of The Lark Ascending were lovely. Among other things, it also included some interesting research on the effects of second world war bombing that I certainly hadn’t heard before. And of course there was the lovely Geoffrey Wellum. One of the themes that I detected was a reflection of the love of all things to do with flying and aviation which, presumably, most Ppruners have. I guess you could argue that this was not the occasion to reflect that.
But, in fact, the programme seems to have gone down quite well amongst the wider BBC audience. As far as I can make out, the iPlayer version has stayed in the ‘most watched’ list for an unexpectedly long time for a BBC2 non-fiction 90-minuter.
However, I’m not disagreeing with all the knockers in the thread. First, the programme wasn’t a structured history of the RAF at 90, and, clearly, it missed out lots of important and significant stuff. (I speak as an ex-truckie) And obviously it wasn’t the programme the RAF thought it was going to get.
That said, I’m not sure that you could sell that ‘perfect’ RAF programme to any major broadcaster. Whether the broadcasters are right or wrong, I don’t think they would take 90 minutes of plain, vanilla history. Maybe the idea of a series of shorter programmes would work better. But I have to say that my experience of trying to interest broadcasters in the kind of material that I think most people on here want is pretty dismal - and I’ve been trying for quite a long time. Even people like the History Channel are notoriously hard to sell to.
So maybe we should be grateful for getting the coverage that we did get. It’s not perfect, but, in the old saw, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And in this case, the publicity wasn’t even bad - just not as good as some of us might have hoped. Oh, and a disappointment for a major birthday.
airsound