Test Match Special: Where do YOU stand on TMS?
As we all know, everything in life can be divided into things that make you angry or things that make you amazed. Where does the BBC's Test Match Special fall?
Michael Henderson has written a piece for the Guardian about how TMS is going to change later this year when its current producer, Peter Baxter, retires. Henderson implores the BBC to preserve TMS in its current form with maybe a bit of tinkering around the edges. He imbues the word 'accessible' with pejorative connotations and foresees a nightmare future of lowest common denominator cricket coverage.
Why? It's something of a presumption that any changes to TMS will be designed to hook that fictional everyman who the media so frequently court. Why won't the changes be for the better?
We like Test Match Special, don't get us wrong. We've even warmed to some of its more laughable eccentricities, to a degree. However, it's anything but accessible, in the literal sense. If you were new to cricket and wanted coverage of the sport that you'd recently come to love, you'd be pretty underwhelmed by TMS. It's insular and many of the team are downright offputting to many people. We mention no names.
One of Henderson's main defences of the current team are that several have good, clear speaking voices. If it weren't an article in The Guardian, we'd be tempted to believe that his reference to 'people who speak sloppily' were code for those with regional accents.
Again, we DO like Test Match Special. But why shouldn't an overhaul of the programme be more reminiscent of Channel 4's improvement on the BBC's staid TV coverage several years ago, rather than the desperate pandering to all that Michael Henderson envisages?
Michael Henderson has written a piece for the Guardian about how TMS is going to change later this year when its current producer, Peter Baxter, retires. Henderson implores the BBC to preserve TMS in its current form with maybe a bit of tinkering around the edges. He imbues the word 'accessible' with pejorative connotations and foresees a nightmare future of lowest common denominator cricket coverage.
Why? It's something of a presumption that any changes to TMS will be designed to hook that fictional everyman who the media so frequently court. Why won't the changes be for the better?
We like Test Match Special, don't get us wrong. We've even warmed to some of its more laughable eccentricities, to a degree. However, it's anything but accessible, in the literal sense. If you were new to cricket and wanted coverage of the sport that you'd recently come to love, you'd be pretty underwhelmed by TMS. It's insular and many of the team are downright offputting to many people. We mention no names.
One of Henderson's main defences of the current team are that several have good, clear speaking voices. If it weren't an article in The Guardian, we'd be tempted to believe that his reference to 'people who speak sloppily' were code for those with regional accents.
Again, we DO like Test Match Special. But why shouldn't an overhaul of the programme be more reminiscent of Channel 4's improvement on the BBC's staid TV coverage several years ago, rather than the desperate pandering to all that Michael Henderson envisages?
Labels: coverage, radio, Test Match Special
