The Observer Making Prominent Use Of The BBC's Messageboards
I wrote the other week following the BBC Three DOG debacle about the risks to a broadcaster of having their own critical user-generated content quoted back at them.
In The Observer this weekend Anthony Holden took it a whole stage further in his article 'Log on, lash out', in which he reviewed Proms 33, 34 & 36 almost entirely through the idiom of quoting users of the BBC's Proms messageboard. Like most messageboard contributers they were not shy in coming forward with their opinions:
Who on God's green earth chose the soloists for the Mahler last night? The singing was vile. The soprano wobbled dreadfully, the mezzo was not on her usual form, the tenor was so nondescript and strangled! As for the bass, words fail me!
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Musical vandalism!
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pointless and pretentious appendage
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The whole effect was like listening to a bad mono recording from the 50s. Hardly progress to the 21st century.
It was a great conceit for a review, contrasting the short sharp acid tongues of the message board with Holden's own description of Holst's "bold, deft and imaginative scoring" becoming undervalued.
In his luminous Planets, as never before, my companion and I heard pre-echoes of all sorts of film music. From Bernard Herrmann's Citizen Kane and Psycho to Danny Elfman's Spider-Man, via much of John Williams and Howard Shore, this 1913 piece has provided the inspiration for almost a century of movie magic. Now there's something for the BBC message-boarders to sink their teeth into.
It is good to see our user generated content being reused though - one of the main reasons it exists is to give our audience their voice.