29 July 2012

Sole Repeat?



As Tommy Cooper would say, "That's nice." Have just checked the radio schedule for today and seen that instead of Part Two of Street Corner Soul at 8pm on Radio 2 there is the first of a two part tribute to Peggy Lee. The forthcoming schedule on the BBC website doesn't go further than next Sunday, which is the concluding part of the programme. So will Street Corner Soul continue its run after that? Who knows?


I have nothing against Peggy Lee, but it seems to me the BBC missed a trick there. Street Corner Soul followed directly on from a repeat series about the Four Seasons in the same slot and would surely have been of interest of to at least some of that listenership. The Four Seasons fashioned something different out of doo wop - I have to admit that I see them as a kind of Sunny Delight to the pure orange juice of doo wop, but that's where their roots were.

No, wait, don't tell me. It's the Olympics. While it's all going on we have to ramp up the sort of programme Radio 2 is best known for, and hearing Peggy Lee makes it almost like the Sundays of old, with Sing Something Simple and Charlie Chester with typewriters and prams looking for a new home, and everyone being fundamentally decent, like in Ealing films.

Or is it simply that there weren't enough listeners for the first episode? But c'mon, this isn't ITV - can't we pay lip service to the notion of the Beeb as educators?

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