Contents
- Home
- News
- Question of the week
- Comment
- Giles Fraser: Why being established means being inclusive
- Paul Vallely: Wickedness can be incarnate, too
- Simon Parke: Would Jesus get published today?
- Two cheers for sentimentality
- 100 Years Ago
- Where are the broadcast services?
- How suffering points to God’s love for his people
- Slipping into being an evil nation
- Before they narrowed the vision
- Letters
- Real Life
- Features
- Faith
- Humour and crossword
- Pastimes
- Books
- Arts
- Media
- Gazette
 back to Comment |
 previous story
|
next story 
|
Where are the broadcast services?
 Now just a TV programme: Songs of Praise, which used to be more a service
KNUT S. VINDFALLET/STAVANGER AFTENBLAD |
|
Why has there been no outcry at the lack of live worship on TV and radio, asks David Self An excited email from the BBC Religion and Ethics department trumpets its “Yuletide offerings”. On Christmas Eve, midnight mass is to be broadcast live from Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Twelve years ago, live church services were a regular part of the schedules. Now, such a broadcast is noteworthy. This change, over a comparatively short period, is a disgrace, for which church leaders and lay people bear the blame equally with the commissioning editors, who believe that viewers are no longer interested in such programming. From its earliest days, the ITV network carried a live relay of a Sunday-morning service, produced by each of its 14 regions in turn, and transmitted nationally. It was a significant logistical and financial commitment. Not only did ITV forsake advertisements for its hour-long running time, but such operations demanded a large technical crew, who often needed overnight accommodation. From my time with the religious department at Anglia, I can remember the spectacular bill run up when Sunday coincided with Boxing Day. We normally had to use the same crew that had covered a Saturday-afternoon football match. Churches near to large clubs were used more often than others. Broadcast services have since disappeared from ITV (along with most other religious programming). There is, however, a 90-minute communion service on ITV this Christmas Eve from All Saints’, Daresbury, near Warrington. It’s not live. It was pre-recorded at the end of November. The following day, since the cameras were in place, the congregation received Easter communion, when ITV recorded a service for transmission next year. Oddly, as its purpose is to provide a public service, BBC Television has never been committed to weekly worship. By 1963, it was producing up to 26 broadcast services a year. Since then, the number has dwindled to two or three. Songs of Praise originally had the structure of a non-liturgical service; it is now just a TV programme. The Christmas Eve edition this year was recorded in an organ museum: the audience was asked to remove Remembrance poppies. Live worship survives on Radio 4 in the Daily Service and Sunday Worship. The former’s inception in 1928 was down to a dogged two-year campaign waged by one listener, a Miss Kathleen Cordeux. Now tucked away on Long Wave (which is not available on many modern receivers), it has always been “made for broadcast”. On the other hand, the Sunday act of worship (which began life even earlier) was, for decades, broadcast on the “eavesdropping” principle: microphones were present at a normal service. Since it was shunted into the 8.10 a.m. slot, it has become necessary to create an event specially for radio. Few church musicians are normally in their stalls at that time. If Radio 3 persists in its plan of moving Choral Evensong from Wednesday to Sunday afternoon (News, 17 November; Letters, 24 November), it will almost certainly become a recorded programme, too, as few cathedrals will be able to accommodate the necessary rehearsal time into their Sunday timetable. For the dedicated listener who hears a radio service prayerfully, it can form a genuine act of worship, even if two or three are not physically gathered together. In contrast, television is a restless medium. The viewer “moves around” the church, seeing now a close-up of a chorister, now the congregation, next the celebrant, in a way no participant does. Thus the viewer becomes a spectator rather than a participant. Even so, we received letters at Anglia asking whether a piece of bread and a glass of wine would be blessed if placed in front of the television. The Vatican reportedly once announced that repeated replays of a video of a papal blessing could not have the same effect as the original one in St Peter’s Square. Yet televised services are valuable to many more than the sick and housebound. Surveys over the years have shown that hundreds of thousands appreciate them because they “help me cope”, “help me understand Christianity”, “remind me of my younger days”, and (supremely) “are comforting”. True, the essence of a sacramental service may not communicate itself to the unchurched viewer, but such services are an invaluable shop window for the churches — something appreciated by Canon David Felix at Daresbury, who is happy to agree to the demands of the medium for the raised profile his church gains. (It helps when ITV brings in David Blunkett, two soap stars, and the Duchess of Kent to read the lessons.) It is easy to see why the commercially driven ITV should abandon regular services: they bring in no advertising, no foreign sales, and can’t be repeated. That our principal public-service broadcaster should also give them up — as Gillean Craig argued (Media, 8 December) — is scandalous. They fill a spiritual void. They kept many thousands in touch with the concept of Church. At their best, they are a form of pre-evangelism. That is why the minimal protest raised by the church hierarchy and churchgoers at their demise is so shaming. We have let the broadcasters get away with it. Imagine the row that would have erupted if the broadcasters had decreed that a Cup Final wouldn’t be covered live — or if soccer fans had been told to make do with documentaries about football rather than matches themselves. David Self is a former television producer for Anglia and a radio producer for BBC Schools. |
