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The Sunday Times
November 19, 2006 With The X Factor, Pop Idol and the Eurovision Song
Contest, it is television that now seems the keenest champion of talent
contests. Yet radio got there first. Opportunity Knocks began on Radio
Luxembourg in 1949, years before it went to ITV; Frank Sinatra got his big break
on a radio talent contest called Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, in New Jersey, in
1935; more recent performers to emerge via such shows here include the tenor
Russell Watson, the impressionist Jon Culshaw and the Torquay surf chick Belle.
Still only 17, she was discovered in a talent contest on her local station,
Gemini FM, in 2002, and is now the face of the international surf label
O'Neill.
As if to trump all the above, the BBC World Service
is engaged on a project likely to make previous efforts seem parochial. It has
set out to find the best young band or best young solo singer in the world. This
is the BBC's first global contest in music - as opposed to drama, where it has
run an international playwriting competition for a decade - and maybe the
world's first, too. More than 1,100 entries, from 35 countries, had arrived by
last weekend's deadline. The winner will be unveiled on December 9.
The BBC should be commended for its ambition in
scouring the planet in this way. There is, however, a sad note. The citizens of
the planet will not be able to vote; but, as we shall see, we have only
ourselves to blame for that.
The Next Big Thing contest, part of a forthcoming
World Service season on under-18s called Generation Next, offers no prize other
than prestige and the chance to play to a worldwide audience. The entries, sent
to the BBC mainly as MP3 files, have been whittled down by staff from the
various language services to 20. The countries they come from include Britain,
Uruguay, Ukraine, Malawi, Iran and Burma. Music-industry figures will further
reduce this to a shortlist of six, who will perform their songs at Maida Vale
studios (providing their parents have allowed them to come to Britain) on
December 6. The winner will be picked by judges who include Peter Gabriel,
William Orbit and Damon Albarn.
So why can we listeners not vote? Because the BBC
has tried that before in various shows, and got its fingers burnt. Radio 4's
Today programme suspended its "personality of the year" contest in 1996 after it
discovered an attempt being made to rig the vote in favour of Tony
Blair.
The World Service, during its 70th anniversary
celebrations in 2002, was similarly embarrassed when a poll to find "the world's
top tune" was hijacked by Irish nationalists, who steered the Wolfe Tones'
feisty anthem A Nation Once Again into first place.
In 2003, Radio 3 disqualified the band Seize the
Day from the Awards for World Music, again alleging voting irregularities.
Several other radio contests have been tarnished by charges of orchestrated
campaigns. "If we open this up to voting on the web or via telephone, it could
be commandeered by an interest group," says Peter Connors, a World Service
spokesman, "and we do not want it railroaded in this way."
The shortlist of 20 is 70% male, 30% female, 80%
bands, 20% solo artists, all with vocals. May the best musician win - even if it
is simply the choice of one panel of judges.
Thanks to Mike Terry via the DX Listening Digest
and uk-radio-listeners egroups for the above.
PAUL DAVID,
Wembley Park, United Kingdom |
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