We are shocked by the daft decision to move BBC Four online-only. The only linear UK TV channel that very occasionally but always parsimoniously given what it shells out for Scandi-noir covers jazz in anything approaching credibility will see its audience shrink in the much more competitive online world dominated for music anyway by non-TV (except by another name) platforms like YouTube. What a ludicrous decision that will hurt jazz. Because beyond BBC Four all the rest of the many channels out there on UK TV don't even do the tiny smattering that BBC Four grudgingly chisels out however gone in the blink of an eye and in the air it usually proves apart from in November when they go full tonto for a smattering of more sustained coverage during the London Jazz Festival. What bad timing given that arch-rival Sky Arts which is now available for nowt on Freeview is more visible than ever. And yet Sky Arts rarely covers jazz properly either! Instead it seems curiously obsessed and laughably serves up lots of the insanely popular Dutch waltz king André Rieu along with clog loads of prog rock as a bizarre Waldorf salad accompaniment. If not quite a case of the Fawlty logic of ''that's eggs, bacon, sausage, and tomato with a Waldorf salad, all washed down with lashings of hot screwdriver'' you surely must get our resolutely unfaulty drift.
Next week on marlbank
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Keep on swinging, cheers,
Stephen Graham
editor marlbank
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