There has been a continuing line of criticism thrown at the BBC from members of the press, who for reasons they have yet to explain want to scrap the organisation, that the BBC is dumbing down.  If this argument doesn’t fit then they argue that the BBC is too elitist and don’t reflect the average users tastes and views, which of course means their own.  In short they seem to hate everything the BBC does and will only be happy when the organisation turns into some British version of Fox News (sorry that is my prejudice but sometimes I wonder if these critics have ever watched TV…sorry)

The worrying thing is that from time to time something is produced by the BBC which makes me  start to agree with some of the criticism and the latest example is The Big Painting Challenge.  The premise of the programme is simple – find the best amatuer artist in Britain.  The methodology used to find the ‘best’ is that each week the selected artists will have to complete a different set of artistic challenges.  They will be judged and at the end of each programme one of them will have to leave.  This is where the problems start.  The programme claims that they have selected the top amateur artists but it is unclear how this has been done.  After some very light Googling it becomes clear that talent is not uppermost in the production team’s mind:

Item 13 of the terms and conditions states:

“…the following will be taken into account: skill, enthusiasm, drive, love of painting and art, lively characters who are comfortable being filmed….”

“…We will be looking for a mix of finalists to reflect the range in age, location, gender and diversity of amateur painters in Britain….”

Then to reinforce the point each artist is asked to supply

“…a recent photo of yourself;…”

(To see full terms and Conditions click here)

So it would seem that artistic talent is not the aim of the programme but rather to make an correctly mixed group of photogenic people.  This then destroys the claim that the programme is trying to find the best amateur artist.  In short as one blogger described it the production team were looking for an art version of the Great British Bake Off or the Sewing Bee.

I have nothing against the artists as they are doing something I could never do it is just the slight of hand of the BBC to make outlandish claims about finding the best talent when that isn’t what they want to do at all.  Instead they just want to find the most photogenic mix and then give them a series of challenges and talent is of little importance. It makes me so angry that I will start to read the Daily Mail!! …ha ha.

Oh it feels good to get that off of my chest.  Anyway, here are a couple of quick sketches based on this week’s programme.

BTW the painting at the start of the blog is another in my continuing painting exrcises.