Well Done Auntie Beeb!!

I've been known to have a pop at people or organisations that fail my World View. Perhaps too often it might be said. Just occasionally there is a complete reversal of that irritation almost to a level that makes me feel quite humble and sorry to have ever made the fuss in the first place. Of course, I'd like to think that it was my complaint that caused an apparent change of direction, but I guess I'm probably just too insignificant to make such a claim.

Last year, several of us were getting frustrated at the mainstream BBC program Saturday Kitchen and did various things to try and get at The BBC.

Today, BBC Radio 4 did a brilliant program on the American Craft beer scene, the influence of European brewing on that scene and its subsequent influence on current contemporary brewing in the UK.

Mentions of barrel aged beers, American hops, massive IBUs and the effect our silly UK taxation system has on stronger, fuller flavoured beers was very welcome. Mention of Fullers, who's John Keeling recently visited to brew our soon to be infamous collaboration, warmed my heart.

It's a great piece of program making and undoes most of my reservations about their programming. More of the same please guys, and perhaps something on the Telly too?

Listen to it on iPlayer before it gets shuffled off to an archive somewhere.

Meanwhile, hypothetically speaking, I have the ability to make a reasonable quality mp3 file of the program. Of course to do so would be breaking copy write laws, so I deny all knowledge of having done so, or offering to let anyone have a copy once iPlayer has stopped streaming it. I imagine it might also be a large file, in the region of 12Mb, probably.

Sam, in the comments, points out there is a pod cast. Thanks Sam.

Saturday Kitchen Attack

OK, so it was only twitter; it's not real life and nothing will change if it just ends here. However, bigger things have started with less, and it's hard to believe that at least a few cages haven't been rattled¹.

It all started a week ago when Neil Bowness tweeted² that it was strange that Saturday Kitchen regularly plugs imported wines that can be bought in major supermarkets but regularly fails to mention British Beer. A mutual twitter friend, Vickie Hunter, asked if there was anyone we could complain to. This set me thinking that there probably was. To me, the obvious snub given to the beverage that is indigenous to Britain, seems to be broadcasting bias, so I complained to OfCom.

I also decided to write a press release, which was helpfully edited and distributed by Tim Hampson, the chairman of the Guild of Beer Writers. This generated some further publicity on local radio and papers as well as a sniff from the Independent, although for the latter I expect it will get no further than their blog.

This morning we flooded the Saturday Kitchen hashtag with beer matches and various other beer and food related comments. Although difficult to measure as all the previous records for Saturday Kitchen tweets seem too unimportant for the search tools to find, we can be sure we made a difference. We created over 1500 tweets and I am certain that the production team now know we are here.

There is a Facebook page now dedicated to the cause of raising the profile of good beer in the media, please like it and contribute with comments, or links to blog posts etc. I'm hoping this will not be the end of the matter. It's called Libeeration, which I'm told is a play on words. Libation is the act of partaking in alcoholic beverages, beer is an alcoholic beverage and liberation is the act of freeing from previous constraints. It wasn't my idea, it was the brainchild of The Director of vituperation, @AKA_Franklin.

However, I am concerned that this will just be a flash in the pan. Hopefully we'll do the same next Saturday, but I expect the novelty will wear off and it would take a significantly greater event to get us noticed enough to change the way major media people think about beer. I expect it is going to take a real life publicity stunt. Beer and food picnic outside the studio anyone?

Meanwhile I've been accused of this being a publicity stunt for Hardknott. I would hope that my readers are clever enough to feel that their intelligence is being called into question if I tried to deny that this is part of my motive. However, I hope that this shows our whole publicity ethos is one of playing to the all-inclusive nature of beer. Yes, we will occasionally have a pop at things that are in conflict with what we do, and that includes other sectors of the beer market on occasions, but we do firmly buy into the concept that we must all consider what is good for beer in the long run.

Other perceptions on the morning's events have been chronicled by Beer Beauty, Pub Champion and Thatchers Arms.

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¹The series producer is quite obviously ignoring us on twitter. Several of us have tweeted directly at him. Mind you, I also know that abuse is thrown at the program because a few people don't like some of the presenters. I'm guessing that success is often accompanied by abuse and it might be worth remembering that what we did today could be cited as abuse.

²I'm slightly miffed that searches have failed to find the original tweets.