Why the BBC Proms is the Skype of classical music - and why it's in crisis

For years, Skype had almost total market dominance. If you wanted to video call someone, you were going to use Skype. By the time a small competitor called Zoom was founded in 2011, Skype had used its 8-year head start to grow to over 100 million users. Hell, it had even become so big that in the same year The Onion joked that “Skype” would be added to the dictionary and three years later, the verb was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. You know you’ve made it when you’ve become a verb. 

All that Skype needed for world domination was for more people to use video calls as part of their daily life. And yet 18 months after a pandemic forced the whole world online and to use video calls for all elements of our lives, the end of July will see “Skype for Business” being discontinued, with Skype’s market share down to 6.6%. 

Skype’s lack of competition during its period of dominance led to complacency, stagnation, and pointless and poorly rolled out updates. When the world went online and Skype realised that it was no longer the only gig in town and that it was behind the pack, it was too late to do anything. What should have been the period for the company’s ultimate success was its time of crisis and demise. 

As well as seeing the discontinuation of Skype for Business, the end of July sees the start of this year’s BBC Proms, another organisation that for years (in fact decades) has seen near total market dominance and now is facing a similar crisis. 

For context, this blog isn’t going to be about the music. It’s not even going to be about attending concerts. This is going to be about the broadcast coverage of the BBC Proms and both how and why it’s facing a crisis that it hasn’t recognised yet. 

For years in the UK, if you wanted to see an orchestra on the TV you had to watch the Proms. The only other concerts that might be televised that year would be BBC Young Musician of the Year, the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Day concert, the odd documentary, and the odd one off. The Proms however would be around 30 televised concerts all over a couple of months in summer, with the whole festival being broadcast on the radio. Let’s face it, watching an orchestra on TV was watching the Proms. 

Like Skype, this dominance has led to complacency, stagnation, and a mediocre product. The coverage of the Proms has both looked and felt the same for years. For example, comparing these two clips from 2012 and 2021.

Ignoring the poor YouTube quality, there are no changes in how they are filmed, and neither are cinematically or visually appealing (bonus points if you noticed that they’re still using the same fonts in the titles). If we’re being honest from a cinematography/broadcast perspective, they look a bit naff and it’s a mediocre product. On top of that, I can’t think of another BBC programme that looks identical 9 years apart. 

Then around the filming, the coverage and presenting has stayed the same since I started watching as a child. The same predictable presenter line up each year, shot in the same way from the same box in the Royal Albert Hall, with the same dull segments and same dull interviews of artists that bring little to either excite or give any real insight. Again, think of other BBC programmes like Match of the Day and how radically they’ve changed their format, included technology, and created other supporting content both on TV and social media. 

Speaking of, then there is the world of social media. I’ve been frustrated for years at how appalling the Proms’ use of social media is and how it’s a huge missed opportunity for them. The ability to share stories, music, and connect to people across the country and around the world should be at the heart of what the what the Proms is and with such an incredible product should be an easy job. 

And yet social media is used such in a clichéd corporate fashion to remind us that tickets are on sale and that we can order Proms guides, that it would be outdated approach 10 years ago. This is no surprise though with BBC Radio 3’s refusal to engage meaningfully with social media leading it to last year use it’s only Instagram post since 2014 to tell us that it’s not using Instagram – ignoring a platform with over 1.2 billion users. But again, this is a stark contrast compared with BBC Sport’s and Radio 1’s excellent use of social media, especially with live music events like Glastonbury and Radio 1’s Big Weekend. 

So where did all this leave the Proms leading into the pandemic? The Proms has openly said it wants to connect to more people and increase viewership for years. As everyone went online or to their TV’s during lockdown, surely this would be the perfect time to reach more people in a meaningful way, especially for the world’s largest music festival backed up by the world’s largest broadcasting company? It turns out, it was in a very similar position to Skype. 

Before the pandemic, we started to see the rise of competitors such as Medici TV and Marquee TV who were filming, purchasing, and broadcasting performances. We also had Sky Arts move to being free in the UK offering an alternative place for arts and culture content on TV. Then we also had the odd organisation broadcasting their own performances, such as the Royal Opera House, New World Symphony, and the Berlin Philharmonic. Finally, we have the world of social media, with YouTube being home to some amazing performances for years and Classic FM’s excellent reach on multiple channels. 

Then the pandemic begins, and orchestras start to react by moving online and broadcasting their own content. What is so striking by this is that they haven’t been limited by any previous way of doing things, so what we see is a ton of filmed concerts that not only sound just as good as the Proms, but they LOOK SO MUCH BETTER. But don’t just take my word for it…

Think back to the two example videos from the Proms and how they look. Now have a look at these examples from the Philharmonic Orchestra, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, and LA Phil.

There’s almost no comparison as they’re leagues apart. You certainly wouldn’t think that out of these it’s the Proms is the video that’s backed up by the largest broadcasting company in the world. And these were just 3 examples, with plenty of other options from LPO, LSO, OAE, Scottish Opera, and more. 

And then there’s the supporting content that has been done around these concerts. Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the Liverpool Philharmonic are some great examples of the success orchestras had at hosting pre-concert zoom rooms and breaking down the barrier between audience and musician (something the Proms didn’t do in 2020). The RSNO smashed it out the park with adding a ton of social media projects around their concert season, with educational challenges, interviews, smaller performances, and instrument guides. RNCM threw the rule book out the window and started their own live presenting format for concerts, pulling musicians off stage in between pieces to chat and encouraging genuine engagement from the audience that was watching, and then responding directly to them during the broadcast in a meaningful way. This ended up with a presenting format that is so much more engaging that what we’ve seen elsewhere. 

The Proms has now gone from the pretty much the only place to watch an orchestra at home to not even being in the top 10 in the space of 18 months. This is then compounded by a total lack of any signs of change. So where does that leave the Proms, why does it need to change, and what can it do? All can be explained by “Game Theory”.

Anyone who has heard me speak this year knows that I’ve become a little obsessed with Game Theory and Simon Sinek’s book “The Infinite Game”, and how they apply to our sector. This could be a whole blog in itself, so here is a very brief run through (or you can go watch Simon’s talk on it here which is MUCH better).

There are two types of games, finite and infinite. In a finite game there are known players, fixed rules, and an agreed upon objective that ends after a fixed period of time. Football is a finite game. In an infinite game there are both known and unknown players, there are no rules, and the only objective is to perpetuate the game. Business is in infinite game, and businesses struggle or fail when they have a finite mindset. 

The video rental company Blockbuster had a finite mindset. Despite having near total market domination, they refused to change and adapt with the times because they were stuck in a finite mindset and only worked within their finite rules. “A video rental company gives people a movie for a set period of time, and if they are late returning it they are charged late fees”. When the small start-up Netflix moved to a subscription service, Blockbuster refused to do the same as it would mean giving up their previous way of thinking and doing things where their late fees made up 15% of their revenue. Long story short, because Blockbuster stuck to their finite mindset there is only one store left in the world which is run as a novelty Airbnb.

Companies with a finite mindset will have temporary success before they get to a point where they fail and will be surpassed by a player with an infinite mindset who more often than not is an unknown player. For example, record stores globally have struggled, with HMV in the UK falling into administration numerous times as they had a finite mindset, and their business model was disrupted not by another music company but by someone totally unknown… a tech company called Apple who led the music streaming revolution and the market away from physical records. If they had an infinite mindset of “bringing music to as many people as possible” instead of the finite mindset of “sell as many records as possible” they wouldn’t have failed. 

The Proms has had a finite mindset for decades. It has done the same thing in the same way each year, playing by the same rules, and measuring its success in the same way. Each year the same old template is rolled out of the cupboard, and everything goes on autopilot. When it has been worried by competition it has been from other “known players”, like what else is on TV at the same time, Sky Arts, maybe things like Medici TV. Two years ago, if I’ve said that every orchestra round the world would be filming and distributing their own digital performances no one would have believed it (I certainly wouldn’t have). But here we are, and the Proms now has hundreds of “unknown players” across the world putting out a better product with an infinite mindset in a way that is relevant and meaningful to people in the time we live in. 

The Proms may not be in an overt crisis this year, but the crisis point is definitely now if it wants to stop its future demise. If it were to carry on the same path it would follow in the same footsteps as Skype, Blockbuster, and HMV. It wouldn’t be a question of if it would fail, but when.

I know that “Proms bashing” happens every year (see any article about the Last Night of the Proms 2020) and that it’s so easy to criticise things when you don’t suggest a solution – something that drives me nuts. I adore the Proms, the reason I’m in the music world is from seeing a cello on the Proms as a child, and the only way for me to really see orchestras growing up in part of the UK miles away from an orchestra was to watch the Proms. So, after a lot of hard truths, here’s my solution to save the future of the Proms. 

Switch to an infinite mindset. OK, yes that’s the answer, but how does that work? Well fortunately, the Proms has already figured this out for me…

“The aim of the BBC Proms is to bring the best in classical music to the widest possible audience, which remains true to founder-conductor Henry Wood's original vision in 1895.” – The BBC Proms website

This aim is an infinite mindset! To prove it, just think back to how this applied in the past. When innovations in radio and TV happened, they weren’t ignored as the Proms stuck to in person concerts, they were embraced to create a series that reached millions of people not just in the U.K. but across the world.

That ethos at its core can apply to anything the future throws at the Proms. The internet and social media age, augmented reality, VR, humans living in space… you can see it working whatever the future throws at it. 

So, what in reality needs to happen is that the Proms needs to go back to its roots and start putting its aim into practice. There needs to be a long pragmatic look as to whether they really have been working to “bring the best in classical music to the widest possible audience” or whether they’ve just been going through the motions with the same thinking and the same mediocre product for the last 10 years. On top of that, taking a look at what their product is and evaluating where it lines up alongside its competitors. 

The Proms needs to take inspiration from all the lessons, mistakes, and successes of the rest of the orchestral world over the last 18 months. From there, it needs to start upping the quality of filmed product to catch up, devising better content ideas for supporting content, and make a significant move into digital and social media world. 

The good news is that for working out how to this, the Proms can look for help and support from elsewhere within the BBC. The “how” of doing social media for a music festival could surely be sorted out by talking with BBC Radio 1 about how they have 7.5 million subscribers on YouTube and what do they do for Radio 1’s Big Weekend, or BBC Sport about creating supporting content around live events. There has to be some help and support on improving the filmed quality of the Proms by talking to the BBC team behind the incredibly cinematic Blue Planet or the beautifully filmed “Secrets of the Museum” at the V&A. There really is so much potential for the Proms here.

There is plenty of hope that the proms won’t go the way of Skype and Blockbuster, but it needs to go back to its roots and start putting its aim into action.