It has been lovely to read so many intelligent and inspiring ideas here - I can probably pick three separate series from the suggestions thus far. Alan Day's idea strikes me as both viable and valuable - I would like to see a show that is varied, fast moving but totally simple - ie one or two camera angles trained on dancers/players/singers. Just pure music that captures the kind of pub session performances one may experience at Whitby. Such a show would be inexpensive, not particularly time consuming and relatively simple to edit and produce. More of this!

I also like the leveller's idea of a 'field recording' programme. Whilst I have to say I agree heartily with Hoot on many aspects of the age-old 'singer songwriter' issue, I do think that there are very many talented songwriters out there who have contributed to 'the tradition' by being well informed by it and by writing *within* it. This includes people like Mike and Lal Waterson, Archie Fisher, Ewan MacColl, etc. However there is a need to be very careful else we slip down the route of calling something 'folk' when it really isn't. Quality 'folk singer songwriters', ie people writing (arguably) 'within the tradition' are unfortunately far rarer than 'average/below average singer songwriter with a guitar', who belongs to a totally different sphere and many people (though not nearly enough!) are rightfully strident about making this differentiation.

To conclude, I would also strongly argue for a series of excerpts from Doc Rowe's video archive, as Mike suggests. His Whitby presentations were always festival highlights - he has countless gems in his archive which it is such a shame are not more widely available.

So come on, let's get started then! ;-)

FairEllender