In this context, Tom Robinson has various members and ex members of Fairport (including Ashley, Simon and RT) in the studio with him tomorrow talking about Liege & Lief on BBC 6 Music (Friday 27th) 7pm-9pm tomorrow. I suspect lots of "folk" folk won't have spotted that if they were looking only at "folk" shows.

Any "quality" argument made by the BBC on outside recordings needing a huge truck is IMO bollocks. There are several rather excellent folk live albums around at the moment that were simply recorded on minidisk straight off the board (just like a bootleg). The BBC mash everything up when they shove it out at only 128mbps on DAB on Mike's show anyway. That's one reason why Late Junction at 192mbps on Radio 3 sounds much better. FM will often sound better than both of course (with the right aerial).

That the BBC can afford to record every bloody prom in perfect quality for broadcast to an audience that is only about twice Mike Harding's and then claim "cost" on folk is one of life's little ironies (and something that should be rebalanced). However, you can get an 80% solution with a minidisk which most people can't tell the difference on. Now I'm sure Smooth Ops markup on sending Mike Harding off with a mini disk might not be quite so high as for sending an army with a truck, but that is no reason why it can't be done.