I tend to disagree though that their lack of sponsorship will benefit other folk festivals, it will to all intense and purposes remove their involvement with folk and drive it further from peoples minds.

In the days before BBC Radio 2 became the "headline sponsor" of Cambridge, they used to also record and broadcast live concerts from Sidmouth week. Back in 2002 they were still sponsoring the Ham Marquee at Sidmouth and it was emblazoned with BBC Radio 2 banners. However, inside the venue they had NO recording equipment and indeed they had none up at the (then) main Arena venue either. ALL the practical effort had been switched to Cambridge. They did make an effort at Sidmouth the next year, which was the 40th Cambridge and the 50th Sidmouth. Out of which came both a TV and a radio show. However, they haven't recorded at a folk festival than than Celtic Connections or Cambridge since as far as I know.

What will now happen for the rest of the summer will be Mike Harding will do his post-Cambridge "special" and then go off on holiday and Smooth Ops will pump out a few pre-records for the rest of the summer. They probably knocked up the coming Kate Rusby Special to (effectively) help her advertise her new album while at Cambridge. As always Cropredy and every other festival in August will be ignored, in the same way as both Warwick Folk Festival and the (cancelled) Nantwich Acoustic Festival were ignored last weekend. Yes they did "advertise" Saul a weeks ago, but only after it had been cancelled for several days.

Now, whether the BBC do or don't do anything with any cash they save from Cambridge is entirely another matter. If they shared it round, it could do some good. If they just throw it at eg Jonathan Ross then it won't. But I don't really see why one specific folk festival an hours drive from London and one in Glasgow get all the licence payers money every year while every other one gets zero.

The funny thing is, as is often the case, it is hard to find many that claim to like folk that actually listened to much of what the BBC broadcast from Cambridge this year. Conversely quite a few of Stuart Maconie's more generalist music fans might have heard a few artists they might not normally have, and that probably did do some good. Dermot O'Leary even discovered Joan Baez on Stuart's handover to him. To be fair I didn't know much Joan Baez material when I was Dermot's age either.

Still, given that various worthies from Fairport Convention were on Tom Robinson for the best part of 2 hours on Friday, and that only I here have admitted to listening to any of it, and I fell asleep during part of it, that might be why the BBC doesn't think anyone listens to "folk". Someone on Talkawhile mentioned that they had listened to it all though...