Folk music has more media presence now than it ever had. On national radio and TV. Never heard of the Radio 2 folk awards? Seen the spate of folk documentaries on TV? Listen to the 6 music folk podcasts?
Of course it hasn't Dave - pure fantasy
The media folk awards have little to do with folk song
Where are the half-dozen weekly programmes folk - Bert's Programmes, the ones I mentioned above ?
Where are the folk courses ?
Crappy, industry driven awards are signs of further deterioration - they have little to do with real folk - just dedicated to the few who 'make it'
Sorry to burst your bubble Dave - stop making things up
You have yet to acknowledge the dire discrepancy between 1,500 + clubs and your 160ish
If that isn't a sign of how bad things have become, I don't know what you need
Nor have you mentioned the effects the driving out of folk song proper from the scene has had on 'The Voice of the People'
Don't you care ?

"Why would Shirley make it up."
Just told you why Dick - MacColl and Seeger refused to become part of the folk 'luvvies' and dedicated his time to working with less experienced singers and promoting folk song - while those knocking him were getting on with their own careers
In all the time I associated with them, I never once heard either of them slag off fellow performers publicly - noot once
Even in private Ewan was very guarded in his criticism of others,
I know there was a time Ewan and Bert didn't get on; I once said I didn't think much of Bert's ballad singing; he jumped to Bert's defence and said he didn't like discussing colleagues singing unless they were there
As far as I know, he never did
I've been a dozens of public performances where others have done it to him
One of the worst examples was at Peggy's first public outing after Ewan's death
She had agreed to sing voluntarily at 'The Red and Green Umbrella Show in Hampstead when a young talentless navel-gazer fired off about Ewan's "finger-in-ear pretentiousness"
Ewan could be a pain in the arse on occasion but as I said, he never ran fellow performers publicly

Nuff of this - anti MacColl necrophobia has no place here
Jim