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Doña and Songs of Praise!

Our very own Goddess of Soul Doña Oxford is to appear on the UK's Songs of Praise on September 23rd.

Full article (The Sunday Telegraph)

 The BBC's Songs of Praise is to include regular services from a variety of denominations because the show's traditional Anglican following is "dwindling".

Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC's head of religion, said the 53-year-old series would be broadcast from multiple locations each week, including Pentecostal, Roman Catholic and Salvation Army churches. It will also include "magazine-style" reports on topical issues such as the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

Mr Ahmed told the Telegraph that the changes, which will be implemented from next week, are intended to draw a larger audience, including immigrants from Africa and eastern Europe.

Currently, the average viewer is in their mid-seventies. Many viewers in their fifties, who would usually "replenish" the older audience, do not have the kind of religious "interest and knowledge" to attract them to Songs of Praise, he said.

By contrast, increased immigration has led to the growth of congregations such as those at Pentecostal and Catholic churches, which the BBC sees as a significant new audience.

"For a good decade now the audience numbers have been in decline," Mr Ahmed said. "That's not because it's not very well made. The reality is that it's a society issue.

"We simply don't have the numbers of people in their mid-fifties who would historically have had the same kind of interest and knowledge and desire that we need to replenish the audience.

"So the option is, let that continue and see audiences dwindle beyond a level that would make it quite difficult, or do something about it."

He added: "Because of immigration you've got significant numbers of people coming in from Africa and eastern Europe, you've got growth in Catholicism because of this.

"The numbers are growing, but they are not the same necessarily as the traditional Songs of Praise audience."

Mr Ahmed, the BBC's first Muslim head of religion, said he had travelled door-to-door with the corporation's licence-fee collectors noting that, of growing numbers of fee-payers from areas such as Eastern Europe, "a lot of them are religious".

He said he was concerned that such viewers would watch existing programmes, set largely although not exclusively in Anglican churches, and conclude that they were not "catered for" by the show. "We need to offer them programmes," he said.

While the show currently broadcasts from non-Anglican churches only occasionally, from next Sunday it will offer "more diversity of Christian faith, week in, week out".

"We feel that it is a Songs of Praise that will be more relevant to the Christian Britain that we find ourselves in today," Mr Ahmed said.

Under the new format each episode will include segments filmed at multiple churches, and will feature different presenters each week.

The first episode will be presented by Connie Fisher, the Welsh singer who won the BBC One show How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and will include a segment presented by Ade Adepitan, a Paralympian.

It will comprise seven songs broadcast from different venues, including a Catholic cathedral, a Pentecostal church, and a Salvation Army training college.

Lord, You Are Good, a song by Israel Houghton, a Grammy Award-winning US artist, will be performed at the Birmingham Christian Centre, an inner-city Pentecostal congregation.

Nicholas McCarthy, a pianist born without a right hand, will perform a version of Ave Maria from the crypt of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Another song will be broadcast from the Salvation Army's training college in Denmark Hill, south London.

The following week's episode will include songs from Ruach City Church, a gospel congregation in Brixton, south London, and the more conventional Canterbury Cathedral. It will also feature a performance by Dona Oxford, an American soul singer.

Mr Ahmed said the changes were being made to ensure the continued survival of Songs of Praise more than half a century on from its first broadcast.

"We take that responsibility incredibly seriously," he said.