Alan and Barry back on TV

Craft Creation 

Tuesday 11th March 2013 12.00 - 1.00 Bid.tv

So Alan and Barry are back presenting a Craft Show on British TV, on Bid.TV. Seems like there is a rather polarised option as to whether this is a good move by bid.tv or not.

Certainly they seem to be the Marmite of British Crafting Telly. Read some forums and you will find that no one is going to watch and think they shouldn't be allowed back on Telly. Read another forum and they are seen as a breath of fresh air and their return it welcomed. (one of the big problems about forums seems to be that people are unwilling to disagree with the prevailing opinion and certainly in this case the general feeling from a forum is either for or against)

So why are people so divided about these two?

On the plus side there is not doubt that Alan is a very gifted crafter and artist. I have know him to review a product and come up with more ideas on how to use it that the developers did. He is one of the UKs top glass painters, a patisserie chef  and an artist.  This is balanced by Barry who is obviously the better presenter of the two. They make crafts "fun" although some people can find them "over the top" at times.

The downside was the collapse of their own company Alan and Barrys Crafts, it wasn't so much the collapse of the company which upset people but the way it was handled. Reading around forums at the time the general opinion was that they let down both customers and suppliers. No one sets out to have their business go bust and indeed many craft companies have gone that way over the last 5 or 6 years but few of these seemed to handle the situation as badly as these two did.

So will I be watching on Tuesday... well yes I probably will. There is definitely room for another craft programme on telly. I probably have more of a reason to be annoyed with Alan and Barry than most people do but this isn't their company and hopefully they will be having nothing to do with the ordering , delivery and customer service! Hopefully this time they will just be able to concentrate on what they are good at.

What would I like to see?

A wide range of crafts, not just paper crafts, not just design CDs..lets have some fine arts, some cake decorating, some rug ragging etc, the type of thing they were hoping to do when they started Create and Craft . (Many people forget that it was Alan and Barry who first brought crafts to ideal world, who started Create and Craft and the Craft Club). Will we get it? Well I wont hold my breath but would love to be pleasantly surprised.

You can watch bid.tv on Freeview, Sky, Free Sat and online (http://www.bid.tv/)

Added 14th March 2003

I have reviewed the first two shows here http://freecraftdownloads.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/alan-and-barry-crafti-creations-bidtv.html and here: http://freecraftdownloads.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/crafti-creations.html