'The Future of Musicals is Under Threat' says Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber, who recently announced plans to launch a new reality TV style casting search for his upcoming London production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, has warned that the future of musicals is under threat from new plans to sell the frequencies of wireless microphones used on stage in nearly all West End theatres, to communications companies.

Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, is proposing to put the section of airwaves, currently used for wireless microphones in shows and plays, up for auction in 2012. This is ironically the year that the Olympic Games comes to London with what is hoping to be one of the biggest opening ceremonies ever, strongly involving Arts organisations.

Lloyd Webber, who first used the wireless technology in 1971 for the London production of Jesus Christ Superstar, warned that selling the spectrum, known as 'Channel 69' - used not only by theatres, but by TV production companies and concert venues as well - to big communications businesses could mean "the end of musicals", claiming that West End theatre producers would not be able to outbid the communications companies, such as mobile phone networks, in any sort of auction for the channel.

"We can't go back to the cabled microphones of the Fifties and Sixties. It would be like asking audiences to go back to a version of the musical Stone Age." he said, and asked that a section of Channel 69 be reserved and sold at affordable prices. The problems are very likely to extend to companies other than the producers of West End musicals if the spectrum is indeed sold off in 2012.

For more information on Ofcom, please visit www.ofcom.org.uk

For more information on Andrew Lloyd Webber, visit www.andrewlloydwebber.com

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