 In 1982 the LSO took up residence at the Barbican. In the first years of the residency the orchestra came close to financial disaster, primarily because of over-ambitious programming and the poor ticket sales that resulted. The Times commented that the LSO "were tempted by their own need for challenge (and a siren chorus of critics) to begin a series of more modern and adventurous music: six nights a week of Tippett, Berlioz, Webern, Stockhausen designed to draw in a new public. Instead it put an old audience to flight." The LSO's difficulties were compounded by the satirical magazine Private Eye, which ran a series of defamatory articles about the orchestra. The articles were almost wholly untrue and the magazine was forced to pay substantial libel damages, but in the short term serious damage was done to the orchestra's reputation and morale.
