[HN Gopher] The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying
___________________________________________________________________
The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying
Author : rwmj
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-09-08 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jamesomalley.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jamesomalley.substack.com)
| seccess wrote:
| "Instead, they'll be reminiscing about watching a Twitch
| streaming millionaire child screaming racial slurs as he rail-
| guns his opponents on Fortnite."
|
| This perspective is reductive and insulting. There are many
| great, wholesome creators on YT/Twitch who put a lot of work to
| make their content welcoming and intellectually engaging, even if
| they are seemingly just playing video games. Just because the
| author doesn't like it doesn't make this remotely accurate to the
| real world.
| thrillgore wrote:
| If getting the BBC more money is the issue, do what Canada does
| with Foreign Movie/TV Productions, and tax the revenue to return
| back to its state-owned production company, the ONF/NFB. They
| can't get by on TV licenses and their deal with AMC Networks
| forever.
| boffinism wrote:
| It's worth saying the BBC has been 'doomed' for as long as I can
| remember. Simply pointing out that it doesn't make sense doesn't
| seem to have much effect on its continued presence.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, the Monty Python Flying Circus has an entire season with
| jokes about that.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I don't recall anyone predicting the demise of the BBC when I
| was growing up, and if they had they'd have had no evidence as
| there were no serious competitors at all back then. Now there
| are huge competitors everywhere and they're actually higher-
| brow than the BBC in many cases which defeats their traditional
| defence against other media! The BBC looks very small and
| vulnerable.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I remember the day Channel 4 started, to a chorus of cries
| that it would lead to the end of the BBC.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Yes, and global warming has been a problem for as long as I can
| remember. Just because the problem doesn't have a deliberate
| start date doesn't mean it isn't a problem. Collapse, whether
| it be political, cultural, or climatological, is one of those
| things that happens on such a long timescale that you don't
| notice it until it's too late.
|
| It's entirely possible that the BBC is maintained for another
| century, purely as an expensive monument to the country's
| history that nobody watches, before finally being rolled up in
| 2092. There's precedent for this in things like the royal
| family[0] or Brexit. Or tomorrow the Tories wind up repealing
| the license tax and significantly downsizing the BBC as a
| result, turning it into an English PBS/NPR. Knowing that the
| BBC is doomed doesn't tell you how long it has to live, just
| that things will continue to get worse until something breaks
| completely.
|
| [0] Conflict-of-interest disclosure: I am an American
| dreen wrote:
| edit: incorrect info
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > BBC World Service, which is an entirely commercial entity
|
| This is not truthful - the World Service is funded by the
| rest of the BBC, not the other way around, and until
| recently was also funded by the FCO.
| dreen wrote:
| Yea I got the name wrong and mistook it for BBC Worldwide
| mattl wrote:
| now called BBC Studios after a merge.
| tialaramex wrote:
| You're thinking of BBC Studios, the global for-profit arm.
| The BBC World Service is an international multi-lingual
| news and discussion service.
|
| Big budget costume drama your commercial broadcaster paid
| $$$ for? BBC Studios. Guy speaking your language but likely
| from a radio studio thousands of miles away, telling you
| stuff that your local news media are too scared (if they
| exist) to broadcast? BBC World Service.
|
| Historically the UK government saw the BBC World Service as
| an important way to exercise soft power, and funded it
| directly. That ended, and today it's all paid for out of
| the profits of BBC Studios and the license fee.
| dreen wrote:
| You're right, I was thinking of BBC Worldwide which is
| now part of BBC Studios. Still, it makes a lot more money
| than the group gets from the license fee, which was my
| point.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| That's not correct.
|
| "Licence fee accounted for 71% of BBC funding in 2019/20"
|
| https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-
| briefings/cbp-...
| dreen wrote:
| Looks like someone gave me wrong information. Thank you,
| I stand corrected
| tialaramex wrote:
| [Although I should note that just because the World
| Service says it and your local news are too scared to do
| so, does not mean it's _true_...]
|
| See for example _All Largely Propaganda_ from _" Bang!" -
| An Open Letter_ by The Hafler Trio.
| paxys wrote:
| The numbers listed in the article don't actually support the
| author's argument at all.
|
| > Netflix spent $11.8bn in 2020, Disney is expecting to spend
| $8-9bn on Disney+ content by 2024, and Amazon is estimated to be
| spending $7bn this year alone. By contrast, according to the
| BBC's most recent annual report, it spent about PS980m ($1.3bn)
| on "programme-related assets and other inventories" in the
| 2020/21 financial year.
|
| Netflix/Disney/Amazon and the rest are catering to a much larger
| and more varied user base, and BBC should absolutely be able to
| compete with ~1/5 the budget for its 67 million residents. A
| British public broadcaster does not need to make Korean dramas or
| Bollywood movies or launch $25m/episode blockbuster franchises.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Netflix (and Amazon) literally list UK produced shows they had
| no involvement with except for buying the global rights to it
| after the fact as "exclusive/original content". I assume they
| do the same for other nation's domestic output too.
|
| BBC have done co-productions with other enterprises since
| before streaming and have continued to do them with Netflix.
| michaelt wrote:
| If your model of the future of the BBC is that the license fee,
| which costs about as much as Netflix, should give you a
| comparable product - then if Netflix have 10x the budget, the
| BBC's going to have a tough time competing.
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| If I were forced to choose between Netflix and BBC's back
| catalog and current programming for the same price, I'd say
| that BBC comes out far ahead.
| dageshi wrote:
| Would that be true in 10 years time when Netflix has been
| churning out content at its current rate and cost?
| adventured wrote:
| I'd be curious what Netflix is going to cost in another
| ten years. They're intent on aggressively hiking the
| price of their plans. Their standard plan, which you need
| to get HD content, is close to $14 now (in both the US
| and the UK). Another ten years, I'd bet on $22-$25 or so.
|
| Some of this value proposition question will depend on
| what the BBC is going to do on their pricing. We can be
| certain what Netflix is going to do.
| mdoms wrote:
| Netflix is churning out garbage I will never watch. I see
| no value in an increasingly large garbage pile.
| deadbunny wrote:
| Indeed. Especially as the BBC is kneecapped in what they
| can have on the iPlayer at any one time. If they could put
| up their entire back catalogue it would be great.
|
| They should also sell subscriptions to those outside the UK
| as well, there is enough demand for sure.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Living in the USA, I tried to buy a license during the
| London Olympics. I was using a proxy so that I could
| stream the BBC coverage (instead of NBC's drivel). Even
| though I'm a UK citizen, it was based on residency and
| totally impossible to do. Ridiculous. Happy to pay the
| fee (as noted, it's similar to Netflix) so that I could
| watche the content.
| mdoms wrote:
| Why the hand-wringing over show budgets? One of the greatest
| shows I have ever watched, People Just Do Nothing - a BBC
| production - must have had a budget one one thousandth of a
| Marvel show but I would re-watch it a hundred times before I
| bothered with a single episode of that generic PG-13 comic book
| dreck. And I can say the same for all of the BBC greats.
|
| BBC doesn't need to compete on budget. Netflix may pour billions
| into soulless generic crap that attracts eyeballs but if that's
| what you want from BBC you're missing the whole point of a public
| broadcaster.
|
| (I'm not British and I don't live there, but I am eternally
| grateful to BBC for producing almost all of my favourite TV shows
| and podcasts).
| davzie wrote:
| Another fan of the Korrupt FM boys! It's not often the BBC hit
| jackpots like this show though, actually tell a lie, Motherland
| is very well done, all parents can relate! Some of their
| comedies of late have been really good. I can't really say the
| same about Netflix. Perhaps it's because the BBC content
| appeals to my British sense of humour.
| mbreese wrote:
| Ironically, if that's the same show, "People Just Do Nothing"
| is on Netflix in the US.
|
| At least they aren't keeping all their shows behind iPlayer
| anymore and these shows are more available outside the UK.
| deadbunny wrote:
| > At least they aren't keeping all their shows behind iPlayer
| anymore and these shows are more available outside the UK.
|
| They have always sold their content overseas...
| tomjen3 wrote:
| It is fine that you do not like comic book shows. I find most
| of them cheese too, but evidentially lots of people disagree
| and they want the most possible for their money too.
|
| Personally I don't think the BBC should produce entertainment
| at all, only scrupulously neutral news and explanations because
| that is what society needs if it is to be held together.
| glugc wrote:
| >Even if you don't engage with Newsnight's coverage of the
| Namibian Presidential Election6, or you don't tune in to hear
| what the fishing conditions are like in the North Sea, it's good
| that at least someone, somewhere is being paid to care about
| these things.
|
| Why?
| wyager wrote:
| You're being downvoted but I think this is a fair question. I
| don't accept this assertion as true at face value. Presumably
| the BBC, as with any other government-controlled revenue
| source, acts as some sort of patronage mechanism, and a lot of
| these roles exist as a jobs program rather than something the
| taxpayers actually extract a benefit from.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > The BBC, as with any other government-controlled revenue
| source
|
| Point of fact, the BBC was not intended to be "government-
| controlled", and it is not a "revenue source" for the UK
| government.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Is-the-BBC-the-state-owned-and-
| state-c...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#
| msla wrote:
| The BBC is government-controlled in that its money is
| collected by the government, which can punish people for
| not paying, and organizations know where their funds are
| coming from and attempt to prevent those funds from being
| stopped.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Reread. I used the word "intended" deliberately. There
| are many indirect mechanisms, that are open to abuse. You
| described one. It's not the same though as direct
| control.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Because we need to know what is going on in the world, whether
| its profitable or not.
|
| News should not be entertainment. News should not be for
| profit.
| bob229 wrote:
| It's biased tripe that makes you more stupid. Time to defund
| it
| gamacodre wrote:
| > News should not be entertainment. News should not be for
| profit.
|
| But _why_?
|
| If "news" isn't profitable or entertaining (and FWIW I agree
| those shouldn't be preconditions for quality news), then it
| will have to be subsidized by someone. Who will do that? What
| is their reason for putting up that money? And - most
| importantly - who decides whether the end product is "good
| enough", and what changes can they demand for the subsidy to
| continue?
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I think its a fair question and wanted to respond. I don't
| think people should just downvote.
|
| There are a lot of things that we as a society have decided
| we need, and that everybody should contribute to paying for
| whether we like it or not.
|
| We pay police salaries to try and prevent crime. We all pay
| to have waste collected regularly.
|
| But lets be clear, we are not talking all that much money.
| Australia's ABC runs on about 7c a day per taxpayer. I
| would happily pay 10 times that.
|
| I think the question of what is "good enough" and how the
| organization should be run, and how independent it is, are
| all good questions and something we should all have a say
| in.
| caoilte wrote:
| > Democracy should not be entertainment. Democracy should
| not be for profit.
|
| But why?
|
| If "democracy" isn't profitable or entertaining (and FWIW I
| agree those shouldn't be preconditions for quality
| democracy), then it will have to be subsidized by someone.
| Who will do that? What is their reason for putting up that
| money? And - most importantly - who decides whether the end
| product is "good enough", and what changes can they demand
| for the subsidy to continue?
| botwriter wrote:
| Honestly the last show I think I watched on the BBC was McMafia
| or possibly Peaky blinders.
|
| When I go on I player I'm just bombarded with content about
| minorities other nonsense. BBC are going the same way as the
| Labour party they're alienating themselves from the classical
| British working class in favor of middle class Londoners and
| minoroties.
|
| Radio 4 is about the only reasonable thing the BBC produces and
| even that has gone down hill dramatically.
| klelatti wrote:
| It's worth noting that the BBC's reputation has also been harmed
| in the course of the divisive debate over Brexit with commentary
| that has kept neither side of the debate happy.
|
| On a lighter note (which I admit reflects my personal
| inclinations): they should buy back live coverage of Test Match
| Cricket from Sky - a series of broadly unifying national sporting
| occasions that used to have distinctive BBC coverage (and still
| does on the radio of course). Good for cricket too.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Is it even _possible_ to cover Brexit in a "neutral" way that
| everyone likes?
| klelatti wrote:
| Probably not. I do think it was less courageous than it might
| have been in calling out issues on both sides - I think it
| could have emerged with no side happy but possibly with more
| respect.
| Traster wrote:
| The political decision to lose national sports coverage from
| the public domain made both the BBC and the nations sense of
| identity weaker.
| [deleted]
| richardjennings wrote:
| I believe that the BBC can provide value for money and remain
| relevant if and only if there is an internal recognition that any
| competition they face as an organisation is against the best
| social value that a public broadcasting utility can provide. Any
| notion of commercial competition needs to be squashed.
| iso1210 wrote:
| My kids have no concept of linear TV. My 9 year old came back and
| told me that a friend had a broken TV as when they turned it on,
| the program was already half way through.
|
| Their 'channels' are netflix, amazon and disney. When I had the
| choice and they were pre-school then sure, we watched things like
| Alphablocks on iplayer. I can force them to watch Attenborough or
| Blue Peter, and they enjoy it, just not enough to want to watch
| them over things on disney. There's so much competition of things
| to do.
|
| I do watch BBC (iplayer obviously) occasionally, but the material
| I'm interested in isn't as accessible as it is on
| disney/apple/prime/netflix/youtube.
|
| We watched Eurovision and Euro2020 (England games) this year.
| Aside from that the only BBC output we watched was Roadkill about
| a year ago, and the one Doctor Who episode which had John
| Barrowman in. I would watch have I got news for you, but whenever
| I remember to watch it, it's not on.
|
| This itself might not say a lot, and I still have a TV license
| despite the limited direct value I get (listen to a lot of BBC
| radio, and the news website), but what's interesting is I
| actually work for the BBC. If my household barely watches it,
| where does the future lie.
|
| Linear TVs days are numbered, but the underlying cultural links
| that prime time TV provided in the 60s through 90s has already
| gone. 1 in 4 people in the UK used to watch the same shitty
| sitcoms in the 80s because there was very little choice.
|
| It's not just BBC or the UK that has this cultural difference.
| "It's a wonderful life" is an American classic. It is because it
| was shown on every channel every christmas year after year,
| generation after generation, and kids watched it, because it was
| that or reading a book.
|
| I think Star Trek was right with its outlandish prediction from
| 1988. TV as a form of entertainment won't survive much past 2040
| (I think linear TV will still be going in 10 years time, but
| probably not 30).
| nate wrote:
| I got such a kick out of my 7 year old at my grandparents. We
| turned on some random movie that was half way through and she
| said: "Oh, let's watch this, start it from the beginning." When
| I told her that's not how cable TV works, she looked at me like
| I was telling her some kind of stupid dad joke.
| aclelland wrote:
| My 6 year old thinks that the screen goes black in some shows
| because that's when the exciting part is about to happen. Of
| course, it's actually where the program would normally break
| for ads . On Netflix/Disney+ this doesn't happen (yet!) so
| he's come to the conclusion that it's just a signal of
| impending excitement :)
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| This is normal in the UK because BBC never had ads. I
| remember foreign cartoons would often actually cut back in
| time slightly. It could be quite confusing but I just
| accepted it as some weird characteristic of TV.
|
| For example Scooby Doo would be falling to his death...
| Fade to black... Fade back in... and he's higher up (?!)...
| Shaggy swings in and saves him.
| pedrocr wrote:
| That is how modern cable TV works though. With the now fairly
| standard IPTV boxes the linear programming can be rewatched
| straight from the on screen guide and there is a "start from
| beginning" button on live shows.
| rhdunn wrote:
| I've completely switched to subscription and live-based content
| (mainly YouTube, with some Twitch). About 2 years ago I was
| only watching a handful of TV shows from traditional channels
| (BBC) and mainly there via iPlayer.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You could consider the BBC to be a subscription + streaming
| model. Don't bother to watch on your TV, just fire up
| iPlayer, watch whatever you want, whenever you want. The
| subscription fee? Your TV license.
| kazinator wrote:
| What works well is Linear TV with a history, so you can go
| through a calendar, say, going back 30 days.
|
| All the Japanese IPTV streamers work that way and it's a very
| natural integration.
|
| You can watch the current streaming, or just go back in the
| calendar to whatever you want in your selected channel. And the
| past items flow from one to the next as if they were live. You
| watch through last Monday's 8:00 p.m. one hour show and it
| falls through to the 9:00 p.m. show of that day as if it were
| last Monday.
|
| There is no annoying "recording" workflow; the full content is
| just there going back about a month.
|
| The organization concept that certain shows occur regularly at
| certain times is very useful; it won't go away that easily; it
| remains useful when you're able to navigate through the
| calendar.
|
| Japanese TV, as such, is pretty great though. It is not
| replaceable in any way by other forms of content.
|
| E.g. families with small kids depend on the NHK E channel;
| there is no equivalent content. Everyone knows what that is;
| it's not ignored, like BBC or PBS.
| deadfish wrote:
| I worked on a project a while back called Freeview play in
| the UK which I think works in a similar way to how you
| described. You can watch live TV over the air or scroll
| backwards in time along the EPG to stream recorded content
| over IP.
|
| I think the BBCs childrens content is one of its strongest
| assets. I don't have any data for it, but I would say most
| families in the UK with small kids consume a lot of CBBC and
| CBeebies content. It's much better quality content than
| children's content on YouTube or Netflix.
|
| Peoples viewing habits are more fragmented and from a wider
| variety of sources than 10 or 20 years ago and the BBC
| definitely doesn't have the same mindshare that it used to
| have when there was only X channels. But, I think when people
| are looking for some high quality curated content in the sea
| of 'please like and subscribe' then they will come back to
| iPlayer - I know I do.
|
| Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part?
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| >I think Star Trek was right with its outlandish prediction
| from 1988
|
| Ah, classic TNG. S1E25 "The Neutral Zone". [0]
|
| Other near-term predictions from 90s Star Trek include
| terrorism-powered Irish reunification in 2024 [1] (how's Brexit
| coming along, again?), as well as a DS9 time-travel episode set
| in the same year that's not exactly about UBI and censorship
| and othering the poor, but those words might be the best way to
| describe the fake-issues of that episode's San Francisco [2].
|
| And, uh, the periodic nuclear exchanges of World War III,
| starting in 2026 and continuing for a few decades, with a death
| toll of at least six hundred million.
|
| [0] https://memory-
| alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Neutral_Zone_(episo...
|
| [1] a throwaway reference in https://memory-
| alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hunted_(episode)
|
| [2] https://memory-
| alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Past_Tense,_Part_I_(epi...
| iso1210 wrote:
| Irish reunification in 2024 certainly plausible. Slightly
| plausible that in years to come brexit will be deemed to be
| an act of terrorism too.
|
| It was "The High Ground", not "The Hunted" though -- and due
| to that line the episode wasn't shown for years in the UK
| (this was during the time UK cities were being regularly
| blown up by terrorists)
| nerdawson wrote:
| Euro 2020 only reinforced how important the BBC actually is.
| iPlayer were streaming matches in 4K HDR while ITV were pumping
| out shockingly poor resolution low frame rate content that was
| barely watchable. Hard to believe that ITV were the ones with
| commercial funding behind them. Seeing that a match was going
| to be aired on ITV filled me with dread.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > while ITV were pumping out shockingly poor resolution low
| frame rate content that was barely watchable.
|
| Don't forget the adverts and the several occasions when their
| streaming servers just plain couldn't be arsed to deliver any
| data to people during important games.
| jbarrs wrote:
| This is depressingly true. Whenever ITV were hosting the
| match, I generally just resigned myself to not being able
| to watch it. Besides that, when it did work, the commentary
| was absolutely atrocious and did nothing but state the
| obvious. The BBC's coverage on iPlayer was superb, and I'll
| admit before I paid for any streaming service I used to
| comb through iPlayer the same way I comb through Netflix
| now.
| noir_lord wrote:
| The irony for me is I watch zero bbc content but I love Radio 4
| comedy.
|
| So my BBC content consumption has gone up over time not down.
| spinningslate wrote:
| Won't argue with the your observation on consumption: I see the
| same with my children.
|
| However: there's nothing intrinsic to the BBC that requires
| linear delivery or consumption. iPlayer was, after all, one of
| the first streaming services: a genuine bit of innovation from
| the Beeb.
|
| I dearly want to see the BBC not only survive, but to prosper.
|
| That may be rose-tinted/delusional/whatever. Why? Because it
| represents a collective service for society, by society. I
| don't watch all the content: not even some of the big stuff
| (Strictly). But I really value the breadth of content: that it
| caters to interests - _people_ - that are diverse. It can do
| that because it doesn 't have to slavishly chase advertising in
| a race-to-the-bottom death march to mediocrity.
|
| Similarly, its aspiration to impartial news coverage - to
| inform and educate, not impose a political doctrine - should be
| invaluable. It certainly hasn't always achieved that (and
| sometimes by a long way) but at least the aspiration is there.
| It would be greatly helped here by some structural protection
| from government meddling, but that's another story.
|
| Like the original article, I see the writing on the wall. But I
| don't think it needs to be a death spiral. In a world of hyper-
| targeted-advertising-driven-sensationalist-fact-free-fake-news
| in 140 characters or less, I want to believe there's a market
| for diverse, challenging society-enhancing content. I can't
| think of an organisation whose charter would better fit with
| that aim.
| native_samples wrote:
| There's a difference between aspiration and execution. Every
| TV channel will claim they aspire to inform, educate and be
| diverse. No TV channel in history has said their goal is to
| misinform, dumb down and present homogenous uniformity day
| after day.
|
| The BBC is clearly failing at its goals. Most of the UK
| population no longer trusts its news output; that's huge and
| a new phenomenon, although of course it's been a long time in
| coming. Unlike normal TV companies the BBC cannot receive a
| reality check from the market because people are forced to
| fund it, so there's no way to break the downward spiral. It
| just gets worse, every year.
|
| Indeed it would be sensible to argue that the BBC's problem
| is too little government interference, not too much. The
| government is, at least in theory, accountable to the people.
| Sure, it's only every 4 years and many different issues are
| conflated together. But there is at least a vote. The BBC is
| accountable to nobody. It's not accountable to its viewers.
| It's not accountable to elected representatives. It is not
| even really accountable to Ofcom, given the incredibly weak
| enforcement of the vaguely worded regulations on fairness and
| neutrality. If you have a complaint about the BBC you can
| complain to, well, the BBC itself. Or you could complain to
| an MP who will do nothing because the BBC is de-facto
| independent of the government.
|
| If the BBC were actually controlled by the government then it
| would have already been forced back to more mainstream
| political views. The ruling party is very unhappy with the
| BBC's wokeness and openly biased news (e.g. "Brexit threat to
| sandwiches" being a memorable headline). That unhappyness is
| not self-serving politics but rather, reflecting the
| frustration that their voters are telling both them and
| opinion pollsters. The public no longer perceives the BBC as
| "society enhancing" but instead society damaging. Yet, they
| can do nothing about it. The political will to reform the BBC
| isn't there.
| teamonkey wrote:
| > iPlayer was, after all, one of the first streaming
| services: a genuine bit of innovation from the Beeb.
|
| This is absolutely worth remembering, iPlayer was revelatory
| 12 or 13 years ago. Infuriatingly the innovation seems to
| have stopped there.
|
| Case in point, it's a corporation nearly 100 years old, yet
| its back catalogue is extremely poor. You should be able to
| watch every episode of Doctor Who on demand since the
| original black & white pilot, instead you're mainly limited
| to items shown in the last month, plus some randomly curated
| stuff. Channel 4 has a better online archive.
|
| When I lived outside of the UK I would have paid a
| subscription fee equal to the licence fee to gain access to
| iPlayer. It's worth paying for! But there's no way to give
| them money for services other than be a licence payer within
| the UK.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| > When I lived outside of the UK I would have paid a
| subscription fee equal to the licence fee to gain access to
| iPlayer. It's worth paying for! But there's no way to give
| them money for services other than be a licence payer
| within the UK.
|
| This drove me nuts! There were a bunch of great series I
| was into that were simply not available in US even if I
| purchased a premium cable subscription to BBC America.
| Another show (programme?) I really enjoyed was Ramsay's
| Kitchen Nightmares. The UK version was much better than the
| over the top version we got on FOX in the US. I ended up
| paying for a cheap VPC in the UK that I would SSH into and
| use it as a SOCKS proxy so I can watch the shows I wanted.
| I would have gladly given BBC/Channel 4 money if I could.
| asdff wrote:
| Isn't it because they don't physically have a lot of the
| back catalogue anymore? I read that they taped over a lot
| of shows and there aren't copies left for some.
| deadbunny wrote:
| > Case in point, it's a corporation nearly 100 years old,
| yet its back catalogue is extremely poor.
|
| This was due to the Competition Commission saying the BBC
| putting up their back catalogue would stifle competition.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >You should be able to watch every episode of Doctor Who on
| demand since the original black & white pilot
|
| I hate to break it to you, but not even the BBC has that.
|
| Most of their early work was never archived, as the
| technology to actually do so either didn't exist
| (television predates magnetic video recording), was so
| expensive as to make full archival prohibitively expensive,
| or was explicitly prohibited by contractual arrangement.
| No, seriously, TV actors insisted that tapes were wiped and
| reused after a period of time so that reruns would not
| usurp the market for new productions. The same goes for a
| lot of other countries' early television. Just finding
| working copies of all of those Doctor Who episodes is an
| ongoing preservation project.
|
| Things like not being able to pay for iPlayer outside of
| the license fee is a similar problem - politics dictating
| the market. The BBC's license-funded activities are
| specifically firewalled from the part of the business that
| sells commercial TV internationally. Even if that
| particular diktat didn't exist, the BBC would still be
| following the ordinary TV business practice of selling each
| show off on a per-country basis. Even the big streaming
| services do this with their own originals, many of which
| are not streaming-exclusive outside the US. The idea that
| you have a single "owner" that just does everything and
| sells the work globally is mostly unheard of outside of the
| videogame industry.
| [deleted]
| throwaway287391 wrote:
| > I think linear TV will still be going in 10 years time, but
| probably not 30
|
| I think you're probably right, but I'm one of the few
| millennials who will miss it when it's gone. I still like being
| able to turn on the news or some dumb show as background noise,
| it's an old habit from my boomer parent upbringing. I'm a bit
| surprised I haven't really met anyone else around my age with a
| nostalgic attachment to linear TV.
|
| I stream things that I actually want to watch deliberately, but
| as a replacement for linear TV it's just not the same. It's a
| lot more effort (paradox of choice, beyond just the UI itself
| necessitating a lot more "clicks") and there's something nice
| about knowing that people around the country/world are watching
| the same thing at the same time as me. I'd like to say it could
| be a startup opportunity, but I think I might be the only one
| who cares.
|
| Not to mention, currently an antenna will get you much better
| picture quality than many/most streaming services (definitely
| true for the BBC News stream available on iPlayer -- that looks
| like crap to me).
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I agree with all of that. Streaming is about choice, but
| linear TV is about an event and/or serendipity.
|
| I have a lot of movies on Plex, but when we browse them it's
| rare for us to select one. On the other hand, we often watch
| those movies when they're on TV. "We have that on Plex" has
| become a household joke.
| function_seven wrote:
| I don't think I've ever sat down and watched _The Shawshank
| Redeption_ or _Goodfellas_. Like, made plans to watch
| either of those.
|
| But I've seen both movies probably a dozen times at this
| point.
|
| It's always been a matter of me stumbling upon it while
| channel surfing (1990-2005) or "guide scrolling"
| (2005-2018), landing there to kill a few minutes, and
| watching through to the end. A couple of times I've gotten
| lucky and caught the movie at the start, so I can actually
| say I've seen these movies. But I've seen way more of the
| middle and end parts than the beginning parts.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Recognise that feeling when you watch a movie for the
| fourth time and go "I don't think I've seen the start of
| this before"!
| iso1210 wrote:
| Netflix have a "watch something" button. I've never used
| it, but I assume it's there to match the serendipity
| aspect.
|
| Amazon I think have a "watch party" feature, but that's not
| the same as 10 million people all watching Mr Blobby get
| gunged. There seemed to be a small amount of cultural
| "togetherness" with the guy doing the PE (Joe Someone?)
| during lockdown, not sure as I didn't watch it (too busy
| working).
|
| But yes, events (sport, moon landings, etc) are great on
| linear tv. I suspect that even after most of the spectrum
| gets removed, there will remain a BBC linear TV channel for
| events for some time, and most households will have a
| working antenna for a long time to come.
| asdff wrote:
| The problem with the watch something button is that its
| not truly doing what linear TV did. Linear TV was still
| programming. You settled on a channel that you knew was
| going to have decent enough stuff on at the time. You hit
| "watch something" on netflix and it might pull, best
| case, stuff from all over my watch history with no
| particular rhyme or reason, when really what I want is to
| throw on adult swim for an aqua teen hunger force
| marathon interspersed with similar content like that. The
| big advantage of some of these older networks was that I
| trusted their curation. If a station like MTV saw that
| Jackass was a popular show, they would give me a four
| hour Jackass marathon sometime this week and I'd probably
| have it on. I don't trust netflix's curation on the other
| hand. I'm honestly on the hunt for some live streams of
| 2000s era cable channels and watching that.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| That seems like an easy problem to solve, if somebody at
| Netflix wanted to. Make it easy for people to create
| their own curated playlists / streams, and then you can
| just turn on "Jimbob23's Stupid Funny Stuff" or "Best of
| Late Night Cartoons" or something.
| throwaway287391 wrote:
| I doubt Netflix could (easily) make a product that
| replicates linear network TV (as much as linear TV itself
| is kind of a shitty product, which I say as a defender of
| it here). Here's why:
|
| (1) Based on what I've seen from spending many hours
| scrolling through their available content (or what the
| algorithm will show me of it, anyway!), I'm not actually
| sure Netflix could put that content together into a 24/7
| program that resembles a linear TV channel, even given
| how repetitive and often shitty linear TV content is. I
| could definitely be wrong about this, but I think Netflix
| lacks both the dynamic breadth and thematic depth of
| content. On the "dynamic breadth": Linear TV is at least
| 95% repeats, but if you watch it one day and then watch
| it again 6 months later, the content in your latter watch
| will usually be totally disjoint from the first watch.
| Meanwhile whenever I go on Netflix I swear like 75% of
| what I'm shown is things they were showing me 2+ years
| ago. Maybe they _could_ still assemble their content into
| a 24 /7/365 schedule that mimics linear TV programming,
| but I wouldn't bet on that.
|
| (2) A linear TV channel isn't just a bunch of shows
| concatenated one right after another. At a minimum it has
| interstitials between shows/segments telling you what's
| next and what's on later. These are what gives the
| channel its personality/brand, and I'd assume it takes at
| least a few full-time staff per 24/7 channel. Think
| Discovery Channel's "Shark Week". It was mostly a bunch
| of repeats of shows they already had that happened to be
| shark-related, but the interstitials for it marketed it
| into a national event. And, dare I say it...linear TV
| often has ads. Ads can be a nice part of TV (especially
| for shitty/campy TV) -- they're when you go to the
| bathroom, get a snack, and/or chat about what you just
| watched. Certainly not a _required_ part of linear TV
| (HBO and BBC are good linear TV channels and don 't have
| ads), but hard for Netflix in particular to recreate if
| they were aiming to replicate the full linear TV
| experience.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Yep, I've never used the watch something button either.
|
| I also think the shared experience of many people
| watching the same thing is part of the "event" nature of
| TV.
| wazoox wrote:
| The main problem with the BBC is that too much of its nice
| content isn't available out of the UK. I see no reason why it
| couldn't be watched all around the world.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Rights issues, and of course the fact that BBC content is --
| a fair whack of BBC funding comes from Worldwide (or whatever
| it's called this week), which sells BBC material
| internationally. Watch a BBC production on CBS or PBS or BBS
| or whatever and some money goes back to the BBC. I believe
| Britbox is an option too.
|
| Same with television formats. Dancing with the Stars I
| believe is a popular US program based on a BBC show, the
| format has been licensed to half the planet.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| I still don't understand why I (an American) can't pay the
| BBC money for access to iPlayer. BBC has been saying hell
| no to my money for over a decade now. It doesn't make
| sense. Free money! You could lower your TV tax!
|
| I think it must be BBC official policy that they want the
| whole world buying VPN and pirating the content. It doesn't
| make sense. Throwing money away and then asking why they
| aren't competitive with the commercial offerings.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Their 'channels' are netflix, amazon and disney. When I had
| the choice and they were pre-school then sure, we watched
| things like Alphablocks on iplayer. I can force them to watch
| Attenborough or Blue Peter, and they enjoy it, just not enough
| to want to watch them over things on disney. There's so much
| competition of things to do.
|
| > This itself might not say a lot, and I still have a TV
| license despite the limited direct value I get (listen to a lot
| of BBC radio, and the news website), but what's interesting is
| I actually work for the BBC. If my household barely watches it,
| where does the future lie.
|
| The entertainment sector is one of the most profitable on
| Earth. Marvel, Disney made billions making content that people
| want to watch and are willing to pay for. I'm not getting the
| reason why there should be government sponsored entertainment,
| especially seeing that people aren't even interested in
| watching it.
|
| Why not simply compete and let the consumer decide?
| bjohnson225 wrote:
| The BBC is there to "inform, educate and entertain". It gets
| government(/licence fee) funding because only the last of
| these is likely to be profitable.
|
| The BBC is far from perfect, but its documentaries are great
| and it remains the most trusted source of news in the UK -
| give the news division a requirement to be profitable and the
| sensationalism that follows would destroy that trust pretty
| quickly. The last thing we need is a news landscape even more
| similar to the US.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > and it remains the most trusted source of news in the UK
| - give the news division a requirement to be profitable and
| the sensationalism that follows would destroy that trust
| pretty quickly.
|
| It's kinda interesting that the journalist supposed to
| criticize the government are... on the government's
| payroll. There's a massive conflict of interests right
| there.
|
| > The last thing we need is a news landscape even more
| similar to the US.
|
| You mean several different organizations with different
| viewpoints and financial support from backers with known
| agendas?
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| The BBC aren't on the government's payroll and are very
| willing to criticise the government.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > The BBC aren't on the government's payroll
|
| But where's the money coming from?
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| Mainly (70%) from a TV licence, the rest from selling
| their IP to other markets.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_t
| he_...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Mainly (70%) from a TV licence
|
| Whose existence is voted and that is managed by... the
| Government?
| robbiep wrote:
| You mean like how opposition politicians are on the
| governments' payroll and their job is almost entirely to
| criticise the government?
|
| The government pays for lots of people who are not always
| friendly to them. Including judges, anti corruption
| bodies etc.
|
| I'm in Australia so I don't know as many specifics about
| the BBC but our ABC which is modeled on the BBC in many
| ways (except it's not a license fee but actual government
| funding that pays for it) has a charter which says _'as a
| publicly-funded broadcaster, the ABC is expected not to
| take editorial stances on political issues, and is
| required under its charter enshrined in legislation to
| present a range of views with impartiality.'_
|
| Given the number of complaints by government and
| oppositions at various times it does this job pretty well
| jodrellblank wrote:
| This feels like saying "why not get rid of government funded
| schools and have children watch Marvel and Disney instead?".
| The BBC's mission was to "inform, educate and entertain",
| Disney's and Marvels is more like "entertain, addict and
| profit". From Wikipedia about the origins of the BBC:
|
| > " _The British Broadcasting Corporation came into existence
| on 1 January 1927, and Reith - newly knighted - was appointed
| its first Director General.[...] British radio audiences had
| little choice apart from the upscale programming of the BBC.
| Reith, an intensely moralistic executive, was in full charge.
| His goal was to broadcast "All that is best in every
| department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement....
| The preservation of a high moral tone is obviously of
| paramount importance." Reith succeeded in building a high
| wall against an American-style free-for-all in radio in which
| the goal was to attract the largest audiences and thereby
| secure the greatest advertising revenue. There was no paid
| advertising on the BBC; all the revenue came from a tax on
| receiving sets. Highbrow audiences, however, greatly enjoyed
| it. At a time when American, Australian and Canadian stations
| were drawing huge audiences cheering for their local teams
| with the broadcast of baseball, rugby and hockey, the BBC
| emphasised service for a national rather than a regional
| audience. Boat races were well covered along with tennis and
| horse racing, but the BBC was reluctant to spend its severely
| limited air time on long football or cricket games,
| regardless of their popularity._"
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#1927_to_1939
|
| Americans will hate the state telling them what to watch for
| their own good, many Britons don't like the way it's the
| Oxbridge upper classes telling the rest of us what to watch,
| but regardless of that there was some attempt to be more than
| just entertainment, some values other than ad revenue. Has
| Marvel, Disney or Netflix made a Tomorrow's World, a Blue
| Peter, or anything like the Reith Lectures (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reith_Lecture ) ?
| parenthesis wrote:
| Why isn't everything the BBC has ever made available on a
| streaming service for license free payers? I'd love to able to
| watch the TV news for days when interesting things happened; old
| dramas with `low production values' but actual acting and writing
| and stories and no constant gratuitous cuts and close-ups ...
| deadbunny wrote:
| I believe there is historical reasons. When they started
| iPlayer they were told they coudln't just put up everything the
| BBC had produced in it's history as it would be "an unfair
| commercial advantage" or some other bullshit.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| The truth about untrue truths changes the moods of the crowds.
|
| [F] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958679/BBC-
| admits-...
|
| Nobody applauds...
| a-dub wrote:
| hasn't the bbc always been outspent by commercial production
| houses?
|
| what happens when the streaming giants start focusing on pumping
| out low risk crap as they mature into what they're replacing?
|
| i always thought the thesis of the bbc was that you didn't need
| huge budgets to produce high quality programming. and that, in
| fact, the opposite is true: moderate budget in the hands of the
| capable and passionate can produce outstanding results.
| enaaem wrote:
| > What happens when the streaming giants start focusing on
| pumping out low risk crap as they mature into what they're
| replacing?
|
| You can stop subscribing and stop giving them money.
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| BBC ceased being universal and viewed as legitimate when it
| delved into politics and political issues. PBS in the US made the
| same mistake.
|
| The era of publicly funding TV should have ended years ago when
| information and news became free (essentially when US household
| internet or smartphone penetration reached 85%+)
| tablespoon wrote:
| > BBC ceased being universal and viewed as legitimate when it
| delved into politics and political issues. PBS in the US made
| the same mistake.
|
| I've been watching a bit of PBS Newshour recently (easy, since
| full episodes are on Youtube), and if it's done that, it's done
| it to a _far_ lesser extent than the commercial cable networks.
|
| Also, you can't have a good news program without "delv[ing]
| into politics and political issues." Often times when I see
| similar criticism, the real issue is the programming is not
| 100%-yourside inoffensive, but you won't get that from anything
| that's not Yourside-Pravda.
| dageshi wrote:
| I have often thought the BBC ought to create individual youtube
| channels for their tv series and put teasers for new episodes as
| they release on iplayer, along with the most popular clips from
| those shows.
|
| An audience of young people who almost certainly visit youtube
| regularly would then have a chance of being able to be notified
| when a show they actually like on the BBC releases.
| sebow wrote:
| MSM is sh*t and it's dying, what else is new?
|
| And how exactly is this a bad thing? >inb4 it allows
| misinformation [...]
|
| That has always been the case, and the generations that grew up
| under the 'protective umbrella' and the golden age of news
| corporations are the most despised ones(not to mention it
| promotes the "lack of filter").It's not a new thing, and that's
| why people are excited when a new medium arises: because usually
| the old dogs are not there at first.[to regurgitate their
| rhetorics, if i might add]
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > Don't get me wrong. I love the BBC, and I'm always the first in
| line to defend it from its many stupid critics.
|
| Ah, one of the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" types.
| Good of him to make that clear right up front so I didn't waste
| any more time reading.
| bob229 wrote:
| Garbage article that totally misses the point. The reason the BBC
| is doomed is because it is metropolitan elite trash.
|
| Emily Maitlis talking nonsense, mad transgender propaganda
| antics, etc.
|
| DEFUND THE BBC. we will be far better off without it
| gootler wrote:
| What a crock of crap.
| hamburgerwah wrote:
| State funded propaganda has always been a bad idea. Maybe the BBC
| is the best example of a bad idea but either way, good riddance.
| swalls wrote:
| I like the original programming content the BBC produces. I don't
| like the BBC, and BBC news in particular, at all.
|
| They propagate bias in insidious ways like 'creative' titling of
| articles, pushing articles off to side channels, and cutting HoC
| footage, all the while claiming impartiality. Their quality of
| their writing on the site has truly tanked in recent years, too.
|
| And that's not to mention the harrassment of people who don't pay
| their license fee. Complain about Netflix's content all you want,
| at least they aren't lying about having signal detecting vans and
| sending threatening letters calling you a criminal. (To the non-
| Brits, the license fee is optional if you don't watch TV. But
| even if you tell them you don't have a TV, they'll send you
| letters every single month threatening you with court[1])
|
| [1] http://www.bbctvlicence.com/
| mattl wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv2ZqZmC7u0 is worth a watch on
| the subject too
| rocknor wrote:
| The bias in BBC's reporting is well known. For example, anti-
| India bias. Lots of other examples here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC#Specific_...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > For example, Disney reportedly shovels $25m per episode into
| its prestige Marvel shows. The Crown on Netflix costs7 between
| $6.5m and $13m per episode, and so on.
|
| > With the best will in the world, there's no way in hell that
| Doctor Who is ever going to have that sort of money spent on
| it8...
|
| > My fear for the BBC is that as generational turnover takes
| place, the BBC will remain outpaced and its cultural relevance
| will continue to decline. How can the BBC compete in a world
| where Disney can crank out an infinite stream of Mandalorians and
| WandaVisions11, while the BBC has to make do with less cash and
| an obligation to make worthy documentaries...
|
| Oh no, it can't afford to make superhero-themed stuff. We're
| doomed!
|
| There's an important place for stuff that isn't easily-translated
| superhero-themed special effects blockbusters. Frankly, I view
| the dominance of those blockbusters to be more of a disease than
| an important trend that needs to be aped.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Oh no, it can't afford to make superhero-themed stuff. We're
| doomed!
|
| They absolutely can.
|
| If you make a show people want to watch, they'll pay for it.
| EricE wrote:
| "The BBC's legitimacy is predicated on it being a universal
| service."
|
| And this is the issue. Once they got super political they ceased
| being universal :p
| deadbunny wrote:
| The BBC are super political?
| nivenkos wrote:
| BBC News is basically Pravda these days:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-43463496
|
| That was reporting on the opposition leader.
| [deleted]
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Witness Laura Kneussburg (chief BBC "zampolit") fawning all
| over Boris Johnson when she should have been giving him a
| hard time about his fuckups!
| te_chris wrote:
| I can't take an article about the BBC seriously that only talks
| about TV
| traceroute66 wrote:
| There are just so many things the BBC in its current form is
| doing wrong I don't know where to start: -
| Paying too much for too little (both quality *and* quantity of
| "talent") - Repeats, repeats and more goddam repeats in
| increasingly short timeframes - Recent actions such as
| putting Spitting Image on BritBox (paid commercial service), it
| should have been on license-paid TV ! I certainly refused to pay
| for it. - Taking Political Correctness to extremes.
| Whether race, gender or disability it has become like *every* BBC
| programme has to fill a quota. Don't get me wrong, diversity is
| important, but do you really have to cram every form of diversity
| into every single programme to the point where it starts feeling
| forced and artificial ? - Turning BBC News into a joke
| (newsreader reads summary, over to "our correspondent" who has
| been expensively transported to the scene to tell the viewer *the
| same thing*, then back to the studio for someone else on the
| BBC's payroll to tell the viewer *the same thing* again).
|
| During the COVID lockdowns, I can probably count on one hand the
| number of hours of BBC programming I watched. Everything else
| came from Apple/Amazon/Netflix and perhaps one or two services.
|
| If you want the BBC summarised in a nutshell, just look what
| happened when DoE died. They cleared their schedules across
| pretty much all TV and radio channels ... to broadcast the exact
| same mirrored content ... for god knows how many hours it was (48
| ? 72 ?). Completely nuts. I mean one channel fine .... but the
| entirety of your major broadcast channels?
| caoilte wrote:
| Spitting Image is made by ITV not the BBC.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| If you watch less than 5hrs of BBC content _a year_ , perhaps
| you aren't best placed to comment on it?
|
| This criticism is so hackneyed it could have been copy pasted
| from a 2002 Daily Mail comment section.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > If you watch less than 5hrs of BBC content a year, perhaps
| you aren't best placed to comment on it?
|
| I see the point I was making flew right over your head.
|
| The point _is_ that I am aware of exactly what the BBC
| schedules during the year, but none of it is attractive (i.e.
| either repeats and more repeats, or just generally
| unattractive content).
| carnitine wrote:
| I think the BBC needs to reject the premise of celebrity
| entirely and start summarily getting rid of people when they
| start demanding exorbitant fees. Particularly for programmes
| which are factual, Huw Edwards and Gary Lineker are simply not
| worth their fees, people are tuning in for the content.
| bb492 wrote:
| I can tell you as someone who works at the bbc is that the
| reason it feels like there's a quota, is because there
| basically is. Well rather a target. Same for hiring (50% women
| and 20% minorities). And we've been explicitly told managers
| are evaluated based on hiring and promoting to meet these
| targets
| gorgoiler wrote:
| How dreadful would life be if Auntie went radio only? It's the
| only content I really care for. TMS, Radio4 to Radio2 inclusive,
| and a 198LW service detectable in the deepest of valleys.
|
| The gutting of the R4 schedule with repeats and the downsizing of
| the radio news team could happily be reversed.
|
| The jewel in the crown is R1Xtra. It's absolutely at the cutting
| edge. How?!
|
| Oh, and erm The Last Kingdom, I guess. Thanks Netflix for saving
| it.
| petercooper wrote:
| _How dreadful would life be if Auntie went radio only?_
|
| I'm glad someone else has asked this! I spent some time earlier
| this year thinking about the responsibilities of the BBC and
| given the diversity of freely available video now, I think they
| could satisfy most of their cultural and journalistic
| obligations with radio/podcasts for a fraction of the budget.
| (BBC1 alone takes up 28% of the BBC budget. Their entire radio
| budget is less than their annual government grant.)
|
| I say this as someone who loves BBC documentaries but is also
| trying to be realistic about resources and waning public
| appetite to pay the license fee.
| deadbunny wrote:
| > How dreadful would life be if Auntie went radio only?
|
| Pretty awful for those of us that enjoy (some) of their TV
| output.
|
| > It's the only content I really care for.
|
| And this is where the problem lies, because the BBC has to try
| and please everyone you get people assuming because everything
| doesn't appeal to them then the rest should be axed.
| zwieback wrote:
| BBC (and other national broadcasters) should focus on news,
| children's TV and maybe a small selection of cultural stuff that
| otherwise wouldn't have exposure. It makes no sense to compete in
| the commercial entertainment space.
|
| I'm already noticing that there's stuff on streaming now that
| includes funding from several non-profit or national cultural
| organisations, I think that model can work well. I enjoy watching
| European or Asian productions with subtitles and get a break from
| the usual fare. There are huge economies of scale to be had.
| MAGZine wrote:
| I don't think that's necessarily true. National broadcasters
| have created great television. They can compete just fine.
|
| They can't, or shouldn't, compete, is just an opinion.
|
| TopGear and Schitts creek come immediately to mind of great
| successes.
| vharuck wrote:
| This is what Japan's NHK does, and I watch it a lot on Roku.
| Documentaries, cooking shows, talk shows focusing on Japanese
| culture, etc. They're basically cultivating and training
| tourists, which is great! I _want_ to know about famous places
| that I can visit, new food I can try, and enough Japanese to at
| least get directions or buy things from people who can 't speak
| English. And, while the production values aren't Hollywood-
| level, I expect they're better than what prefectural tourist
| offices would make.
|
| If I were planning a trip to Great Britain, I'd happily watch a
| similar channel.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| I agree with you, but we need to reevaluate our values when
| it comes to public funds.
|
| When Florida paid Emeril Lagasse to produce a show that's
| purpose was partly to promote Florida tourism, people freaked
| out and it ruined his career.
| deadbunny wrote:
| > It makes no sense to compete in the commercial entertainment
| space.
|
| If the authors figures are right and they are spending a
| fraction of what the competition are spending while still
| producing solid shows (which are then sold on to other markets
| for a decent price) then why not?
| golemiprague wrote:
| Looking from the outside I like many British shows but it
| doesn't really matter whether they are a BBC show or ITV or
| whatever other channel. I don't like the politics though and I
| wouldn't want my tax money financing a news channel as I don't
| believe it can be "objective", let each political group finance
| their own propaganda themselves.
| croes wrote:
| Comparing how much money Disney, Netflix and the BBC put into
| productions is useless. Netflix in particular has already burned
| a lot of money and the result was average at best. How many
| failures are there for a hit like "The Crown", how long can
| Netflix in particular continue to spend so much money? For
| quality, you need the right makers, and the BBC has often had the
| right ones.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > BBC has often had the right ones.
|
| "had" being the operative word here.
| croes wrote:
| Even Netflix and Disney can't buy them all.
| mabub24 wrote:
| The big distinguishing factor has long been Netflix's
| subscriber driven business model: if they're not growing in
| subscribers then the company appears to be "failing" or
| stagnant to investors/shareholders. Netflix's original
| productions are for retention, but moreso for getting new
| subscribers to boost the subscription numbers (hence their hard
| push into Asia).
|
| Netflix's problem is that it doesn't have the niche of another
| service using the same business model, something like HBO which
| makes "HBO shows" (Nudity, violence, swearing, "prestige"
| productions). Without a distinct house style or niche
| aesthetic, Netflix has adopted the firehose method. Blast as
| much money at as many scripts as possible with the hopes that
| one will turn gold.
|
| The BBC, through the licensing fee, kind of evades that
| business model and the ramifications of it; the BBC can choose
| to not aim for "hits", but for cultural content as such.
| Creators are free to create cultural content without a direct
| profit motive and that really allows the BBC to retain some
| very high quality documentarians, screenwriters, producers, and
| directors. The licensing fee is a tax, but it is a tax that
| keeps the profit motive from dominating media production.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But I think this is where it's starting to nose-dive. It used
| to be there were competitors but they were crass comparative
| junk, like ITV. Now the competitors are suddenly massively out
| BBC-ing the BBC. Huge landmark period dramas - used to be only
| the BBC could competently pull that off. Now Netflix does it
| better. Serious radio discussion - used to be only found on the
| BBC. Now I can get it often better from Spectator or New
| Statesman podcasts.
|
| They're being out-done on money and talent in, and results out,
| for their own game.
|
| Really serious problem.
| croes wrote:
| Wait and see. Netflix was once the place for new fresh shows
| but it's a victim of it's shareholders value. Most shows
| don't survive the 1st season. If the BBC tries to copy
| Netflix they will lose, if they stick to their last it might
| work out.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Apple seems to be trying to occupy the quality niche
| though.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| It's the quality thing - previously peopled tried to
| compete with the BBC by being lower brow, now they're
| attacking the high brow.
| echelon wrote:
| It's insane to me that Apple and Amazon are making
| movies. How many things are companies allowed to do?
| They're clearly making it harder for other players in
| these markets, and they're leveraging their insane
| capital to succeed in areas they have no experience in.
|
| It's also incredibly annoying now that there are a dozen
| different subscription services, each with different apps
| and radically different navigation UX, and many of which
| don't run on the same hardware.
|
| This is insane.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > they're leveraging their insane capital to succeed in
| areas they have no experience in.
|
| This is nothing unique about Apple and Amazon, leveraging
| insane capital is the name of the game.
| echelon wrote:
| It's wildly anticompetitive.
|
| And let's not forget that this isn't strictly about
| movies, but the broader concept of attention.
|
| The giants are paying to keep attention on their
| platforms, and they're doing it in every vertical they
| can possibly enter. This makes it hard for other
| industries to compete for that same attention as they
| don't have the claws and meat hooks that the trillionaire
| famgopolies do.
|
| How does MGM compete? They can't. They sell their assets
| on the cheap to the rich megamonopoly.
| caoilte wrote:
| Putting aside my consternation that the spectator is capable
| of serious discussion (it recently published an article in
| defence of Greek neo-nazis), the fiction that until recently
| only the BBC could pull off "huge landmark period dramas" is
| simply propaganda put about by media barons wrestling with
| raging hard ons for Ayn Rand in their Riviera villas (eg
| Brideshead Revisited - ITV 1981).
| open-source-ux wrote:
| The challenge the BBC faces is one that all public service
| broadcasters face across Europe. Although they cannot compete
| with the enormous budgets of streaming services, that doesn't
| mean they can't make programmes the public want to watch and
| which can be popular. And not every series needs a huge budget to
| succeed. Co-productions are common throughout the industry and a
| lot of BBC content ends up on Amazon and Netflix.
|
| For those not familiar with the BBC outside the UK, the variety
| and scope of content they produce is simply massive. Some argue
| too much.
|
| It's not just big-name TV shows though - there are national radio
| stations covering music and speech, a further 40+ regional radio
| stations and the BBC World Service.
|
| They fund 5 orchestras, produce the biggest classical music
| festival in the world (BBC Proms), also support UK artists to get
| exposure with their _BBC Music Introducing_ scheme.
|
| Children's TV programmes are free of commercial influence and ad-
| free. Educational materials cover the entire UK school curriculum
| and are extensive. (Remember the recent bbc micro:bit project to
| get kids coding? Only the BBC would have taken the initiative).
|
| The entire BBC website is completely ad-free for everyone in the
| UK (not ad-free outside the UK though).
|
| The list goes on...
|
| There are lots of things I dislike about the BBC, particularly
| their domestic news output. I hate the 'dumbing down' of some
| documentaries. But I think we in the UK would be worse off
| without the BBC despite all it's faults.
| gandalfian wrote:
| Be honest, would anyone really be worse off if the iPlayer left
| out asking you to login, choose a profile, confirm you have a TV
| licence, decline the parental lock and click through the add
| roll?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The BBC is (overall) great. The licence fee though has always
| been a regressive tax.
|
| Like with libraries, NHS, school, police etc. some crazy person
| will just have to suggest the unthinkable that taxpayers money
| creates YouTube (or whatever) content, and the lack of need for
| it to be a thinly disguised advert will make it much more
| enjoyable to watch.
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