Govt Broadcasting Green Paper On BBC

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ardross
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"If I want Education and Information, I will subscribe to the Discovery Channel, or the Biography Channel or any of the History stations. They all do a much better job in this regard."
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Oh, come on, Bobbyjo, you are an intelligent bloke, don't let your argument degenerate so. They are each mainly recycled American tabloid fodder. Let's take, as a random choice, today's schedules.

Firstly the Biography Channel:-

8.00 - History v Hollywood
9.00 - Rod Stewart
10.00 - Tom Jones
10.30 - Engelbert Humperdinck (The Las Vegas version not the Sieberg born composer)
11.00 - Sting
11.30 - Lenny Kravitz
12.00 - Al Pacino
1.00 - repeat of 8.00 am
2.00 - repeat of 9.00 am
3.00 - repeat of 10.00 am
3.30 - repeat of 10.30 am
4.00 - repeat of 11.00 am
4.30 - repeat of 11.30 am
5.00 - repeat of 12.00 noon
6.00 - Cole Porter
7.00 - Bruce Willis
7.30 - Janet Jackson
8.00 - The Redgrave Family
9.00 - Masters and Servants
10.00 - US Marshals
11.00 - Cold Case Files
12.00 - repeat of 7.00 pm
12.30 - repeat of 7.30 pm
1.00 - repeat of 8.00 am
2.00 - Closedown

Or try today's Discovery Channel, this time with some further information where I have it:

6.00 - Keeli and Ivy Two almost human chimps
7.00 - Extreme Engineering
8.00 - Extreme Machines
9.00 - Big
10.00 - Monster Garage
11.00 - Junkyard Mega-Wars
12.00 - Scrapheap Challenge Recycled from Channel 4
1.00 - repeat of 8.00 am
2.00 - Time Team another Channel 4 repeat
3.00 - 21st Century War Machines
4.00 - Battlefield detectives
5.00 - Salvage Squad
6.00 - American Chopper
7.00 - repeat of 2.00 pm
8.00 - Ametrican Chopper The crew builds a chopper for its football heroes
9.00 - American Chopper - Paul builds a chopper to honour the USA's forgotten heroes
10.00 - Ultimates Exploring theme park rides with film footage and graphics
11.00 - Forensic detectives Photographic evidence in murder cases
12.00 - Trauma Life in a real life ER
1.00 - The FBI Files
2.00 - repeat of 10.00 pm
3.00 - repeat of 9.00 pm
4.00 - repeat of 8.00 pm
5.00 - repeat of 7.00 pm

Finally the History Channel, surely no cheap sensationalism here? It includes "Martin Boormann - In the Fuhrers Shadow", "Greatest Movie Gadgets"', Grat Crimes & Trials - This week the Reverend Jim Jones and the Jonestown mass suicide of 1978", "Vanishings - in 1956 frogman Buster Crabbe disappeared. Was he a spy?", "Lawrence of Arabia" - did he hide a dark and guilty secret?", World War II - Germany's Secret Gambles" and "Mummy - the Inside Story"

Oh, and by the way, the BBC hasn't shown any cricket for years, they can't afford it....
 
Ok Brian, my brevity of reply has caught me out - I agree that the stations mentioned are far from perfect, Biography was good four years ago but has gone to the dogs now - there are so many channels on Sky Digital now that I am pretty sure that if you seek it out there are adequate levels of intelligent evocative or informative programming.

Certainly, where I live at the moment, all we have available is the four Irish channels, Sky News, BBC1, 2 and ITV3 and I certainly don't feel that the output there is enough to satisfy the relatively diverse bunch of people of varying nationalities that live within my apartment block.

I think it is cynical to suggest that if the BBC was cut loose that it would merely end up as a mimic of ITV with programmes aimed solely at commerical interests. I do not believe this to be so at all. Channel 4, whose status I appreciate is quite vague, regularly manage to produce the odd gem of a documentary [admittedly littered either side of 100 greatest showbiz haircuts or something similar] and still manage to retain a relatively serious and straight faced news format.

Recently, C4 ran a great programme asking, "Whatever Happened To Saturday Night TV?" which traced the slump down from Morecambe and Wise to Noels House Party to, eventually, those ghastly National Lottery shows. In my mind, it demonstrated just hard it is to produce programmes of mass appeal. M & W was genius but satisifed the audience of its day - nowadays it would not.

The BBC is already long, long, gone and its only because of its name that when it produces the odd gem of a programme people say, "ah thats what the old BBC used to do". Rather than celebrate the odd gem, people are more entitled to ask why there is so much dross. To use racing parlance, it's like when people foolishly follow a decent horse and overrate it merely because it is trained by one of the big stables rather than take its merits at face value.

Ardross, you are a middle aged person trapped in a nearly middle aged persons body!! You have always struck me as the kind of person who local kids would be scared to approach if they kicked a football into your garden. I could be wrong :D :D
 
Yawn!

The BBC may be the best of a public service broadcasting bad lot, but I just feel that the very concept will become obsolete in the context of the digital television era that is coming upon us...

Time will tell
 
I have no doubt that you are right, Bobbyjo. As I said, I hope that they will choose a funding formula that keeps us free from advertising.
 
Article 10 of the Human Rights Act states -

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

It used to state -

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

But the extra bit at the end was added after someone used the Article in their defence of not having a tv licence.

The judge ruled against the person NOT because they didn't have a good argument, but rather because not having a tv licence and watching (receiving etc) broadcasts is a strict liability offence.

No matter which way it is looked at, if you want to watch television you are forced BY LAW to purchase a licence. This was (up until it was conveniently amended) a clear denial of my right to freedom of expression as set out by Article 10.
 
Not really. Paying taxes is the collective will of the people. It is borne out of the age-old "let's all chip in and help each other" theory.

Many people will say they disagree with paying taxes but in the end they don't really and it is always at the forefront of election subjects, so if it really was a no-no with the public, there would be massive upheavel regarding it.

The want of the tv licence is unfounded. Have they actually put this to the test? How do they know the majority of people in this country want a licence? I wasn't asked. Were you?

Also, taxes are not the same rate for everyone. TV Licence fees are. And yes, it's only 33p a day compared to about three times for Sky, but if I don't pay my Sky bill I won't be committing a criminal offence.
 
How is me being forced by law to purchase road tax (if I need to) considered a denial of my right to freedom of expression?
 
Bobbyjo - there is nothing more middle aged than the conservative orthodoxy you spout . A highlighted mullet won't save you from that assessment - or have you had a restyle recently - a sort of Rupert Murdoch look perhaps - would suit your opinions
 
Absolute nonsense Ardross, you know little of my politics but I am certainly not a conservative - I just happen to have a very healthy dislike and distrust of public service broadcasters - they are a thing of the past and do not deserve and should not expect the privileges they received in the past - particularly when they are largely inefficient and have a terrible nepotistic policy of hiring staff.

I have obviously touched a nerve with the 'middle aged' comment and for that I apologise - you are quite clearly something of a champagne socialist, you quite obviously empathise with the working classes but I also get the feeling you are slightly disgusted by them. Not to worry.
 
Your remarks about public service broadcasters are hardly surprising coming from someone in your position generally envy is the cause . Your essay about the future of the BBC ( which is almost wholly uncritical of the privatise approach ) represents conservative self interested orthodoxy whether you like it or not .

I spend day in day out representing people from what you anachronistically describe as the working classes .
 
I assure you that envy is not the cause Ardross - if I so desired I could be working for a public service broadcaster but other commitments prevented me from doing so. But anyway, I regret that this topic has become quite personalised,

Brian - when you say my familiarity of the US networks, what exactly are you getting at? I must admit that I steered clear of the US in my studies because I felt it was a very deep issue to get into so I instead focused on this part of the world plus France and Australia [which doesn't necessarily have too bad a system although admittedly it is manipulable]
 
Above average intelligence Americans watch the PSB channel a lot of the time and would give their right arms (perhaps right eyes would be a better phrase?) to have a full public service broadcaster to compete with the mainly dire stuff pumped out by the networks for 85% to 90% of the time.
 
Which begs the question Brian, if public service television should just be for the intelligent or for everyone........we cannot just produce programmes for the vanguard
 
"Above average intelligence Americans"
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I know that you don't need a maths qualification to get into broadcasting, but the above will constitute fifty per cent of the population. How big a rating do you want? :lol:
 
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