I f the Tories have their way. What do we think? Is it an anachronism these days especially as many no longer watch normal terrestrial TV?
CBC in Canada is similar to BBC but they carry advertising on TV, just 2 main channels (English and French), plus a news channel. Their radio stations are free of advertising though. There are also other publically funded channels that are free of advertising like TV Ontario. There is no license fee
Personally I will do anything to avoid commercials, so many options these days without them (or I fast forward through them). Having them on the BBC would not be great, maybe a subscription Netflix type service is the way to go.
I don’t have the answer, as the BBC’s downward slide into mediocrity seems unstoppable. What is most striking though is the absurd idea of Nadine Dorries having the slightest idea about culture.
The slide into mediocrity for me is defined by the new 5Live Breakfast show.
I loved it when Rachel and Nicky presented and it almost felt like a friend talking to me.
Now they have a formula which is crass and boring so I have moved to listen to the Today Programme. The Thought Of The Day introduction is my cue for a shower!
The Today Programme – also Beeb.
Yes I know that!
I know you know, but you’re citing an emblematic BBC programme as a stated alternative to what you consider a decline in their standards. No biggie 🙂
The lesser of two evils is not an endorsement of quality…
Check out the Times radio breakfast show. It is very good.
But it’s Murdoch tainted, says I who lived through the bitter and unpleasant media of the 1980s through the 2000s phone hacking bonanza and the blame the foreigners austerity thereafter. Am I bitter? You bet. Will I listen to Times Radio? I refer you to my previous answer.
Murdoch’s comment on TR “Why is my money being spent on this shit?”….. There, does that help?
Unlike Sky News, Times Radio is directly under the influence of Murdoch. Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!
I like Times Radio. I know it’s Murdoch etc but I am capable of ignoring obviously biased stuff and I don’t think there is too much of it – they are pretty hard on the Gov generally. The morning show is more listenable than Today which I listened to for years but TFTD and the mandatory misery item after the main interview did for me.
I really dislike Today, They have (or used to have) an overwhelming sense of smugness and are (were) the personification of privately educated Britain. When I was getting up at breakfast time UK time more than 15 years ago) then I would put 5 Live on (or 6 Music)
I started listening to Today at, literally, my mother’s knee. Sixty years later I thought “Can’t take any more of politicians avoiding questions from smug presenters” and switched to Radio 5. Me, Nicky, Shelagh and then Rachel were very happy. Then Nicky left and the whole tone of the programme went yoof-centric. I turned back to Today and three months later that’s me shouting “Answer the question you smug prick” and “Why are all you presenters such arses?”
ps I live in France – god knows what I would do without the BBC
Unfortunately, today’s politicians have rendered the format of the Today programme largely useless.
Without it’s political content the programme is pointless but the politicos all know that there is only a limited time slot for their interview in the programme, so they can waste time waffling if questioned and only impart what they came on to announce in the first place. It’s become nothing more than a game.
The presenters don’t have the time to do any probing in the current format.
I used to listen on my drive to work but since retiring I’ve given up on it.
Replying to Mike – the role that news journalists play in holding power to account is something the current Gov’t can’t wait to see off. They will put Johnson on with Phil and Holly but not on Today or what was Marr, of anything by C4.
It’s a crucial function, essential to democracy, but increasing shouted down by “their coverage is biased” etc
@dai – the personification of smug privately educated Britian is (now) the current government. It’s much improved by the retirement of Humphrys. I can’t relate your description to Brian Redhead, Jim Naughtie, Ed Stourton.
Quick check of wiki indicated that Redhead was privately educated,. He was a decent journalist, but I always thought he was incredibly pleased with himself (similar to Humphrys). It’s more the listeners they are aiming for in general.
Over here in “classless” Canada I also find a number of the CBC presenters (not all) annoying. Maybe it’s me?
Humphrys (the reason I stopped listening to Today, and I haven’t gone back) was my first thought too, but according to his Wiki he’s from a working class background and left his grammar school at 15 because he felt he didn’t fit in.
I meant Humphrys was pleased with himself. And his late brother who did Sports News on BBC Wales had a much stronger accent
Joining in the general ‘Today programme’ thread, not particularly responding to Dai.
I listen to WDR5 until 7.30 am, then switch to R4 on BBC Sounds for my cycle to work. So, I catch the headlines, for the latest in the slow motion car crash that is the BJ gov, skip the weather, catch the paper/websites summary, then Dhasheni David with her 2 tame economists, skip ‘here’s Gary with the sport’, the 2nd headlines, the pre-7am articles (usually dull unless it’s the yesterday in parliament slot), and the next headlines. Often they have an expert on just after that, who’s worth listening to. At my desk, I might catch the post 8 am politician, but they rarely are worth it. Carefully filleted, the Today programme makes for a reasonable listen.
I’d pay a subscription for Dhasheni and Anita Anand alone – how that woman suffers and weaves magic out of the old gits who call into Any Answers is beyond me – a star! Certainly urinates from a great height over the Gavin Williamson double that is Chris Mason.
I’m content with paying a licence fee (to use your analogy, I see it as a sort of subscription).
I’ve read people saying “£159 a year. For what? There was nothing on at Christmas.”
True, but for your £159 you get (in my opinion) the best, trusted, and balanced News Service, minority programming, tv and radio, iplayer, access to archive on iplayer and sounds.
Not a bad subscription when compared to Netflix (£120), Amazon Prime (£120), NowTV, SkySports, SkyMovies, Sky-whatever
(and I know people who have just about all and every TV package going).
It’s not quite “I would willingly sell my house and all its contents to help the BBC”, but the range of stuff on offer makes it worthwhile
(OK, except Graham Norton and Mrs Brown Boys)
This – from 11 years ago – is still relevant
I would agree except many people don’t watch the BBC or listen to it’s radio stations. License fee probably made more sense when there were 3 TV channels (2 of them BBC) where as now we have hundreds plus all the streaming services
@dai I would say that is a sweeping generalisation. The terrestrial tv I watch is about 95 percent bbc. Exception being Gogglebox and an occasional drama. ITV news is unwatchable. The only radio I listen to is BBC be it 6music, radio 2, radio 5, BBC wm or world service. As far as I am concerned Nadine Dorrie came in to do a job on the BBC and now I hope someone does a job on her. Dreadful woman.
Am talking mainly about younger people. I am not in the UK but my daughter never watches regular TV, it is all Netflix, YouTube and Disney+. All listening on Spotify. This is the future
I am in the UK. My son, 27, hasn’t watched the BBC since he was 14. My impression is that he isn’t unique
My daughter and her boyfriend don’t watch terrestrial tv either. I was referring to the people that do watch terrestrial tv – there are still plenty – yes they may be diminishing but rating figures don’t show a significant fall.
Funnily enough I unplugged our arial yesterday. We had a couple of boxes under the TV that haven’t been used in years – a broken DVD player and some sort of TV recording thing. I thought I’d bung them away and while i was down there I found a cord leading to the wall. Couldn’t remember the last time we watched a live broadcast on the big screen, and if the need arises you can do it over WiFi anyway. So I pulled that out too.
Out of curiosity, I looked at what it might cost to have everything Sky offers: sport, movies, Netflix etc plus multi viewer and 4K. It seemed to be an eye watering £120 a month. Do people really spend that and how do they find the time to watch it all?
I get broadband and TV through Virgin Media for just over £60/month.
200MB Broadband accounts for about half that cost, and the rest is for a landline (which I haven’t got/don’t use any more) + more TV channels that I ever want to watch (some duplicated in HD, just to give the air of choice).
Could go down the Freeview route, but the TV aeriel on the roof has long since gone.
They do keep phoning me up to upgrade the Sports or Movie Packages, or even just increase the TV – I don’t watch them all so would I want anymore.
And here’s the daft bit – if I try to dump the landline part of the contract, and/or reduce the TV package, it ends up costing me more.
If I wanted to upgrade my broadband, it would be £20 on it’s own, but only £18 if I upgraded the TV package.
Elitist 200 Mb broadband users, eh? Completely unrepresentative of so many people in this country who will effectively be broadcast disenfranchised if over-the-air Freeview ceases to exist in a future sunny Tory upland free of inconvenient critical reporting.
Yes, they really do. Loads of my colleagues have a whole smorgasbord of packages and, especially where there are kids at home, they are watching every day, on several different devices. Sport is the big driver.
I haven’t needed to buy a TV licence for 20 years. I don’t know where people find the time to watch TV; I’m too busy spending the £1,500pa that I’m not spending on Sky packages.
These people probably thinnk the same of people that spend similar amounts of money on music, gigs and books. Which, of course, are morally superior to watching tv.
Well I suppose it stops them spending all their money on fags and booze. And have you seen how much they spend on their kids’ trainers?
I used to be huge supporter of the BBC, but I find it increasingly hard to remain so.
The license fee is an anachronism. It really can’t be justified anymore. I would suggest the way forward would be to allow advertising with an option to pay for a subscription which eliminates the advertising. Entirely doable and fairer for everyone.
A mixed model doesn’t work for broadcast TV in the way it might for a service like Spotify, it only works for on demand. Scheduled TV either stops for ad breaks or it doesn’t. So either the BBC becomes a streaming platform – Britbox+, or it shows ads like ITV.
None of the channels that rely on ads want this as they have less content and would see a reduction in ad revenue. It’s a lose lose.
Yes, but look at the audience figures. The number of people who watch TV as a channel rather than an on demand service is rapidly diminishing and will continue to do so. That’s one of the main reasons why I argue the idea of a TV license is an anachronism – my daughters don’t watch broadcast TV, haven’t done for years and never will again.
Britbox is surely paving the way ahead, with its subscription and archives of both BBC and ITV shows. Stuff they are gradually withdrawing from other platforms. Plus it is now commissioning new stuff.
I don’t have an answer but I’d miss radio 4 and Stereo Underground. Unfortunately, there’s very little that I would miss on TV and I don’t know if that’s because the BBC have had funding reduced in recent years or it’s due to some other reason. Very little on other channels BTW.
Emotionally I support the Beeb but practically I don’t use it much – the political coverage was dismal in the GE and on Brexit and much of the other content doesn’t interest me, mind you it might be of interest to someone so hey. I don’t mind paying the licence fee but I can’t help thinking it could be better. I had a thread about this a few years ago and the vast majority of people were uncritical lovers so I am interested to see where this one goes.
Do you say it was “dismal” because it didn’t chime with your own political stance or for another reason you would like to articulate?
The most dismal thing in my opinion was the obvious sense of a journalistic organisation starting to run scared of the incumbent government. Slippery slope started. The clueless Nadine confirms the negative direction.
C4 news is very good, especially now Jon Snow has retired – who was a great journalist but was really making a mess of the live stuff before the end. Curiously it is of course ITN which also makes ITV News.
Taken me a while to realise that the best UK news programme is Sky News. Now completely independent it asks questions the BBC currently doesn’t dare. Try watching Sky News around 530pm then switch to BBC at Six. It’s like different worlds.
Not sure how long Sky News independence lasts – think its charter is time-limited?
Outside Source with Ros Atkins is the best TV News programme & it is BBC News Channel. Try it, he is superb.
Seconded. Shoots from the hip. Probably has his face on a dart board at Central Office.
But one programme in the sprawling empire of the BBC. 99.23% of the rest are too scared to say anything remotely challenging.
..”And over to you, Laura”
Well you say that, but the top headline on the BBC website is currently “A PM who lied to Parliament would normally quit – Raab” so I’m wondering if you’d consider that ‘remotely challenging’ or not.
I saw that too. The next few paragraphs give it context which the header lacked.
Dominic Raab has said a prime minister found to have deliberately lied to Parliament would “normally” resign.
The comments come after the PM’s former chief aide Dominic Cummings accused Boris Johnson of misleading MPs last week over a drinks party held in the Downing Street garden during lockdown.
But Mr Raab, the deputy PM, said his leader had “made clear” he had not known about the event in advance.
He added that he believed Mr Johnson would remain in power “for many years”.
I heard that* interview with Raab this morning. He sounded like a rabbit caught in headlights – never have I heard so many ums and ahs while he flailed around for something positive to say.
(*) well, up until I started shouting at the radio and Mrs F turned it off.
Raab was also caught in the headlights on the dreadful GMB this morning. Susanna Reid, whose journalistic independence extended to rolling her eyes, shaking her head and smirking a lot while interviewing him, actually succeeded in looking more pitiful than he did.
It’s taken all this way into this scandal and at a point where Boris’s supporters are jumping the sinking ship for Laura to grow a pair (perhaps not my most pc of statements)
After watching Sky’s Beth Rigby’s demolition of Boris today – would anyone from the Beeb have done better? No.
Has any Prime Minister ever been spoken to by a journalist with such withering contempt as Beth Rigby did there?
I’ll wager you this half a scotch egg I have here (with Branson too) that the biggest constraint for BBC journos is editorial policy, not capability. Marr made comments to that effect on his way out.
And whilst I think Beth Rugby’s ok, let’s not forget Sky also give airtime to the the talent free zone known as Kay Burley.
@fortuneight why are you sharing your scotch egg with the beardy space cadet?
@mikethep – cat’s out of the bag now. Every Tuesday he comes round for an evening of Boggle with the spoils for the winner a generous portion of said eggs.
He had to resort to his little
“Aw shucks” hand on the head thing which is supposed to be endearing. “Love me please. Here’s my hair, you remember”
Re Beth Rigby’s evisceration.
Boris had pinned himself, limbs splayed, belly exposed, onto the dissection table. It was hardly a tricky procedure for Beth.
Do you honestly think Laura would have asked those questions in that “You’re a useless lying scumbag, aren’t you” manner?
ps nothing against Laura et al, as someone said above it’s not the reporters fault that the BBC is , quite rightly, running scared. What is not so forgiveable is the BBC’S continuing insistence in “presenting both sides of the argument” even if one side is being put by, for example, some climate change denier fuckwit.
Yes. I do.
Pre-sliced or half-eaten? It makes a difference to whether I take the wager
@chiz – half eaten. Branson’s party piece is to lick the egg out without collapsing the outer casing of breadcrumbs.
Replying to Lodey above at https://theafterword.co.uk/bbc-license-fee-to-be-abolished/comment-page-1/#comment-519071 – they’re still fkin at it:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/24/vaccine-refusers-have-been-asked-on-to-question-time-is-this-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen
The BBC had no hesitation in showing the interview and forensically dissecting it last night. I really don’t see any evidence that they are either holding back on this story, or giving it more prominence than they should. Of course members of the government are finding it convenient to blame the BBC’s alleged lefty woke anti-Boris bias on this whole farrago, conveniently forgetting that some of those who have been most aggressively sticking the knife into the prime minister over this story include ITV, Sky, the Telegraph and the Mail.
@Lodey – it’s pointless speculating what LK would or wouldn’t have said becuase the situation won’t arise. Johnson won’t give interviews to the BBC or C4 anymore – and the reasons for that are telling. The BBC broadcast it in full – best they could do. Your point would only stand up if Johnson put himself in front of Maitlis, Robinson, Guru-Murthy, Newman and they let him off the hook.
Johnson’s team will have told Sky he would do the interview, with everyone knowing what would be under discussion. Johnson will have rehearsed the head bowing once Brenda’s name was mentioned. Bunter may have been surprised at the tone, but they both knew why he was there, and also why he wasn’t going to answer questions anywhere else.
@fortuneight Ah but no. Johnson offered himself up for one interview (no idea what he or his advisors were thinking). All the relevant channels , including the BBC, agreed to pick Beth provided they could all use the interview in full. Johnson has definitely banned C4 from interviewing him but no such edict for the BBC.
Shouldn’t there be a question mark in the thread headline, @Dai?
Aside from news, I think the BBC should focus on quality
Drama, comedy and documentaries (what it does best) and
Abandon the desperate chase to the bottom in terms of ratings.
Aside from the host’s immediate family does anyone really
need witless drivel like Danny Dyer’s The Wall or yet another
Quiz show starring Bradley Walsh?
“if the Tories have their way”
Yes but that’s in the post itself.
The headline is pure clickbait.
So what. Am not getting advertising revenue from it (and I am only paraphrasing the Guardian article I link to)
“Only paraphrasing the Guardian article I link to”
Afterword T-shirt, right there.
Careful now. If we go down this route of ensuring intriguing and inviting thread titles we run the risk of attracting new members.
I would gladly sell my house and all its contents to help The Afterword.
There’s a valuation agent on the way
Can I have his slippers?
…they could probably walk to you on their own.
It’s also worth pointing out that the BBC have their own training schemes, in fact they have their own university-style campus.
Almost everyone in broadcast, be they in front of or behind the camera, did their basic training at BBC Wood Norton. Including me.
And Prime and Netflix in the UK have been propped up by BBC output. With the BBC properly hobbled, replacing BBC content will see subscription fees rise, with advertising also a strong possibility.
And then when they are fully-trained and have some experience they tend to move on to other companies, because the BBC don’t pay as well.
That’s just life, though – one of my university housemates was sponsored by British Aerospace and left as soon as his graduate training scheme ended.
I’ve done some of the Wood Norton courses, although I was never a direct BBC employee, and they were a lot better value than my undergraduate lectures.
Sort of like the way doctors who are trained through the NHS then clear off to work in private medicine once they’re qualified simply because they can make shed loads more money. “That’s just life” maybe – but its morally wrong. They are being trained courtesy of the public purse and then turning their back on the public once they’ve got what they need out of it.
That’s a better analogy than mine as both come from the public purse. Although I suppose BAe’s customers (the MoD) are also funded by the taxpayer.
I know some people who leave ITV/C4/Sky to go back to the BBC. I also know NHS consultants who work part-time for Bupa – mine is one.
My pal David finally got pissed-off with training-up newcomers to his department, only to see them promoted ahead of him, because he was too useful where he was. After about 20 years service he went freelance at last and virtually doubled his salary.
I think it’s a dead cat designed to deflect interest from Johnson’s more pressing problems. Dorries is the perfect outlet as she has her head so far up Johnson’s ares you can barely see the soles of her feet.
The Tories have got the BBC pretty much where they want them – starved of the cash needed to properly fulfill their charter, emasculated and scared to say anything that might offend. They now have C4 in their sights. Aunty routinely shoots herself in the foot – Bashir, Dershowitz – to make the Tories job easier. If the BBC is seen off we’ll end up with the US TV model – content of any quality behind various paywalls which combined will exceed the license fee, with free to air basically a platform for adverts which are occasionally interrupted by repeats that spend most of their time recapping what was shown before the last ad break.
The traditional US model is dying. Paying 150 dollars a month for hundreds of cable channels one never watches. People are “cutting the cord” in droves, relying on antennas to pick up the main networks and various specialist apps like Pluto which offers a “free” cable experience as well as Netflix etc. Most people want cable for sports but even then the biggest one (NFL) is broadcast on “free to air” channels. In Canada there is enough ice hockey on free channels except if you are a fanatic, golf is also mainly free to air in North America, at least on weekends
Whilst I understand that the government sees an unbiased or critical news service as A Bad Thing, C4 does not rely on public money (as Ms Dorries found out to her embarrassment recently) so it’s hard to see what they can do directly, short of removing their technical ability to broadcast.
Think they do or did. Partly, the rest coming from advertising revenue
“It is publicly owned but commercially funded. Unlike the BBC, which is funded through the £159-a-year licence fee its viewers must pay, Channel 4 has no financial support from the taxpayer.”
As always when this question comes up, I look at the politicians and journalists (and their below-the-line lickspittles) who are advocating defunding/privatising the BBC and conclude they’re all people I wouldn’t want to share a bus with, let alone a bed. Simply put, if they’re agin it I’m for it, and vice versa. This works in most areas of our so-called, lives, I find.
Indeed, a veritable cabal of the unappealing will form behind Norries, chuckling into their sherries and eyeing up the BBCs media opposition for potential sinecures.
This going to sound impossible but I think there v needs to be an internet license, ie just as the Beeb fee, a tax that the government gives to a renewed and updated BBC to create and commission public service content in the digital sphere, including as now impartial news, brand free kids programmes, soaps, arts, music, docs, natural history etc etc thst upholds quality, honesty and culturally enriches society. Ok I know the Beeb news isn’t pristinely impartial always but it has that goal and intent. I don’t think the idea of the BBC is outdated, it’s as vital as ever.
Well I hope you defunders enjoy your precious TMS being interrupted every ten minutes by ads for betting and KFC. Chicken leg-over?
Of course, it’s a deflection from the real issue of Fat Boy and his Beatbox Crew, but…
In this country in 2022, culture-wise, there are two things worth fighting for:
(i) Test Cricket and,
(ii) the BBC.
Show me the people who want to get rid of the BBC, and I’ll show you a whole raft of people I don’t like. The tabloids for a start. They are what has destroyed this country.
If we could rid our culture of them, 90% of our problems would be solved overnight.
NHS?
Is that culture?
Carry On Nurse, Carry On Doctor, Carry On Again Doctor, Carry On Matron… yeah, I suppose.
OK and (iii) N.H.S.
Missed “culture wise”. Did you edit?
Not sure. Actually, the N.H.S. may fall into the culture bag anyway. Again, not sure!
Well said, Deram. As someone who lives next door to the UK, I have had the benefit of the BBC for most of my life. Marvellous institution. Cherish it. Not sure about the cricket, mind.
Long live the BBC. Radio is my main consumption – 5Live for sport and Radio 4 for news on a week day morning.
It is my only channel for news (please let me know if other free to air options exist) and ITV news is a joke.
I don’t watch much of its other output apart from The Apprentice and Dragons Den. that tells you a lot about me I guess!
C4 News is rather good. Which kind of reinforces your remark about the ITV stuff!
The BBC has been with me all my life, and I treasure it. I went to Trafalgar Square when the Poll Tax was happening, and I’d go there again for the BBC, even if it is in that London.
The license fee gives us three things – a broadcaster and news operation that can’t be owned by commercial conglomerates or be subject to the pressure of pleasing advertisers; a broadcaster that is British and therefore both attuned to the specific character of this country, and to providing a huge amount of work and economic stimulus to this country; and a broadcaster that provides things that the market otherwise wouldn’t. Most of its radio output; much of its documentary and culture coverage; even much of its particular comedy and drama output; local news and radio, and much more would not exist in the same way and of the same quality if left to Netflix Sky and Amazon.
I am completely open to alternative ways of paying for it; the license fee was a vehicle created in a very different time and context. But I absolutely think the unique role the BBC plays is worth having. What’s worrying to me about this government is that they give no impression that they feel the same. And if they do think there is a continuing role for the BBC there is no indication they have given the first thought as to what might work instead of the license fee. It’s almost as if they just want to wreck it first and don’t care what replaces it. As if.
What he says… Hear and Hear
Up
that first paragraph pretty much nails it
We watch a lot of BBC output – I hate ad breaks with a passion – but we also have Amazon, Netflix and Disney +….and Sky Q….blimey, that looks terrible, but Netflix is free to me (daughter’s subscription) and Amazon Prime is a bonus as I had that anyway. I’ve had Sky for years and they give me a decent deal, and Disney was recent for Get Back, but their content is very good and not pricey really, so will keep that.
I agree the licence fee is now an anachronism, but I’d hate to see the Beeb go down in flames.
Of course this announcement is everything to do with saving Johnson (expect more populist stuff over the next week or two) …oh look, a dead cat!
There’s been a Tory argument and counter-argument that has been running for ten years or more, and it really boils my piss something rotten.
Argument 1: The BBC make elitist, arty nonsense that nobody watches/listens to. Why should our great British public be taxed for niche, left leaning nonsense. Defund the BBC and let people choose what they want to watch!
Argument 2: When the BBC get ratings hits like Strictly, Fleabag or Sherlock they have an unfair advantage over commercial platforms who don’t have public funding. How can our hard working chums in Sky and ITV compete on an uneven playing field? Defund the BBC!
Ten years of the beeb trying to get on the good side of the Tories hasn’t worked. The government’s plan of attack has also been to constantly accuse the BBC of bias, and balance is not enough. The likes of Laura Kuenssberg ripped Labour a new one on a daily basis in the run up to the last election, but it still wasn’t enough because someone on the news had the nerve to question why Bojo avoided all the debates and hid in fridges. Only a Fox News-style service, frothing at a perpetual woke liberal storm here to destroy us all, will be good enough for this lot. Enjoy your national broadcaster while it still looks like one.
Spot on. Particularly the observation that anything arty is somehow left-leaning. Good God, it’s almost as if anything that is culturally enlightening leads inevitably to the conclusion that unfettered capitalism is a huge and dangerous mistake. We can’t have that thought out there, poisoning the minds of the foolish hoi-polloi!
It’s an unavoidable fact* of life, always has been, that the vast majority of folk involved in the arts and media are left-leaning, with the obvious exception of those Tory culture ministers given the job of policing them.
*I have no evidence to back this up of course.
I would happily pay the licence fee just to be able to access Test Match Special and all the county and international cricket coverage on the radio/online. Everything else would then be a bonus.
You are Mr Tully of Sidcup and I claim my £5.
Ha! Yes, does sound like that sketch.
Whilst there is a lot of comment that the younger generation don’t watch live TV and so the licence model is outdated, isn’t it the case that a significant proportion of those who do are the older generation, who are more likely to be ‘traditional’ Tory voters – wouldn’t the plan to destroy the BBC hit a core of their vote ?
@ChrisF
Agreed.
Problem is, as always with this government, they just never bother to think things through.
So while Dorries blithely announces/proposes an end to the license fee in 2027, there is no indication as to how the broadcaster might then go about finding a means of funding itself.
Coming up with and implementing such a radical restructuring of such a complex institution is a huge undertaking that is likely to take far more than five years.
Given that the Beeb is a state-owned asset surely ensuring its continued existence should be a top priority for those ostensibly “leading” the country?
This is especially true when one considers the vast contribution the BBC and those who have come up through its ranks are making to the UK’s global image, export earnings, and – via the World Service – influence/soft power.
See also their plan to abolish free prescriptions for 60-66-year-olds. That’s potentially an own-goal if ever I saw one.
I can see why free prescriptions would be changed in line with retirement ages, even if it is unpopular.
Agree…I started free prescriptions when I hit 60 and was still working full time, but didn’t start getting my OAP until I was 65. That made no sense to me, although obviously I wasn’t out picketing the DWP demanding to be allowed to pay for my meds.
Remember the first time the pharmacy said “You’re 60, keep your money” and me thinking “Kids gone, mortgage gone, still in employ, never had so much spare cash in my life – and my medicine is free??”
Irritatingly the mutual funding agreement between the NHS and Medicare in Oz doesn’t extend to free meds while I’m over there. Presumably because there are so many more old Poms in Oz than Aussies in Blighty. I have to pay full whack – about $70-80 a month. I do get a hefty discount on other medical expenses though…
I’ve only just realised, reading this, that when the pharmacist asks “Do you pay for your prescriptions?” they’re actually asking if I’m over 60. Which I’m not, the cheeky fuckers. When I go to the supermarket to buy booze, someone has to come to the self scan checkout to confirm I’m over 18.
But you do look as though you are ‘on benefits’.
I always get asked, presumably because I look as if I’m on benefits.
Those were the days…
Over 18% blood alcohol is what they are wondering.
If people are keen for the BBC to continue then that’s great. But I don’t see the rationale for retaining the licence fee, given that it is a regressive tax and they aren’t generally held to be a good thing. Funding the BBC from Income Tax would be preferable.
In any event, it’s hard to see how the licence fee model is sustainable in the longer term if the trend for younger people to ignore live, or indeed any, t.v. continues.
Funding from Income Tax puts them further in the power of the government of the day than the TV Licence does. A grant of funds from taxation can more easily be reduced than a licence fee that the public are fully aware of.
If the argument is “young people don’t watch broadcast TV” then I must be young. Most of my viewing is via the iPlayer.
Transmission is only a small link of the chain. Without a decent income, how are the Beeb going to make new programmes?
I’d pay the £13.25 a month just to have Radio 4, 6 Music and iPlayer. Everything else is a bonus.
We do have ITVhub and All4 etc on the tellybox and avoid them due to the adverts. I want an alternative.
I wasn’t talking about transmission , but the younger people preferring You Tube and other net platforms to most if not all T.V. platforms. Presumably part of the reason why the BBC proposed switching the licence fee to a tax on internet connections a year or so ago. A move that would simply replace one increasingly anachronistic method with an even more unfair regressive tax
The government have correctly calculated that the BBC can’t help themselves when it comes to, er, news stories about the BBC. So that’s partygate safely off the top of their agenda for a few days at least. “Know Your Enemy” indeed.
You have to hope that there are enough people out here who can see through their cynical and transparently manipulative behaviour who care about these things. If there are, the bastards have miscalculated.
Multiple, sometimes competing, thoughts on this.
Like most of us, I was brought up with the notion that the BBC is a national treasure that must be guarded into all eternity. That’s certainly my reflexive reaction to this news. It’s also tempting to conclude, as some have above, that given the people who want it gone, it must be great. That strikes me as slightly lazy thinking (or at least, we tend to regard it that way when the right do it), although clearly Nadine Dorries is the last person most of us would choose to take on reform, or any other complex task for that matter.
I have to confess, I don’t use the BBC a great deal. The odd football match, a sitcom once in a blue moon, maybe show the kids something old on the iPlayer and that’s about it. That seems to be a common theme in a lot of responses, and it only becomes more prevalent as the demo gets younger, which does rather beg the question of what the future looks like.
The media landscape is changing radically. The advent of Netflix, chord-cutting and the impending streaming wars will have profound implications for the BBC’s broadcast output; not only are they now in direct competition for eyeballs with entities with far deeper pockets and a far greater global reach (not to mention the TikToks and Fortnites of this world), they’re also in direct competition for talent.
The UK is currently experiencing unprecedented demand for production capacity; from studio space to sparkies, from actors to runners, there has never been a swell like this, and it’s expected to last until around the 2027 mark the Tories have set out here. The premium for talent is tremendous, right across the board.
How does the BBC compete in an environment like that? What shape does it need to take in order to do so? How do you retain audience share when the trend is towards ever larger rivals with ever deeper pockets? It’s certainly a debate worth having, although reaching a conclusion in a five year window with the industry in flux might take some doing.
The burning question seems to me to be; how popular is the BBC really? Popular enough for people en mass to voluntarily pay circa £15 a month for it, in lieu of a license fee? Popular enough that threatening to castrate it won’t cost the Tories at the polls?
I’m inclined to say that if it’s a truly popular and beloved entity, it will be made politically impossible between now and 2027 for Dorries’ plan to ever be enacted. And if it isn’t that popular, then – really – can we justify forcing people to continue to pay for it, just because it makes some of us (myself included) feel warm and fuzzy to know it’s there, even while most of us barely use it?
On the political bias point, I think I’ve said this before, but my feeling is that the organisation has a relatively gentle left wing bias, and that’s probably unavoidable given the people who work there and the fact that a large section of the right would like to destroy the institution completely. Frankly, I’m surprised the bias isn’t more pronounced.
I do find the notion that they gave Labour a particularly rough ride at the last election to be a little preposterous; Labour chose a spectacularly unpopular and incompetent leader who the country roundly rejected. The BBC reflected public sentiment and public concerns about the prospect of his becoming Prime Minister. They did the same with Johnson, and the way they’ve managed to piss off the extremes of left and right in doing so suggests to me that they got the balance spot on. They’re certainly the news source I trust above all others, and given the frequency with which one now meets people who proudly inform you that they get their information from “outside the MSM” (translation: YouTube, podcasts and their own backsides), it seems more imperative than ever that we have a relatively neutral, high integrity national news organisation.
I’ll end on a prediction; if the government does succeed in entirely removing public support from the BBC, it will attempt to go it alone as a subscription streamer and whatever’s left of it will end up owned by a US media entity within 5 years (regulators permitting). Too sweet a jewel to leave on the table, particularly given the importance of local programming on the road ahead. I think that would be a huge shame, for all the reasons Blue Boy expresses above.
As for dead cat bounce; I don’t buy it. They may have brought the announcement forward, but it’s not like this is a new idea the Tories have cooked up overnight; it’s pretty much the reason Dorries was appointed to her current role.
I was favouring the dead cat theory but I think you are right. Johnson (according to Tim Shipman) has ordered any and all policies that might shore up his popularity to be pushed out ahead of Gray’s report. So we can expect Navy gunboats to replace the woke RNLI picking up migrants, the declaration of the end of Covid on Jan 26th no matter what the numbers actually say, hundreds more doctors and nurses to be teleported in from Gallifrey to clear the NHS backlogs and something cobbled together by Gove to suggest anyone in a post code north of Mansfield will be leveled up.
It’s far more likely this has been bumped up to throw some red meat to the right of the party (the ones with the keg, over by the floral borders).
Gove orders train-loads of stilts to be urgently deployed north of Mansfield.
An excellent analysis.
I fear that if the PM is looking for a distraction from his present woes all he has to do is wait for a cold snap in the Ukraine.
Consider the NHS.
‘Most of us barely use it’. At any given point in time this is true.
So we need to ask if we ‘can justify forcing people to continue to pay for it’? Of course we can.
I’d argue that as regards the Beeb there’s also a case for saying ‘yes, we can justify that’; it gives us something that no other nation has, and which no other nation seems likely to develop, and which will continue to be a strategic national asset in the coming years, as it has been in the past.
The BBC/NHS comparison would only really work here if most households in the country were also spending a considerable amount on multiple forms of private healthcare, and young people were showing distinct signs of ceasing to use the NHS entirely.
If that were the case, we’d probably also be having a debate about the NHS.
Dunno about you, but we’re already ‘spending a considerable amount’ on our private dental care. I don’t have the figures, but I’d guess that a substantial number of people already do exactly that if they can afford to.
I have no idea how the young approach this – anyone have any insight there?
Where we live the the nearest NHS Dentist – if there is one with any capacity for new patients – is roughly 10 quid’s worth of petrol from home for a return journey.
I get mine free as a work perk.
At a National level, about 13% of people have private health insurance.
Over 50% of UK households have a Netflix subscription. That’s not even factoring in Sky, or other pay/streaming expenditure, which would be likely to take that figure materially higher.
I would like to see the BBC retained, but I think the comparison between healthcare and entertainment is apples/oranges.
I used to go to a private dentist pre Covid and before they went bust due to not charging enough. The people that took over charge about the same as a monthly family Netflix subscription and provide 2 x check ups and 2 x cleans per year. I asked my wife what the NHS dentist charges and it wasn’t too dissimilar.
Hmmmm. Stats check!
I suspect that the 13% you quote is for the whole caboodle; giving the illusion of total independence from the NHS (except for training, early years professional experience etc. etc.).
Furthermore, I suspect that includes the oodles of people who have an employer funded or subsidised arrangement.
Paying to use a private dental practice isn’t the same thing at all – it just covers check-ups, cleans and fillings if and when required.
And does your ‘50% of UK households have Netflix’ claim include the miwyuns – like me – who use somebody else’s – my brother’s – credentials to watch Netflix content?
I was indeed being generous with the 13%.
The figure was quoted in support of my suggestion that a far greater number of people in the UK pay for and enjoy non-BBC entertainment sources vs the equivalent figures for healthcare. It’s not really a discussion specifically about private dental, although I would imagine that is a subset of the overall healthcare figure.
The fact that the figure includes employer funded/subsidised policies only further reinforces the point.
The 50% figure for Netflix is subs, not access.
I would speculate that when you layer on top other paid for TV services and similar we might well be hitting 70%
All of which goes to show; while the UK population is largely reliant on the NHS for healthcare, it is not remotely reliant on the BBC for entertainment (besides which, the service types are also quite distinct). Hence, the idea that the BBC should continue to be maintained because the NHS is doesn’t really stand up (sadly). They’re playing very different roles, and if 50-70% of people had fairly comprehensive private medical insurance we’d be having the same debate about the NHS.
I can’t but help pointing out:
1. Private medicine creams off the simple stuff in the healthiest to make the most money.
2. When things go wrong, the wound dehisses, the hip keeps falling out, it’s the NHS that cleans up the mess.
3. Big Pharma make a fortune out of the NHS and the public purse generally. Hell, our government is one of the few in the world blocking the third world from being to manufacture their own vaccines, vaccines developed using mostly tax payers money by the way both here & in the US. Still, Big Pharma protects its profits.
4. Private companies are only interested in bricks and mortar when it comes to the care sector, not actually delivering good care. Mind you, the government is doing nothing to help either.
5. What they are doing to the BBC because of market forces, as you point out, is a rehearsal for what they plan to do with the NHS?
I’m not making any argument about healthcare, other than to say that it’s not a good comparator for entertainment, in this instance.
I know very little about market forces in the healthcare sector, but from a distance they look fairly distinct to the market forces driving change in the entertainment sector.
Is the suggestion at 5 that we need to protect the BBC as a bulwark to the NHS?
Yebbut, you said of the BBC that ‘hardly any of us use it’ (having already said that you hardly use it, so that’s maybe an easy logical leap to have made) and all I was doing was to point out that that’s not the be-all and end-all of the decision regarding whether, as you put it, we ‘can justify forcing people to continue to pay for it’.
There are many who do use it a lot – some on here, and certainly a large number elsewhere, and it is a national asset that no other country enjoys.
On balance, I think we certainly can – and should – oblige people to continue to pay for it.
And it’s not just about ‘market forces’. It’s not just about entertainment. What happened to the other corner stones of information and education? Are they to be abandoned? Do they no longer have any meaning in a national sense?
I didn’t say “hardly any of us use it”.
I said: “I don’t use the BBC a great deal… That seems to be a common theme in a lot of responses.”
I went on to say “most of us barely use it” – with the “most of us” referring to the responses on this thread which, while warm in their support of the BBC, hardly speak to the majority getting huge utility from it.
The statement was also presaged by “And if it isn’t that popular, then – really – can we justify forcing people to continue to pay for it”. I was speculating about a scenario where the BBC proves to be insufficiently popular to save it in the years ahead.
You quoted the “most of us barely use it” in your response above, and added “this is true”.
There are undoubtedly lots of people who are heavy users of the BBC. But the reality is that they’re having their usage subsidized by those who do not, and it’s hard to justify a national broadcaster funded by a mandatory license fee if only a comparative minority end up regarding it as one of their primary ports of call for media, either now or in the near future.
Market forces aren’t the be all, end-all, but they’re an important factor in the discussion. If the BBC attracts less and less eyeball time from the populace then it will become harder to justify forcing everyone to pay for it. 40 years ago, it was one of three choices, and best in class. Nowadays it’s competing on a much busier looking shelf, and often against services that are its equal or superior. Market forces.
I say all this not as a knock to the BBC, but because I think it’s important to be realistic about the very real challenges it faces. We can indeed oblige people to keep paying for it, but with the picture as it currently is, that’s a short term strategy at best; people won’t stomach being forced to pay the same amount for something that they, as a mass, use less and less.
First, they came for the BBC & I did nothing….
I’ll load the guns, you dig the trenches.
I’ll put the kettle on.
Move over, there’s still space on this pin.
If you are going to quote me back like this, please don’t selectively leave out the qualifying phrase ‘At any given point in time’ where it makes a significant difference to the meaning of ‘this is true’!
Where the BBC is nowadays competing against other sources, I contest the assertion that this is ‘against services that are its equal or superior.’
There are no other services with the same remit, with the exception of Channel 4 as our other public service broadcaster.
The BBC should not be in a race to the lowest common denominator – though they’ve already compromised themselves in that respect with the execrable Mrs. Brown etc.
I’ll be accused of elitism when I say that I don’t believe I should care what ‘the mass’ wants from the BBC – if all they want is drivel there are plenty of paid sources of that – but I want the BBC to be a beacon of quality and integrity, not an opiate.
I look upon the BBC as part of a continuum of decency and excellence within British society, and I will fight like hell against any who wish to remove it from view by adding it to the mound of family silver that’s already been flogged off to line private pockets.
I think we are in agreement about the importance of the BBC, but I’m just too incoherently mad at this shower of chancing thieves to allow the existence of any possibility that we might lose it.
The problem with “I don’t believe I should care what ‘the mass’ wants from the BBC” is that it’s currently the mass who are paying for it and, in the end, they’ll be the ones who decide its future.
As I’ve said elsewhere; ultimately, it’s a simple calculation – either enough people consider the license fee to be good value that it will be politically impossible to do away with it, or that’s not the case, in which case the license fee has lost the support of the public, which means it’s ultimately untenable.
My understanding is that current polling suggests that the majority are not in support of the license fee (although I recognise polling is always open to debate/dispute). For what it’s worth (which, in this context, ain’t much), I’m personally happy to continue paying the License Fee.
The BBC has been a noble and vital institution, and I agree that the values expounded by Lord Reith made total sense in an era where information was at a premium and the audience you were looking to educate was largely captive. But the media landscape, and indeed the world, is a very different place these days; viewers have far, far greater mobility (perhaps unfortunately).
If the BBC is to survive in any meaningful form, someone is going to need to articulate a future role and financial model that makes sense. If the expectation is that it can simply continue as is, with the public en masse paying for it, even as they migrate to other platforms, then I’m afraid that’s probably wishful thinking, unless you can achieve a consensus amongst political parties that it should be retained regardless of what the voters think (which seems unlikely).
Personally, I think the license fee is a lost cause; it’s really just a matter of when at this stage.
I haven’t considered in any great detail what the alternatives are until this discussion, but I’d probably start with the concept of a voluntary subscription model with some form of relatively gentle public subsidy, a permanent statutory footing, protected ownership and guardrails against (further) political interference. Someone else will probably explain now why that wouldn’t work, but that’s an off the top of my head stab at a semi-viable future.
Some good possibilities there I think.
I know you can claim that resistance is futile in the face of mass indifference, but as a thought experiment let’s replace the term ‘the BBC’ with an alternative, say for example, ‘financial help for immigrants’ or ‘social care for the disadvantaged’ or ‘capital punishment’ and wonder how much attention, as a society, we ought to pay to the opinions of the masses as regards these things?
Leadership entails steering a course that is ultimately best for the whole nation, and not just reacting to noisy current vagaries. That’s why I do indeed want to see ‘a consensus amongst political parties that it should be retained regardless of what the voters think’.
I don’t believe that if something has ‘lost the support of the public’ it should necessarily mean that its continuation is untenable. If that were so we’d have gone down the toilet as a nation even more quickly.
Capital punishment did spring to mind as I wrote the above. It’s one of the few political issues I can think of offhand where the political classes have (wisely) decided that the views of the public should not hold sway, and that position has proved fairly durable over the last 50 years or so.
I think it’s an exception though.
Ultimately, we live in a democracy. If something doesn’t enjoy the support of the public, but the public are paying for it (which is what distinguishes the BBC from capital punishment, for the purposes of this discs), that thing is on shaky ground.
Our leaders deciding what’s best for us, regardless of what we might think, always sounds great when it’s something we agree with. It’s not so great when the shoe’s on the other foot though, and I’d certainly be extremely wary of handing this mob that particular power.
I’m also not convinced this issue can be realistically described as a “noisy current vagary”. I don’t believe we’re seeing a momentary dip in support for the license fee that will correct in years ahead. Quite the opposite.
But if people were told they had to pay 160 quid a year or something for capitol punishment to be continued they may not be so much in favour of it (if indeed that is the case)
Maybe if it was televised…..
I suppose if it’s not popular enough, and not enough people value it, then we can’t keep forcing people to fund it.
Personally, I love it and would gladly pay double the licence fee to keep it going. If only for the archive than anything else.
Do you think there’s any alternative to keep it going and focus on the archive? Surely iPlayer could act as a massive repository for thousands of shows, couldn’t it? Wouldn’t that be cheaper – it could even subscription-based, so you don’t pay unless you want access to it? Maybe I’m naive and don’t understand how much that costs, but I find myself watching quite a lot of old shows on iPlayer and would love to see a lot more.
I agree the archive is magnificent. My instinct is that, left to the market, it wouldn’t self sustain, and would soon enough be swallowed by Netflix or similar.
The basis of the subscription model is already there with Britbox. The current situation is messy as both ITV/C4 and the BBC all have their own streaming platforms, but there’s going to have to be consolidation in the future and without a license fee, Britbox seems the immediate alternative.
Trouble is, streaming platforms that can’t generate enough income meet the demand for new content will be the first to get consumed by those that can, as as per Bingo’s comment above, Netflix, Disney or someone like Viacomm (who own Pluto) will swallow them whole.
The streaming wars are all about global scale.
Netflix lost money hand over first for years, because it was scaling fast. There’s going to be room for a handful of a subscription services once the dust eventually settles. Everything else will be acquired and/or otherwise consolidated into those services.
Impossible to imagine the BBC as one of that handful, so it’s going to take some pretty skillful navigation to identify and secure a patch of ground on which they can stake their future.
A loyal and devoted UK consumer base with some additional global subs, plus some sort of government mandate to keep the organisation out of private hands might do it, but even then it’s going to be a tough needle to thread.
Everyone is happy paying 150 sheets a year to feel good about Auntie while we’re all required to do it; will people still feel the same when most of the population are no longer paying for the privilege and covering the household cost of Beeb Plus means not having Netflix, or some other dramatically superior, high revenue, globalised streaming platform? I don’t know.
Wow, what a grim outlook. I keep going to reply with an objection to what you are saying then I realise there’s no way round it. Either we somehow protect the BBC or it will get submerged into other more aggressive and profitable businesses, basically.
We really need a figurehead – David Attenborough I suppose??? – to explain to the populace the true value of the BBC and explain the numbers in a clear, concise, Chris Whitty way.
Something like this perhaps – maybe there is some consistency (or persistent arguments) in this world after all
Sadly I think it’s too late. Back in 2004 Dominic Cummings then “think tank” the New Frontiers Foundation argued that the BBC was a “mortal enemy”. He proposed
1) the undermining of the BBC’s credibility; 2) the creation of a Fox News equivalent / talk radio shows / bloggers etc to shift the centre of gravity; 3) the end of the ban on TV political advertising (an enterprising donor with a few hundred thousand pounds would do more to help the Conservative Party by funding a legal challenge of this ban than he ever could by donating direct to the CP). One low cost thing that Right networks could do now is the development of the web networks scrutinising the BBC and providing information to commercial rivals with an interest in undermining the BBC’s credibility. During the election and even more so in a EU referendum, there will be a huge need for the BBC’s reporting of issues to be scrutinised and taken apart minute-to-minute.
And that’s pretty much played out. Groups like “Biased BBC” , the ever shady Institute of Economic Affairs, the Taxpayers Alliance plus self interested media entities such as the Times, Mail, Telegraph, Express, Sun have maintained a steady stream of anti BBC rhetoric that’s been readily grasped many irritated by BBC output.
George Osborne deftly increased the drain in BBC funding which has been key to enabling people criticise the BBC for reduced services, or weakened coverage. In real terms funding has been reducing for around 15 years. Even Thatcher resisted the idea of cutting the BBC loose after the Peacock report in 1987.
I fear there’s little chance of a clear headed, objective discussion of the BBC’s future free of political manipulation.
Are Netflix/Disney/Amazon/Sky really that much better than the BBC?
Arguably, yes – if viewing figures are to be believed.
But we’re also talking about a future scenario where the BBC is subscription funded and the major players continue their global growth. Netflix is projected to hit over 300 million subs by 2025, for example. And it’s likely that streaming platforms will expand to take in news, sport and other non-core formats.
How does the Beeb deliver an equivalent/better service on what is likely to be a fraction of the revenues? Not impossible, but tough.
Where can I find those viewing figures, please?
I wrote a long answer and my phone ate it.
Short answer: some of the figures I’m referring to aren’t public, but if you want an example look at UK viewing figures for the BBC’s highest rated drama of 2021 (6.1m) and Netflix’s equivalent (5.8m), then adjust for the fact that Netflix is only in half of UK households at this stage.
“Better” probably isn’t fair, and it’s certainly subjective, but it’s a fallacy to believe the BBC’s content has a magic quality that will prevent eyeballs wandering away in the medium to long term. Particularly given the trends in the viewing habits of under 45s.
Hope that helps. Again, I’m not slagging off the BBC, I’m trying to frame up the challenge it (and, frankly, every other broadcaster), faces.
I do know that there are 8 million homes where they only access ‘licence fee’ TV. I’m assuming you don’t regard Eastenders as drama. 😀
Eastenders isn’t a Drama, it’s a Soap.
But it’s an excellent case in point. Even if it was a Drama, it wouldn’t be in the chat; it pulls way less than 5.8m viewers an episode on average these days.
In fact, its ratings have been the subject of recent hand wringing; it did 2.9m for its Xmas special, which is a fraction of what it once pulled (30m at its peak).
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2021/10/13/bbc-boss-defends-eastenders-ratings-but-says-its-been-hit-hard-15412983/amp/
I can’t shed any years over Eastenders.
iPlayer is doing better:
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/1550115/bbc-iplayer-record-viewing-figures-over-christmas-redesign-new-logo
Yes, very good.
Wow, less than 3m? that’s incredible. Time to put it out of it’s (eternal) misery I think. I read somewhere that they were recently breaking Masterchef into 2 episodes with EE in-between to try and get more viewers, that’s the opposite of what used to happen.
I’ve already admitted elsewhere on this thread I like The Wheel. So let me downgrade my Afterword rep further still and admit I watch Eastenders. Me and my wife both watch it, usually as easy viewing at the end of a hard day. And you get to like a lot of the regular characters (as well as love to hate the ones you don’t).
But I’m not surprised the viewing figures have declined so much since its heyday. In particular over the last couple of years it has been getting noticeably more desperate and amateur-ish. At first it seemed to be as a result of Covid restrictions (it was comical for a while when every shot had to be artfully set up so everyone was six feet apart), but it seems to be more than that. It’s baffling. The production standards have been pretty consistent over it’s 35 year run, but now plotlines seem really thin, many plots seem to just disappear and some meander about for ages with no-one apparently having a clue what the point is. It feels sometimes like they have chucked out a load of script pages with no-one checking for continuity, with characters appearing in two places at once and making bizarre decisions. It’s as if they are just making it up a week at a time, and filming it really quickly.
Arthur, are you talking about East Enders, or the Afterword?
@salwarpe, don’t be silly, there’s no comparison between the two. One is a clapped-out institution full of out of touch, strange individuals desperately trying to cling onto something that was of passing importance decades ago and struggling to maintain some kind of relevance in today’s fast-moving world, but instead going round and round in circles of ridiculous and unconvincing dialogue and interactions, with no end in sight, and the other is… oh hang on…
Well played!
The Archive is magnificent. I’d pay for it but I’m not sure enough other people would..
The BBC website is one of the first I click on in the morning, sport first, then news. I tend to lazily stick to Radio 2 during the day (I know). BBC Radio London occasionally at the weekend. TMS, Match of the Day, BBC Breakfast and BBC news at 10. They still do some decent 9pm dramas. There are still the ratings Monsters like Strictly. I’m 56 very few of these options will appeal to those under 40.
For me as much as having the BBC on tap for £150 a year feels like a real bargain it cannot last in its current form. If it means Ken Bruce being sponsored by Viagra than so be it. Other advertisers for othe BBC programmes are available….
What about local BBC? It’s all very well for us cool kids who don’t dig it, but a lot of the old folks on whom the Tories depend on polling day love their local radio – and BBC local is properly local – the commercial stations outside the big cities are generic in the extreme.
I don’t see the local offer surviving under any private-sector model.
Agreed. I think both local tv and radio, and the BBC’s national radio coverage tend to be forgotten in these discussions but are hugely important. Whilst I would guess it is largely an older (and often Tory?) demographic many people value BBC regional tv news. BBC local radio has been undermined thoroughly by budget cuts over the years but is still important in many locations around the country and highly unlikely to be provided by a commercial operator. And Radio One is still pulling in over 8m listeners; Radio Two 14m, Radio Four 10m; Five Live 5m; Five Live Sports Extra 5m, 6 Music and Radio Three over 2m each. Some of these would arguably be replaced by commercial operators, but many not. Would the country be a better place if these all went, or were taken over by the Global or Bauer Media conglomerates? I don’t think so.
And national radio presenters don’t just get handed the keys to Broadcasting House and told to speak when the red light comes on, they learn their craft beforehand at BBC local radio.
Not all the celebrities they put on Radio 2
The Tories say this will stop pensioners being thrown in jail for not paying their fee. This is nonesense. The people who are jailed for non payment are mostly women of child-bearing age who are poor. They were prosecuted aggressively under Conservative governments. It is less of a problem that it was, largely because the beeb recognised the injustice of it.
The demographic who rely on the BBC most are pensioners. The licence fee is the cheapest ‘subscription’ I pay for TV and easily the vest value. I’m sure many pensioners think the same. If they don’t, they will soon find out.
You don’t know what you have got until it is gone.
It is pretty difficult to find any evidence of people actually going to prison for not paying for a TV licence. As at June 2021, there were no prisoners doing time for not paying for a tv licence. Of the 120,000 or so who, last year, were found guilty of the criminal offence of not paying for their licence, around 75% were female. None will have got a criminal record for the offence. They are just as criminal as somone fined for speeding offences and no more.
Yes. Sorry. I meant to type ‘were’ jailed, rather than ‘are’. Certainly, pensioners are not in jail as the Tories suggest.
No need to apologise – I was agreeing with you but with an additional fact or two. The current noises from the Governemnt feel fact free and political.
One of the parts of the Letters Of Last Resort on Nuclear Subs is whether Radio 4s Today programme is still broadcasting.
Imagine a scenario where all the submarine captain can get is an advert for Safestyle Windows …
(I know the LOLR could be revised to say can you still tune in to Heart FM, but it doesn’t have quite the same gravitas)
Putin has tapes of 500 hours of old John Humphrys programmes, and almost as many hours from the Brian Redhead days; they’ll get pumped out at random across all wavelengths on a 15 GW transmitter as soon as his attack ships can see the British coast. Should buy them at least an hour to get ashore.
500 hours of James Naughtie… That would be like, wow, about four questions!
They use those tapes as punishment in the gulags.
I think some here may be thinking of their idea of what the BBC is rather than what has become these days. I love the BBC and support its continued existence. However they have expanded to become this huge monolith. I understand people liking local radio but there are dozens of channels and I doubt the listening figures are too staggering.
Also they now have 7 TV channels (1 online only), are 2 childrens channels and a news channel needed these days? Maybe they could be funded by alternative means? As for the main channels, the quality is nothing like as good as it used to be, they are often making commercial programs for the lowest common denominator and doing things like paying a semi competent presenter like Gary Lineker half a million a year or something for generally making one hour’s TV for 30 weeks in the year.
Also their wall to wall coverage of things like Glastonbury where they normally send hundreds of employees. Yes coverage of it is nice but does it have to be on this scale?
And they do already carry advertising, on the website overseas.
Yet they manage all of that on a license fee which has pretty much kept in line with inflation for decades (which isn’t necessarily an argument for keeping it; I’m open to other suggestions for their funding).
I used to have a regular guest slot on BBC Essex, talking about books. At the time, about 20 years ago, the unofficial listening figures for that mid-morning show (the one including listeners outside the Essex area the station was designed to serve) was about quarter of a million.
I take issue with the perceived lack of quality too. There has always been plenty of dross, and and I’m sure there is more of it now given the sheer amount of material produced. Most weeknight television has always been undemanding, and most Saturday evening television has always been dross. But there is still a host of excellent material for a range of viewers, from The Repair Shop to I May Destroy You, and quite possibly more good BBC stuff than at any one time before, including the option of using iPlayer to catch up on it.
I’m agnostic about Lineker and his pay, but he’s about as good a presenter for MotD as I can imagine, and I don’t know how the figures balance but don’t they sell the rights to their excellent Glastonbury coverage worldwide?
I have criticisms of the BBC, not least some of their news coverage, and I don’t even watch that much of it, but for what I do and the radio and BBC Sounds, it seems to me that I get a very good deal.
It has grown, that’s true, and it may well be that some elements could be cut without damaging the BBC’s overall delivery of its remit. But it’s that remit, unique in broadcasting, which is both its value and its challenge. Sure, local radio listenership figures are modest, but it has a social value that goes beyond simple numbers. It’s cultural and educational programming, whilst it has taken a big hit, doesn’t achieve massive figures but reaches many for whom it is profoundly important.
As for the ‘lowest common denominator’ argument this frequently gets thrown at the BBC – why are they showing The Apprentice, or Strictly or the Wheel when commercial TV could do that just as well? But the BBC has always had popular mass market programming and it’s been a key element of its job. Those who say they shouldn’t do it tend also to be the first to lambast the BBC for being poor value because it puts on programmes no one want to watch. That to me is the real threat for the BBC- it simply won’t be able to afford big scale popular entertainment and drama shows, and will decline by default into some unloved ghetto of minority programming, and even that it won’t be able to afford to do properly.
Change is needed, I think that’s true. The trouble is that the change the government wants is ultimately to destroy the BBC entirely and everything it stands for, and to throw it to the market. You can see it in Dorries’ dismissive phrase ‘the days of state-run television are over’.
If they came out and said -‘ there absolutely is a place for a non-market led national channel producing and broadcasting television and radio programmes and news and we will protect it entirely. But we need a real national discussion on what it looks like in a multi-channel, digital world, and how it is paid for in the best interests of everyone’ then I’d agree with them. But it’s clear – their intentions are bad.
I think your analysis is bang on. The only things I’d add are as follows:
(a) I think we have to accept the possibility that once we’ve had the debate there might not be a viable non-market solution for the BBC. In all the heat and light since Dorries’ announcement I’ve seen lots of recognition that the license fee can’t continue as is, but relatively few sensible suggestions as to what the alternative future model for the BBC might look like.
(b) I sometimes worry that when we say “we need an urgent debate about x subject” it now translates to a lot of people as “we need to chat a bit about x subject for show and then leave things exactly as they are”. We’ve seen it with immigration. We saw it to some extent with Brexit.
Someone faintly credible needs to come up with a viable strategy for the BBC in the next five years (ideally that would be the leader of the Labour Party, but I’m not sure I’ll hold my breath). Otherwise the same pattern will repeat and the Tories will get their way.
There’s surely at least one general election between now and 2027, so any truly good ideas should at least have the opportunity of a proper airing.
Agreed on the ‘we need a debate’ point. Even as I wrote it I was shuddering slightly at the prospect of yet another inconclusive and drawn out process on the future of the BBC – God knows there have been enough of those already. In truth what it needs is some well informed, clear-thinking analysis led by the government, and some measured but clear proposals from them on the way forward. Over to you Nadine. Oh….
The spend on the BBC in real terms has been diminishing for years, but it’s still trying to fulfill it’s charter as public service broadcaster – hence kids TV, local radio etc. They were the most trusted source for information during the pandemic, and stepped up to help with home schooling etc.
Part of their remit is to entertain, which means you’re going to get Mrs Brown’s Boys alongside Only Connect. Subjective assessments of entertainment program quality or Gary Lineker are routinely offered by those who want Aunty buried but objectively don’t really prove anything other than the BBC does stuff you like and stuff you don’t.
I would imagine that if the Tories succeed in killing CBeebies it will earn them the rightful and eternal enmity of just about anyone who has been a parent or child in this country in the last 15 years.
You’d have thought Rees Mogg, of all people, might understand.
Don’t be silly, that’s what nanny is for.
Particularly the last two.
By the way, I unashamedly love The Wheel. Is anyone else going to admit to this? Low-brow, populist Saturday night telly it might be, but it’s terrific. And Michael McIntyre is great (yes, you heard me): one of those genuinely funny, old school gameshow hosts.
Can’t stand it. But The Wall …. now there’s real prime time. I’ll brook no criticism of Danny Dyer either. I’ll also cheerfully watch The Hit List even if I rarely get more than 3 songs per show.
So what happens when the government’s boot is not on the BBC’s neck any more, as it undoubtedly has been for most of the last 50 years? The Beeb still have the country’s ear but the Tories have shot their bolt and done their worst. Now they are free to say, replace Laura Kuensberg with Noam Chomsky LIKE THEY’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO.
“That’s not left wing bias….. THIS is left-wing bias!”
I mean… it’s one way to go.
Expect Panorama to be about the Israeli Army every week for five years.
Guest spots on the One Show for Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange.
Saturday Kitchen with Tariq Ali etc.
Dorries has just spoken of the BBC being in a “London bubble” (they’re obsessed with f***** bubbles), but the Beeb has pretty much upped sticks to Salford!
Just for that move, it could be argued (and I would) that they’ve done more for “levelling up” than Fat Boy and his Beatbox Crew would get round to in a thousand years.
You wouldn’t expect Dorries to know about the Salford thing. She was caught out recently over Channel 4.
“Aw yeah, we’ll shut down them lefty twats at Channel 4 an’ all, with their queers and crips all over the place”
“You can’t do that, minister”
“DON’T YOU TELL ME WHAT I CAN’T DO” etc
Just heard a Tory MP (white, male, ’bout 50, could have been anyone) on the Radio 4 news who, when Salford was cited, said it’s still urban and they could get out into the community more. What a load of shite!
At 6.30 p.m., if you wish to tune in, every single region in this country will have its own regional TV news programme lasting 30 minutes.
Can anyone talk me through Sky’s local news programmes tonight?
Square root of diddley, isn’t it!
The only time they get to any outposts is when they send football fans from the South Coast up to Middlesbro’ for a noon kick-off.
I’ve never understood the obsession with moving out of London. Programmes have to be made and broadcast from somewhere and while I can see the need to spread production of drama around, I don’t see the logic in broadcasting the flagship breakfast programme from Salford when parliament is in That London, unless it’s to allow a household name insurance company to make a boatload of money because they own the studio development.
Not sure sofa location is important when a reporter can be on the ground reporting from outside Downing Street, and even that could be done from a studio in Timbuktu if they wanted to
And it was done to save costs right?
Most BBC types like to spend their holidays in Blackpool and Morecambe, so that’s…
….what are you laughing at?
I’m sure everybody living below the poverty line in London always love to hear how they are part of some metropolitan elite. Just as everyone outside London will be fascinated to learn that the BBC plays no part in their downtrodden humble lives
This is a really tricky one. I think the BBC and NHS comparisons are valid. They are both loved, well funded (they really are!) but not particularly well run or making the best use of their resources.
The BBC are out of touch with a lot of the country now. They “modernise” constantly, removing favourite formats or presenters. They are very woke. They do lean left. They covered the pandemic dreadfully most of the time. They make terrible decisions – eg. Bashir, Savile, Maxwell coverage. I love their output that I consume and curse their stupidity at giving the moronic likes of Dorries the bullets to shoot at them.
You may think the D&I and left leaning is a good thing and perhaps it is. But similar to the Labour party there is a very large share of the population who don’t like what they are doing. Viewers taken for granted, a bit like those red wall Labour seats. But once you destroy the BBC you can’t restore it unfortunately.
I would never vote for someone intending to abolish the BBC or NHS but both are crying out for some sensible forward thinking governance. The licence fee may not be feasible but there are alternatives.
How did they cover the pandemic dreadfully? Genuine question!
(Liking the “did” by the way….has it finished?)
I think they got stuck in a scenario of doom, not presenting the facts.
At the beginning when we all thought we might die fair enough:). We were all scared and necessarily cautious.
But 2021 onwards modellers have been wrong repeatedly, actually proven so repeatedly by the facts wrong, yet the BBC keeps churning out the same old, quite irresponsibly doom outlook from some quite extreme left leading scientists like Gurdasani or Pagel. It’s the equivalent of them having anti vaxxers on giving their opinion. There are a lot of people not with access to other news sources who are still scared to leave the house. Or believe the NHS is about to collapse. Again.
See also many other national news operators of course guilty of the same . But the BBC are not the Guardian or Indy or Torygraph who you expect to be politically motivated in their news coverage. They should be factual.
It has finished. In the UK anyway (Until the next variant pops along:)
Unfortunately the whole problem of crying wolf is the wolf will arrive one day and no one will believe them.
Covid is certainly over for the 85 people who died today. Maybe not for their families but hey, we’re bored of it, so fuck them.
85 people dying of something isn’t a pandemic.. we’d have hundreds of pandemics now if that was the case
Monday’s numbers are always artificially low because they are actually Sunday’s count and there are reporting delays at weekends.
Over the last seven days there have been 1845 deaths. Just one week in the course of a pandemic.
I may be reading things wrong but cases appear to be plummeting and hospitalizations and deaths will soon follow. There can be several thousand deaths a week from influenza during the winter months I believe. I realise Covid was much more virulent in 2020 and early 2021 but this variant seems to be much less severe. Sadly, vulnerable and aged people are always going to be dying.
Sometimes I think the media are enjoying this, The Guardian especially seems to trawl the world to find the worst daily statistic it can find which is then displayed prominently on their website.
The Guardian’s palpable disappointment that Omicron has not proved more severe and desperate hunt for any hints that the situation might yet deteriorate is proper through the looking glass stuff. Daily Mail level alarmism.
There are way more deaths from covid than influenza (at least nine times as many in 2021 in the UK). Deaths are now occurring in the under-vaccinated more often than the vulnerable. People are dying who wouldn’t normally.I
Omicron is still a nasty, deadly virus. Thankfully, it’s the least deadly of the variants so far but the vaccines have protected us from its worst. The impact on an already damaged NHS has been horrendous.
What comes next?
At the rate people are still dying from Covid, I’m not so sure it is over – I thought the first (and second and third) waves were supposed to have picked off the elderly and vulnerable “who would have died soon anyway”. How many of those are left for Covid to pick off? It seems to a layman that those now infected are the un/under-vaccinated.
It is certainly still doing the rounds around here, especially amongst those with school-age kids in the household.
Over a two year period a lot of people, earlier not so elderly and vulnerable, become so…… And I daren’t hazard any guesses as to whether lockdown restrictions contributed toward their heightened vulnerability. But, however much I was and am an advocate of stringent lockdown, when called for, I do wonder.
I didn’t say it wasn’t. I hope that in a few weeks it will be on its way out and I am talking about 2022 figures not 2021 as I made clear
Don’t worry, Dai, I wasn’t replying to you really. Nor quoting you directly.
No worries @fentonsteve
Sorry, but that is an ill thought through riposte to a reasoned answer to a reply to your “genuine question”. Mind your manners, sir.
I’d also be interested to hear how they ‘lean left’. To my mind they have always seen themselves as the voice of the government, a policy which Laura Kuenssberg took to extreme lengths in the last 2 elections*. With senior figures (not all current) such as Paxman, Neil, Humphrys, Robinson and others I really don’t see how they could be considered left leaning, especially in current affairs coverage where it matters most. You could define ‘woke’ as you understand while you’re at it. You say it as if it was a bad thing.
* Having asked you for examples I should explain my reasoning here. Once I had noticed that every election vox-pop started with a former Labour voter saying they would vote another way ‘because Corbyn’ I couldn’t stop noticing it. It may be that everyone she spoke to did say the same thing, I’m far from a Corbyn enthusiast myself, but I very quickly seemed to be too much of a coincidence to be anything like an editorial decision.
I think all the senior figures you quote above very good broadcasters who are not left or right particularly. I also think most of them are not with the BBC anymore!
Nobody wants GB News but I believe the Beeb could have been more balanced in their news coverage of Brexit & Covid for example.
Their programming is out of touch. They sometimes seem scared to be popular even.
On Jezza he was so inept after a while they automatically portrayed him that way all the time and ignored any positives. Which was unfair.
They did the same to May and now it’s Boris turn and the same is true of them too.
On what basis are they well funded?
On the basis they receive a large amount of money.
They have to do too much though. It’s spread too thinly, they spend it on the wrong things and they are wasteful.
Which are the wrong things and how are they wasteful? Seems to me what the wrong things are is largely a matter of opinion. I haven’t watched Eastenders for years and I never watch any sport but I wouldn’t suggest that none of it should be covered or the Albert Square set be demolished.
The latter suggests the Enders cast continuing to shuffle around a smoking wreckage in a chilling echo of the Blitz. As if that show could be any more bleedin’ miserable.
Don’t they have regular fires, gas explosions etc? I thought that was part of the appeal.
Most of it is just Phil Mitchell’s head exploding.
Funny you mention EastEnders as they are spending £87m on a new set!
Interesting that she has slightly softened the message today. Typical tactic though – and job done. Yet more undermining of the BBC and preparing the ground for its steady dismantling.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jan/17/no-final-decision-made-on-bbc-licence-fee-says-nadine-dorries?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
I think it quite possible she’s so clueless she overstepped the mark completely.
Once Boris is gone hopefully she’ll get also replaced by a grown up
I’m hoping Boris stays on until his reputation is even more tarnished than it is now. Not sure who his successor will be but they all seem pretty awful.
How much more damage do you want him to do, both in terms of reckless policies and the pervasive political and national culture? He’s a bully trapped in the corner, lashing out. He should go, now.
I worry Priti Patel will take over.
Seriously? She was my constituency MP, but in a very safe Tory seat. Outside of such cushioning, I can’t see the Conservative membership voting for someone so toxic and so stupid.
Anything is possible, I suppose, given their craven, submissive adoration of the Maggie.
I was being slightly flippant. What I meant was I want Johnson to be damaged and humiliated so that people who voted for for his Have I Got News For You persona realised that being a bit of a laugh” on tv doesn’t make you fit to run the country.
BTW, Patel is a 12/1 outsider, Sunak and Truss are the front runners.
Thank goodness. My irony detector needs new batteries.
Although I think Johnson has inflicted so much long-lasting damage on the country for his own gratification and benefit, that he well deserves humiliation (rubbing his canine nose in the shit he carelessly deposited everywhere), I’m not sure the self-belief he wears like armour can ever be removed.
I think he is irredeemable, and that being the case, there will always be stupid, selfish people defending him – Dorries and Patel being first out of the traps.
Read a serious piece in a serious paper at the weekend which said Liz Truss could quite possibly be our next PM. She has been apparently sounding out supporters and “promised” Jacob Rees Mogg the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Can you imagine it? “I would like to present my Budget to The House. Tax rates reduced to 0.1% for anyone earning over a million. BBC funding withdrawn. For the next five minutes I shall spout Latin.”
You wait until he starts repealing the corn laws…
Once she becomes PM, how long can the cheese and apple cheerleader last before she collapses in incompetence? The reselling of the new irony lady.
And then who’s next? Mark Francois? Andrew Bridgen? Desmond Swayne? Maggie Throup? Sir Redwood Leigh? An endless stream of quality candidates…
Just replace the black painted wood with a revolving door.
Apparently she is popular with activists but less so with the main membership. Fingers crossed.
Never quite got the “Metropolitan Elite” putdown.
“Metropolitan” (the best tube line) and “Elite” are two good things, aren’t they?
“Itchy” and “Arse”… different matter entirely.
Sounds like a bunch of really particularly good underground train drivers. Great people if you ask me.
I like Jubilee (and Victoria), must be a royalist I guess …
Not Toyah’s best film.
Bloody good Kinks single though…
No that was by The Fall …
What was that cable channel Kelvin McKenzie ran, with naked weather presenters bouncing on trampolines?
Channel 5.
Oh Ho⬆️
From 1985. I’m thinking that the BBC still does most of this – and more.
There’s an echo in here …
I haven’t read the whole thread in detail as it has passed critical mass for practical phone reading so forgive me if repeating here. I have some (not a lot, but some) sympathy for the view that the Beeb shouldn’t be competing with commercial channels. Like any business facing budget tightening (an all of them do at the moment) they need to think about what comprises their core business.
This will differ from person to person but IMHO they should be providing content you can’t get elsewhere, so good quality unbiased news, current affairs, comment, world service, history, documentaries, quality kids programmes (maybe). This should be free, funded by the TV licence. Commercial stations would never do it.
Bright orange people dancing, making cakes, cosdram etc could be on a paid service if people want it. See also teenager content. None of them watch the Beeb – I mean, like, literally. Not core business.
Radio – a good core set of national programming fine, less convinced about the need for regional radio. Maybe certain hours / items are local, perhaps, a bit like “now we go to news from your area”.
Sport is a tricky one. There’s an argument for sporting events of national interest could be considered core business, but there will always be (and they always pop up on here) a vocal group who hate football/tennis/rugby/ping pong etc. so maybe it should be on the BBC Xtra channel. Allegedly the Beeb team is massive for the big international events – don’t know if this is true but I’ve heard it a few times.
The website – should the Beeb really be providing recipes etc? Dunno. The costs all add up.
Agree pretty much with that.
In the mid 90s I was out of work, saw an advert for a position at the BBC for a Project manager who had run projects using html. I ticked both of those boxes and applied. Later I realised the job was to start up the BBC website! I was a bit under qualified for that, didn’t get an interview, but at least they sent me a nice letter saying I had been considered but they weren’t taking my application any further.
The point about the recipes when it was last discussed is they were created by the Good Food show, paid for by license fee payers. And they are largely text & low-res image-based, so hosting them takes up 0.00001% of the Beeb News homepage data overload.
And the roast spuds are bloody lovely.
Post-Brexit, we might need more turnip recipes.
They’re bloody good recipes.
It’s nice to find some online that don’t have all this “cups” and “rutabaga” nonsense. And most recipes in books are based on you being able to get the most crucial ingredient from one specific deli in West London.
I enjoy the ones that are for Chinese cookery. Often needs no end of specialist ingredients and decent equipment, plus you need decent cooking skills. Or you could just walk to the corner and pick up a delicious (British authentic) Chinese meal for about 5 to 6 quid which you probably wouldn’t get near if you cooked it yourself.
I haven’t got time to watch Delia Smith stuff her capers…
Don’t you want to see Ainsley Harriot grinning mischievously as bastes his poulet?
I broadly agree that a sensible future for the BBC would include taking a long, hard look at what it’s good at and who it appeals to.
The only risk of doing so is that, per the above, you end up with a BBC built for the people who are the heaviest users, who are the over-45s. Makes total sense, but there’s a material risk of guaranteed obsolescence if there’s no attempt at all to appeal to the next generation.
Personally, I think they’d be mad to lose the cakes, the orange people and the kids programming. I don’t use any of them, but they all strike me as real sweet spots where huge value is being delivered and generated.
The next generation will be over 45 one day, even if they don’t believe it. 🙂 But maybe the Beeb should be finding ways to make the core service more attractive to younger people. Twang Jr, 17, is not short of opinions on world affairs but there is no sensible Beeb offering he might watch. It doesn’t have to be boring. I think it was a massive mistake for the Beeb to cancel This Week for example, which was fun and serious at the same time. Surely they could manage this for young people. Mind you TJ doesn’t watch any scheduled programmes so probably a different delivery channel is needed. Equally kids programming is core, for me.
The value created by the orange people and their cakes isn’t in doubt, but it’s not core business and should be on the paid option. Probably doesn’t have to be much per household. But it’s not core business.
The trouble with recipes being on the website is it’s the thin end of the wedge. You either focus or you don’t. I use beeb recipes of course but plenty of others from other sources too. There are probably dozens of people at the Beeb having meetings about font sizes on the recipes website as we speak….For me it goes. Along with the magazine type content. The educational stuff – BiteSize etc – that can stay.
Haha – trust me, I’m starting to believe it!
Have you turned completely into your dad as you’ve got older? I know I haven’t and I don’t expect today’s youth to do so either.
Each generation has it’s own stuff they take into middle age and beyond.
Compare BBC Radio 2 with The Light Programme of my youth, Radio 4 with the Home Service.
The differences are huge.
Radio 1 stagnated and lost listeners. It needed and eventually got a clearout and revamp that worked for a good while. Probably needs replacing with a set of online content channels now.
Lady from Rag Doll productions on the wireless this morning. In The Night Garden cost £14M to make. Beeb no longer has that kind of money to spend on new programmes.
In my house, we (two adults, two teens) often enjoy an Operation Ouch! (CBBC show) together.
My kids are too old for Cbeebies now, but I have to say that channel is absolutely superb. Great mix of education and entertainment. Plus, some of the theme songs are absolute bangers.
Speaking of education, didn’t the Beeb step up during lockdown to provide a whole load of education programmes online, etc?
Yep. Can’t say I caught any of them though. My house was a blur of home schooling, seemingly endless work and Animal Crossing. I’m sure they were good.
Animal crossing? During lockdown you went crazy and started some kind of dreadful experimental kitchen?
The Island of Doctor Bingeau!
They did. I know several people who said they were life savers.
No money to make expensive series/films? Isn’t that more about how the money is allocated internally rather than funding? How much does Strictly cost each year?
The BBC can’t win. Make sucessful shows (i.e. Strictly) and they are castigated for crowding out ITV etc, spend money on more niche stuff and they get told they are failing to reach a big enough audience.
Strictly isn’t something I watch, nor East Enders. But they entertain millions – people like this stuff, and I’m fine that some of my license fee goes on shows I’ll never watch. It’s part of the public service remit.
Sure they can make stuff like that too, just wonder how it is divided up. They have done things in the past like moving Andy Murray Wimbledon games from BBC2 to 1 in desperate search of higher viewing figures. am still confused that some TV sets still can’t get BBC2, thought that was solved in the late 60s.
I don’t think there was anything desperate about it. They were going to get the same viewing numbers either way. It’s more to do with using BBC1 to present the “flaghship” stuff, and BBC2 for the lower auidence, more broad based shows. Top Gear, Call of Duty moved from BBC2 to 1 as their popularity grew.
I suppose she meant “…for a minority-interest channel like CBeebies”.
I don’t know what the viewing fgures are for CBeebies, or CBBC, but I bet they are lower than for BBC1.
Oh didn’t realise that. That’s a lot of money to spend on a kids programme.
A program like Night Garden is expensive but I have no doubt they recoup that investment on overseas sales.
I was right. 34 countries. Dubbed into 19 languages.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worldwidestories/pressreleases/2009/07_july/itng_dvds.shtml
And what a brilliant programme it is too.
Except for when those extreme noise terrorists, the Tomliboos, launch into free form jazz.
Go to 12.45 in this episode.
Here’s an overview of Overseas Activities and Sales.
https://www.bbcstudios.com/
https://www.bbcstudios.com/annual-review
A new series of Dr Who, for example, is now a global event in the Sci Fi community.
100 30-min episodes made over two years.
Ok. That’s good value then
I realise there are upfront costs but Rag Doll must make money over all, what with the foreign sales and merch.
Crikey! I’d forgotten the merch. There is lots of it.Imagine all those millions of tinies all over the world who want Night Garden Cuddlies, Jim Jams, Ninky Nonks and Pinky Ponks.
Many moons ago, I bought my daughter a large, Danish speaking Iggle Piggle doll when I went to the Roskilde Festival.
ITNG ( II drømmehaven) sounds wonderful in Danish.¨
And Spanish. Hola Makka Pakka!
And as for Norwegian…
Their ‘gigs’ are pretty lucrative too. Mini Paws went to see it live a couple of times and it wasn’t cheap. You could pay extra for a meet and greet with Uppsi Daisy et al.
A friend of mine did two tours with The Tweenies which were the most lucrative tours of the year as there were two shows a day. The close up dancing on the first tour was recorded and the footage used on the screens so no need for cameras or operators on the second tour. The hard drive playback was a bit flaky in those days and would stutter occasionally but production reckoned that a bunch of small kids wouldn’t notice.
Wouldn’t notice? I don’t believe it for a second. You can’t fool the kids.
As mentioned, when we screened the trailer for the new Bamse film at Bio Reflexen (Bamse is enormous with preschoolers), there was a roar of discontent from the two and three year old Kärrtorp cinephiles that there was a different actor doing Bamse’s voice.
There are many kids programmes that do live shows. Our current fave is Yo Gabba Gabba.
They even played Coachella.
When are we going to see Makka at Glastonbury??
This should bring back some memories for Mini Paws. I loved that roar of applause when Macca came on stage.
Meet and Greet with Makka Pakka and Iggle Piggle? Who DO they think they are? Metallica? The Spice Girls? Half Man Half Biscuit???
Half Toddler Half Rusk.
I notice Ragdoll sold all their existing back catalogue (and merch rights) in September 2013 to Canadian company DHX Media.
So they’re back to being a small independent production company.
Her first success was Roland Rat for TVAM.
I saw the Teletubbies at the Television trade show in ’97 or thereabouts. The girl on the stand said they were going to be huge which I would have laughed at had I not previously scoffed at the Ninja Turtles in the 80s.
I preferred their earlier stuff (Brum).
I was thinking about the whole licence fee/subscription service thing earlier when I went on my lunchtime walk. Now personally I don’t have a problem with the licence fee, would happily pay more etc, although on reflection it is a bit like the poll tax (everyone paying the same regardless of earnings). I did hear a couple of days ago about how the Swedish pay for their national broadcaster (could one of our regular Scandi contributors comment?), where I believe that money is taxed as part of your pay packet. This got me thinking that there are certain things that the BBC provide that cannot be provided in any other way (most of its radio content, news, cbeebies, website) to the same standard. Perhaps this could be paid for through a direct tax, which leaves the remaining TV channels, iplayer and bbc sounds. I reckon that a subscription service (along with britbox, freeview/freesat, perhaps in combination with ITV, C4, C5, UKTV) wouldn’t be an unreasonable thing to pay for. No idea what you would charge for all that, probably less than sky and more than Netflix I suppose.
Sweden used to have TV licences then in 2019 it was changed to tax because too many didn’t pay. It is now a progessive tax. You pay max £130 per year. The right wing here would like to be rid of state funded broadcasting like many of their counterparts in other lands of course.
Interesting. Is there much evidence/concern re: political interference in output since the switch to tax?
Swedes go along with what the government decides in the main I believe. They want things as they are like Donald Duck and friends on Christmas Eve as usual, as it has been for 50 years or so. Was ten minutes later than normal this time. There was some tutting. I suppose the tax doesn’t interfere with any familiar routines though.
“Swedes go along with what the government decides in the main I believe.”
Well, there go my hopes that we might be able to apply the Swedish model here.
Thanks Paws, I was starting to worry that we’d had a whole thread without Sweden bring mentioned.
I mentioned WDR5 once, but I think I got away with it.
I use that to spray me hinges.
Is that an ‘h’ or an ‘m’?
Hold on, I’ll just go and get me glasses.
He calls his missus hinges, ‘cos she’s something to a door.
…and she’s liable to punch me up the bracket…
I suddenly felt very ignorant about the abolition of the licence fee here. It seems to a trend across the Nordic region.
https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/latest/news/nordics-replace-licence-fee-public-service-tax
The new system seems to be more effective and we no longer have to answer the door to licence inspectors.
This page is rather informative about the history of radio and tv licences in the UK
The first radio licence cost 10 shillings and this did not go up until after WW2 when a combined radio and TV licence cost two pounds
https://www.sixtiescity.net/Television/Licences.htm
This discussion of licence fees got me thinking about this all works in the USA.
NPR will probably be known to you because of their Tiny Desk sessions. But as this article reveals, it’s far more than a music channel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/16/business/npr-trump-budget.html
Trump hates public radio which makes me like it even more!
NPR has an interesting funding model, balancing grants, sponsorship, and public contributions to local stations. The same holds true for PBS, the television equivalent.
They are the gold standard for radio in the USA, and the morning breakfast show, Morning Edition, knocks spots off Today. See also All Things Considered, the evening show.
Gold Standard indeed! I can only talk about about NPR’s music shows. But those Tiny Desk concerts on YouTube have earned them a fantastic reputation internationally,
And hats off to the Beeb for putting Winterwatch on Yer Tube, thus spreading joy around around the world for all of us who don’t have access to BBC iPlayer programmes abroad. Moose is on the money there!
Right on cue, Winterwatch is on. Fuckin’ boss. Take my money BBC!
I suspect the current Aust government are watching with some interest at how this will pan out. They’d like nothing better than to get rid of the Oz BBC equivalent.
Interesting that a lot of people note how teenagers/anyone under 30 doesn’t engage with the BBC. When I was a teenager, in the 90s, I can’t say I really engaged with it either – my Sony Megadrive and football were far more interesting. As I got older and developed an interest in the arts/culture, I actively sought out cultural shows – something the BBC occasionally did (and still do on BBC 4) well.
I’m certainly not suggesting that everyone who’s a teenager now will suddenly start watching BBC tv or listen to their radio content when they hit 30, but some will engage out of interest as they get older.
Other than Radio3 , if their interest lie in that direction, I cant see that most people with any cultural interests will find much on the BBC
I don’t agree – R4 does it’s bit, as do BBC2 and BBC4.
I agree with fortuneight – R3, R4, BBC2, BBC4 constitute the bulk of my BBC watching and listening (along with a bit of BBC Scotland and BBC Alba). Plenty for viewers/listeners with “cultural interests” – so my main concern is that arts/culture/music is the first thing to be culled when the Government are demanding cuts/savings…
The Beeb’s arts coverage has sadly been one of the biggest casualties of the endless funding cuts. While the broadcaster is showing a couple of excellent doc series (Warhol’s America and the archive-driven Art on the BBC), Sky Arts pretty much “owns” halfway-decent arts coverage these days
Beeb Four stopped producing music docs quite a few years ago. It’s all bought in now.
Did not know that! And yes, Sky Arts is on the ball, lots of good stuff on there.
Dorries settlement decision leaves Aunty about £300m short against current costs. Suggestions I’ve seen so far is that BBC4 may be closed to help meet this with BBC2 expected to cover what there would be any money left for.
Other than Radio3 , if their interest lie in that direction, I cant see that most people with any cultural interests will find much on the BBC
I see a number of comments along the lines of ” look at the huge range of stuff they do for the money”, as if this was intrinsically good. I would question that assertion. What it seems to mean in many cases is significant amounts of money spent on something that still isn’t adequate for many people. To give one example, our ‘local’ BBC radio station is in Southampton. That’s two hours drive away from the west of the catchment. There is little, if any, relevant content and people are frankly better served by the local amateur / volunteer stations. This is a population of some 400,000 people, nearer 800,000 if one includes the Bournemouth connurbation.
I see one of the Dimbleby’s suggested yesterday that the BBC be funded via Council Tax, presumably as a way of ensuring wealthier people pay more. Personally I would prefer that any money raised by local taxation went to very local stations I mentioned above, rather than bring wasted on ‘star presenters’ playing records 2 hours away.
Excellent post, completely agree.