HOW THE BBC WORKS

You have a top programme such as Doctor Who

It makes you millions of pounds

It breaks records for iplayer, top rating on BBC America, top download on iTunes, is the mainstay of Saturday scheduling...

Then the rumours start about budget and actors...

Will it get a full series in 2012?

And then what does the beeb do?

Spends £22m on the rights to some US talent show

Sickening

And it complains about cuts?

DOCTOR WHO;FIRST GLIMPSE

First tiny whiny glimpse of the Doctor Who Christmas Special in the preview for BBC drama this season (nearly at the end!)-



ht: Bleeders

BBC n SAN DIEGO

So the BBC is underfire about the licence fee,excess spending on executives, and the threat in cuts which, as I said a few days ago, really means cuts to programmes rather than the idiots that infest the bureaucracy...

so who paid for Yentob at San Diego Comicon?



ht: Rich

CALING AUNTIE

Jeremy Hunt has put the BBC on notice about cuts when its Charter comes up for renewal.

Now there is a couple of things that makes me nervous about this and is actually symptomatic of the Civil Service culture anyway.

1) Do you think the cuts will be in the huge infratructure that the BBC employs? All those middle-tiered managers, training officers, diversity and health n safety officers etc?

Nope, it will be the programmes themselves that will face the cuts. Doctor Who is already on a 5% cut in budget, rumours abound that Top Gear is also facing stringent cuts as well - this is despite them being vast money earners for BBC Worldwide.

2) What do you think the response of the BBC will be? It will be that this is a threat to programmes that will be scrapped, cut etc, like the NHS. Not the management system. The programmes themselves, programmes that are already being cut to pay for the infrastructure of the BBC.

This is what gets me. Cuts can be made, jobs can be axed, without a massive threat to services. Why all these managers etc? What do they all do? This is what the BBC and all of the public sector should be looking at. For the BBC, the non-creatives; the NHS, the non-medical/front-line. Get rid of all these people who seem to be there to propogate their own jobs.


Also, I do think the BBC has lost its way as it's grown to its behemoth-size.

It is meant to educate and entertain and also supply programmes/services that aren't available elswhere.

I know it's a bit of a damned if we do, damned if we don't position vis a vis rating but:

1) Scrap/sell off Radio One. There's no need for it to be paid for by the licence fee.
2) Scrap News 24 - waste of resource. If something major is happening then report it on the main channels.
3) Scrap BBC3 - or reform it. There is some gems on the channels, otherwise it's full of dross that can be replicated on Channel 4.
4) Boost BBC 2. Get it back to its former glories instead of the home/cookery channel is seems to have been morphed into.
5) Ditto for BBC 4. There has been some crackers on this under-acheiving channel. The thing is, I only know because I look at what's on - most people need a bit of a push.
6) BBC Worldwide. We know from its accounts that it is profitable. We know that it's top earners are facing cuts - why? Surely each programme should have "ownership" of some of its own branding. I think that a percentage of each individual profits should be plowed back into that programme whilst it is on the air and then the rest should be diverted to programming.
7) Increase the freelance output. Make the BBC more of a publishing house for, say 60% of output. This gives jobs to the industry and would probably be cheaper.
8) Seperate BBC Films from the licence fee - make it stand on its own succes/failure.

I'm sure there are many more but to begin with, this is a start!

BLOG V JOURNOS

This has been an ongoing issue since the blogosphere appeared - does traditional media represent true journalism?

With the Times going behind a paywall, what function does a paper hold in the modern world?

WIth 24-7 news, why would someone pay to look at the news section of the Times when an app on their phone or a quick trip to one of the numerous newssites would give someone an overview of the world?

So what is the print media's function?

What is the model to counteract falling readerships and sales?

For newspapers, there is going to have to be a shift into views, comments and special features which are unique to the identity of the paper.

Also what coverage does a newspaper have?

The illustration below is based on a study by journalism.org which looked at the US stream and what is driving blogs, newspapers and twitterers.



By its very nature, the web can offer a broader, disparate number of views than traditional print. The complaint that the blog is not true journalism ignores the very origins of newspapers ie. the pamphleteers.

Blogs and tweets are the modern equivalent - people pushing their opinion onto the public.

If the pay-model for traditional media fails then we could see media falling into a world of citizen-journalism, one powered by personal opinion rather than driven by commercial, editorial, owner-needs.

A world where every person is plugged into their own network of information and opinion, not relying on pravda, newsinternational etc for news and views. A network where the person is relied on to filter through the rubbish.

Could it work? Or would a million voices drown out the one screaming "fire"?

Pic ht: flowtown

BBC

The BBC did its best yesterday reminding people how evil Tories are with the Jeremey Vine show debating what was worse, Thatcher's '81 recession vs Brown's 2009-? recession.

And it really annoys me.

If the polls are right then I would expect the Conservatives to really go for the Beeb since it seems to be on a self-destruct course.

The thing is I am a massive fan of the BBC. If you have seen US tv, until the likes of HBO came along and forced channels to raise their game, it was crap.

We got the cream of US tv, people seem to forget for every Hill Street Blues and Cheers,we also got Who's the Boss. It was part of a package - ITV, Ch4 and BBC had to take rubbish which was syphoned to a dead-end as well as the quality programmes.

The BBC has it's problems like any public organisation.

What is the percentage of managers, diversity officers etc, compared to the creators - you know the people who are meant to be there - same with health, education etc.

Sack all those people and get the Beeb back to being (to use a sickening phrase) the "people's broadcaster"

It is a jewel that is frantically trying to kill itself and it's a shame

BNP-QT

So how was it for you?

Like many I thought Griffin came across exactly as I thought he would - shifty, nervous, ludicrous.

But... As others have pointed out, how will this play out in Bradford, Dagenham etc?

To be honest I don't think that his support will rise. Yes it may look like he was being bullied and yes I agree with Iain Dale that perhaps the Beeb should have stuck to the topical format of QT instead of focussing on the BNP. But the support he has is already there, I doubt he will get new support after this. We'll see when the polls are done, spose.

Anyway well done the Beeb for sticking to its guns and well played Alan Davis on The Week where he was perfect foil to the shrill Diane Abbot.

BTW, funniest moment? Jack Straw reaching for a (partisan),er, straw. He was asked if Labour were to blame for the rise of the BNP and in his waffle he ended up trying to blame the Conservatives and Enoch Powell for the policy that allowed Commonwealth citizens to work for "the Mother Country" in the '50s.

At least I think that was what he was trying to say because he was waffling. Also Jack try not to make it too obvious when you are reading your SPAD notes!

Comedic values

I see the BBC is once again in a self-flagellation mode again with the news that Mock the Week has been censured for a joke by Frankie Boyle about Rebecca Adlington.

The joke "The thing that nobody really said about Rebecca Adlington is that she looks pretty weird. She looks like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon" was deemed "humiliating" by the BBC Trust.

Now look, there were 75 complaints, yep 75! That's from an audience of around 2m. And that wasn't the end of it - One, that's ONE, viewer continued to complain which resulted in the formal censure.

So 0.0037% of viewers complained intially. Then 0.00005% of viewers were sad enough to keep going.

Listen, I like Mock The Week. I find Frankie Boyle is gloriously rude and bare knuckled. Some of his jokes are extremely close to the bone but that's him. If you don't like it, turn of the TV, watch something else, do something else. Don't try and decide for me and 1,999,998 other viewers (or 1,999,924 other viewers if you include the original sad cu..complainees) what we can watch post-watershed.

Interestingly The Trust concluded that a joke about the Queen was "in bad taste" but was broadcast long after the watershed and was "within audience expectations for the show".

So were the Adlington jokes.

Free for all not Pic n Mix

"Five years on, the broadcasting ban remains a nasty little law, flirting with censorship."

Peter Hain is continuing his campaign to prevent the BNP from appearing on Question Time

I have always argued and will continue to argue in favour of free speech.
It is not a pic and mix, if there is free speech for one there is free speech for another.

"Tolerance of the intolerable is the hallmark of a democracy."

Why do Labour want to block these odious idiots anyway? They complained loudly about the Sinn Fein broadcasting ban - or were those bunch of political thugs acceptable to their ideology? (I thought the broadcasters did a brilliant job circumventing a ban that should never have been ordered and Labour correctly applauded the media's actions.)

You cannot decide on who has free speech. Although we don't have a written right to free speech, we do have laws and precedences to protect people. If Griffin, or any other loony commits an offence for incitement to racial violence or violence against a person then hit him with the law.

There is one straight precedence, it is fine to exercise free speech but you cannot shout fire in a packed cinema. So apply that. And whilst you're at it, arrest those thugs at the Finsbury Mosque for incitement as well. Like free speech, laws should be applied to all no matter what religion, colour or which House of Parliament you sit in.

As always, confront the bigot, don't make him a martyr. It is your natural constituents, Labour, that are voting for them.

The BNP is tapping into fears about jobs, housing, crime, the "way of life", and the only answer you're coming up with is to try and ban them?

AS I argued before, if you ban one political party, where does it stop? Hmmm, UKIP, bunch of loons, ban them. Tory Party? Full of rascists and capitalists, ban them. Lib Dems? Those orange book lads look a bit off-our-message, ban them.

Where do you stop?


Oh, and while I'm here, THE BNP IS A LEFT-WING PARTY! Look at its manifesto commitements, they're all socialist ideals. Just because they want to kick "anyone not them" out of the country and use nationalist imagery, it does not make them right wing, the left has used that as well!!


One final thing, the quotes on this blog - you may be interested to know that these come from Ann Clywd, the then-Labour spokesperson on National Heritage,on the fifth anniversary of the Sinn Fein broadcasting ban.
Here's the final one...

"Being right is not the key. Being allowed to be obnoxiously wrong is. The constitutional concept of free expression means something in continental Europe, and it means something in the United States. It should mean something here."

Appendum: Even Richard Littlejohn is calling for a ban!?! H/t Obo