Your thoughts on, the mess that is the BBC. (Oh Boy!)

[Neurotic Void Melody]

License fee i used to despise (ooh like Yoda i talked), but nowdays it seems a better idea for the quality and absolutely no adverts. That still feels refreshing to sit down for a film and suddenly realise you have no toilet break or cuppa tea break. They have buggered themselves (no pun intended) with the saville problem. But so have many of our politicians in that area of unethical behaviour. I am aware the tories hate the idea of the BBC because, other than certain arse grovelling news readers (no names memtioned), they do not benefit directly from it. I would rather they stay around and keep giving young artists a good platform to begin their careers on. A bit more transparency and less overpayed, underworked upper management would be a good start. The saville enquiry unfortunately will not accuse anybody too high up of responsibility, if the first half is anything go by. All these enquiries are being dragged out for as long as they can for reasons many are all too aware of. Anyhow, getting sidetracked. Umm, the BBC is the least of our worries really, but they are under strain from various angles.

 

[Lightspeaker]

HEY!! It was just that one moment with the Daily Mail I had back in 2012. A one time night fun. I don't smell of them anymore.

Only takes once, and then you're complaining about youths wearing hoodies giving pensioners cancer.

There's a photoshopped picture of a Daily Mail that does the rounds on facebook and other social media sometimes.

The headline is "Terror as Gigantic Muslim Spiders bring Deadly Ebola to UK" with an underheading of "...and the Sharia Law arachnids are also set to cause the worst winter for fifty years- and you're paying for it".

The article underneath claims that they're also benefit scroungers who will force your local bakery to make halal pasties and that the French hare helping them enter the country illegally.

Its almost believable that its an actual Daily Mail cover. X-D

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I listen to the BBC podcast. Its pretty good I guess.

But yeah, as a company its a complete shitshow. But then again, so is just about everything in the UK. So its hardly exceptionally bad.

 

[Leg End]

All I know about the BBC is something to the tune of child trafficking coverups, the gestapo coming to your house for the license while doing whatever they can to bullshit you into paying the license, and the episode of Top Gear when they came to the states and the car dealer was packing heat while someone or other chose a truck and slapped a flag on it. I had a freedom boner.

As for the tv tax - yeah, its a *****, but I think it is ultimately worth having. Imagine if America had a tv license system - it would become the world's most well funded tv channel by a longshot, able to put out goddamn blockbuster level movies on the back of the tax money of 300 million people. The beeb already puts out some of the most expensive dramas, documentaries and tv shows in the World, and it is great that it is able to do that.

We'd be escorting the license gestapo off our properties at gunpoint and instead just go with the usual paying for specialty channels.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Yeah the BBC is going through a rough patch to say the least. I mean when they allow Robbie Savage to do football punditry you know something is fundamentally wrong

Sadly the shows on the BBC I like seem to disappearing with nothing really replacing them. Buzzcocks cut the axe last year so that's one last panel show, QI is going to be without Stephen Fry which just seems wrong and as much I'll try to keep an open mind on new Top Gear it's hard for me to be optimistic of anything attached to Chris Evans that isn't a massive boulder being hurled into the sea.

That said if the beeb can refrain from hiring any more pedophiles and can keep Match of the Day and Have I Got News For You on then I'll reasonably happy with its continued existence. Plus having it around pisses Murdouch off, which is worth the price of admission on its own.

 

[The White Hunter]

This is a corporation that believes that Chris Evans can replace James May on any sort of television show, in spite of Chris Evans being the most unlikable **** in show biz.

 

[Thaluikhain]

What about that Apartheid themed episode of the Goodies that has mysteriously disappeared from all circulation?

When did that happen? I've got that on a DVD a few years back.

 

[Laughing Man]

The beeb already puts out some of the most expensive dramas, documentaries and tv shows in the World, and it is great that it is able to do that.

and yet here I am watching Game Of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Agents of Shield or to put it another way nothing on the fucking BBC. It wasn't even able to hold on to F1, loosing the full rights to Sky two years ago, relegated to showing highlights and hand picked coverage cut down and fuck me if it didn't some how manage to lose even that to C4, C4 for fuck sake.

Recently BBC3 was pulled from the air and is now putting all it's content online, the only problem being that until Top Gear was canned BBC3 was the only channel from the Beeb that I would watch with any regularity, it actually did some decent original comedy shows and even had one or two decent dramas. This is all fine and dandy if a channel I paid for suddenly decided it wanted to stop broadcasting and stick all it's media online then I would also be well within my rights to not pay for that channel any more and that's were the BBC falls down, we have no say, I don't care if it produces some of the best documentaries or tv shows if I don't watch any of them then why on earth should I be made to pay for them?

It's like being made to pay road tax when I don't drive a fucking car??

Of course you also have the cover up scandals of the 70's and 80's which I believe lead to the utter nonsense that was the public circus of Clarkson being fired, look look everyone no one is too big to not get fired, look we are waving our arms and shouting about it from the rooftops, no cover ups here, please no one mention Jimmy Saville. (PS I am not saying that Clarkson shouldn't have been fired but the BBC sure could have handled it much better than they did.)

 

[maninahat]

What about that Apartheid themed episode of the Goodies that has mysteriously disappeared from all circulation?

When did that happen? I've got that on a DVD a few years back.

Huh, the DVD I got specifically didn't have that episode.

I only found out about it because I saw a tv programme about shockingly casual racism/sexism on 70s tv, and Bill Oddie popped up yelling racial epithets.

 

[Thaluikhain]

What about that Apartheid themed episode of the Goodies that has mysteriously disappeared from all circulation?

When did that happen? I've got that on a DVD a few years back.

Huh, the DVD I got specifically didn't have that episode.

I only found out about it because I saw a tv programme about shockingly casual racism/sexism on 70s tv, and Bill Oddie popped up yelling racial epithets.

Well, they seem to just stick a bunch of episodes together almost at random on their DVD sets.

Though, the apartheid one was attacking the idea of apartheid. Not very subtly or well, but they go to South Africa and all the black people leave, so the white people want someone else to oppress so they institute Apart-Height and take away rights from short people.

Also, it has Philip Madoc as a villain, which is always good.

 

[Albino Boo]

See at least the BBC uses your tv license money to go towards making good content. Try living in Ireland where our tv license is spent getting the Irish distribution rights to Coronation street and Eastenders and very little else. There's fuck all good television produced in Ireland. Which is ridiculous when you consider the amount of Irish writers/actors/comedians/performers who have made it big in the UK.

You don't see the neverending quiz shows, cookery shows and gardening shows. When you take out the soaps, the BBC only makes an average of 4 hours of TV drama a week. The biggest ticket item that the BBC spends its money on is highlights of the premier league. The BBC spent ?204 million on getting the highlights for 3 years. Its only marginally better here than in Ireland

 

[votemarvel]

From TV licence (a fucking dumb Tax)[...]

Given the level of quality received in return, I have little problem with the licence fee. What they offer would cost a great deal more on subscription.

I watch two shows on the BBC. Top Gear and Doctor Who. So to me the TV Tax is not value for money in the slightest.

I watch far more shows on Amazon Prime, plus the yearly subscription fee is lower than the TV Tax and I get speedy delivery on my orders from Amazon. That to me is far better value than the TV Tax. In fact if I just bought the DVDs of Doctor Who and Top Gear it would work out cheaper.

The time has come to make the license fee optional. If people want to pay for it then they can do so, if people don't think it is value for money then they don't pay. I find it very annoying that I am being forced to pay for the BBC because I own a television.

 

[MCerberus]

Coming from the US perspective, my exposure to BBC is through BBCA and the US version of the app. One plays reruns of TNG and the other is the least-screaming news service currently available since AJA shut down.

Meanwhile, American networks range from petty fraud to actual treason; both "sides" are actively working towards making representative democracy collapse under the weight of identity politics. And you want to talk about unnecessary fees you're forced to pay for in spite of use, well, let me introduce you to a network called ESPN.

 

[Nickolai77]

The OP's giving far too much stick to the BBC in my opinion. It's not perfect and like any large organisation it's got its failings and had its flaws.

But, I think it's certainly very good for British television that we've had a public broadcaster that isn't funded by advertising. Privately funded Tv shows that try to 'educate' tend to fail miserably when compared to the quality of BBC content (Look at the History channel or National Geographic and compare that to David Attenborough documentaries) and I think the BBC itself drags up the quality of other TV stations like ITV or Channel 4. If you have a TV station that has a guaranteed and regular stream of revenue (The TV License) you can make content without worrying about wherever it will be profitable. The BBC can afford to do really niche, educational shows on BBC 4 about topics like early medieval monastries or Plank's Theory that would never be far less likely to be made on other TV stations because they would not be profitable.

I think you can question wherever the BBC should be funded by a tv license- which is mandatory if you want to own a TV that receives any television broadcast- and the Jimmy Saville scandal was quite shocking to read about. There's also the question of wherever the government can exert influence over the BBC to adjust its news content. Generally what you find is that left-wingers say the BBC is too right wing, and the right wingers say the BBC is too left wing. I guess as long as the BBC news is being viewed as being biased by both these extremes it's not doing a bad job of being neutral.

I personally like the BBC, of course it's not perfect but I think British TV in general is far better because of the BBC than it would be otherwise. TV in the UK would feel a lot more American if we never had the BBC I think.

 

[maninahat]

To start off with the License fee is ?145.50 (or for you Americans that's $202.99 a year)[footnote] students get a discount on this rate[/footnote]

In comparison a year of netflix in the UK is ?71.88 a year for SD and ?83.88 a year for HD or ?107.88 for 4K streaming.

Or for a year of Amazon Prime including prime video and films it's ?79 a year

So the argument about the value of the BBC is one worth having as it's output is at times questionable.

I agree with the value for money issues, but I would argue that you could at least factor in things like the radio services, in which seven channels are also paid for by the licence fee. It also pays for the largest, and arguably one of the most reliable news sources in the World.

 

[fenrizz]

BBC is the best broadcaster in the world, with NRK in second place.
Easy as that.