The Biased Broadcasting Corporation

[Only2McInallys]

30 minutes ago, Xela said:

That's fair enough, people will have different opinions on it and that's cool. You' d pay for it and by the sound of it, you'd pay more than £160 per year. I wouldn't. The TV they make is ok. Agreed some great dramas every now and again (love Luther, Line of Duty and Sherlock). Comedy? The odd gem here and there, plenty of shit made as well.

I'm not fussed on the radio side as I never listen to it. Most of its primetime TV shows are just dross like Strictly, the Voice and other z-listers trying to boost their own profile or endless repeats of quiz shows like Pointless. If it went to voluntary subscription, i'd dip in and out it every few months like I do with other services. 

How much would you pay a year for it? 

 

I listen to BBC radio all day at work -local radio,radio 5,bbc 6 music  bit of radio 2.

The prime time shows you mention I would agree with you, are not my cup of tea.

But you just have to look at a channel like ITV-how much rubbish on there ?They used to have some gambling programme on around 11.30 what was that all about?Making money.I don’t want BBC to have to do similar.

Then you look at SKY how many decent programmes do they make -very few.Whats their cost ?£600 a year ?The sport is there main pulling power

I personally would pay £250-300 for the radio stations mainly

But in a funny way it reminds me of the NHS-something we pay for without our choice but is beneficial to everybody especially when you compare it to other countries.

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by Only2McInallys

[VILLAMARV]

57 minutes ago, blandy said:

No.

One thing I've noticed (and there's an example in the virus thread) is they "cater" (the Beeb I mean) for a wide range of people. So the example in the virus thread is the Newsnight man doing a lot of stuff on care home horrors. And then you get the website questions you posted - stuff to which the answer is "Durrr!". I think they're catering for casual tabloidy internet browser people o nthe one hand, and broadsheety type Newsnight viewers on a different level. You or I might not like it and wish that they just did the in depth, authoritative, critical stuff. But others will never watch newsnight, or clips of it, and just "consume" low rent click and leave articles.

There's an argument to say the beeb should leave that area to the tabloids and their websites, I suppose, and just do serious stuff.

Comparing the BBC to Breitbart is (and no offence intended) **** moronic. And to be less flippant, it still scores highly on Trust, higher than all the other news outlets. And that excludes all the nature, sport, music, culture, comedy, drama, radio, Kids stuff, science...

Their news coverage is to me, mixed at best. But whose isn't?

To be fair, I saw breitbart once when the man was alive and thought, nah, not for me this, and can't say I'm all that clued up on what it does, it was more a comment aimed at sensationalised clickbait bollex rather than an informed opinion on their output. 

I have noticed a rise in use of language and terminology on the BBC that would, in years gone by, have been beneath them. Having just read a few breitbart headlines via my browser though, you're right. It's not that bad.

It's all a bit sad to me that the defense of a once beloved institution is along the lines of not as bad as the really bad thing. Akin to 'not as racist as Australia' for instance. As if that is a measurement with any worth attached. 

I think you can guess my views on measuring 'trust'.

I agree with much of your reasoning in regards to the mixed nature of it's output. And the way it attempts to appeal to a wide audience, though most of my feelings on that I've probably covered in my reply to xela above. 

Z scores stuff is bad enough in the realm of examination boards though and shouldn't be used to normalise or rationalise an increasing amount of drivel and or propaganda masquerading as news imho. 

Their radio output for instance is no where near as in the gutter as say, talk radio. But I don't think being favourably comparable to James Whale et al is a unit of measurement I really put much stock in. 

[LondonLax]

26 minutes ago, blandy said:

I think that's (in the big picture) the wrong question. Of course you can ask someone how much is it worth to you? - but I mean there's loads of stuff paid for by general taxation or by some specific charge, that people don't use. If everything is broken down to pay as you go, everything withers. Libraries with their brail books are big for the partially sighted, schools for those with kids, hospitals for the sick...

You might not watch the beeb, or listen to their radio, or look at their internet now. But you did when you were younger - the kids TV, the schools programming, the science stuff they show that's picked up by schools and Universities. The radio and TV news that drives (as well as follows) the "agenda". The consumer programmes that drive out crooks and fraudsters. The Presenters that learn on local TV or radio and go on to work for BT sport, or Sky or Netflix...

How to fund it is a good question, and the License fee will get overtaken by technology for TV. Not sure how that will affect radio and internet etc. But ultimately I think what I'm trying to say is the BBC benefits everyone at some point in their lives, and making it pay monthly or whatever will kill it. It needs to be at least core funded by the state. SO what you or I would pay is neither here nor there. the 14 quid a month is an absolute bargain for me.

 

Great post, especially the bit about people getting great value out of it at certain stages of their lives even if they feel they may not be when they are in their early adult years and starting out paying their own taxes. In some ways that is like the NHS where younger adults pay in but really don’t make much use of it until they are old when they then get great value out of it.

I also think that the lack of a national broadcaster is one of the main reasons why the US media landscape is so hyper partisan and tribal. If there is no ‘neutral’ media outlet that everyone has a stake / investment in people drift further and further from the centre, only taking up media that fits their bubble.

[VILLAMARV]

1 hour ago, Xela said:

I'm in the camp that the licence fee should be scrapped and it converted into a voluntary subscription service like Netflix/Amazon Prime. Instead of a forced taxation. 

I never did give you an answer much on this bit.

I've gladly paid it for years and still feel it could have a role to play if it went back to it's remit of old. 

If it's operating as an institution though where the 'world' part brings in revenue that dwarfs the license fee side of things I'm not sure what we are doing or indeed why it exists. (The fee, not the beeb)

[VILLAMARV]

46 minutes ago, blandy said:

I think that's (in the big picture) the wrong question. Of course you can ask someone how much is it worth to you? - but I mean there's loads of stuff paid for by general taxation or by some specific charge, that people don't use. If everything is broken down to pay as you go, everything withers. Libraries with their brail books are big for the partially sighted, schools for those with kids, hospitals for the sick...

You might not watch the beeb, or listen to their radio, or look at their internet now. But you did when you were younger - the kids TV, the schools programming, the science stuff they show that's picked up by schools and Universities. The radio and TV news that drives (as well as follows) the "agenda". The consumer programmes that drive out crooks and fraudsters. The Presenters that learn on local TV or radio and go on to work for BT sport, or Sky or Netflix...

How to fund it is a good question, and the License fee will get overtaken by technology for TV. Not sure how that will affect radio and internet etc. But ultimately I think what I'm trying to say is the BBC benefits everyone at some point in their lives, and making it pay monthly or whatever will kill it. It needs to be at least core funded by the state. SO what you or I would pay is neither here nor there. the 14 quid a month is an absolute bargain for me.

Agree with this.

Away from the news side of things it's multi faceted. And the parts which provide a quality service are worth every penny. 

Shipping forecast the most obvious example to my mind that literally saves lives. 

As I said before though, that doesn't necessarily apply in terms of normalising an increasingly poor output in one of its core tenets.

I like boobies but it doesn't make the S*n/Star ok as a news service.

[bickster]

Has anyone else noticed that Laura no longer loves Boris? (or Raab for that matter)

[Stevo985]

32 minutes ago, bickster said:

Has anyone else noticed that Laura no longer loves Boris? (or Raab for that matter)

Dunno about Boris but she did seem quite hard on Raab today. As did Sky's woman. Don't know her name but the one that looks like an extra from The Witches.

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Dunno about Boris but she did seem quite hard on Raab today. As did Sky's woman. Don't know her name but the one that looks like an extra from The Witches.

I noticed it with Johnson the other day and even more so with Raab, she appears to be the jilted lover

[chrisp65]

Is there a subscription radio service anywhere in the world?

 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

Is there a subscription radio service anywhere in the world?

 

America has one I think @leviramseyused to post about it Sirius Xm or something

[Seat68]

Sirius is huge. Lots of individual and very specific stations. 

[Xela]

8 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Is there a subscription radio service anywhere in the world?

 

Fubar Radio launched in the UK as a subscription station a few years back. 

[chrisp65]

8 minutes ago, Xela said:

Fubar Radio launched in the UK as a subscription station a few years back. 

I don’t think Fubar is truly radio is it? It’s internet / phone based. I don’t think I could get it on a standard DAB radio? 

 

[Xela]

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I don’t think Fubar is truly radio is it? It’s internet / phone based. I don’t think I could get it on a standard DAB radio? 

 

Probably not, unless your DAB radio can connect to your phone via bluetooth or something 

Mind you I'm no expert on radio - I enjoy listening to Johnny Vaughan on Radio X! 

[chrisp65]

7 minutes ago, Xela said:

Probably not, unless your DAB radio can connect to your phone via bluetooth or something 

Mind you I'm no expert on radio - I enjoy listening to Johnny Vaughan on Radio X! 

Nope. This is my problem, having had a 1974 radio that was just awesome, I ‘upgraded’ a couple of years ago, then needed to upgrade again, and now it turns out my DAB radio can’t connect to my phone. So I could upgrade again.

All these advances just appear to be ways to sell larger quantities of less good shit.

I strongly suspect that changing the funding model of the BBC might be well intentioned by some, but will inevitably result in something less good that costs more and is a bit of a ball ache.

[Seat68]

Buy an alexa you hick. Imagine all the country music stations you can listen to and also shout 20 times that you mean play **** george strait 

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, Seat68 said:

Buy an alexa you hick. Imagine all the country music stations you can listen to and also shout 20 times that you mean play **** george strait 

How do they get all those records in there?

[Seat68]

Just now, chrisp65 said:

How do they get all those records in there?

Magic. But it works, eventually. Alexa play george strait on spotify. Alright I will play Southern Death Cult on Spotify. 

[VILLAMARV]

I get that the discussion is over live radio, but is the model of subscription radio not crossing over into the realm of podcasts? 

While they may be said to be rather specialised, I would definitely argue that decent ones put much of the bbc output in the shade, as opposed to pointing at commercial radio and comparing it to the lowest common denominator as I've said before. 

It's obviously a marketplace the beeb themselves are keen to position themselves in. As the adding of the word podcast to lots of things that they do on the iPlayer would attest to. And they are definitely catching up in terms of market share, helped in no small part by their dominance of the UK market and advertising capability.

But the beauty of many decent podcasts is their specialised nature (in that the hosts are highly knowledgeable on their subjects) and the lack of a need to fulfil some criteria imposed from on high. There's no corporate interest, no one in the house of lords telling them what they can and can't say and certainly no Jeremy Vine prattling on about nothing. Or Adrian Childs hearing what Kevin from Runcorn has to say about the days news. 

I certainly agree that to turn towards a pay model could precipitate a race to the bottom, quality wise, but the rise of the long form podcast surely proves that actually the opposite may be true if we leave the public to drive demand rather than the supply driven model we are used to.

[blandy]

2 hours ago, VILLAMARV said:

...is the model of subscription radio not crossing over into the realm of podcasts? ..., I would definitely argue that decent ones put much of the bbc output in the shade

That’s another area where the BBC excels. Podcasts.