-
-
The BBC does History documentaries far better than anyone else in the world apart from Ken Burns. So the licence fee is worth it IMHO.
Most of their mainstream political coverage is excellent (David Dimbleby, Michael Cockrill, Laura Kuennsberg, Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Neil, Chris Mason, Nick Robinson, Fiona Bruce, Faisal Islam & John Pinner are all great), although I avoid the Andrew Marr show and their local London news because of the obvious and ridiculous PC/lefty bias.
Think the BBC website is superb for Sport news. Enjoy their coverage of the Olympics, athletics, tennis and soccer. Their Rugby coverage is a mixed bag, Gabby Logan, Brian Moore and Martin Johnson are very good, less keen on John Inverdale or Jonathan Davies. Enjoy Test Match Special on the radio, shame they abandoned televised Cricket.
They have introduced some outstanding comedy over the years: the Goons, Hancock's Half hour, Monty Python, Dad's Army, Fawlty Towers, Young Ones, Yes Minister, Blackadder, Alan Partridge, The Office, Little Britain, Fleabag.
I'm more concerned with the increasingly dire, woke and irrelevant Channel 4 (edit: receiving public money) being publicly owed. Clearly needs to be privitised.
-
@Crucial said in British Politics:
@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in British Politics:
I just don't think the BBC is actually very good. It is not that entertaining and it cannot really be trusted to be informative .
Supporting the BBC and licence fees is often more about elitism than actually enjoying the channel, kinda television virtual signalling.Eh? Labelling people who see value in something where you don't.
So all the people that happily pay their licence and watch 'Strictly Come Dancing' are virtue signalling what? Hasbeen 3rd rate celebs prancing in costumes?
Shows like The Young Ones and Monty Python only got a start because of the TV Licence environment. That alone is good enough for me.
Only if you misrepresent what I said.
-
Worth every penny
-
@MiketheSnow said in British Politics:
Worth every penny
Well they will have no troubles getting people to subscribe voluntarily then....
-
@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in British Politics:
I just don't think the BBC is actually very good. It is not that entertaining and it cannot really be trusted to be informative .
Each to their own of course. I'm sort of here nor there on them, but they do get a lot of sport, and their coverage of most things British is pretty good. Martina's documentary on trans people in sport and Hugh FW's war on plastic were both fantastic. BBC Sport is also arguably the fastest / best coverage of British / UK based sport.
Supporting the BBC and licence fees is often more about elitism than actually enjoying the channel, kinda television virtual signalling.
Yeah, we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.
-
With the exception of Andrew Neil's stuff and Nick Bryant, a lot of the BBC's coverage of US politics is poor. Gavin Elser and Matt Frei heralding Obama as the Messiah in 2008 was naive and nauseating. Too many BBC reporters covering the US election who seem to know very little and parrot clichés from CNN and MNSBC. Little attempt to understand why millions of Americans love the Second Ammendment and vote GOP/Trump.
I don't know why they don't use Andrew Neil and his encyclopedic knowledge of US politics and political history more.
In their defence, Channel 4's US coverage is a thousand times worse.
-
@sparky said in British Politics:
The BBC does History documentaries far better than anyone else in the world apart from Ken Burns. So the licence fee is worth it IMHO.
Most of their mainstream political coverage is excellent (David Dimbleby, Michael Cockrill, Laura Kuennsberg, Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Neil, Chris Mason, Nick Robinson, Fiona Bruce, Faisal Islam & John Pinner are all great), although I avoid the Andrew Marr show and their local London news because of the obvious and ridiculous PC/lefty bias.
Think the BBC website is superb for Sport news. Enjoy their coverage of the Olympics, athletics, tennis and soccer. Their Rugby coverage is a mixed bag, Gabby Logan, Brian Moore and Martin Johnson are very good, less keen on John Inverdale or Jonathan Davies. Enjoy Test Match Special on the radio, shame they abandoned televised Cricket.
They have introduced some outstanding comedy over the years: the Goons, Hancock's Half hour, Monty Python, Dad's Army, Fawlty Towers, Young Ones, Yes Minister, Blackadder, Alan Partridge, The Office, Little Britain, Fleabag.
I'm more concerned with the increasingly dire, woke and irrelevant Channel 4 receiving public money. Clearly needs to be privitised.
What public money? C4 is largely self funding.
-
@sparky said in British Politics:
With the exception of Andrew Neil's stuff and Nick Bryant, a lot of the BBC's coverage of US politics is poor. Gavin Elser and Matt Frei heralding Obama as the Messiah in 2008 was naive and nauseating. Too many BBC reporters covering the US election who seem to know very little and parrot clichés from CNN and MNSBC. Little attempt to understand why millions of Americans love the Second Ammendment and vote GOP/Trump.
I don't know why they don't use Andrew Neil and his encyclopedic knowledge of US politics and political history more.
In their defence, Channel 4's US coverage is a thousand times worse.
IT really does depend on what you watch. I suspect there is BBC infighting on how Trump is portrayed. Professional journalists vs those who think Sadiq Khan is doing a good job.
-
@Crucial Point taken. Edit made to post. Channel 4 will tell you that they receive no state funding which is currently true. None of their programming receives licence fee or state funding.
But up until 1993 they did. Their instructure was based on state funding. Their current Leeds HQ was bought using the funds from their old London (state owned) HQ.
They have a public remit under 2003 Communications Act.
-
@sparky said in British Politics:
@Crucial Channel 4 will tell you that they receive no state funding which is currently true. None of their programming receives licence fee or state funding.
But up until 1993 they did. Their instructure was based on state funding. Their current Leeds HQ was bought using the funds from selling off their old London (state owned) HQ.
They have a public remit under 2003 Communications
Pre 93 their funding came from ITV (it’s weirdly complicated)
C4 is still publicly owned And I’m also pretty sure they didn’t actually sell Horseferry Rd as it is also a large apartment building. -
@Crucial Channel 4 corporation indeed still own Horseferry Road site and receive large rents from flats in Central London (including some MPs/ civil servants who live there). But they in turn are owned by UK Government Investments, who are owned by UK Government.
Hard to argue they are not in anyway state-supported.
Bigger point. Channel 4 clearly leans hard Left, whereas if the BBC News has a politically leaning it is towards on the one hand, on the other.....
-
State owned and State directed through remit and management oversight of that remit by DCMS but does doesn’t equate with taxpayers money supporting their operations. It is actually a state investment company that owns the assets and gets a return on that investment.
I get your point that they can make some shite TV but your OP that they are doing so off taxpayer funding is a stretch.
Most importantly C4 bring us Rachel
-
@Crucial said in British Politics:
TV broadcasting in the UK is primarily DTT (Digital Terrestrial Transmission) through an aerial. That would require distribution of an encoded transmission and a decoder box to every subscriber.
That's built into the network, though not used much, and many, if not most, TV's have a subscription card slot for Pay TV channels. My new Panasonic has one.
Possibly not needed as viewing is increasingly done online and broadband speeds increase. DTT has difficulty delivering UHD which could become the norm in the next few years same way as HD did.
The Beeb does need a shake up and cull though and some of the salaries paid to 'stars' is stupid.
Yep. The BBC has become far too complacent and backward in its thinking - iPlayer was years ahead of Netflix, Sky Now etc, yet they only recently discovered box-sets..... I can see the BBC becoming a bare-bones service with a lot of its content on a subscription model.
At the end of the day, its business model is jailing people who don't pay for their service - even if they don't want it. That's pretty untenable when people are increasingly not watching any of your output
-
@Crucial said in British Politics:
What the licence (or forced subscription) service does bring to broadcasting is a range and type of programme that would not be made otherwise whether that is quality drama or ground breaking comedy.
Or a management who think they are fire-proof and can turn out dross.
I've lost count of the number of BBC shows we've starting watching and stopped halfway thru the episode as they were utter crap. I used to be a ardent listener to R4's Today programme. Tuned in last last year after a year or two's absence and was struck by how poor it was. Really saddened me.
Hopefully, the fear of having change forced on them might shock them out their complacent "we're world class" world-view and get the Beeb back on track. Hope so.
British Politics