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@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.
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@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.
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@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.....
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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
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@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
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@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.
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@No-Quarter said in British Politics:
Fun fact - from what I understand, according to Gender Theory if you are a man and you don't identify with all of the stereotypical masculine traits, that makes you non-binary. And as being non-binary is a subset of trans, it makes you trans as well.
I like the story of a local Labour Party selecting a woman-only short-list one Wednesday
One bloke applied saying that, in line with Labour policy, he was eligible as he identified as female - but only on Wednesdays...
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Biggest problem for the BBC is that HBO now do TV Drama better than anyone else: Game of Thrones, Chernobyl, Succession, Big Little Lies etc.
Killing Eve got lots of praise but left me cold. Luther, Happy Valley, Peaky Blinders and Years & Years were okay, last big production BBC dramas that blew me away were Wallender and Wolf Hall.
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@sparky said in British Politics:
Biggest problem for the BBC is that HBO now do TV Drama better than anyone else: Game of Thrones, Chernobyl, Succession, Big Little Lies etc.
Killing Eve got lots of praise but left me cold, Luther, Happy Valley, Peaky Blinders and Years & Years were okay, last big production BBC dramas that blew me away were Wallender and Wolf Hall.
In a two horse race, then second is death.
In a multitude of offerings, second is viable.
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Dawn Butler seems interesting, apparently Obama endorsed her
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/dawn-butlers-transgender-madness/
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@Victor-Meldrew said in British Politics:
@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.
DTT is the platform that the UK has invested in (and continues to). Yes, it has limitations around UHD but the current thinking is that demand for UHD is met by the likes of Sky.
As for thinking that people already have the tech, you seem to forget that the UK only went digital a few years back and that involved a lot of work upgrading viewers tech or providing them boxes to collect and transfer the “new” service. As for online viewing, it still makes up a very small portion of the total and if you think broadband is improving to the levels needed you are dreaming. The infrastructure outlay to change from old copper carrying the last mile is prohibitive. Very few FTTP households and the lucky ones are where Virgin have run coax to the house.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.
Not quite. BBC sell their box sets to these other providers already.
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
BBC don’t jail people who don’t pay for their service. That is a misinterpretation of the broadcast system. You are required to have a licence to receive ANY broadcast TV in the UK. If you have a TV but not a licence you get fined. If you still insist on flouting the law you run the risk of being treated as a criminal.
I agree that criminality is extreme, but that is not down to the Beeb. -
@Bones said in British Politics:
Sooo.....speaking English is only worth 10 points.
Good to see they are following through here. Would like to the see the point breakdowns and how they compare to what they were when I went through the process. It was a bit of a nightmare at the time with rules changing every year, from memory the squeeze went on commonwealth applicants due to the influx of european migrants at the time.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in British Politics:
@No-Quarter said in British Politics:
Fun fact - from what I understand, according to Gender Theory if you are a man and you don't identify with all of the stereotypical masculine traits, that makes you non-binary. And as being non-binary is a subset of trans, it makes you trans as well.
I like the story of a local Labour Party selecting a woman-only short-list one Wednesday
One bloke applied saying that, in line with Labour policy, he was eligible as he identified as female - but only on Wednesdays...
When you dig into it, it's all just gobbledygook. It does amaze me that anyone buys into it at all, though I'd say pure narcissism is the key driver for people like the bloke in that video.
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@Rembrandt said in British Politics:
How on earth did they manage to prosecute kids?
If you read the article you will see that they probably didn’t.
British Politics