BBC To Be Smaller Post-Switchover
- Thread starter Bob The Skutter
- Start date
Yeah, it's not exactly something you just flick over to and expect to enjoy, but it's good to actually see some of the debate when there's a law you're interested in being debated.
I occasionally watch it for PMQ or some of the debates on subjects I'm interested in. I like that it is there. But yeah, it hasn't been a quarter screen for years.
Considering the size of some of the MP on there(No part due to some very eloquent free expenses paid lunches) its no wonder they had to make its full screen.
I predict that if the Conservatives get into power with the help of the Murdoch press, there soon won't be a BBC at all, or at most a rump of BBC 1, 2 and maybe BBC HD. The news and other web sites and the additional freeview channels will disappear.
I do think the BBC is going to/currently suffering a death of a thousand cuts, end eventually will either become a private company or disappear altogether, but I don't think it will happen all at once.
How can a show be "a gold mine" when I thought the BBC was a non-profit organization?
While getting good ratings is a worthy goal for the BBC, that should never be its primary goal. Objective measures of success should be in the purview of commercial networks. The legitimate goal of an organization like the BBC should be to concentrate on producing their own original scripted comedies & dramas, ensuring a level of quality programming that won't ever be sacrificed to the gods of cost or profitability.
Well, if Murdoch owns Sky, then moving FOX shows over to that network might just be a matter of corporate synergy. After all, I got the impression that, here in the U.S., the Sci-Fi Channel was pretty happy with Doctor Who. Nevertheless, the show has been moved to BBCAmerica, presumably to promote corporate synergy and to further develop the BBC brand in this country. (They're pretty successful at that, BTW, even stamping their logo on the American DVD releases of ITV shows like Primeval.)
^BBC Worldwide are the commercial arm of the BBC, they own BBC America, etc. and get the rights to BBC shows and products. Their aim is to make money on BBC (British shows in general) productions in order to funnel it back in to BBC proper, the aim is to keep the licence fee low, or low than it otherwise would be.
So while the BBC within the UK do chase ratings to a certain extent, because they get a backlash if they're seen as funding a show no one is interested in, they generally do give shows a better chance than others. Even Krod Mandoon has a second series in the works, if I recall correctly.
Sky's major stakeholder is News Corp. and when the BBC decided to decrypt their channels on satellite so they could be picked up by anyone with a satellite receiver Sky, who own the company supplying the encoder, told them that they would have trouble holding on to rights to international TV shows because half of Europe would be able to pick up the signal.
When all was said and done the only shows they lost rights to were Fox shows, and it's seen by almost everyone as News Corp trying to prove the point.
So while the BBC within the UK do chase ratings to a certain extent, because they get a backlash if they're seen as funding a show no one is interested in, they generally do give shows a better chance than others. Even Krod Mandoon has a second series in the works, if I recall correctly.
Sky's major stakeholder is News Corp. and when the BBC decided to decrypt their channels on satellite so they could be picked up by anyone with a satellite receiver Sky, who own the company supplying the encoder, told them that they would have trouble holding on to rights to international TV shows because half of Europe would be able to pick up the signal.
When all was said and done the only shows they lost rights to were Fox shows, and it's seen by almost everyone as News Corp trying to prove the point.
My point (or one of them anyway) is that the confluence of costs & ratings is what leads to TV being populated with ghastly reality TV shows. Generally, they don't get very good ratings compared to scripted programming. However, they get ratings that are decent enough and the gap is offset by the shows being very cheap to produce. Thus, commercial networks are quite prone to airing subpar shows because their true aim is high profit margins.
Since the BBC is not a for-profit network, it should make quality its #1 priority. It should be immune from the profit motives that plague commercial networks and fill the airwaves with a lot of profitable junk that no one actually likes to watch.
Of course, ratings are sometimes an effective indicator of quality. As a public trust, it's the duty of the BBC to provide as much entertainment as possible to as many people as possible. Like you say, there's no point in funding a show that no one is interested in.
Since the BBC is not a for-profit network, it should make quality its #1 priority. It should be immune from the profit motives that plague commercial networks and fill the airwaves with a lot of profitable junk that no one actually likes to watch.
Of course, ratings are sometimes an effective indicator of quality. As a public trust, it's the duty of the BBC to provide as much entertainment as possible to as many people as possible. Like you say, there's no point in funding a show that no one is interested in.
^Which is exactly why I like having BBC Three and Four around. They're smaller channels and can have niche programming freed somewhat from the expectation of large audiences. The problem is whenever matters become political they get lambasted for spending millions on channels where their most popular shows get less than 2 million viewers, despite the fact they are among the top performing digital channels every week.
As I said earlier, I think the biggest problem isn't what they do, it's the expectations placed on them from different groups of people. Commercial companies don't want them supplying something for free which they charge for, the viewer expects shows they like since they pay for it forgetting that there are millions of others with different tastes expecting the same thing, the politicians want them to offer value for money even if at the end of the day it is false economy, the media expects them to bow to their pressure whenever they concoct a new scandal. etc. etc.
In the end everything will suffer because of this, the demand for popular programming then gets them in trouble for not having more highbrow and challenging shows, they do highbrow and challenging they get in trouble for it not being popular. They bow to media pressure and get in trouble for censoring things or not being edgy and moving with the times.
As I said earlier, I think the biggest problem isn't what they do, it's the expectations placed on them from different groups of people. Commercial companies don't want them supplying something for free which they charge for, the viewer expects shows they like since they pay for it forgetting that there are millions of others with different tastes expecting the same thing, the politicians want them to offer value for money even if at the end of the day it is false economy, the media expects them to bow to their pressure whenever they concoct a new scandal. etc. etc.
In the end everything will suffer because of this, the demand for popular programming then gets them in trouble for not having more highbrow and challenging shows, they do highbrow and challenging they get in trouble for it not being popular. They bow to media pressure and get in trouble for censoring things or not being edgy and moving with the times.
good post
Nicely put. Like every other public service (hospitals, teaching, police, councils, etc etc) they simply cannot win. They get criticised whatever they do.
Certainly is the way things go. Right now I am so sick of the BBC just bowing down to media pressure, with these new guidelines which will pretty much guarantee no new comedy pushing the boundaries or being edgy. Slimming down their services, not particularly from public demand more from media and corporate pressure.
Now they're censoring a ballet because of offensive scenes, and talking about limiting budgets to BBC Worldwide ventures, selling off all assets that aren't BBC branded, and having "Qualitative tests" on programming on their Worldwide stations so if it wouldn't go on the BBC at home it can't go on the BBC abroad... I thought one of BBC Worldwides goals was to export British culture to the world? Not just British culture as the BBC sees it.
Private sector companies face the same sets of conflict. This is not unique to the public sector. Within the entertainment world, look at the incessant controversy around the various Murdoch companies for an obvious example. But similar no-win scenarios exist throughout the private sector in every area you mention (cf. private hospitals, independent schools, private security contractors, management consultancy firms for tha analogous sectors to the areas you mentioned).
The difference is that private sector companies have very clear lines of responsibility, to their shareholders. Shareholders also generally have a better understanding of the impracticalities of delivering the infinite with finite funds, than the general public does.
The problem is that the BBC, and the public sector in general, is that it is expected by politicians and voters alike, to do far too much at a world-class level, with massive (and yet still finite & therefore paradoxically insufficient) amounts of taxpayers money.
The logical solution is to cut the public sector and redefine its role to much more limited, clear, and finite one. And therefore deliverable with finite funds, which by happy coincidence, would also be much smaller in total. This role should be one fundamentally undeliverable by the private sector for reasons of lack of a profit-making business model (an easy obvious example would be provision of healthcare to those dependent of state benefits and therefore unable to pay for it themselves either directly or through insurance).
To take the case of the BBC in particular, there is absolutely no reason we need to support a BBC capable of competing with Sky or ITV or whoever in terms of popular entertainment. The private sector is more than capable of creating profitable popular entertainment as any number of shows prove. What the private sector cannot do is create high-quality unique/niche programming as that is unprofitable due to the very low audience figures it would gather. If anything, that is what the BBC should be paid by the taxpayer to do, at a total cost much much lower than it currently gets. There's also an argument for the state continuing to maintain its world-class news-gathering operation since it has some intelligence benefits (production/presentation of the news could be privatised though, separately from the gathering side of it).
To me, the BBC is a relic of another age in terms of the scope of its remit. Truly slimming it down would make a lot of sense. It sadly won't happen though, even under a Conservative admiministration, as everyone is too afraid of doing it. It would require a significant advertising campaign to convince voters of the benefits, which would be fought against continual negative coverage of the debate from BBC itself. It would require a significant expenditure of political capital that would be better used on other, more important, political issues. And so the BBC will lumber ever onwards, sucking up massive amounts of money and doing things that could be done privately, and not doing as many of the things as it could, that should be done publicly.
seriously? so you have a public service, gathering news and a private company deciding what of that to use? seriously?
^The problem with this though is that, in this country at least, none of the private options do do the job BBC do.
Sky spend poultry amounts on commissioning original shows, ITV make a lot of mediocre shows, Channel 4 do the occasional good show but their best shows tend to be the current affairs shows.
No one but the BBC does decent documentaries, and that includes the supposedly exclusively documentary channels such as Discovery, any decent shows on them tend to be BBC co-productions.
I suppose you could argue without the BBC there to fill that need others may spring up in their place, but judging from American TV the only area that would be filled would be decent drama.
Sky spend poultry amounts on commissioning original shows, ITV make a lot of mediocre shows, Channel 4 do the occasional good show but their best shows tend to be the current affairs shows.
No one but the BBC does decent documentaries, and that includes the supposedly exclusively documentary channels such as Discovery, any decent shows on them tend to be BBC co-productions.
I suppose you could argue without the BBC there to fill that need others may spring up in their place, but judging from American TV the only area that would be filled would be decent drama.
^Not if the point was to get rid of a "publicly funded premium service" and replace it with a privately funded one.
I wonder if we could get one of the Murdoch's on question time?
Sure. Why not? The public service could sell to whatever private companies it chooses to, not just one, though.
Separating the gathering work from the presentation work is a principle that's widespread already - there are various private companies dedicated to gathering information and creating articles and selling that content on to other private companies involved in publishing that work. There's no reason for the same organisation be both creator and publisher.
The only reason I suggested keeping the news-gathering side publicly-funded is because the BBC, under the cover of journalism, can be of use to the country in terms of gathering information rapidly and sometimes being able to get to places that conventional state representatives cannot. This is something that could be theoretically considered a national security asset (it certainly has been used as such in the past) and so much thought would have to be done before risking privatising it.
But news publishing (production, presenting & broadcasting) is not a security asset, just another television programme, and can easily be privatised with no such concerns.
If you're concerned about subsequent editorial bias, rest assured that it already exists in every single media publisher (including the BBC) and will continue to exist regardless of state or private ownership. The slant might vary a little, but since left-wing newspapers remain viable as well as right-wing newspapers, I have little doubt a left-wing TV news publisher could be commercially viable alongside right-wing TV news publishers like Sky.
Exactly. Why taxpayer fund it instead of letting viewers choose what they want pay for?
Well, the American market also produces large amounts of other content. It may not be to your taste, of course, but the point is that there would be homegrown content providers that would spring up to take the BBC's place in much of the populist arena. If there's a profit to be made from making a good drama, comedy or whatever, a private production company can make it.
Now, there ARE - as I already acknowledge upthread - certain niche sectors of entertainment where it is very difficult to find a sufficiently large audience to make them commercially viable. In those sectors, there is a role for a state-funded broadcaster to act as a catalyst - almost like a VC fund would operate to take risks and encouragei innovation. But those areas are very much the minority of what the BBC currently produces. Most of the BBC's expenditure - ie. your licence fees - is not on this sort of niche programming (which often tends to be cheap) but on populist entertainment that is profitable, and something that the private sector can and should fund, rather than the taxpayer. Focus the BBC on that unique niche programming and you'd still be able to encourage innovation (probably MORE than now) while still slashing the BBC's budget and so cutting the licence fee heavily.
The BBC at the moment is an organisation that is a total media creator & publisher across the entire gamut of entertainment. I can't see any reason for the state to fund all of that, rather than just those niche areas of media creation/publishing where there is no viable private alternative and no prospect of one being created if the BBC were not a giant player in market, making it relatively hard for new entrants to emerge.
