"The BBC's activities and ambitions are chilling"

[Bob The Skutter]

It isn't a government institution, it's an independent public corporation that is funded through public money. But I see your point. I can see the reason for wanting multiple sources for news, and I suppose I could see the argument that competition might raise the standard of the productions they make for the children's programming, but if the commercial companies don't have the financial incentive to make quality children's programming then all you're going to get is cheap rubbish, so it makes the whole thing pointless.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Out of curiousity, what is "quality children's programming"? Give me some examples. I've been an adult for so long that I'm not entirely sure I know what it means. All the crappy anime I see on 4Kids! just makes me sad. And when I look back, a lot of the cartoons I enjoyed as a kid do not hold up at all, like Back to the Future, Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers, Garfield & Friends, etc. The only stuff that still holds up is 1990s Warner Bros. cartoons like Animaniacs, Batman: The Animated Series, Freakazoid, and Pinky & the Brain.

 

[wamdue]

shows like The Demon Head Master, The Queens Nose & more recently The Sarah Jane Adventures, whilst over on ITV you had things like Art Attack & Children's Ward.

Blue Peter, Newsround to name another two.

 

[barnaclelapse]

We're talking about a man who basically built his empire on The Simpsons. I've always believed he was more lucky than good when it came to business. I hate Ted Turner to hell and back, but at least it sort-of seemed like he had some kind of insight once in a while.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Out of curiousity, what is "quality children's programming"? Give me some examples. I've been an adult for so long that I'm not entirely sure I know what it means. All the crappy anime I see on 4Kids! just makes me sad. And when I look back, a lot of the cartoons I enjoyed as a kid do not hold up at all, like Back to the Future, Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers, Garfield & Friends, etc. The only stuff that still holds up is 1990s Warner Bros. cartoons like Animaniacs, Batman: The Animated Series, Freakazoid, and Pinky & the Brain.

I'm not entirely sure, I think they mean children's dramas, comedies and semi-educational things, instead of shows invented solely to sell toys and stuff like that.

 

[payndz201]

I hate Ted Turner to hell and back, but at least it sort-of seemed like he had some kind of insight once in a while.

Someone once said of Ted Turner words to the effect of: he would go into board meetings and shoot out a constant stream of ideas. Nine out of ten would be worthless at best, moronic at worst... but the remaining one would be good enough to make him another million dollars.

In contrast, Murdoch's entire empire is founded on the idea of "Plan A: Find the lowest common denominator and pander to it as cheaply as possible. If we somehow accidentally produce something that is not cheap or pandering, either kill it immediately or run it into the ground until it fits into Plan A." (See: The Simpsons, The X Files, Futurama, Firefly, the Alien series, the Predator series...)

(Oh, and Fox News, obviously.)

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Out of curiousity, what is "quality children's programming"? Give me some examples. I've been an adult for so long that I'm not entirely sure I know what it means. All the crappy anime I see on 4Kids! just makes me sad. And when I look back, a lot of the cartoons I enjoyed as a kid do not hold up at all, like Back to the Future, Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers, Garfield & Friends, etc. The only stuff that still holds up is 1990s Warner Bros. cartoons like Animaniacs, Batman: The Animated Series, Freakazoid, and Pinky & the Brain.

I'm not entirely sure, I think they mean children's dramas, comedies and semi-educational things, instead of shows invented solely to sell toys and stuff like that.

Of course, shows that sell toys aren't all bad if they encourage children to invent their own stories within the universe. I attribute much of my current creative streak to spending so many hours in my childhood playing with Kyle Ripley next door with his Power Rangers action figures. Then we started throwing in all of these crossovers with Beetleborgs & Spawn. It was great.

But I can see how shows intending to sell toys could be bad... especially if it's "Chinpokomon"!

I never found "semi-educational" programming very entertaining as a kid. Some of the stuff that was very overtly educational was kinda cool, like Reading Rainbow & Bill Nye the Science Guy. But semi-educational stuff like kids' news or whatever always seemed totally lame to me, even at a very young age.

shows like The Demon Head Master, The Queens Nose & more recently The Sarah Jane Adventures, whilst over on ITV you had things like Art Attack & Children's Ward.

Blue Peter, Newsround to name another two.

OK, maybe asking for examples was a bad idea. Of all these, the only one I've seen has been The Sarah Jane Adventures and the only other one I've even heard of is Blue Peter (thanks to some of the short clips that are included as bonus features on some of the classic Doctor Who DVDs).

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Animal Planet co-owned by BBC Worldwide, Discovery has a lot of BBC documentaries and co-productions.

Both channels air plenty of American documentaries. I doubt the BBC is making Animal Cops: Detroit. And regardless of where they come from, they certainly are profitable or they wouldn't be on the air.

Animal Planet, Discovery and History Channel are all PayTV, the BBC is what keeps those kind of programs avabile to all.

The BBC doesn't do shit for me. I get those channels because I pay Comcast for the privilege (and my fee in turn helps underwrite the production costs).

But once again, how does it argue that documentaries are unprofitable when people like me are motivated to pay for cable partly to access those documentaries?

^Besides, Discovery mostly show reality TV shows nowadays with the occasional documentary thrown in.

Nope. Here are the shows on Discovery that are documentaries (which they sometimes label 'reality TV' for marketing purposes - anything that's about real life, that would be happening even if the cameras weren't rolling is a documentary):

Gang Wars: Oakland
Extreme Rides
Rampage!
Heroin Nation
Raging Planet
American Loggers
Deadliest Catch
Dirty Jobs
How It's Made
Nature's Most Amazing Events
Prehistoric New York (etc - they do other cities)
Out of Egypt

So we have documentaries about tough jobs, crime, drugs, and wild weather, plus a couple genuinely educational sounding shows. Not real intellectual stuff, but it's all about the real world and not contrived situations. That's a documentary.

And haven't all three channels (History included) basically started going for more sensationalist stuff and drama rather than being straight up documentaries?

Discovery has the most "sensationlist" documentaries but that doesn't mean they aren't documentaries. History has some intelligent stuff like The Universe and silly nonsense about religious conspiracies and the end of the world. But a documentary can still be called a documentary even if it's not a particularly good or sober one. It just needs to at least purport to be about the real world and not a game or contrived situation.

You don't have to agree with the documentarian's point of view. Plenty of people think Michael Moore is an idiot, but his stuff still counts as documentaries. A show about how weird weather proves that the End Times are upon us is a documentary if the person making it believes that they are accurately presenting reality, even if they are in fact, clinically insane.

The purpose of a government institution should be to provide things that the free market is unwilling or incapable of providing. If the free market has found a way to provide something, an additional government source of that something is superfluous at best and a wasteful use of public money at worst.

Yeah, but then the problem is: who decides what is "worthwhile"? Ballet and opera and other artsy stuff? A lot of people hate that shit. I think a well written written, intelligent space opera series would be far more useful and would serve the public good better than stuff that only a tiny percentage of the public is interested in. Just try using tax dollars for that.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

The purpose of a government institution should be to provide things that the free market is unwilling or incapable of providing. If the free market has found a way to provide something, an additional government source of that something is superfluous at best and a wasteful use of public money at worst.

Yeah, but then the problem is: who decides what is "worthwhile"? Ballet and opera and other artsy stuff? A lot of people hate that shit. I think a well written written, intelligent space opera series would be far more useful and would serve the public good better than stuff that only a tiny percentage of the public is interested in. Just try using tax dollars for that.

That's one aspect of the free market. It helps determine what is "worthwhile." Things are profitable when people enjoy them enough to voluntarily pay for them, which covers the cost of providing these things. Something may not be worthwhile if too few people are willing to voluntarily fund it. And if you ask me, the only TV that I think there is a strong argument for publicly funding is news. I think you could argue that society has a need for new programming free of commercial influence. Beyond that, I think the argument gets a lot tougher. (However, I'm not about to go on an anti-PBS crusade over here. Even if it is a government excess, it's far from the worst one we have. I've got badder fish to fry.)

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Temis When wamdue says the BBC keep it available to all he means in the UK, of course they don't do shit for you, you're not a licence fee payer. Well actually they do, any shows you enjoy on Showtime/HBO/discovery that are co-pros/BBC imports, they might have been bought/co-produced by an American company, but they probably wouldn't exist without the BBC.

Also with your question about what is "worthy" you hit the nail on the head about why the BBC also make popular drama/comedy etc. because they are serving the entire population, not just those who want to watch ballet and classical music (which they also air).

I guess you're right about those things being documentary in the sense that they are documenting events that would happen without them there, and I suppose fly-on-the-wall documentary has more right to be called "Reality TV" than reality TV does. As for the crazy conspiracy documentaries... doesn't it have to be real for it to be documented, rather than the fevered imaginings of a crazy person?

 

[wamdue]

shows like The Demon Head Master, The Queens Nose & more recently The Sarah Jane Adventures, whilst over on ITV you had things like Art Attack & Children's Ward.

Blue Peter, Newsround to name another two.

OK, maybe asking for examples was a bad idea. Of all these, the only one I've seen has been The Sarah Jane Adventures and the only other one I've even heard of is Blue Peter (thanks to some of the short clips that are included as bonus features on some of the classic Doctor Who DVDs).

I swear not all of the BBC is built around Doctor Who

 

[barnaclelapse]

I hate Ted Turner to hell and back, but at least it sort-of seemed like he had some kind of insight once in a while.

Someone once said of Ted Turner words to the effect of: he would go into board meetings and shoot out a constant stream of ideas. Nine out of ten would be worthless at best, moronic at worst... but the remaining one would be good enough to make him another million dollars.

In contrast, Murdoch's entire empire is founded on the idea of "Plan A: Find the lowest common denominator and pander to it as cheaply as possible. If we somehow accidentally produce something that is not cheap or pandering, either kill it immediately or run it into the ground until it fits into Plan A." (See: The Simpsons, The X Files, Futurama, Firefly, the Alien series, the Predator series...)

(Oh, and Fox News, obviously.)

Then I guess The Simpsons is the exception to the rule.

That show has been downright brilliant at times. Good thing no one told Rupe.

 

[payndz201]

Then I guess The Simpsons is the exception to the rule.

That show has been downright brilliant at times. Good thing no one told Rupe.

Downright brilliant at times, yes... but those times were long ago. I stopped watching it about five years back because the new episodes never managed to raise more than an occasional vague smile. Every week was "Homer's so stupid that he's lost any grasp on reality and even basic motor functions, and now he's bloodily injured himself!" So it fits the "run it into the ground" bill, like The X Files.

 

[_r_]

It's a very complicated subject.

But what I have complete faith in,

Is that if the BBC were to disappear, the quality of British television would fall incredibly quickly.

The BBC is compelled to make good programmes, through a responsibility to it's charter. To it's licence-fee paying members rather than advertisers.

The foundations of commercial television in the United Kingdom, were fundamentally, made in reaction to the BBC.

An understanding of this, would explain, the very interesting crossroads we are coming to in British Television, which not only has consequences in this country, but the world as wall. This includes the United States (It's major reality shows, not just some poxie documenteries) televisions as well.

ITV and Channel 4, as the two other terrestrial broadcast corporations in the UK, are finding their places in the future tenous, their existence useless as British television becomes ever more like two idelogical poles, between the publically-funded BBC or Cable and Satellite suscription, dictated by giants like the Murdoch-funded Sky. It's no wonder they are completely neurotic.

ITV for one are completely falling apart, how can they produce regional news (which is not what they intend or mean, it was an attack on the BBC) when former regional broadcasters break apart and actively rebel against them (see: Scottish Television.)

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

As for the crazy conspiracy documentaries... doesn't it have to be real for it to be documented, rather than the fevered imaginings of a crazy person?

But their fevered imaginings are true... from a certain point of view.

shows like The Demon Head Master, The Queens Nose & more recently The Sarah Jane Adventures, whilst over on ITV you had things like Art Attack & Children's Ward.

Blue Peter, Newsround to name another two.

OK, maybe asking for examples was a bad idea. Of all these, the only one I've seen has been The Sarah Jane Adventures and the only other one I've even heard of is Blue Peter (thanks to some of the short clips that are included as bonus features on some of the classic Doctor Who DVDs).

I swear not all of the BBC is built around Doctor Who

I'm sure that's true, the same way not all Paramount is built around Star Trek. But it doesn't mean I'm not going to ignore the non-Star Trek elements of Paramount any less. (Although, to their credit, Paramount also produced Frasier.)

 

[Bob The Skutter]

As for the crazy conspiracy documentaries... doesn't it have to be real for it to be documented, rather than the fevered imaginings of a crazy person?

But their fevered imaginings are true... from a certain point of view.

True how? True in that they imagined them? That they have paranoid "proof" of them and that there are people who believe it? I suppose, but I'd expect a documentary about it to show how it is/could be completely false too, otherwise it's complete bollocks.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

The BBC is compelled to make good programmes, through a responsibility to it's charter. To it's licence-fee paying members rather than advertisers.

But how is responsibility to its charter any greater an incentive to making good programs than the profit motive that drives the commercial networks? Commercial networks will lose advertisers if they produce poor quality shows that no one wants to see. In the law of supply & demand, I have to imagine that the demand for quality television in the U.K. is fixed and that, if the BBC did not provide it, some commercial network would and reap the profits from it.

The foundations of commercial television in the United Kingdom, were fundamentally, made in reaction to the BBC.

An understanding of this, would explain, the very interesting crossroads we are coming to in British Television, which not only has consequences in this country, but the world as wall. This includes the United States (It's major reality shows, not just some poxie documenteries) televisions as well.

ITV and Channel 4, as the two other terrestrial broadcast corporations in the UK, are finding their places in the future tenous, their existence useless as British television becomes ever more like two idelogical poles, between the publically-funded BBC or Cable and Satellite suscription, dictated by giants like the Murdoch-funded Sky. It's no wonder they are completely neurotic.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Perhaps some background on how British commercial television is a reaction to the BBC and what the ideological difference is between the BBC & Sky and why ITV & Channel 4 don't matter in this scheme of things.

 

[Deckerd]

Murdoch just wants some licence money. It's not rocket surgery.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

As for the crazy conspiracy documentaries... doesn't it have to be real for it to be documented, rather than the fevered imaginings of a crazy person?

But their fevered imaginings are true... from a certain point of view.

True how? True in that they imagined them? That they have paranoid "proof" of them and that there are people who believe it? I suppose, but I'd expect a documentary about it to show how it is/could be completely false too, otherwise it's complete bollocks.

Forgive me for going a bit Obi-Wan on you but I do believe that much of the history we cling to can be very subjective and depends an awful lot on blind faith in historical authorities. After all, I wasn't around 140 years ago and I haven't the time to invest into thousands of hours of confirming research; therefore, I'm taking it on an educated blind faith that the American Civil War happened. That's an extreme example of course but since our own personal experiences are so limited, much of what we think of as history comes from what other people tell us. It would not necessarily be difficult for a conspiracy to fabricate or obscure facts or to reshape them into an inaccurate historical narrative.

I think most conspiracy theories are incredibly unlikely. However, a film that earnestly presents an alternative theory, however unlikely, is still a documentary. If the theory seems especially bogus & unsubtantiated, that makes it a crappy documentary but it's still a documentary.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Well profit motive gives them reason to go lowest common denominator to draw in as many people as possible, not necessarily a motive to make quality programmes.

The BBC was the first TV broadcaster in the UK, ITV started in the 50s as a network made up of regional broadcasters, basically as a competitor to BBC. Then BBC Two was started as a more niche channel. In the 80s Channel 4 was set up as a commercially funded publicly owned broadcaster, their remit was to push the boundaries and be a bit more fringe. Later Channel 5 came along as another commercial network.

I think I read Channel 4 currently has a budget shortfall of around £50m, and ITV are slashing budgets and going for more reality/live entertainment shows rather than quality drama.

I don't know why he says only Sky and BBC are relavent because Sky produce next to nothing in original programming, ITV still has around billion pound budget and produces a lot of highly rated shows. Channel 4 still produce a lot of good shows, but they became very bogged down in reality, property and cooking shows over the last few years, but they say they are investing more in drama over the next few years.