Report Says BBC should sell off Radio One & Radio Two : Should They?

How would that piss Moyles off?

i dunno. he ought to be shot.

But even so, this is not a good idea. And who is the European Media Forum anyway? Something funded by Murdoch perchance?

Everything I've heard about this selling-off story so far has been focusing on what is or isn't worthy about R1 and R2 but, though I personally like neither, I cannot argue they don't entertain rather a lot of people.

But so do the commercial stations and they have to make their own way. I don't think there's really any public servive justification for R1 and R2 any more. Flog 'em.

Hitler was funnier than Moyles.

BBC audience = virgin oil fields; "end this protectionism"

hahaha!

Maybe 60% of the audience don't want to listen to a station with adverts.

"FUTURE FUNK SQUAD OH! MY! GODMAN! IT'S THE BIGGEST THING SINCE PENDULUM! PEOPLE! YOU NEED THIS!"

Moyles should be sold off to the British meat industry.

Most people who want to sell them just don't want to pay a license fee. They wouldn't realise how good the BBC is until its too late and radio/tv would be a mess.

I haven't listened recently but, bearing in mind the time of year, I suspect R1 are filling in between songs with plenty of revision and exam-related jingles. Maybe they also have a Radio 1 Action Line for this. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Mike Harding
Suzi Quatro
Desmond "six times Isle of Man TT winner" Carrington
J Ross
Craig Charles
Elaine Paige
Sarah Kennedy
Vernon Kay

They are all pretty rubbish, but only one is a proper celebrity, with one of them up and coming.

I bet they have celebrity DJs on commercial radio too, althouhg I can only think of Chris Tarrant and Johnny Wotsit on Capital.

Oh, and Vanessa Phelps on BBc Radio London.

Also while i'm not the biggest fan of either radio 1 or 2 but anyone who geniunely thinks they are exactly the same as commercial stations obvivously doesnt listen to either.

Admitably there are overlaps in music policy, but i think thats somewhat inevitable, anyone who's ever dj-ed in a club people generally don't like listening to music they don't really know, or at least seems familar.

Both 1 and 2 seem to play the music first, its the commercial stations which follow the beeb.

If the competition for r1 is xfm and kiss i think all three offer quite different and distinct programming,

and radio 2 who are there competitors virgin and magic maybe ? again if you actually listen to the stations what they offer is actually quite different.

i think they ought to exist even if its for the stuff they do around other than the station itself, the onelive events, coverage of events which would get exposure otherwise etc

that said i think these kind of challenges are kind of helpful as the license is essentially a tax the beeb should be subject to scutiny

I fail to see how radio stations who have 60% of the audience share between them aren't providing a public service. They are providing radio stations that the majority of people who want to listen to radio want to listen to.

does The Girly Show and RI:SE count as tv presence? 8)

radio 1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/statements2006/radio/radio1.shtml

radio 2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/statements2006/radio/radio2.shtml

6 music
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/statements2006/radio/radio6music.shtml

1xtra
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/statements2006/radio/radio1xtra.shtml

Other people (me included, FWIW) seem quite happy to keep paying the licence fee to continue to get all the services that the BBC provides. Swings and roundabouts, innit.

If R1/R2 weren't costing the corporation money what would they spend it on? Not more popular things, because they'll just get lopped. So dull things. Then the BBC will become so tedious that nobody will support the licence fee, and we'll have killed something of excellence. Hmph.

Whether people enjoy listening to R1 or R2 is one thing; the question is whether these stations should be funded with public money if the same service and level of audience enjoyment is being provided by commercial radio.

Currently in London Magic FM is top of the ratings, so that's obviously what people want.

By fourpence.

am i right in thinking that channel 4 gets some sort of subsidy? cos it seems to work pretty well.

If they were that good, they'd have kept Brookside going.

I LOVE THE BBC.

As for it being sold off, a lot of it has already been sold off. I don't understand how this works though. Perhaps someone else does. For instance, BBC Worldwide (or whatever it was called) was sold to 2 Entertain, thus denying the Corporation its Terry and June DVD income. Apart from licensing, I suppose.

There was a good "oh noes" thing about massive crocodiles on Channel 5 last night, Ailsa. It was up against BBC 4's documentary about the British space programme, which involved thinking.

I did watch a thing about animal rights nutters one day though. I don't know whether that's "oh noes" or porper serious documentary though. And a thing about Nepalese unrest with the sound down.

BBC wants too much cash, says ITV
Michael Grade and Mark Thompson
The government's decision is expected later this year
The BBC is asking for too much money in its current licence fee bid, says ITV.

The BBC has asked the government for a rise of 2.3% above inflation for the next seven years, meaning the licence could rise to £180 by 2013.

But an independent report commissioned by ITV argues the corporation needs a licence fee - currently £131.50 - rising only at the rate of inflation.

The BBC argues the increase is needed to fund digital switchover, on-demand services and more quality programming.

A spokeswoman said the licence fee bid had been subject to independent scrutiny prior to publication.

But ITV boss Charles Allen said: "The BBC's back-of-a-fag-packet figures should come with their own health warning.

"This report represents a thorough economic analysis of the impact of the BBC's proposed licence fee increase and it is damning in its conclusions."

The report, carried out for ITV by Indepen Consulting Ltd, argues that if the current bid was agreed, the licence fee would grow faster than people's incomes, meaning it would become harder to afford as time went on and hit low income households the hardest.

It says that if the BBC's productivity growth takes place at the same rate as the rest of the UK economy, it only needs a licence fee rise at the same level as inflation.

But if the BBC out-performs the economy, it adds, the licence fee could be fixed at the current rate of £131.50.

BBC consultation
The BBC has been consulting the public on its future

BBC chairman Michael Grade told the House of Lords earlier this year that the proposed licence fee increase was the lowest it could be to meet the public's needs.

The current licence fee agreement - which sees the fee rise by 1.5% above inflation every year - will expire in April 2007.

The licence fee will remain until 2016, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has confirmed - but she has also said that the final deal for the new settlement will be "lower than the BBC's proposition".

She recently announced plans to ask the public how much they would be willing to pay for the licence fee and whether they considered it value for money.

The Barwise report for BBC governors suggested in April that almost half of viewers were against raising the licence fee to help vulnerable groups switch to digital TV.

The BBC's demands could be massively reduced if the government were prepared to foot the bill for their digital switchover policy
Don Foster, Lib Dem

But it also found most viewers would pay more than they do now if the money was spent on relevant services and output quality was maintained.

Shadow secretary for culture Hugo Swire said on Wednesday: "A proposed licence fee of over £170 would be too much for many low income families.

"The BBC cannot expect the government to write a blank cheque to fund the corporation wish-list."

Lib Dem shadow culture secretary Don Foster said: "This report indicates that the BBC has 'over-egged the pudding' in its demands for an inflation-busting increase to the licence fee.

"The BBC's demands could be massively reduced if the government were prepared to foot the bill for their digital switchover policy."

excellence? where? what exactly does the BBC do that's "excellent"?

as a non-BBC journalist, i hate the corporation and everything it's become: over-staffed, over-funded, utterly protected from the horrific realities of the market, etc etc. if it was genuinely doing a better job than its many rivals, i'd say, right, there's a case for keeping this public funding going.

but it isn't. yes, i still listen to "today" because there's nothing else that comes close - but that's only because the beeb, with its vast funds and reputation/tradition - has got a monopoly there.

the licence-fee-funded BBC is an absurdity, and it's time the whole thing was taken apart and restructured for the 21st century. right now it's a fucking sinecure for thousands of underworked hacks, and that pisses me RIGHT off.

Even our radio presenters are awful. They can't get through a single sentence without saying 'ehh' or 'um' or 'like' about ten times. On RTE's flagship morning news programme the presenters are always leaving their mikes open while guests are speaking, so that you hear them breathing, shuffling papers, scribbling things out, tapping stuff into their keyboards and so on. It's most unprofessional. i'm convinced that our national broadcaster is keeping digital radio out of here on purpose so that we don't all switch to getting our news from Radio 4.

But hey, I'm not paying your license fee.

if ad rates and the pressure for viewership statistics that justify those rates becomes just as much of a concern to the BBC as it is to commercial broadcasters - if it becomes so much of a make or break proposition - then the BBC's mission is disposed completely.. what point even calling it the BBC any more? (A: "branding!")

I am looking at BROADCAST.

i definately have a bit of a problem with the level and forced compulsion of the license fee but i just can't believe that the market would provide given the absence of the bbc.

R1 and R2 may seem commercial at just this moment but that's because the charts have been invigorated recently too by larger cultural forces. I LOVE not having adverts and ultimately that is what a lot of people are paying for; any fule capitalist has to understand there is a backlash to the hard sell. Insanely rich people who argue that the competition is not fair because they are not another ten per cent more insanely rich are FAKE VICTIMS; a real victim is someone unable to get World Service in Uzbekistan (and therefore even the tiniest bit of news about their country that isn't dictated) because of budget cuts.

I wonder if this is widespread.

I rest my case.

Chris Evans desperately trying to get to grips with the drivetime show format. Business news and sports news do not suit his universe.

Desmond Carrington celebrating his 80th birthday by playing, in the main, military band music. And Nick Drake and Eva Cassidy.

The Organist Entertains. Who needs Eraserhead?

Documentary on the Carter Family.

Part two of the Tammy Wynette Story (summary: George Jones, punchbag, KLF, illness, kthnxbye).

Steve Harley's Sounds Of The '70s.
"I'm going to sign off early tonight to play the full-length version of a musical masterpiece, not just of the '70s, but of any decade."

Bated breath:

"A long, long time ago..."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mark Radcliffe has Scritti Politti in session.
Green Gartside preferred to hear an old Pretenders song than a new Fiery Furnaces one. I'm sure his new record company enjoyed hearing that.

Watch five hours of US TV and radio, compare to BBC. How many ILM threads have been started by overheated music fans who've just heard something amazing on commercial radio and want to know what it is?

as a non-BBC journalist, i hate the corporation and everything it's become: over-staffed, over-funded,

And as a non-doctor, I hate lungs. You have no idea whether they're over-staffed or over-funded, you're just going on the public perception of the thing. I'll agree that I think there are alarming numbers of managers, but I don't think having adequate resources is a bad thing.

if it was genuinely doing a better job than its many rivals, i'd say, right, there's a case for keeping this public funding going.

WTF are you on about? Whether things do a better job is not a test of why you fund them with public money. You don't say "whee public ownership will make the hospitals really good at surgery", you say "people need decent hospitals for low money, so we'll provide them".

It's time the whole thing was taken apart and restructured for the 21st century. right now it's a fucking sinecure for thousands of underworked hacks, and that pisses me RIGHT off.

It's time you were taken apart and restructured. What would your shiny new BBC look like? Lots of hacks being sorely overworked; a few pools of talent grappling with whatever odds-and-ends of staff were left after a massive redundancy programme; lots of cheap kids in jobs better done by (expensive) older people; a relentless drive to keep core functions (ie the popular shit) going so they can justify the fee; a corresponding drop in any sort of adventurous programming at all? Nice going, Einstein.

If the hacks are "underworked" -- and the ppl I know from the BBC would hotly deny that -- it's only in comparison with the downright shitty terms and conditions the rest of the industry is putting up with from corporations who couldn't possibly care less about the finished product, but want to maximise return on investment and minimise spending on staff.

What's wrong with saying to a group "we want to make the best possible output, so take the time and the money you need to do it and get on with it"? If only NHS hospitals had twice as many staff as private ones. But then you'd probably get pissed off that they were sheltered from competition and say that it was a sinecure for old surgeons.

And I don't disagree with the privatisation of public broadcasting, I just don't see many great or realistic arguments for that here.

Still, apropos the BBC, to paraphase dear old Alan Sugar, public funding isn't about pissing taxpayers' money up against the wall...

Funny that he should say that when he is in effect pissing our money up the wall, innit.

As I understand it, this is exactly what's happening in the BBC right now.

exactly. thank you, marcello.

stet, you can't compare fucking BBC hacks with doctors. don't be a tool.

and you haven't actually answered my question about excellence. you just said it's better than american broadcasting. yes, i'm sure it is. so is ITV1. so is channel 4. so is channel bloody five. what, i ask again, is "excellent" about the BBC right now?

[tumbleweed blows]

exactly. it's a joke. layers of management everywhere (the ludicrous birt legacy); thousands of unwatched digital programmes being made at great cost; an absolute dearth of original comedy and drama; current affairs programmes that are so fucking lax THEY INTERVIEW SOME CHAP WHO'S COME FOR A CLEANING JOB, THINKING HE'S A TECH EXPERT.

but i'm not claiming to make a coherent business argument for privatisation: i'm speaking as a pissed-off hack who actively resents the BBC. that's all.

the BBC is not living up to the expectations it glorious past provokes in us, therefore it should be annihilated "thrown into the marketplace" (somewhat, i imagine, as a martyr is thrown before the lions). very new labour of you both, TOP HOLE GENTS

i mean. it's a bloody broadcasting organisation. it's not a hospital or a railway. it makes fucking strictly dance fever.

sentimentalism clearly rules on this thread.

:)

and the BBC is entirely beholden to the bottom line. read private eye: every single week there'll be a story about mergers/budget cuts/news crews being told to do each other's work. (and you know what? why shouldn't bloody BBC news 24 be feeding in to the terrestrial broadcasts? but i digress.)

did you miss all that bollocks about the "internal market" within the BBC? its feeble-minded managers are trying to run it on a private-company model. this is insane.

the bottom line is simple: news has moved on. reporting has moved on. broadcasting has moved on. the BBC is an anachronism, plain and simple. all i can see on this thread is sentimentality, and straw-man arguments about how ITN is crap too.

The reason the BBC should be publicly funded -- which it isn't, btw, it's only funded by television owners -- is because it gives a far better return for our money than anything else.

Straight-up commercialism produces terrible TV (hello ITV, which would be far, far worse than it already is if it didn't have the BBC channels to live up to). Subscription TV is the worst of both worlds -- monthly payments four times what the licence fee costs and you still get adverts and shitty programmes.

The licence fee is basically as if everyone who owned a TV got together and said "we're fed up with shit. Let's all put £10 in a kitty and get some decent stuff made". The results really do speak for themselves, and if you don't think so, you haven't seen nearly enough foreign TV.

(And yes, the licence fee is mandatory. So? If it wasn't, freeloaders would refuse to pay, and we'd have the tragedy of the commons. This way we get a great cross-media organisation, for what is frankly, a fucking steal. News websites, Radio stations, Television stations. Streaming radio stations on the net. A peerless global news network. For £10 a month. Capitalists can go watch ITV shows on torrents. Oh wait, nobody wants to torrent an ITV show.)

xpost: they're fucking DRIVEL compared to the BBC.

At least the money hunger doesn't really get on screen. 2am in this country I can turn on the telly and watch something reasonable and clever. 2am anyplace else, it'll be an infomercial. No, it's not some golden valhalla of TV, but it's better than anything else, and for buttons

bollocks. absolute arse. tell you what: strip out R1, R2, all so-called "entertainment" programming, all comedy etc and give us a lean, fighting-fit news service and i'll say, yeh, i'll buy that for a tenner a month. but a) i should have the choice, and b) it would have to be a damn sight better than the piss-poor sara cox/chris moyles/strictly dance fever-riddled nonsense we get right now.

i'm off to bed. where mrs fiendish is watching a commercial channel. i can hear the adverts.

x-post: what? we spend 72.4% of our time arguing. it's in the grimly charter.

(X can be British society, Glasgow West End, the NHS, the BBC, hell any damn thing).
xpost: see! bedtime.

Also you or I watch NO pseudo-ITV shite on BBC1 but millions do and the BBC has to cater to them too (file under 'entertain').

(xpost to GF and stet)

No, the fact that it's currently the best way to get the best return on the public's money for something they want is the argument for public funding.

Like the NHS. Like the pre-Beeching railways. Like the Royal Mail.

People wanted letters delivered, they wanted healthcare, they wanted trains to run everywhere and on time. So they all got together, and paid for it. We may not get the very best results, but NOTHING ELSE GETS ANYTHING BETTER except rich individuals, paying their own way.

The US has fantastic healthcare ... if you can pay for it. FedEx will take your letter overnight ... if you can pay for it. CNN will give you rolling news ... if you pay for it. Their free equivalents of such services are utter dreck.

Sure, you'll pay £10 a month for a great news service (no, you won't). But what about your neighbour who can't afford that £10 just for news, cos his kids want the three kids channels? How about you pool your resources? Your nephew can watch their TV when he's over, and your neighbour can come watch your news channel when something's on? Scale that up! All the £10s nationally combine and everyone gets all the services?

That's all the BBC is: it's a national pooling of resources to get the best possible TV/Radio we can manage. It's mandatory because people are short-sighted and stupid, and can't always see what's in their own long-term best interest.

A pedant writes: you don't mean pre-Beeching, you mean pre-Sectorisation. Sectorisation was the market-driven havoc the Thatcher government wreaked on British Rail (not privatisation, that was Major ditto ditto ditto)

Do BBC employees have to have a TV licence even if they haven't got a TV? Because I imagine a lot of them are sick of TV by the time they get home.

My aim in life is to have no TV, thus no TV licence, yet still enjoy the wealth of truly excellent radio programmes broadcast by the BBC.

I wish they would stop being "jolly" on Radio 4's flagship agenda-setting Today programme though.

No commercial broadcaster is going to put out Farming Today.

I think I should work for the BBC at some point in my life.

Yes, this is sentimentalism.

Er, strictly speaking they didn't "pay for it"; the Attlee administration effectively "funded" these services on the never-never, even though Britain was still crippled by war-incurred debts. Corelli Barnett and others have argued that post-war Britain might perhaps have done better to build up a proper industrial infrastructure, as both Germany and Japan were forced to do, than to concentrate on the welfare state at the expense of all else; i.e. they did it in the wrong order and we're still suffering the consequences.

the existing BBC, which - as i've said - i think is a bad joke, should be thrown to the wolves. as i keep saying: as a journalist myself, i think it should be forced to compete on a basic economic level. its programming is no better - frequently worse - than that of its commercial rivals, and it galls me that it gets to sit back and watch the cash roll in, no matter what it does.

a nu-bbc - a decent one that didn't waste all its cash on "internal markets" and "blue-sky thinking" and producing idiotic drivel would, however, be a perfectly sound prospect for public funding. i think a couple of comments on this thread have made me realise this.

Also you or I watch NO pseudo-ITV shite on BBC1 but millions do and the BBC has to cater to them too (file under 'entertain').

eh? it's like i said to stet: why should anything have a duty to entertain? to inform, yes; to educate, yes. but to entertain?

millions of people also like beating their wives/injecting hard drugs/being total cunts in a variety of interesting and unpleasant ways. does that mean the BBC has to cater for them too?

as for your hospitals/trains/royal mail argument, stet, i'll reiterate: the BBC is not a necessity. tracer hand's comment about "quality reporting" did make me think that, okay, there's a place for an informative/educational/stripped-down BBC. but come on. strictly dance fever? eastenders? two pints of fucking lager and a packet of fucking crisps? chris moyles? hah. i don't think so.

i'm not saying the alternative would necessarily be better. i'm simply saying we'd all be a damn sight better off if we weren't paying a licence fee to fund such a constant stream of utter fucking drivel.

I would suggest that if the media industry in general, BBC and otherwise, were forcibly to divest itself of all its "consultants," timeservers and timewasters and went back to this way of doing things, this would be something of a solution to the quality problem.

This is how they congratulate themselves for The Office. I mean, it's good, but was it necessary to produce twenty different copycat programmes immediately afterwards?

I think we should all try having a completly BBC-free day or weekend, to see what it feels like.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/watch/

It would pain me to be BBC-less, I think.

I was going to attempt a lengthy debate of Beeb funding but then I looked at the listings for the next week and decided Dr Who wasn't worth £10 an episode.

Next time I buy a mars bar I'm going to go on a message board and complain for hours afterwards that they used MY MONEY to put an advert in Emmeerdale or some such rubbish!

In what way would we be better off? Millions upon millions of people wouldn't get the programmes they liked -- such as yes! SDF -- and hundreds upon hundreds wouldn't get the obscure programmes they liked. As everyone has tried to hammer into you, our TV would become like other countries' and THAT'S A REALLY BAD THING. What would we save? £10.

Sure, the licence fee needs looked at. I don't think people on benefits should have to pay it, for one thing. But in total it boils down to "what should the BBC do?". And the choices are:
The BBC should: Inform, Entertain, Explain
or
The BBC should: Try to maximise shareholder income.

"The market" doesn't produce the best, it never has. It produces companies that are good at making money. Whether or not they're going at their ostensible tasks is utterly irrelevant. At the BBC it's the only metric. Or it would be, if clod-humpers weren't making it justify the fee all the time.

It's exactly the same situation with the Guardian. The Scott trust means they can blow all their money on shiny new presses and websites, because the whole reason for its existence (and the hard life of the GMG companies) is to keep making the Guardian. Is it the best damn paper in the world? No. Is it better in a remarkable number of money-losing ways? Why yes.

The only reason the BBC couldn't have a similar trust is that it costs outstanding, exhorbitant amounts to produce big TV shows. So we all pay.

also: at no point did i ever say the market "produces the best". this is yet another straw man. what i've said, repeatedly, is that the quality of the programming produced by the BBC is no better than - indeed, frequently worse than - that of its commercial rivals. so why should it remain a special case? the broadcasting landscape, for want of a better word, has changed beyond all recognition, yet still the BBC clings to this outdated and ludicrous model, as if it's got a god-given right to exist. it doesn't. end of story.

More money for hospitals and schools, for one thing.

Millions upon millions of people wouldn't get the programmes they liked -- such as yes! SDF

If they like them enough, they'll be prepared to pay for them.

and hundreds upon hundreds wouldn't get the obscure programmes they liked.

Well, they'd probably end up being broadcast online or downloadable; I think BBCs 3 and 4 are the first step towards that happening.

Sure, the licence fee needs looked at. I don't think people on benefits should have to pay it, for one thing.

I don't think anyone should have to pay it.

"The market" doesn't produce the best, it never has.

The Prisoner? Cracker? Hillsborough? The Naked Civil Servant? 7 Up? Armchair Theatre? Every worthwile American television programme from Bilko to the Simpsons (leaving HBO out of the equation for now)?

It produces companies that are good at making money. Whether or not they're going at their ostensible tasks is utterly irrelevant. At the BBC it's the only metric. Or it would be, if clod-humpers weren't making it justify the fee all the time.

If something is subsidised by public money - that's your money, and mine - then the public has every right to demand justification of its continued existence at a time when I would have thought it would be much better deployed elsewhere.

Ah yes. The Guardian. The newspaper which has turned into a comic to attract "younger readers." They certainly succeeded in getting rid of this old reader!

It's called Believe. They are jumping on the "once every 2 years football fan come on ING-UHHHH-LUNNNND!" market. Cunts.

stet: How will we be far better off? = "we won't be paying the licence fee". not difficult.

If they like them enough, they'll be prepared to pay for them.
Except ... and get the crucial point here ... the BBC can make programmes even if there aren't enough people who like them to make them commercially viable. It's why there are niche shows, "subsidised" by the SDF-loving masses.

Well, they'd probably end up being broadcast online or downloadable
And WHO WOULD MAKE THEM?. Jesus wept.

Oh, and none of the independent TV shows you mentioned are from this decade. That's how good the market is. I'm not saying it doesn't have hits, but it certainly prefers infomercials to the Learning Zone.

If all you mean is we'd save £10, while losing news.bbc.co.uk, all the unsustainable regional work (compare BBC Scotland to Scottish TV, shudder), the non-commercial programming, the obscure radio shows ... bugger me you have one fucked-up sense of "better off".

There aren't "big hit" differences because that's one the market can and would achieve anyway, but that's not what you're trying to protect. It's the small things, that only a few people care about, but which matter all the same.

Radio 4 is a bore.

River City versus Scotland Today - tough call.

We need less news generally. The major way in which Birt crippled by the BBC was his obsession with rolling 24-hour news coverage. Far too much money was squandered on that particular white elephant.

My Mum watches BBC soaps and Come Dancing and all that crap, my Dad watches QT and News 24 and Blue Planet, my brother watches Dr Who and MOTD, my kids watch CBBC when they stay with their Granny. They are, by most UK standards, skint. The stuff they like, if put on a subscription based service, would either be on 3 or 4 different channels, each costing as much as a license fee, or would cease to exist.

How would they afford it? How is this better than the "tax" they pay to get all of this and more?

The World Service, as mentioned right upthread by Suzy. Recently made available (audibly) in this countrty on DAB and Freeview.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=bbc%2C+itv%2C+channel+4&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

Also Marcello those C4 films mentioned received funding in the form of Arts Council and film board grants also from the public coffers or were made by companies like Rediffusion back in the '60s where the talent had the same old-boy networks you moan about now, only they're OK when named Cook, Bennett, Dromgoole etc. Private ownership of broadcasting is a continuum where you get Berlusconi or Murdoch at the end when it "works" and cheap infomercials when it doesn't.

Nobody is saying the BBC is perfect, but the alternatives aren't worth thinking about.

Regular arts coverage on terrestrial seems to have been reduced to the bland Culture Show and Imagine, but BBC4 is superb for documentaries, films etc. And they've been repeating the Avengers!

I do have problems with BBC Scotland and Radio Scotland for being too damn safe (the arts show under Brian Morton was often very good, now it's the bland Radio Cafe), but they give Bob Wylie and Duglas T Stewart gainful employment, so fair play to em! Also BBC Scotland have always been pretty good on Scottish literature and language, particularly with the recent Carl McDougal programmes.

Radio 1 and 2 - daytime is generally awful, but at night you have specialist shows which simply wouldn't exist in the commercial field.

Duglas T Stewart - Is that Duglas BMX Bandit? What does he do?

As for BBC4, everything on there should be on BBC2 in the first instance - that's what the station was set up for, not an hour of Cooking Ronnie Corbett.

The trouble with R2's specialist programmes is that they're all so bloody dull and worthy. Studium specialists.

Were I offered my own programme, the first two records I would play would be "Street Waves" by Pere Ubu and "Love Of My Life" by the Dooleys. I'd pitch my delivery as a sort of cross between Bryce Curdy and LBC's Steve Allen.

Fair enough, but at least it's there. You've given me images of Ronnie Corbett being roasted on a spit. He may be a Tory, but I wouldn't wish that upon the old fellow.

(and that'll be the same world service that's being completely decimated, according to private eye. ah well.)

this argument is starting to go round in circles. suzy, yes: it's important to support the "creative industries". but i see precious little sign of the bbc doing that, apart from with a couple of radio shows that cost buttons to make. the majority of its output across all formats is bland, tedious, populist guff that - as marcello so rightly points out - could have been churned out by any number of rivals.

actually, that's a point: how much stuff BBC TV shows these days has been produced out-of-house? of its so-called "original" programming, how much is bought in?

stet: BBC scotland is FUCKING WOEFUL. don't come it. it's marginally, slightly better than STV, but there's only a bawhair in it.

OK, these aren't to everyone's taste, but I'm glad I live in a place where they still get made.

so all that really means is that someone at BBC scotland's got a good sense of humour and a half-decent chequebook. w00t.

and yes, your list of "old" BBC scotland stuff v "new" BBC scotland stuff is indeed depressing, and kinda proves my point: that the whole thing is a pale shadow of what it used to/should be.

but fuck it. i'm (unhappily) paying my licence fee - or rather mrs fiendish is - and everybody else is still happy, so ... why prolong what is rapidly becoming a rather dull argument?

:)

and now you've given ME images...

haha, my original post actually contained the phrase "you're going to go off on one about the Comedy Unit and I don't care because ultimately it's BBC Scotland that gets in on teh telly" in parentheses, but I thought better of it.

I didn't do "old BBC" v "new BBC" btw, I listed things I liked about the BBC and struggled to think of anything Scottish Television has done to match any of it. You don't like it != it's shit.

:P

(I've just finished watching it, and turned over to teh Beeb for thread evaluation purposes. There's something on called Totally Doctor Who, which is like a junior version of the Apprentice for geeky kids to join the "companionship academy". It's both compelling, yet tragic)

Yeah, but they also *made* The Good Old Days! Turn of the century music hall fun down at the Old Bull and Bush!

(someone's going to invoke the Black & White Minstrels soon, aren't they? I'm not saying it's all fantastic, but Noel Edmonds = the shit that people watch, but they are still allowed to get on with making the good stuff too)

I've got the Weekly Politics on next door. It's got Mark Mardell's political funnies! And Andrew Neil's continually evolving and amusing hairpiece. Now tell me a commercial channel would produce such a thing. Okay, not counting the funny bit on that STV late night Hollyrood show.

I missed lots of things in my list. I'm not the fucking encyclopaedia of BBC Scotland, I listed some things that I liked. i also didn't mention Hamish MacBeth (which I really liked), Sea of Souls, Monarch of the Glen, Balamory, Chewing the Fat, The Karen Dunbar Show, Only an Excuse, McCoist & McAuley, that crappy Jo Brand-fronted panel game that one of my friends made me go and see once, Athletico Partick...

(sorry for parochial ranting, but regional programming is one of the things I like about the Beeb)

When I say I like the regional programming, I mean the regional programming up here. I recognise that regional programming can vary from region to region - and BBC Scotland is nowhere near to producing the quality it did a few years ago, but I imagine it would be worse still if left to the mercy of the market forces.

wtf

(sorry for Sat morning derail but did kids really tune in for 5 years to watch Sandi Toksvig?)

Sandi Toksvig v Dick and Dom. Hmmm...

Grammatical pedants to thread!

Investigations editor Bob Wylie deserves some props, especially for the time he ended a report on gun crime holding an Uzi.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/25/radio-1-playlist-livetweets-hurts

Well, as the article says, they can't play absoulutely everything.

It's just that they could do it a lot better than they're doing - and that goes for 6Music as well as R1 & R2.

BBC needs to stop reacting to everybody and start creating.

sp: "absolutely"

do you still want to privatise R1 & 2?

Yes. They've had plenty of chances to prove why they shouldn't be.