BBC Green Paper
Today the government will announce their recommendations on the future of the BBC (registration required on MediaGuardian, sorry). As usual, there has been much debate about the Licence Fee, and whether people should have to pay it in the satellite/digital/multichannel era.
Here's what I think. Your BBC1s and BBC2s, BBC3s and 4s, I can take or leave. I rarely watch any of their output, even more rarely watch anything home grown. As far as I'm concerned, they've followed the lead of commercial television too much, and there have been too many makeover shows, reality shows, soaps ('Enders, Casualty, Holby) and lukewarm cop shows (anything with Amanda Burton). They don't even do the lukewarm cop show as well as ITV (Foyle's War is the quintessential example of this).
And as for the argument that it's ad-free tv, puhlease. Trailers are as bad as ads, so give over. Interminable trailers, especially when they're already running late for some reason, make most of us feel homicidal.
As far as their factual programming goes, it has been dumbed down to the point of parody. Horizon, as a so-called science strand, must surely win the award for destroying the Earth in more ways than was previously thought possible. Watch a couple of episodes and you just wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Drama-documentaries are just another hyphenated word: gob-shite; and the crap CGI dino-docu is just laughably bad.
The very worst thing they do in this dumbed-down Hallmark Universe, is to fill every 30-minute programme with 10 minutes of "still-to-come" mini-trailers. Trailers are bad enough, but the trailer within a programme has me out in the kitchen, opening the oven door, and getting in. When a subject is interesting enough to make a programme about, why fill it with padding? This tendency, which annoys everybody and yet continues to worsen, tells you everything you need to know about the lack of talent and intelligence in TV production today.
So, after all that, do I think the licence fee is worth it? For CBeebies alone, I say yes. CBeebies is stuffed full of trailers, but by not following the lead of commercial TV, by not including noisy and violent (and crappy) cartoons from America and Japan, and by not having ads for plastic crap that will not work properly and break after 5 minutes, it does a great service.
So, CBeebies, yay. And Radios 4, 5, and 7, yay. 5Live has too many trailers and jingles, but it's still preferable to any alternatives, and Blighty wouldn't be Blighty without Radio 4. Any one of these things alone is worth £2 a week of anyone's money. The television side needs a slap upside the head, but that train is surely not far from the station.
Television
TV
Radio
Media
BBC
Here's what I think. Your BBC1s and BBC2s, BBC3s and 4s, I can take or leave. I rarely watch any of their output, even more rarely watch anything home grown. As far as I'm concerned, they've followed the lead of commercial television too much, and there have been too many makeover shows, reality shows, soaps ('Enders, Casualty, Holby) and lukewarm cop shows (anything with Amanda Burton). They don't even do the lukewarm cop show as well as ITV (Foyle's War is the quintessential example of this).
And as for the argument that it's ad-free tv, puhlease. Trailers are as bad as ads, so give over. Interminable trailers, especially when they're already running late for some reason, make most of us feel homicidal.
As far as their factual programming goes, it has been dumbed down to the point of parody. Horizon, as a so-called science strand, must surely win the award for destroying the Earth in more ways than was previously thought possible. Watch a couple of episodes and you just wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Drama-documentaries are just another hyphenated word: gob-shite; and the crap CGI dino-docu is just laughably bad.
The very worst thing they do in this dumbed-down Hallmark Universe, is to fill every 30-minute programme with 10 minutes of "still-to-come" mini-trailers. Trailers are bad enough, but the trailer within a programme has me out in the kitchen, opening the oven door, and getting in. When a subject is interesting enough to make a programme about, why fill it with padding? This tendency, which annoys everybody and yet continues to worsen, tells you everything you need to know about the lack of talent and intelligence in TV production today.
So, after all that, do I think the licence fee is worth it? For CBeebies alone, I say yes. CBeebies is stuffed full of trailers, but by not following the lead of commercial TV, by not including noisy and violent (and crappy) cartoons from America and Japan, and by not having ads for plastic crap that will not work properly and break after 5 minutes, it does a great service.
So, CBeebies, yay. And Radios 4, 5, and 7, yay. 5Live has too many trailers and jingles, but it's still preferable to any alternatives, and Blighty wouldn't be Blighty without Radio 4. Any one of these things alone is worth £2 a week of anyone's money. The television side needs a slap upside the head, but that train is surely not far from the station.
Television
TV
Radio
Media
BBC
posted by Anonymous at
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
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