“it’s very SUPPOSED principles of providing DIFFERENT UNIQUE content”

Hmmmm….not sure how it’s living up to those supposed principles, are you?

In context, BBC licence fee revenue is approx 20% greater than the sum of CNN and HBO global revenues combined.

How do revenues just 4% lower than they might otherwise have been translate into anything “radically” different?

This is mad? So in your opinion, in the current economic environment, the BBC should be asking for more taxpayers money because the service is genuinely well regarded by the public?

This conclusion is reached despite indentifying areas they should cut which could be reinvested more wisely to offset the impact from freezing the license fee.

Wake up and smell the coffee. If the Left aren’t even in favour of freezing inflationary increases to a bloated organisation like the BBC – you will have zero credibility when considering value for money in other public services.

@1, CNN is not a good example right now, the broadcaster having slipped to third place in cable ratings recently.

In fact, CNN is in such a desperate state that they have appointed Piers “Morgan” Moron to replace Larry King early next year:

http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2010/09/rat-joins-sinking-ship.html

Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow are reported to be not quaking in their boots.

@2, try and leave pejorative phrases like “Bloated BBC” to the Daily Mail, unless you have a cite for the remark, which you don’t.

Mark Thompson’s own salary package – bigger than that of the chief executive of the NHS and the chief of the general staff added together – in unjustifiable in a public service role. Unless and until the BBC is prepared to address this disgraceful situation, the BBC will garner little sympathy.

@3 that is nothing to do with lack of cash though is it?

Asking for an increase when everyone else is making cuts would be political suicide, making the abolition of the licence fee entirely even more likely.

It’s a wise decision.

@5, *what* is “nothing to do with lack of cash”?

Can’t we just start taxing Murdoch’s empire and use some of those $$$ to make up the license fee shortfall? Win-win, I’d say.

CNN’s ratings slip

No surprise to see the moronic brownshirts attacking the BBC. Just like fly’s on shit , trolls are attracted to any thread about the BBC.

The BBC can never win with these people. If they make popular programmes like East enders or Radio 1 and 2 the moronic fucks say “private sector could do that” Well why don’t they then? Plenty of private radio stations about. Why don’t they get 7 million listeners like Wogan did? The answer of course is that they are shit. And Sky spends a fraction of what it gets in new programmes.

And if the BBC make worthy programmes that only half a million watch, the same knuckle draggers say, “no one is watching it so why make it.” Moronic Brownshirt fucks will never be happy until they have destroyed some of the great things about the UK. The BBC, the NHS for example.

One thing I hope the BBC has learned , is that you can never appease Brownshirts. Handing over your motoring show to Clarkson, and letting him turn it into a giant advert for the tory morons, or your political shows to Andrew (Thatcher) Neil, and Nick (I joined the tory party) Robinson will never buy you any leeway with the Right wing.

The enraging thing about the BBC is its institutional left wing bias, openly admitted by Mark Thompson earlier this month:

http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/09/lecture-thompson-bbc-interview

@10 “Just like fly’s on shit , trolls are attracted to any thread about the BBC.”

Shit punctuation?

As a radio script writer I’ve just taken an enforced 15% pay cut on the unanswerable argument that if I don’t my commissioned work will suddenly disappear.

And the scum at the top still rake in the unbelievable sums. the more they pay themselves, the more craven their decisions.

The enraging thing about the BBC is its institutional left wing bias, openly admitted by Mark Thompson earlier this month:

http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/09/lecture-thompson-bbc-interview

I take it you were hoping that nobody would actually read your link?

Which brings us to the question of the BBC’s politics and the frequent accusations of bias. Thompson says this has been a problem. “In the BBC I joined 30 years ago [as a production trainee, in 1979], there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left. The organisation did struggle then with impartiality. And journalistically, staff were quite mystified by the early years of Thatcher.

“Now it is a completely different generation.

Or did you just not bother reading past the misleading pseudo-quote in the headline?

@14 No Dunc, I’ve read the article, I just don’t share your confidence that the Beeb has magically become a neutral broadcaster in this ‘new generation’.

@ 10

Sally, you really do need to find a new word for right-wingers. “Brownshirts” is just historically wrong. The Brownshirts (SA) were the Nazi party’s lefties.

From Wikipedia’s article on the SA:

SS members generally came from the middle class, while the SA had its base among the unemployed and working class. Politically speaking, the SA were more radical than the SS, with its leaders arguing the Nazi revolution had not ended when Hitler achieved power, but rather needed to implement socialism in Germany.

So you’re using an insider’s viewpoint to support the exact opposite of what that insider actually says himself, then? If Thompson says that there used to be a left-wing bias but there isn’t any more, you’re taking that to indicate that there’s still a left-wing bias?

Well, somebody’s biased alright…

@9. well, the appointment of Piers “Morgan” Moron looks exactly like lack of cash.

Pay less, get Moron!

@Dunc

Isn’t it obvious? When Thompson said the BBC used to be biased he was telling the truth, but when he said it isn’t anymore he was lying!
For more information on how to concoct your very own right-wing conspiracy theory, click here.

Mark Thompson has a vested interest in claiming that the corporation is neutral- he needs to try and convince refuseniks to pay their TV License again.

As a source, he’s not that credible.

NB the BBC does almost 80% of its job advertising with the Guardian. Not really casting its net very wide…

@20

So why do you believe him when he says the Beeb used to be biased, then? *sigh*
Also: the Guardian is well known for its excellent jobs pages (I’m no fan of its journalism, either) particularly in the public sector. So it makes sense.

All that aside, the political make-up of the people who work at the BBC shouldn’t, and in my opinion doesn’t, affect its coverage. As I’ve mentioned before on this very blog Nick Robinson is a Tory, Andrew Marr is a Labourite, these things are known but they don’t actually affect the coverage like some people – on left and right – think. It is the only institution legally bound to be impartial with regards to political coverage etc etc and I think it does a bloody good job of it.

” 20. Manning The Pumps

As a source, he’s not that credible.”

Except, of course, when you need a source to prove that institutional bias did exist in the 70s.

Also interesting to note that we need to provide sources that prove the BBC of today is not biased, while you fling (unsourced) positive assertions around willy-nilly.

This might be an excellent place to fight back against the stupid, unprincipled and intellectually lazy argument that because person A is known to sympathise with a certain political stance, that means they are entirely incapable of being professional enough not to allow that to affect their work.

Nick Robinson is a Tory. Andrew Marr is a Labour sympathiser. Does that matter? No, as long as they do their jobs well. Both annoy me with their verbal mannerisms, but both are good journalists who do not bring their personal preferences particularly to the table, and neither are subject to private proprietors who wish to impose their views on people.

The BBC is superb. People who moan about it being biased, 100% of the time mean ‘It does not always say what I want it to say’. It’s not for you. It’s for everyone.

Nobody has the right to have everyone agree with them all the time.

@22 “Also interesting to note that we need to provide sources that prove the BBC of today is not biased, while you fling (unsourced) positive assertions around willy-nilly.”

Who’s ‘we’?? Left wingers???

@23 If the BBC was funded voluntarily and not through a tax, it could say whatever it wanted and only those who liked what it was saying would have to pay. That’s fair isn’t it?

Those who are happy with the tax-funded model 100% of the time mean they like what the Beeb says and stuff everyone else.

My brilliant apercus have disappeared, was it on purpose? The point I was making was this:

I value the BBC highly but that does (and should) make me more cautious about defending a funding model that requires thousands of people who value it much less than me to subsidise content they are not remotely interested in. Ho can we justify jailing people (and let’s not forget that that is the cost of the BBC) if they don’t want to pay for BBC3 or Strictly Come Dancing (or the Proms if you want to look at it from that side of the room)?

My brilliant apercus seem to be vanishing. Is it on purpose or should I keep trying?

Well, if the choice is between BBC or two versions of ITV, I’d say I’d pay for BBC myself.

But I can’t help but wonder if the reason ITV, Sky, Five, Sky etc have their present shape is the mere existence of the BBC. Would its absence not change things? And, more importantly, is it worth risking it to find out since it would probably be irrevocable?

As to the freeze in the license fee, I suspect this is a sensible political decision, as people may like the BBC but object to paying more.

@James: The point is that this rise had already been pencilled in, admittedly prior to the credit crunch. Not accepting it seems to be more about cutting off their nose to spite their face than anything else. You can present it as a wise decision or giving in, walking towards the inevitable when it’s not going to do anything to stop what the Tories most likely have in store regardless.

@Jayla: The problem is that all the other heads of the main broadcasting companies earn vastly more than Thompson. He might well be prepared to take a massive pay cut, but the next person along might not. Admittedly this goes to the heart of the BBC’s difficulties in operating as a publicly funded entity when it has to compete with private sector salaries, yet the “privilege” of working for the BBC simply doesn’t exist any longer, except in those loyal to the corporation, which isn’t many.

@Watchman: Mark Thompson dealt with that in his MacTaggart lecture, quoted in the full piece:

But do not believe anyone who claims that cutting the licence fee is a way of growing the creative economy or that the loss in programme investment which would follow a substantial reduction in the BBC’s funding could be magically made up from somewhere else.

It just wouldn’t happen. A pound out of the commissioning budget of the BBC is a pound out of UK creative economy. Once gone, it will be gone for ever.

“The problem is that all the other heads of the main broadcasting companies earn vastly more than Thompson. He might well be prepared to take a massive pay cut, but the next person along might not.”

It is a mistake to take the profiteering of other company heads as a sign of anything other than corporate greed, surely the banking crisis proved that? There are a tiny number of very senior broadcasting jobs, an even tinier number of those with prestige of the BBC. There will be literally hundreds of brilliant men and women clamouring for the role and it is nonsense to think that a merely colossal salary will deter the best of them. We shouldn’t keep falling for the myth of the great leader.

“But do not believe anyone who claims that cutting the licence fee is a way of growing the creative economy ”

I don’t believe in the ‘creative economy’ but I take your general point. I don’t see why the BBC should not completely close down Radio 1 and BBC3, though and invest all the money saved in commissioning for the remaining channels. Would that really be a serious net cultural loss?

But I can’t help but wonder if the reason ITV, Sky, Five, Sky etc have their present shape is the mere existence of the BBC. Would its absence not change things?

If we compare commercial television in the UK with the rest of the world, the only tentative conclusion I think we can draw is that, without the presence of the BBC, commercial television would be even worse than it currently is.

John,

I don’t believe in the ‘creative economy’ but I take your general point. I don’t see why the BBC should not completely close down Radio 1 and BBC3, though and invest all the money saved in commissioning for the remaining channels. Would that really be a serious net cultural loss?

I fear you may been showing your age here. Why Radio 1, not Radio 2 (BBC3 I can understand – it makes total sense… but perhaps others will defend it and ask why not BBC4).

Septicisle,

I fear you misunderstand me. My question was what would happen to the other networks should BBC disappear – would they improve (in my view) or not. This is nothing to do with the creative economy, but rather the simpler question of whether there would be anything worth watching on?

There is no such monolith as “commercial television”.

HBO, source of the many series we all seem to enjoy, is commercial.

So are Sky Arts, Discovery Channel, etc. etc.

Comparing the very best of the BBC – a falling proportion of its output as its output has ballooned – to the very worst of ITV is fun but pointless.

Indeed both models have been overtaken by technology.

“I fear you may been showing your age here. Why Radio 1, not Radio 2 (BBC3 I can understand – it makes total sense… but perhaps others will defend it and ask why not BBC4).”

Probably true (age-wise) but I do think there is a non-partisan justification fro scrapping Radio 1 given how well commercial radio provides most of its content. The argument for Radio 3 is pure elitism, but can that be avoided? The whole justification for the BBC is elitist and I think that bullet has to be bitten. Now that we have been through the ideologically purifying fire of the banking collapse, this might be the time to do it. Otherwise the BBC is doomed to inhabit forever the horrible squirm space where it ends up baring its arse for a kicking from the public service side every time it hitches up its skirts to win the ratings to keep the populists at bay.

“33. cjcjc

There is no such monolith as “commercial television”.

HBO, source of the many series we all seem to enjoy, is commercial.

So are Sky Arts, Discovery Channel, etc. etc.

Comparing the very best of the BBC – a falling proportion of its output as its output has ballooned – to the very worst of ITV is fun but pointless.”

Comparing the BBC with American commercial broadcasters is somewhat disingenuous; the American stations’ greater reach and audience means that some sorts of programming that are commerically viable there are not here: by contrast, comparing the output of ITV, C5 and Sky to the BBC is a fair, and highly unflattering (for the commercial stations) exercise.

Really?
As I pointed out earlier BBC revs are greater than CNN and HBO combined.

HBO, source of the many series we all seem to enjoy, is commercial.

We do, do we? Funny, I hadn’t noticed personally…

So are Sky Arts, Discovery Channel, etc. etc.

There is exactly one half-decent show on the Disco channel (Mythbusters), and it gets worse every season. Sky Arts I have no knowledge of.

I pay my TV license and cable subscription almost exclusively for BBC content.

Bottom line: you can only justify the licence fee for the public service stuff.
So keep news, BBC1 and 2, R3, 4, 6, 7.
That’s it.

It’s cut or die.

@37excellent and you and I and everyone else should have the same opportunity to subscribe to what we want to see

No-one else should be forced to pay for my pleasure – or yours.

Troll riding a straw man again …….”@23 If the BBC was funded voluntarily and not through a tax, it could say whatever it wanted and only those who liked what it was saying would have to pay. That’s fair isn’t it? ”

Yes , and all those that don’t like bombing the shit out of brown people won’t have to pay for the military, and all those that don’t break their legs skiing won’t have to pay for the health service, and all those that don’t have children won’t have to pay for education, and all those that don’t have a car need not pay for roads, and we can become a nasty, small minded, selfish little nation.

Watchman: Simply put, no, I don’t think they would improve. Times have changed so much that even if the BBC did suddenly disappear tomorrow ITV, Channel 4 and 5 would keep on shovelling out the crap they currently do (there are some exceptions to that generalisation I’ll admit); it seems to be the only thing they’re any good at.

And so they might.
But so what?
You may have spotted that there are a hundred channels from which to choose.
A multiplicity of ways to watch, stream, download whatever type of programming you want to see.
And are our “creatives” so useless that no-one will want to pay for their output except under compulsion?

Sally states “and we can become a nasty, small minded, selfish little nation”.
I put it that we already have become this, and the left-leaning Bolshevik Broadcasting Company has become a propaganda machine to help achieve this over many years.
Radio 4 is particularly virulent, biased, and a purveyor of misinformation through lies, distortion, and omission.
This week it tongue-in-cheek put on a “positive” show of the Pope’s visit to Scotland and Birmingham after weeks of anti-religious propaganda from it fellow travellers Dawkins and company.
The amount of anti BBC blogs and articles has grown immensely in the last 3 years, and even the USA is now aware of the BBC’s anti USA bias, especially its crude reporting of the tea party movement which also relied on omission like the 250,000+ people meeting in Washington recently.
Add to this the open support and genuflection to that fountain of knowledge The New York Times that BBC radio 4 gave to its very shaky foundation with its anti Murdoch campaign, and you soon know that where the BBC’s heart lies.
At one stage in the last week I thought John Prescott had bought the BBC it was so rampant in its positive coverage of his truly ridiculous whining.
We deserve a professional, balanced, truthful, and unbiased BBC that is also transparent, non-political, and subject to open regular independent scrutiny to a set in stone ethical commitment.
We have not had this for at least 25 years, most especially the last 15 years.