Absolutely. That's why we have commercial television, and also why the BBC does not cater exclusively towards minority interests. That's not to say that minority interests shouldn't be catered for by a broadcaster subsidised by the licence fee. I don't see hoards of people deprived of the sort of TV that they want to watch. Make your mind up. One minute your arguing that the BBC produces minority television that nobody wants to watch, and the next minute you're arguing that the BBC wastes the licence fee by producing cheap, mass-market television. You don't have a consistent position. You start from the assumption that the BBC is bad, and choose whatever position is convenient at the time to support your hypothesis. Indeed. But it may very well need the BBC blessing in order to exist. Absolutely. A market driven exclusively by personal choice would be a nightmare. However, you seem to suggest that the current situation represses choice, which of course it does not. It's not as though independent television doesn'tr exist, or is struggling to survive. There's plenty of free choice available. The BBC exists to protect quality broadcasting that might otherwise fall foul of the low-brow prejudice of the free market. Oh come on! US TV is dominated by utter shite! Quality shows are frequently cancelled before they've got off the ground. Look at Angel. Whether it's too your taste or not, it's recieved wide critical acclaim, has a strong audience share and a good demographic. Cancelled because the network wants to concentrate on cheap, reality TV. Why than you Oh yeah, and in case it had escaped your attention, I'm a tax payer too. So's my partner. So are my friends. So's my whole family. Don't be so stupid to mistake a contrary opinion to your own as indifference. You clearly don't understand democracy then. Democracy is not about enacting the will of the people, and never has been. Any politician will tell you that, be they Tory or Labour. The job of a government is to interpret the will of the people, and implement it where they believe it is sensible, and to ignore it where they believe it is wrong. If democracy was about implementing the will of the people, we'd have a death penalty for starters. I see. So it's an efficient and diverse broadcaster, catering to all tastes then? Of course I answered the question. I can't help it if you fail to understand the answer. You can't compare BBC world to the domestic BBC. When you have the whole world as a market rather than a limited region, there's a much great potential for producing minority interest programs while still generating a profit. It's not a like-for-like comparison. What an excellent idea! I'm amazed it's not been thought of before! But hang on..... effectively we do have one, don't we? It's called BBC News Online. News stories... check. Editorials.... check. Entertainment.... check. Weather.... check.
I hate BBC news and BBC online....its dreadful. The BBC should just be for us in the Uk . If they it can not survive within modern competitive markets ... well then it should go out of business...
And does that go for museums, art galleries, ancient monuments? You might not like the BBC news services, but thy're widely recognised as world class, and leaders in their field.
Yes , the botanical gardens in wales for all its good work and beauty http://www.gardenofwales.org.uk/english/visit/visit.php Is being suported more than is financialy aceptable. i don't want it closed but it is not working so should be closed. That should be the case with galleries and museums too a certain degree. collections should not be stored in some back room somwere but a business is a business The BBC is a business. Anciet monuments well thats another story .. we have prety much vandalised ancient egyptian sites , and other such wonders of history. So there is nothing new in destroying them. there is no comparison though realy.
Right. So anything must have $$$ value in order to survive? How progressive of you. Can you explain to me exactly why money is so important that it should come before all else? Of course there's a bloody comparison. Many sites in this country are maintained by tax payer's money, and would not exist if they weren't accorded protected status. Avebury, for example, would have vanished long ago if there hadn't been intervention to protect what little was left. Your wonderfull free market resulted in the stones being pulled down and broken up by a property speculator to be used as fabric for house building.
No everything does not have too have a ££ value to survive. But the BBC is just another media company . Bore me with its history if you must , but what actualy does it do that no other company does. It operates in a cut throat market ... so why should market forces not apply.
That's the whole point though. It isn't just another media company. It provides 'public interest' broadcasting such as regional programs, arts, minority interests. Have you actually looked at any of its competitors? Sky News is utter trash, presenting news as entertainment. It's shallow, cheap and trashy. Put it this way. If there was a genuinely free market, and in such a marketplace there were no impartial providers of, say, a quality news service, would you still think that there'd be no place for a publicly funded broadcaster? It amazes me that we're even having this debate. The BBC is the envy of the whole bloody world.
I realise that certain things should have protective status , but i dicision has too be made if a perpetual maintenace serves anyone (in the long run) . You can not 'save' every last thing 'man' makes . And a certain amount of 'desrtuction' has too take place.
Indeed. Which is why we can leave the crap that's served up by the vast majority of private TV companies to the free market and the dusts of time.
I agree with that , but each makes it own amount of quality and rubbish. Granted the BBC has made more quality . But it been around longer. It rests on its laurels to much though.
Quite. The case is quite simple: The BBC is the best broadcaster in the world. Other broadcasters in larger, more prosperous countries working almost exclusively on the free market model cannot match its excellence. It's the envy of the world in terms of its international radio, television and news output. It's a reasonable deduction that this is because of its status: neither a state broadcaster nor a private media company, but a well-funded, totally independent broadcaster with a cast-iron public service remit. This seems to indicate that the BBC has probably got something right. Ideological quibbles about the license fee and taxation aside (these are the factors of a political, not a media debate) these facts remain. So, my case is don't privatise the BBC because it is working extremely well as it is, it is widely respected both around the world and by the overwhelming majority of Britons who pay for it. Further, the example of other countries indicates that the free market cannot produce broadcast media of such a consistently high standard.
An interesting thought experiment: what would happen if the BBC were privatised? It wouldn't turn into Channel 5 overnight, that's for sure. But for those of us who believe privatisation would, in the long term, be a bad thing for the Beeb, by what process would the BBC lose its unique trademark excellence? I don't think anyone has made the case that privatisation would actually make it better in terms of its actual output. The objections seem mostly ideological and political - privatisation would suit a certain model of the role of the state and the free market. If anyone thinks privatisation could actually improve the BBC's broadcast output, by what process would this occur?
The thing is it is far more than just a media company. Name another media company that does anything along the lines of Open University, or the GCSE Biteback stuff, the late night "signing" programmes, documentries like "The Blue Planet", "Walking With Dinosaurs" - truly "local" radio and television, BBC Online, BBC Four etc etc etc Name another media company that has been involved so closely with the evolution of TV as we know it (NICAM Stereo, Teletext to name a couple of BBC inventions). Name another media company who would have made Freeview the success it is today. Name another media company who are putting the majority of their back catalogue online FREE for download and viewing. The license fee doesn't only benefit the BBC - if the license fee was abolished and the BBC moved to an advertising funded model then the simple fact of life is that other channels would lose advertising. More advertising money wouldn't suddenly be available, it would just be spread thinner - with a large wack of it being given to the BBC, so smaller channels would lose advertising, lose money, and go out of business. Giving us less choice, and with less choice the market becomes less competitive, and quality drops.
Why can't it be both? Some of their programming is pointless commercial broadcasting, some of it goes unwatched because it caters to elitist ideas of what people should, but don't, watch. That's the BBC's Catch 22 - they either make programs people want to watch, in which case they can't justify why they need to exist as a public broadcaster, or they make what they think people should watch, in which case they get terrible ratings and people wonder why they pay a license fees for stuff that nobody watches. So they end up doing a bit of both, which doesn't really solve either problem. Which is exactly the self-serving mentality of the BBC cultural elitists. Of course you trust your own personal choices, just not other peoples. A quick browsing of the programming lineup of major US networks (or better yet the whole 800 channel lineup available to cable/satellite subscribers) reveals that reality TV is only part of the menu. This is pure hyperbole. Didn't Angel survive four seasons? Given that most shows last about three months, not too bad really. Personally, I've never seen it, but I'll keep an eye out for it. Of course you are happy for your tax dollars to pay for things you like. My point is that you are also happy for other people who don't like the same things to be forced to pay as well. You missed it again. Minority interests has nothing to do with it. Either accepting advertising corrupts or it doesn't. Is BBC world corrupted? What a lame attemp to evade the point. Different medium. You could just as easily say we don't need BBC television because we have BBC radio. So are you going to answer or not. How can the UK survive without the BBC to provide a independent and unbiased newspaper? Don't we need state intervention to "correct" the newspaper market which is currently run at the mercy of capitalist interests?
That was not very fair of me i suppose. i just said that because for all its might ... the BBC never tells me the truth .. just every point of view and never if something is right or wrong ... impartiality is fine but still giving time too mindless speculation gets on my wick. You can watch a programe on BBC 4 and then on BBC2 (or something) it tells you the opposite. If you just watched the main News broadcasts you would have one view of the world ... watch more then that and you get a complety diffrent 'message'. The BBC gives so many mixed messages its unbeleivable.
Of course your use of language is loaded towards your lack of impartiality. Obviously it's untrue to say 'nobody' watches your so-called 'elitist' programs, or else they wouldn't be made. There's a world of difference between 'nobody' and 'not enough people to make something commercially viable'. Naturally. If we didn't all trust our own opinions, we'd subscribe to the opinions of others and all think the same thing. That's communism, isn't it? So are you arguing that we should always enforce the will of the majority, even where we believe it to be wrong? It's not about whether something's 'not too bad'. It's about whether a commercial market can actually deliver quality television. Even with strong audience figures, Angel was still cancelled because a wider audience could be reached more cheaply. Market economics cater to the lowest common denominator. Yup. I accept that best interests of the community will sometimes involve the government dipping into my pocket. Similarly, I don;t use schools or libraries, and I have private health insurance so don't need the NHS, but I don't have any objection to my wages being taxed for these things. I'm 'forced' to pay for things I don't use, and hey! Guess what! I think it's fine! That's what governments are suposedly for. To tax you and spend your money wisely. What has corruption got to do with your question? Look, you dumb twat. It wasn't a 'lame attempt' to evade the point. I was answering it head-on. I believe that a state-funded, impartial newspaper would be an excellent idea. And it wouldn't be to 'correct' the market. It would be to provide an alternative. I do, however, think that BBC news serves this function. I an age where all the major newspapers are now producing on-line editions, you could argue that the BBC is already operating side-by-side with them. It's still the written word reporting of the news, be it on paper or on screen.
I agree, to a point. I'd sometimes prefer to have 'the truth'. Unfortunately though, there's seldom such a thing. 'The truth' is usually a subjective thing, based on subjectivity and personal interpretation. This is exactly why the BBC provides such a valuable role - because it provides impartial information.
So what about the number of people in the population who dont have digital, but want to watch the programs the bbc puts out that other stations don't? This is where the debate split last time i think. It gives people what they want to the degree that makes the most money, or gets the biggest audiences, but we are not clones and, at least i would like to think, that individuals and small groups matter. For example, if a small number of the license paying population would like to see an art/drama on the life of Ronald Regan (or Karl Marx or whoever), and this is shown, chances are that not a huge number of people will watch it. If there are less viewers then advertisers will pay less for airtime, hence showing this program loses the company money, so it aint shown. ANSWERS 1. I dont know, i would assume not, but corruption isnt the issue here, neither really is untrustworthy news, and much of the arguements put forward have been suggesting the BBC to be independent. 2. Newspapers are designed as media mostly for news and current affairs (and occasionally soft-core porn), this is just one part of the BBC (though unfortunately the soft-core porn element is lacking from the BBC). I dont really understand, the BBC is not about showing what a tyrannical government wants the ignorant masses to see, its about showing quality programms that appeal to a wide cross-section of society. 3. As ive mentioned, it is not possible to subscribe to terrestrial TV, which is how a large number of people choose (or are forced) to have TV. People may be happy to pay for it as it is now, but under private management things would change in order to make more money and please share-holders. Whether people would be willing to pay for this new private BBC it is impossible to say, but the BBC as it is now would be lost, and many others here (i would guess) and i believe that it would be inferior to the current BBC.
A very perceptive comment, Doost. This is the point about 'market efficiency', or providing the best return for an investment: the maximum profit for the least outlay. Which means spending as little as you can in order to achieve the maximum possible viewing figures. That's how the unregulated free market in broadcasting could, quite possibly, lead to live televised public execution. From history, we know there would be a vast audience for that. Is that better for the population than, say, a Dennis Potter play? Pointbreak's argument would say yes, because more people would want to watch the execution than would want to watch the play. More money would be made from the execution than would be made from the play. The free market model in broadcasting leads inevitably to the notion of "value" as nothing more than monetary. If it makes less money, it is less valuable. If it doesn't make any money, it's worthless. Personally I think that's a rather vapid conception of cultural worth.
