(from Blithering Bunny)
Some praise for the Beeb for a change. The show Dragon’s Den is one of the best TV shows in years. If you haven’t seen it, people who have ideas for businesses get 5-10 minutes to pitch their idea to five very rich business people, to try to convince them to invest in their ideas, which range from new inventions to disposable carboard furniture to couches that hang from ceilings to machines that sell umbrellas.
What’s so good about this? Well, it provides riveting reality TV without involving a situation that is too artifical. Moreover, it really gets across some of the realities of business. Not the day-to-day mechanics of running a business, but the realities of what’s required for an investment to be rational, and how to persuade people with money to invest in your business.
Some people have nice ideas but no idea of how they’re going to make money from it, yet they expect other people to pour a lot of money into their company (if they even have a company, which often they don’t) for a tiny percentage of it in return. Some people have already been successful in convincing the “dragons” (as they’re called) to part with some loot.
This is all good, because it gives those viewers who’ve never had much to do with business and investment a more realistic view of it, and humanizes the whole thing. I expect a few stereotypes to be gradually adjusted as a result of this show.
Actually, the BBC has been pretty good on this front recently, running a number of shows which look behind the scenes of real businesses. Sometimes these shows involve having a discreet laugh at the mad posh people who run country homes, but at least we’re seeing some real, actual companies at work, instead of disgruntled left-wing beardy writers’ fantasies about business.
P.S. Seeing as we’re going easy on the Beeb today, let’s bash Channel 4 instead. They just had a show on entitled “What Tony Blair Can Learn from the Iron Lady”, presented by Iron Lady’s daughter Carol Thatcher. I couldn’t believe Ch 4 were giving anyone half an hour to praise Maggie. But, as it turned out, the second half of the show was all about how Blair was wrong to invade Iraq, and ended up being just an excuse for various old Tories to criticize Blair over this, so business as usual for Ch 4 really.
One old Tory was quoted as saying what a disaster Iraq was, and how Blair would be judged badly by history. No doubt he was filmed saying this before last weekend’s elections. He looks pretty silly now – but then so does most of Ch 4.
CH4 News US correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, is clearly well qualified to report on the US, with his knowledge of America clearly, like most Europeans, not extending beyond New York.
Likewise New Yorkers lament the “ignorance of the outrside world” of Middle America, ironic considering New Yorkers know nothing of what they arrogantly dimiss as “flyover country”.
Yes. All credit to the BBC in putting out a program that promotes enterprise.
Even more credit for showing the 4 hour documentary on Reagan over xmas. I believe it was a US- produced program and was pretty complementary to Reagan. Even mentioning that, at the time he decided to defeat the Soviet Union, through an arms race, he was considered a war monger by many people. In New York over a million well meaning souls turned out to protest against Reagan. Then it showed the fall of the Berlin Wall.
All I remember from my student days were conversations about how ‘stupid’ Reagan was. I guess we could do with a few more idiots?
First time in years I have seen a good documentary on the BBC. Perhaps noticeable though that the BBC did not produce the program.