“The second obstacle is that it is hard to know exactly what a world without the BBC would look like. The ramifications on media, cultural, political and social life would be so profound that it is very difficult to predict what they might be. It is not too dissimilar, for example, from envisaging a country without a national electricity grid.”
– from Measuring the Value of the BBC: A report by the BBC and Human Capital (October 2004) [Text version here, PDF here.]
This gem was found by commenter “Grimer”.
What they cannot imagine is a world without large salaries paid by you and me.
Truly pathetic. “We’re as essential as electricity” they jabber……er, no you’re not. You’re just one more biased news organisations amongst many. But rather uniquely, you’re funded through a series of forced payments, backed up by a nation wide system of threats and intimidation.
The pomposity of these people is beyond satire. They really do think they’re on a quasi-religious mission to bring enlightenment to the grubby masses, and protect the ignorant plebs from all sorts of nasty ideas and thoughts, which they, our self-elected betters don’t like.
Funnily enough, I can all too easily imagine a world without the BBC, and people in the UK would be 120 quid a year better off for it.
Ludicrous as this paragraph is, it does give us an insight into how they think of themselves.
The impact on the media – upheaval, but so what? the media think they are the country, well they aren’t.
Cultural life? I can’t see any impact at all. Improvement if any, I would imagine.
Political life – yes, there would be an enormous change. Gone would be an extremely powerful and biased force distorting British politics. Political life would enjoy a renaissance of diversity of opinion (i.e. those who hold views which are right-of-centre may actually be given a platform).
Social life – 100,000 fewer people, most of them poor, criminalised for non-payment of the TV poll tax. A truly enormous change in the social life of Britain!
This is so divorced from reality it takes the breath away, yet, as Rob says, it does shine a light on the mindset. They are obessional and delusional. I just hope they wrote it tongue-in-cheek because it would be too disturbing to contemplate if sincere.
More repeats, sorry ‘choice’ from the BBC:
Del Boy saved from the axe
http://media.guardian.co.uk/diary/
Earlier this year BBC chairman Michael Grade announced, with no little fanfair, that he wanted to eradicate repeats on BBC1 and BBC2. Since then, both director general Mark Thompson and new BBC1 controller Peter Fincham have blown polite raspberries at the idea, citing cost implications, for one thing. Thompson was again in polite raspberry blowing mode today, when the question of eradicating repeats arose at the press briefing on the BBC’s licence fee bid. “I think it’s a dream – and part of my job is to try and make the chairman’s dreams come true,” said Thommo. Grade, who was sitting beside Thommo, then appeared to backtrack on his initial pledge to banish repeats: “What we’re seeking to achieve is a position where repeats become a matter of choice, not necessity. They are very much a matter of necessity at the moment, to make the numbers work.” So relax, people – looks like you can keep on enjoying those Only Fools and Horses repeats for years to come.
A world without the BBC: one in which I would be deprived of an important source of daily amusement!
I’m guessing Susan is living someplace where refusing to pay for the televisual equivalent of spam will not get you jailed.
I didn’t request their broadcast network, and I’m not going to pay for it! Especially when it would be much cheaper to collect via subscription.
Read it and weep.
Europe TV now ‘less informative’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4334718.stm
so, commercial TV & choice = baad, public sector poll taxed tv = goood
“Viewers often do not receive the information necessary to make informed democratic choices,” the watchdog said.
“Viewers often do not receive the information necessary to make informed democratic choices,” the watchdog said.
True, we don’t… not from any public broadcaster. That’s why we rely on the internet so much these days.
Yes, Rob, it’s true, I don’t have to pay for it, that’s why I can afford to smile a bit at the Beeb’s often ridiculous propaganda offerings.
But, I do feel guilty about indulging at you lot’s expense, if that helps!
I this reflects the ‘balance of opinion’ then the war is far from lost:
Should TV licence fee be increased?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4330060.stm
Should the threat of violence fund TV?
“TV shows throughout Europe are becoming less informative and more sensational, a European watchdog has found.”
Hmm, I wonder if the BBC exclude themselves from this – has anyone seen documentaries produced by the BBC recently?
As for repeats, most of the stuff produced recently by the BBC has been appalling, commercial rubish. Showing repeats of good programmes produced 20 or 30 years ago is the only chance we have of seeing something worthwhile.
That ‘research’ desperately needs a thorough fisking. It is a prime example of the quack science that now pervades our universities, supported by corrupt bodies like the BBC seeking academic justification for their own selfishness.
Some choice quotes:
“Digital households tend to value the BBC’s digital services the most highly as they are already in the habit of paying relatively expensive multichannel subscriptions.”
Are we to believe that some non-digital households also value the BBC’s digital services?
“… was particularly highlighted when the data was analysed in more detail for 14-19 year olds and they were found to value local radio just as much as BBC One.”
So their ‘sample’ includes 14-19 year olds does it? Um, how many 14-19 year olds pay the licence fee? How can they possibly comment on whether or not it represents good value for money, or how much they would be ‘willing to pay’?
The above quote is in connection with one of their ‘pilot’ studies, but children were included in the main study too, as this later quote shows:
“It is likely that the young are willing to pay more for the BBC because they are living at home and are not responsible for paying the household licence. They are therefore less likely to anchor their answers to the current licence fee. It will be interesting to see whether this generation, as it ages, will adopt the attitudes of its parents.”
16 year olds probably think the Council Tax is a fair deal too. They think that right up to the moment they have to start paying it.
Exactly what purpose does this ‘research’ serve? Are we expected to believe it is objective, given that it is full of gushing praise for the BBC lifted right out of the BBC’s own propaganda? Where are the peer reviews?
It’s interesting to note that even in this blatantly pro-BBC propaganda piece, there is much to inspire the anti-BBCers. For example, as the fee increases from £10 to £15 per month, the proportion of their hand-picked respondents not willing to pay it rises sharply from 19% to 40%. Plenty of new recruits for the cause, methinks.
Sorry, broken link to the cause in the above.
Das Riech
by Leni
Of passing interest but as so many comments here refer to the bbc website I wonder if anyone could remind me how it is that the bbc runs a website in the first place let alone this multi milion pound extravaganza. I’ve let ‘Reader’ search the pdf’s of the Charter http://www.bbc.tv/go/info/policies/charter/ext/_auto/-/http://www.bbc.tv/info/policies/charter/pdf/charter.pdf
the Agreement http://www.bbc.tv/go/info/policies/charter/ext/_auto/-/http://www.bbc.tv/info/policies/charter/pdf/agreement.pdf and the Amendment to the Agreement http://www.bbc.tv/go/info/policies/charter/ext/_auto/-/http://www.bbc.tv/info/policies/charter/pdf/agreement_amend.pdf for words like ‘internet’ and ‘website’ and even bbc.co.uk and drawn a complete blank.
I can understand the Corporation funding a website that is a companion to the programming – a sort of electronic Radio Times-as a convenience to viewers but why has it usurped the role of an online newspaper?
Surely, if it’s strapped for cash, scrapping this irrelevence would be the first place to start.
It’s not as if it’s providing a service that isn’t more than adequately met by innumerable other providers worldwide. If I want to be informed about UK news I only have to visit one of half a dozen sites published by UK newspapers or if , for instance, it’s events in the USA that concern me then I naturally turn to a US source. Why would I want to rely on the output of journalists employed by an organisation several thousand miles away? The little I’ve read of their scribblings seems to relate to a country I have trouble in recognising compared with the one I know so well.
A version of the above was submitted to(D)HYS purely in spite.
lies, d**ned lies, statistics..or something like that
i do remember following a link from this blog some months back about the complete rubbishing by an independent body of a bbc approach to gov for more funds based on one of its “studies” – sorry i can’t be more specific, but regulars here may recall it. it would probably be wise to view the bbc’s “conclusions” with caution inview of this.
i’m always sceptcical, anyway, of bodies that sponsor or perform “their own” surveys, anyway.
delete second “anyway”
apologies
Don’t forget the Beeb’s patented tactic of “proving” that it isn’t biased in a particular way by sponsoring a “media studies” report which shows that they are really too pro-Israel or pro-EU — the exact oppposite of what they really are.
The BBC article in Ritter’s link above
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4334718.stm
deserves a main post of its own.
The article describes the “Open Society Institute” as a “watchdog”. While this may scrape by on a technicality, many people will interpret a “watchdog” organisation as one that is official and impartial:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1066488.stm
The “Open Society Institute” is a private, political campaign group founded and run by George Soros (moveon.org, etc).
http://www.soros.org/about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros
I wonder why the BBC wasn’t open about that?
“Viewers often do not receive the information necessary to make informed democratic choices,” the watchdog said.
Indeed.
.
I used to take the line that the BBC was a great organisation that was flawed but repairable. However given the dreary relentless socialist propaganda it spews out I now know it is past repair and the plug should just be pulled.
NB – BBC NI spent last night telling us that a IRA godfather, identified as such by every other media outlet, was as wronged farmer. Sickening!
A while back, there was a rumour that the BBC were hoping HMGov might be persuaded to class modems as “television receiving equipment”.
The aim seemed to be to levy television tax on all UK net users.
The rumour, if that is what it was, no longer seems to be current. Is it daft to wonder if this has anything to do with the BBC’s online presence?
Ad
‘The rumour, if that is what it was, no longer seems to be current. Is it daft to wonder if this has anything to do with the BBC’s online presence?’
One of the motivations, no doubt. All agitprop organisations use whatever communications outlets are available; so the Internet is a major facilty for the Gramscian Gurus within the Beeb. But every other MSM broadcaster uses the the web, too, for a variety of reasons.
Luckily the web has extremely low entrance costs, and extreme eye-ball competition.
This means that the Gramscian BC can only fool a few, and for a shortening amount of time.
According to TV Licencing, all you need to be hit by the BBC poll tax is a device.
If you use a TV or any other device to receive or record TV programmes (for example, a VCR, set-top box, DVD recorder or PC with a broadcast card) – you need a TV Licence. You are required by law to have one.
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/index.jsp
So just now its a TV, DVD recorder, PC (with the right card) – soon to be added mobile telephones (they’ll probably all have the ‘ability’ to receive tv soon), DVRs (digital viseo recorders) iPods, modems etc etc etc.
They’ve would appear to have all ‘devices’ covered.
Ritter,
I have all the devices and I’m NOT PAYING for their junk programming that gets pushed down my aerial whether I want it or not.
Death to the BBC!
Rob, I almost said, in response to someone yesterday, that those who call for “Death to the BBC!” are little better or more thoughtful than the rabble we sometimes see on our TV’s calling for “Death to America/Bush/Britain/Blair/etc”. Now seems like a good time to say it, in conjunction with the discussion on the thread above.
There is a lot wrong with the BBC, but there’s also a lot that’s potentially good about it too as a cultural organisation. A little more constructiveness (and I’m not targetting this at you in particular) wouldn’t go amiss.
“A little more constructiveness … wouldn’t go amiss.”
OK then; death to the BBC – metaphorically.
I don’t care what Andrew or anyone else thinks of the cultural value of the corporation; its funding mechanism is a nasty, perverse anachronism. The BBC as we know it can only survive by the licence fee. Therefore the BBC must go.
I’m sure there’s a lot of “cultural value” in the Guardian media section – that doesn’t mean that Daily Telegraph readers should be forced by the police powers of the state to pay for it.
Wake up. It’s only the telly.
.
I’m certainly not advocating death (or injury/harm etc) to any PEOPLE connected to the BBC if people mistakenly get that impression.
But the organisation must go. Think how many lives could be saved by letting people spend their own money?
If everyone who paid for the BBC bought a bike and cycled instead how many fewer people would get unfit and die of obesity?
Forced transfers kill.
The ‘Ministry of Truth’ revealed – and in all its own words.
The overweening arrogance; the list of subjects in which it seeks to exercise its influence.
The limitless belief in the BBC worldview – no doubts here; there is the BBC’s concept of the future of mankind and no alternatives worth a moment of consideration.
This document is actually frightening in its implications. A 24/7 ‘spin machine’ shaping the thoughts of as many people as it can reach, ostensibly under public scrutiny but in reality answerable to no-one. The BBC has become its own religion.
Paulc
Good analysis I’m afraid. But it is not the Corporation as an entity or even the idea of a public service broadcasting that is necessarily wrong, the people who have hi-jacked it as a propaganda arm of their own ideology are the problem. But it is highly unlikely that either the current administration, or the Brownites, who will take over quite soon, will abolish the BBC; they need it themselves to further their own political ends. Neither will the continuum be interrupted – for the self same reason – should the unlikely phenomenon arise that the Tories come back from the dead at the next General Election. All we can do is chiark away at the worst excesses of the Beeb and use other media outlets and the web more and more: a ounter-evolution by both slealth and overt means to reverse the Gramsci inspired success of the past four decades or so. The BBC has always been a propaganda organ, the difference now being that the bad guys are in charge. That is why it is unnacceptable. It should be renamed the A(anti)BBC.
read ‘counter-revolution’ for ‘ounter evolution’ – I swear that happened in the transmission rather than in the typing stage!
You sure about that Frank P?
What’s that slealth that immediately follows it?!
Sleazy stealth??
(I’m not complaining. I was guilty of typing polulation yesterday.)
Andrew writes:
“There is a lot wrong with the BBC, but there’s also a lot that’s potentially good about it too as a cultural organisation. A little more constructiveness (and I’m not targetting this at you in particular) wouldn’t go amiss.”
I’m sorry, Andrew, I realise this is your blog an’ all, but I’m afraid many of your readers (myself among them) have come to the conclusion that the Corporation is absolutely beyond reform. To achieve it would require the replacement of an entire media caste and it couldn’t be done.
The mindset of the overwhelming majority of BBC staff is the mindset of the metropolitan elite and as you would only be able to recruit their replacements from the same poisoned well, you’d end up with the same thing all over again.
The rhetoric used may sometimes be extreme, you may well find it offensive, but the basic sentiments are those of many: we’ve had enough of the BBC and want to be rid of it.
There is, of course, an equally compelling argument about the unfairness of the taxation method, but as that inevitably leads to the same conclusion, there’s little point exploring that as well.
Hey, I’ve got no problem with the BBC….
I’ve got a problem with the way it is funded. They are throwing Grannies and Poor single mums in Prison to pay for this monster….and for what? So Graham Norton can get a £4 Million contract?
TVL litereature claims that they took 30,000 people to court in a single month recently, I would have thought the cost of this to our nation in legal time and also in clogging up the jail system, would make even the most ardent supproter realise it is time for the BBC to catch up with the rest of the world….and to stop abusing peoples human rights and criminalising poor people over a glowing bit of furniture……
As someone else said…it’s only TV…..and it’s not like there are not 100s of other channels and stations to choose from if the BBC were to fade away……
They seem to think that if the BBC went, then that would be the End of TV…..lol. Just shows how delluded they really are……
The world will survive without the BBC, as it has survived without TASS and Pravda remaining in their previous forms…….
As a non-viewer of the BBCs output, I can tell you it is quite easy to live without them….as also their recent strike prooved…I mean no-body noticed other than the higher than normal quality of the repeats……lol.
Frank P
GCooper
Could not agree more. I would like to think that the realisation that the BBC must just be closed extends to the greater public. I hope they are also becoming aware of the power and influence this corporation has had over there entire lives.
Its disapointing that even conservatives still find it nessesery to hide behind the “unfairness of the tele tax”, because it really is just so much more important than that. The BBC are the biggest and simply ended danger to our country.
The horror of trying to sort out the problems this counties people now face, with not only the opposition parties, all the institutions,most of the media AND the full power of the BBC to fight. Should scare even the most brave of Tory prime ministers to death.
AND IT WILL
Come on people!! see what this lott have done to your confidence.
Close them down on the first day of the new goverment. Just bar the door and thats that. Dont even try to make excuses for them.
Then make a toast to your FREEDOM
You could preface corporation with multi national,……..lefties/BBC dont like them………OH YES its only those owed by people not there beloved state that they hate.
I don’t think there is a middle way any more.
There have been endless challenges about the BBC’s bias, over many years. It is PROVEN beyond any reasonable doubt.
It is beyond reform.
I loved the BBC, I grew up with it. But I now despise the way it is run, I despair for any change,
I would rather see the whole damn thing closed down. It is not a zero-sum gme. I would be content to pay £50 a year for some thing worthwhile and UNBIASED.
I am making a very obvious point here but here gos.
If the BBC is not bias towards the left how is it that only people of the right (not including the likes of corporate lover KEN CLARK)want it simply closed down.
Beware of Torys that are just waiting to inherit all that extra tax and power to further there own personal control freakery.Hush Puppys or not.
David Davis has said more on this issue that I like (and he is not a public schoolboy) but we must start making our politician do what there best instincts tell them and watch everything they do all the time. At least the internet gives us a chance of now doing this.
It has also I hope become clear it is now time to get ourselves A WRITTEN CONSTITUTION to protect the people of this country from the abuse of its ruling eleats . Not the European type.
Is there a blog relating to this subject?
P.S I own a small business. Let me say that the long awaited economic chickens of Gordon Brown have arrived
eaten the takaway and are now organising a rave in the kitchen. Weather the BBC chooses to tell anyone or not. Nothing.. Yes nothing is selling out there and even less is getting paid for.GOD HELP US
I wonder what other enterprise can budget its revenue streams for 7 years ahead and be guaranteed its existence by law and its income by criminal law
Why is it that BT uses digital technology and is restricted on price increases to RPI-X on the basis of technology reducing costs, but the BBC goes for RPI + X where X is 2.3% because of the costs of introducing digital technology ?
Rick
Answer: Only a goverment and this one is bankcrupting this economy again just as shurly as there old mates did in 1978. I am not looking forward to seeing how the BBC explain to the people how and why Gordons economic miracle turned out to be as credible as the biblical kind. Somehow I fear the things to blame will be
1 Unforseen world events
2 That bitch Thatcher
3 Silly British public,not wishing
to pay 110% tax on there living.
4 Multi-national corporations(not themselves though)
5 Those dammed gready Americans.
6 American Neocons.
7 Capitalism.
8 The Jewish conspiracy
9 George Bush
10 The war
11 The Chinese
12 Bad luck
13 Henry V111
14 The weather
Who knows for sure one some or all of them. But one thing is for certain it wont be the goverments corruption and their part in it.
Could you leave Radio 4, please. And Simon Mayo’s film review with Mr Kermode on R5.
Thank you eversomuch.
One thing Hitler did when his economic shit was about to hit the fan was to steal all the jews money and later lives.
When that money run out went stealing it from other countries. I cant offer any help to Gordon as his goverment have already done both of these as much as they dare.
Hitler stayed in power long enough to cause real trouble by lieing about the state of the economy. Which was only sustained by stolen money. Hows your pension doing? And had absolutly nothing at all to do with Hitlers economic miracle. Did none of the BBCs journalists read their history books. Or maybe its because they did.
Bob Doney writes:
” Could you leave Radio 4, please….”
You are joking, I presume? From the moment John Humphrys starts up in the morning, till the last squawk of a late ‘comedy’ programme, Radio 4 is almost entirely biased toward the Left.
Keep Your and Yours, From Our Own Correspondent, Despatches, The Food Programme?
Hardly! They should be the first to go.
I was careless enough to see a bit of “Have I Got Puerile Leftist Bias For You” tonight. Talking about Lady Thatcher’s 80th birthday, Paul Merton made the following “satirical comment”:
“Not long to go”.
Yeah, of course I’m paranoid. I’m sure he would make the same kind of sick “joke” about, say, Nelson Mandela.
But of course, that would be out of order, because we all “know” that Mandela is a latter-day saint, whereas Lady Thatcher is devil incarnate.
And no – I wouldn’t condone any sick “jokes” about Nelson Mandela’s future death, either – or for that matter, any figure sanctified by the Left. I just think that that kind of puerile stuff should be kept off the Beeb, period. Fat chance, so long as the person concerned is someone disliked by “liberals”….
James G
Sorry if my little joke offended, what I meant to say was;
Baroness Thatcher is 80 years old. When she took over as Prime Minister, Britain was the sick man of Europe. The other EU countries had surged ahead economically, while Britain languished with ailing state industries, shoddy workmanship, abysmal labour relations, and a chronic inability to meet delivery dates. Under Lady Thatcher it turned around. Tax rates dropped from a maximum of 98 percent to a top rate of 40 percent. Growth surged. The sick state giants were privatized. Britain changed from being Europe’s example to avoid to being the one that showed the way to the future.
She was tough and quite prepared to accept unpopularity, especially from those whose dreams of a socialist future were shattered forever. It was a remarkable period. With her counterpart and friend Ronald Reagan, she helped secure the revival of free markets, incentives and opportunities. Together they helped defeat socialism on the international stage, winning the Cold War against totalitarian collectivism.
The world is a far, far better place because of her leadership and moral conviction. Happy birthday, Lady Thatcher, and once again, many thanks.
But the BBC wouldn’t let me
Nah … not Paul M. Could have been Ian H though!
Or me !