Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.
General BBC-related comment thread!
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“The BBC’s “history” of global warming (in reality it’s a propaganda piece) showed a few frayed seams. Presenter Iain Stewart spent a lot of time pouting about how Reagan appointed the Nierenburg committee to look at the issue, and hand-picked its chairman so as to bias its findings. Unfortunately, somebody noticed that the committee was actually set up by the Carter administration. This (ahem) error has come straight from the mouth of Naomi Oreskes, so the producers of the programme have only themselves to blame for picking a “player” as the series adviser”
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/9/13/climate-cuttings-23.html
But will the BBC own up to this – as well as other “mistakes” it has made on “Climate change” – I doubt it. If you are going to lie at least let your co-conspirators know.
yeah. horizon was a bit shite alright wasnt it?
by the way – here’s some background reading on three mile island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
“The average radiation dose to people living within ten miles of the plant was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by US residents in a year.”
“To put this dose into context, while the average background radiation in the US is about 360 millirem per year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulates all workers’ of any US nuclear power plant exposure to radiation to a total of about 700 millirem per year.”
in other words – you’ll get more radiation exposure from that granite table top in your swanky kitchen every year than you would from three mile island.
you do realise that granite is radioactive?
by the way – i noticed that horizon avoided the ONE BIG HUGE ISSUE that is number 1 in the minds of americans in this election… and its energy independence.
a non-agenda driven docu would have looked at drilling offshore and asked – well, how much is really down there. and how much would it cost to extract? is it worthwhile?
and looked at the economics of extracting oil from shale deposits in Colorado.
and just how much oil is there really in Alaska? but none of that was addressed.
horizon, like the bbc, is just living on another planet to most americans.
(and most normal people as well..)
AIG , on of the biggest insurers in the world is on the brink of collapse.
5000 highly paid jobs dissapeared in a puff of smoke in the City yesterday, with more to come.
and what do newsnight lead on?
the ferrets-in-a-sack bollocks about the Labour leadership.
christ. the world financial system is veering towards meltdown, and all NN lead on is utterly irrelevant to what is going on in the world.
pathetic.
Re tonight’s Horizon.
Given that this was a documentary about science I found it amusing that the final word – the summary, the editorial conclusion • was a load of vague hippie bollocks from Michio Kaku, anti-nuclear campaigner and peace activist. Not too difficult to figure out who he’ll be voting for.
And was that Mariella Frostrup narrating? Here’s what she had to say about Sarah Palin on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday: “I think we’re terrified about what she’s about because it’s like Bush Two, isn’t it?”
That’s the BBC “we” she’s using there.
Re: tonight’s Newsnight:
Coming up shortly is an interview of the Bush-hating currency speculator George Soros by the programme’s famously impartial Trot Paul Mason.
So no bias there then…
DB -> always bear in mind that those scientists might have been victim to the cut-n-paste-out-of-context style that the bbc and the left wing MSM like to deal in.
(prime example – charlie gibson and his cut-n-paste interview of palin…)
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/09/figures-abc-edited-out-key-points-from.html
i have enormous respect for Michio Kaku. he’s done a heck of lot with popularising incredibly difficult concepts such as superstring theory and quantum physics.
and thats good enough for me.
even if he is a hippy.
to be fair – at least Emily Matthis seems to think that this “labour leadership” thing is a load of bollocks.
fairs fair – she is pointing it out, considering the current financial crisis.
ha ha.. over to Socialist Worker Trot Paul Mason..
next we’ll have George Soros.
i wonder if they’ll interview any American conservatives? nah – they’ll just stick inside their bubble.
AIG is f**ked…
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=AIG
archduke | 16.09.08 – 10:51 pm
I was watching the footie and only caught the end of Horizon but the fact that it concluded with some wussy hope ‘n’ change toss from Kaku suggests a certain editorial slant.
that editorial slant was throughout the program.
probably the worst horizon i have ever watched. rabidly anti-american with all the redneck buttons pushed.
“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” the Illinois senator said that night, a month before announcing his presidential bid. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/07/15/obama_web_site_removes_surge_from_iraq_problem/
He’ll make a fine President though.
just watching a Beeboid propaganda drone referring to some freedom fighters called the Talibarn Forces
wish they’d say taliban rather than talibarn
anyway from guido
Newsnight Reports on a Market That Doesn’t Exist
Well this is a first, they have in the past reported up markets down, down markets up and once even reported dramatic moves in a market that was closed. Paul Mason has just breathlessly reported from New York that a late breaking after market story on the Bloomberg newswire has “halved AIG’s share price on the futures markets”. There is no futures market for shares, as anybody who knew anything about financial markets would know.
There are over-the-counter electronic markets where stocks trade after hours. Perhaps that is what he meant? With Newsnight’s market reporting you just never know.
http://www.order-order.com/2008/09/newsnight-reports-on-market-that-doesnt.html
“Anonymous | 16.09.08 – 11:17 pm ”
who are getting supplied by afghan police via arms dealers in pakistan.
i do wonder why the hell our soldiers are there, when we have nuclear missiles – as a deterrent.
@David
I wasn’t really taking you too seriously, more mocking the fact that you laced your post with caveats about the unlikeliness of the BBC/government operating Big Brother-style, before closing with the line “this certainly does introduce the idea of opening up one’s own home to BBC eyes.”
See, to be honest, I don’t think the BBC really care too much about your interior decor. I reckon you can probably sleep safe.
My point was simply that your projection into the future was completely speculative. The idea that webcams make any difference just seemed a bit…random. Since it’s already possible to access people’s google search history, their cookies etc., their online movements, a data stream makes very little difference really.
And, to be frank, I don’t think it would happen in the US either, under Bush or anyone else.
You lot have got to see this.
Saturday night on BBC 2 there is a programme about the search for Moby-Dick (no not another rent boy joke honest)
According to my Sky guide the story takes us to whaling ports around the world and draws an erie parallel with the war on terror!!!!
I kid you not.
Fuck me, Sarah Palin will no doubt be getting the blame again.
Beeboids just don’t give up do they?
“MrLouKnee | 16.09.08 – 11:22 pm |”
he’s right. its after hours trading that plummetted AIG down by 50 per cent.
archduke 9:41 eugenics , horizon informs us, is a practise that continued in America until the 1970s.
The programme having urged abortion on the president then swipes at the US for having sterilized unfortunates in times past. Isn’t the future that the unfortunates will be aborted rather than living without issue? A touch of hypocrisy?
Back in 1978, when Horizon was a brilliant series, they ran a special programme on the force and breadth of the microelectronics revolution. Jim Callaghan happened to stay up later than normal and watched it. Next day all sorts of tasks forces were set up in Whitehall on his orders but Whitehall frankly didn’t have a clue what was happening in Silicon Valley.
I remember pointing out in the then Department of Industry that Britain’sonly sizeable computer company, ICL, was a deadbeat living on public contracts, that BT’s new telecom switching system was never – yes never – going to work, that the UK had nil real expertise in muicroprocessors, that what was left of the consumer electronics industry would be killed by the Japanese – and that the only area where Britain had any competitive strength was in software,
And that the micro revolution was a tsunami, trying to protect dud jobs was a waste of time.
It ran to 40 terse but detailed pages, went down like a lead balloon in Whitehall. Did my career a bundle of good !
….. “I’ll get my coat”…
I left a year later, fed up with the sheer dishonesty inside the government machine. Not party political – the Tories were just as dumb. Old Jim Callaghan at least tried to pay attention to reality on that issue.
Those were the great days of Horizon. Real and true scientific or technological messages, superbly vivid photography and filming plus excellent interviewing with people whom really knew their onions.
Sad, sad, sad. I am glad I didn’t tune in to Horizon tonight.
What annoys we about BBC ‘science’ shows is the lousy filim making.
The continual use of handheld cameras, shooting from behind walls or people in profile etc.
Just so naff.
How come they can shoot a programme like Top Gear almost like a film and use some great photo techniques.
“JohnA | 17.09.08 – 12:30 am ”
i remember that Horizon you talk of. as a child.
along with Carl Sagan, both of them made me who i am nowadays – which is a computer programmer & hacker.
now that is influence.
it makes me shudder what they are influencing kids about nowadays.
looks like AIG is going to collapse. no sign of the Fed stepping in. (cbs news).
hold onto to your hats.
and if you have money in HBOS, i would get it out and stuffed under the bed.
Oh, dear.
The BBC’s Mark Easton is riled about concern over both the rapid rate of increase in population and the high density of population of England.
He apparently doesn’t like the BBC’s own (reasonable) report on the subject by his ‘colleague’, Chris Mason, Europe correspondent, BBC News:
“England ‘most crowded in Europe'”
(by Chris Mason)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7618994.stm
Easton likes that report so little that he doesn’t even refer to it! So what does he do? He launches into ANOTHER tirade from the complacent Easton school of economic history,(at his BBC website) which implies (incorrectly) that Britain has always had a high rate and level of immigration. So he launches into his Communist counter-argument, quoting Fred Engels of 1845 on the increase in population in the north of England then partly caused by Irish immigration. (Easton doesn’t go on to say that Marx and Engels were concerned that such a mass immigration of that time would keep down the wage rates of indigenous English workers.)
Easton’s blog for 16 Sept:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/
I recommend Professor Robert Rowthorn’s PDF pamphlet:
“The Economic Impact of Immigration”
Click to access Rowthorn_Immigration.pdf
Professor Rowthorn’s conclusion:
“We cannot rely on mass immigration to solve the problems arising from ageing of the population and alleged labour shortages. Mass immigration is not an effective solution to these problems. To the extent that they are real, such problems can only be effectively tackled by mobilizing the under-utilized talents and energies of the existing population. This does not mean that there is no economic benefit at all from immigration. It will always be in our collective interest to admit skilled and talented people. But this is happening already. We also admit a large number of other migrants, such as spouses and asylum seekers. People who say that this country needs more immigration really mean that we should encourage the mass immigration of unskilled workers. This would be of negligible benefit to the local population as a whole. It would also
harm the weaker sections of our society who would have to compete with such immigrants – including the more disadvantaged members of our existing ethnic minorities.”
Also recommended:
“A Nation of Immigrants? A brief demographic history of Britain” (by David Conway)
(Intro from publisher Civitas):
“Immigration into Britain is now running at a level that is without precedent in our history and which threatens our cohesion as a nation, according to a report from the independent social policy think-tank Civitas.
In ‘A Nation of Immigrants?’ David Conway takes issue with those who minimise the threat posed by mass immigration by claiming that this is nothing new; that we are a ‘mongrel nation’; and that, in the words of the Commission on Racial Equality, ‘everyone who lives in Britain today is either an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant’ (pp.2-3). He argues, to the contrary, that from the time England can be considered to have become a nation, immigration has never risen above very low levels and had no serious demographic impact until the last part of the twentieth century. Since 1997, however, … Labour government has effectively abandoned even the goal of limiting immigration. As a result, by encouraging unending mass immigration as a permanent feature of the political landscape, there may result a disintegration of the bonds that hold together the group of people that constitutes a nation.”
http://www.civitas.org.uk/books/whatsnew.php
The 1980’s Horizon documentary on Feynman was a classic.
Take a genius physicist, raconteur and maverick thinker with a proven ability to explain science to the non-scientific mind. Ask him a few interesting questions and then just let him talk. Result – awesome.
21st century Horizon – take a scientific nobody like Dr Brian Cox ( a Beatle haired particle physicist who somehow needs the services of a media agent ) and make a documentary with stupid camera angles, a road trip through the USA on the tellytaxpayers money and packs about 5 minutes of hard information into 50 minutes of bollocks. Result – what the fuck ?
Cox was the keyboard player for a shit pop group called D:Ream ( when he wasn’t too busy splitting atoms, writing difficult sums and physicising I assume )
D:Ream provided the soundtrack for the 1992 Labour victory ” Things can only get better ”
QED
A Muslim Labor MP has urged Muslims to drop their victim mentality, as reported by the Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1056794/Abandon-victim-mentality-Labour-MP-tells-Muslims.html
“…Meanwhile, it is important for integration that Muslims rejected the narrative that Western foreign policy is a ‘war on Islam’, he believes.”
Hmm. I wonder if Al-Beeb will report on this man’s comments. No sign as of yet. I’m not holding my breath.
I really must stop spelling Labour “Labor”.
HSLD | 17.09.08 – 1:38 am | #
You don’t see many good documentaries on TV any more. Sometimes I’ll try and watch something that sounds interesting on the Discovery Channel – something to do with superstructures or extreme machines or something – but I can’t even concentrate on what the narrator’s saying because everything is set to the constant thump of bad techno music. it’s like watching a 30 minute infomercial. Documentaries have definitely gone the way of style over substance and remember thinking this about the Beeb 10 years ago. I remember being thoroughly absorbed by the likes of Horizon and QED as a kid. Unfortunately everything’s dumbed down for the kebab-eating Eastenders-watching neanderthals these days.
So Mark Easton has done another blog post in favour of more immigration. Surprise, surprise.
“I remain unpersuaded that we cannot cope with the extra people.”
Good to see the BBC employing people with such a strong commitment to impartiality and balance 😉
Mark Easton, is he a journalist or a campaigner?
I think the BBC should be banned from paying journalists to blog their opinions. It really adds insult to injury. If they want to blog on their own time on their own dime, they can set up a blogspot account and knock themselves out.
Joel | Homepage | 16.09.08 – 10:29 pm | #
Ta for that. Adds more reasons to the kind suggestions of the previous guys.
It still seems to boil down to the fact that it can be done, but I remain unsure who is benefitting most.
That an all pervasive national broadcaster with access to multiple TV, radio & web promotional systems needs access to commercial, paid systems to get its content offering across to its audience is already ‘interesting’, but I remain unsure that paid advertising is the best use of public money to do it.
I’d rather the money were directed to quality programming. If it’s any good I will find it. As, I am sure, most others can and would.
Jason | 17.09.08 – 4:26 am | #
I am never big on bans, but better, independent policing of their own output might be a plan. Just getting within sight of the Charter obligations would certainly be nice.
And if they were banned from blogging this site would be the poorer for it! On their current ‘damn the peons, we’re always right’ roll it is the best and quickest ways to see true colours in print without having to assess agenda-driven word and deed over a lot of output.
Just looking at some of the skewering responses to BBC-blogged ‘thoughts’ it is rather evident that they are currently not only making the noose but building the garrett, tipping the hangman and paying for the flyers.
Odd, given the actual value to the BBC of these online offerings in viewer numbers. I am sure readerships of the original may often number just hundreds (albeit often from a high-powered circle… and then the interested rest of us), but the reactions to outrageous statements, inaccuracies, etc reach many times more, and often hit the major media.
Seems the egos of the authors and the blinkers of their superiors often outweigh the actual best interests of the corporation.
So, in many ways, at least as a keen debater, I’d have to say… ‘bring it on’.
However, as a parent with kids who may read some of their output and treat opinion as fact, I’d have to say ‘stick with objective reporting when on the public dime (penny?), please’.
BBC Worldwide invests in Baby Cow production group
LONDON – BBC Worldwide has bought a 25% stake in comedian Steve Coogan’s production company Baby Cow for an undisclosed sum, cementing a relationship that began almost nine years ago.
As a result of the deal, the BBC’s commercial arm, which already distributes Baby Cow programmes including The Mighty Boosh, Nighty Night and Gavin & Stacey around the globe, will look at developing commercial opportunities for the company.
Isn’t life grand?
The ‘greenie’ lobbyists, (some subsidised by EU), and their sympathisers in the Labour government (and the BBC) are so in thrall to the EU on wind-power that the big issue gets missed:
Christopher Booker has written about the cost and inadequacies of wind-power:
“A load of hot air: Why spending £100 bn on windfarms to please the EU is Labour’s greatest act of lunacy” (by Christopher Booker)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1029551/A-load-hot-air-Why-spending-100bn-windfarms-EU-Labours-greatest-act-lunacy.html
Even in the following report, which raises the vital issue of Labour-EU policies causing future UK power cuts, the BBC continues its customary political routine of giving much space to the views of some unrepresentative ‘greenie’ lobby group:
“Britain ‘faces power cuts threat'”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7618840.stm
Steve McIntyre has opened a thread on Climate Audit dealing with the BBC’s ‘Climate Wars’ agitprop.
The BBC website has at least reported that one of the country’s leading authorities on energy supply, Professor Ian Fells, has warned that, because of EU and greenie lunacy in closing coal-fired power stations, we’re heading for major power shortages over the next few years.
But, and it’s a big but, there’s no chance of it being reported straight; instead there’s an inevitable Greenpeace (we break any law and smash up anyone’s property whenever it suits us)spokesman to pour cold water on Professor Fell’s ideas – and to ensure the climate change mania continues.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7618840.stm
Richard Black continues unabated with his climate change mania in a web story that says that Artic ice this year didn’t melt as much as last year.
Of course Black has swallowed hook, line and sinker greenie propaganda that nevertheless, the Arctic will be ice free before we know it, the polar bears will all be dead, and we’ll all be drowned.
He makes no mention of the dozens of stories on the blogsphere that the agency that issued the figures is obsessed with global warmning, and that no one really knows what governs the ebb and flow of Arctic ice because efforts to study it are relatively new – and are totally dominated by warmist fanatics.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7619770.stm
The BBC has a report today which raises the issue of Muslims having a ‘victim mentality’; but the BBC, being the BBC, confined comments on the issue to Muslims only:
“Muslims have victim mentality'”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7619642.stm
Here is a comment on a related area from a non-Muslim, non-BBC source, Cranmer:
“Sadiq Khan MP: David Cameron promoted Baroness Warsi ‘because of her religion'”
[Extract, from Cranmer]:
“But Mr Khan accuses the Leader of the Opposition of an ‘opportunistic courtship of the Muslim vote’, and the use of the ‘Tory spin machine’ to persuade them that the Conservative Party is ‘on the side of British Muslims because it needs their votes to win key seats’.
“Of course, Labour has never courted any minority ethnic or religious vote, or used anything as crude as ‘spin’ to attempt to. And God forbid that anything like a ‘religious hatred’ law should be seen as an attempt to portray Labour as ‘on the side of British Muslims’.”
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2008/09/sadiq-khan-mp-david-cameron-promoted.html
The BBC report contains the usual gratuitous, invented Islamic whinge of ‘Islamophobia’, not ‘Christianophobia’, notice. When this recently invented Muslim word is used, it needs to be challenged, BBC, thus:
“Fitzgerald: Islamophobia? Really?”
[Extract]:
“The word ‘Islamophobia’ must be held up for inspection and its users constantly asked precisely how they would define that word. They should be put on the defensive for waving about what is clearly meant to be a scare-word that will silence criticism.
“So let us ask them, which of the following criticisms of Islam is to be considered ‘Islamophobia’…
Hugh Fitzgerald then makes 27 points about Islam, and concludes:
If this is ‘Islamophobia’ — show me exactly why it is irrational (i.e. not based on facts or observable behavior, or a study of history). Show me why it is an ‘irrational’ dislike or even hatred of Islam. If you cannot show that, then perhaps the word should not be invoked. But if you do invoke it, be prepared to have copious quotations from Qur’an and hadith and sira constantly presented to audiences so that they may judge for themselves, without the “guidance” of apologists for Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim. ”
(Hugh Fitzgerald.)
http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/009275.php
Guidos got this on Peston
http://www.order-order.com/2008/09/who-told-peston.html
Mrs U was nearly drenched in my cornflakes this morning. Why? Suddenly on Today there was none other than Professor Fells of the University of Newcastle saying – to paraphrase – “f**k climate change we’re going to have power cuts unless we get new nuclear generators and, by the way, renewables are crap”. He was followed by Jeffrey Kupfer a Republican and member of the current US administration supporting energy independence for the US. Wow! Even this friend of Harrabin and all-round loony was shocked and awed.
Question for Muslims everywhere: Is the BBC, or any of us, being ‘Islamophobic’ to discuss this latest atrocity, carried out in the name of Islam in Yemen today, by people proudly calling themselves, ‘Islamic Jihad’?:
“Deadly US embassy attack in Yemen”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7620362.stm
As someone has commented:
‘Ramadan Day 17’.
Lurker in a Burqua 12.43
I am still wanting to know who tipped Peston off about Northern Rock. Making that public could be quite interesting.
Umbongo 12.51
Professor Fells is 100% correct in my book. Most politicians rarely look beyond the next election timescale so avoid making difficult decisions required for the long term national good which might upset some voters in the short term.
Wind power really is a load of hot air as you have to have equivalent conventional generating capacity sitting idle to cover for its vagaries. That would be gas fired capacity which will increasingly be required to use gas from our good friend Mr Putin. Scary.
How the Chinese must be laughing as their industrialisation is powered by a rapidly increasing number of “dirty” coal fired power stations.
Is there a Greenpeace branch in China pressurising their government to erect wind turbines?
Lets compete with the world with both our arms tied behind our back.
Global warming – presume something must have happened naturally since the last ice age. Presume it also naturally cooled/warmed to cause the other ice ages and periods between.
O/T but related enough to be of value, I trust most will allow.
Parliament must decide the future of commercial public service broadcasting • Foster
Commenting ahead of Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards’ speech to the Royal Television Society tonight, in which he will set out the regulator’s latest thoughts on the future of public service broadcasting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, Don Foster said:
“Ed Richards is right to draw attention to the serious financial pressures commercial public service broadcasters are facing. But with the consultation still under way, I’m seriously concerned that Ofcom seems to have already made its mind up about the solutions.
“When we’re talking about issues that people care so passionately about, the final decision must lie with Parliament.”
… reflecting, one hopes, the views of the majority of the electorate.
A further apology in advance, this time to any not living in the West Midlands, sex capital of the UK… apparently.
I’m just watching the lunchtime news as I munch my sarnie, and two slots have caught my eye.
First up is some ‘sex scandal’ that has got all sorts of knickers in a twist. Well, the BBC and some spokespersons not from the party of those in question (guess who), a married couple who, it is claimed, engaged in orgies.
May be some truth in that they have resigned, but what I don’t yet get from the reporting is what, apart from a bit of consensual swinging, the ‘scandal’ part comes in.
As local pols it is news I guess, but from the tone I had thought they were ‘guilty’ of a tad more than getting more than most.
Maybe the married, heterosexual aspect was what caused most offence?
Then we moved on to a major, nasty, tragic murder. I wish I had the link to confirm all I think I heard as ‘the latest stories’ still seems to be last night’s:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/midlandstoday/latest_stories/
But I’m pretty sure that somehow, in one sentence the ‘reporter’ managed to get in the suggestion that lack of info thus far meant the victims were probably prostitutes, then that the police had denied this.
Pray to god that you are not on the wrong end of anything you are not around to speak for yourself on (but in any case, all vox pops can be sorted in post if it’s a slow news day), because our public broadcaster will probably make it up if it serves the 24/7 news narrative.
Peter | Homepage | 17.09.08 – 2:11 pm
what I don’t yet get from the reporting is what, apart from a bit of consensual swinging, the ‘scandal’ part comes in.
Actually, according to the local rag, it appears that these two councillors are under investigation for allegedly using their house for PAID group sex.
http://www.expressandstar.com/2008/09/09/councillor-quits-after-sex-scandal/
From Matt Frei’s latest article:
For her part, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been judicious enough not to claim to have knowledge of the banking sector the way she said she had “knowledge” of Russia – based on eye-contact and proximity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/americas/2008/vote_usa_2008/7620124.stm
Gratuitous sneering swipe at Sarah Palin from a BBC employee – take a drink.
(No mention of Joe Biden, gaffe machine.)
Jonathan Boyd Hunt raises a major subject about the remit Britain’s Broadcaster. Some of the less “favoured” independent production companies, media outlets and – by the way – BBC producers as well, are concerned about the growth of the commercial activities of the BBC. While making no accusations about the latest deal between the Beeb and Coogan, these arrangements are often viewed as ‘sweetheart deals’ between powerful players and their chums inside the BBC.
Often the production costs and losses incurred by a failed series are borne by the BBC, the profits reaped by a successful series are shared with the independent producer…at the licence-payers’ cost!
The questions to be asked are these:
1. Why can’t the BBC bid for each programme made by Baby Cow on its merits? Producers inside the BBC go through a selection process from idea to final product, why not Coogan? We’re told that Baby Cow will have ‘complete artistic control’. That’s more than a staff producer gets?
2. While once again not commenting on the present deal, is there any way of monitoring the career paths of BBC employees? How many producers, execs and commissioning editors end up working for the very companies they foster?
3. How many indies,now in bed with the BBC, have been set up by former BBC employees?
4. What happened to the famous in-house productions from legendary BBC Departments. It seems BBC Drama and BBC Comedy are merely shells for indies to finance and later market their wares. I suppose, as long as the market is truly competitive this may be healthy, but is anyone checking these are not deals between members of a new “old boy network”?
5. In the future, does the BBC intend to buy programmes or make them? Is the BBC a producer of shows or a buyer and commissioning editor? If it is a buyer in the open market place, it should not get in bed with people who could be seen as “old chums.”
For the record, I quote from this article:
“Last year, the BBC bought a 25pc stake in Andy Harries’ Left Bank Pictures, a production company he started after making The Queen. It also owns quarter shares of Cliffhanger Productions, set up by the creator of Footballers’ Wives and Clerkenwell Films, maker of the Rebus detective series, and 15pc of history drama and documentary specialist Hardy & Sons.
More recently, Worldwide took a majority share in a joint venture with Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson, which will sell merchandise and international versions of the show.” – Daily Telegraph
If the BBC were a commercial production company these questions would not concern me, but as a “tax” funded broadcaster….???
Jonathan Boyd Hunt | Homepage | 17.09.08 – 9:29 am |
Ah, that explains why they’ve been pushing that tiresome, chavtastic Gavin & Stacey on BBC America.