What is the world coming to? My prejudices have been well and truly challenged and appropriately adjusted this weekend.
Forced to listen to the BBC’s ‘News Quiz’ in a diversity training package I came to ‘see’ the other side, to appreciate the world from a different perspective other than my right wing narrow minded and bigoted little Englander viewpoint.
Well, actually that’s a load of bull….but what did surprise me was the News Quiz was actually funny, verging on very funny at times….Fred MacAulay on Ikea cushions is a YouTube classic in the making.
The reason might be that it didn’t seek to preach a message this time, it stayed fairly well clear of ‘political’ politics, or any signs of partisanship and stuck to comedy….even suggesting Miliband will never be PM.
Could be a lesson in there somewhere for the BBC….stop the preaching and stick to ‘funny’….
…or to ‘News’ or ‘Drama’ or ‘History’ or ‘children’s’ programmes without inserting a partisan interpretation of everything into, well, everything.
In the Sunday Times Adrian Wooldridge (paywalled unfortunately) examines how the BBC is doing in the ‘excellence’ stakes…his conclusion is that it is failing in its remit…the licence fee method of funding should enable it to take risks to produce high quality programming but it seems to settle for the middle ground producing mush that is supposed to give value for money to the largest number of licence fee payers…not what the BBC was designed for.
Wooldridge says:
‘The BBC is failing to produce great television precisely because it is hampered by the public service model, and HBO and its various rivals are producing a new golden age of American televison precisely because they are catering for the market.’
Perhaps if the BBC stopped looking at audience ratings, stopped thinking viewers want only ‘accessible’ TV made to match their ‘short attention’ spans and went for a bit of ‘elitism’ things might improve…..invest in quality not quantity?
Might help if vast tranches of licence money wasn’t getting siphoned off anywhere but programming, and what is is overseen by battalions of compliance drones.
But even then…..
I find it curious to note that when Muslims wanna be Muslims, Scots wanna be Scots, the Welsh wanna be Welsh, the Irish wanna be Irish and so one, we are all forced to celebrate diversity. However, as soon as someone waves an England/British flag, wants to celebrate English culture, the chattering, self-loathing middle-class 2nd-rate jazz club frequenters shout ‘racist’!
Just finished watching Sunday Morning Live hosted by the ever so impartial Samira Ahmed.
Poll for the day was “Are Muslims being demonised?” Oh how Samira and guest (kuffir hating) Medhi Hassan salivated over the poll coming out in a resounding yes.
Alas, it was an emphatic 4 to 1 against. Those casting their votes effectively saying – “Muslims demonised? Are you f****n kidding me!!??
However, that didn’t stop Samira focussing on the yes vote “Ah, so just over a quarter were in favour” – bias, bias, bias
NB – has anyone ever listened to Hassan? His method is to talk pretty quickly and allow his sentences drift off into nothingness – pretty much the same way in which anyone who tries to defend the fascist nature of the Religion of Peace does
Yeah, I’m hearing it was an appalling episode by all accounts. Sounds like a stroke of luck that I missed it! Will have to watch it on the iPlayer.
Have you learnt nothing? Has the BBC been wasting its time all these years?
Don’t you know that the ‘minority vote’ status counts for far more than its actual numbers do?
The minorites are weak and vulnerable…the bombs and killings are mere expressions of anger and frustration at a supposedly democratic system that has failed them.
They therefore need ‘protection’ (hence the Rochdale blind eye) and a powerful voice to speak for them that will give them influence far beyond what they are due in the real world.
I didn’t see the prog’ but what you report Samira Ahmed as saying is clearly rubbish as well as biased. If the ratio was 4:1 against, then we can say that 4 / [4+1] = 4/5 were against and 1 / [4+1] = 1/5 were in favour. So only a fifth were in favour and not a quarter. Oh, to have a college education!
The BBC already does provide quite lot of distinctive quality broadcasting which is unavailable from commercial broadcasters.
There is Radio 3. BBC2 and BBC4 TV both have a small proportion of quality output. BBC local radio stations cater for audiences no commercial broadcaster would be interested in, such as the older people, local sports fans of small town football clubs and local groups of people from ethnic minorities.
I’d have no objection to paying a licence fee of about £20 to fund this small proportion of the BBC’s output which is unique, necessary and unavailable from commercial companies but I don’t see why I should have to pay for loads of BBC trash like Eastenders, Casualty, Flog It and Radio 1.
That kind of rubbish is already made in huge quantities by the commercial sector so I don’t see why the government funds the BBC so it can make even more of it.
The current licence fee is a misuse of the tax system. Tax income should not be spent on the manufacture of junk TV, several national 24/7 pop music radio stations and a dumbed down news service which is crippled by a Guardian style political correctness.
I agree with half of your your arguement. There is no justification for a tax based broadcasing system. But as for the unique local aspect of services – there are plenty of commercial, very local, radio stations completely dedicated town/district based news; and there are still hundreds if not thousands of local news papers that cater specifically to the big-cheque charity donation, jam-making, local football club attending, planning disagreement market. Everybody loves to see their photo appearing in the paper and the letters pages are very well used and extremely influential in local politics, so much so that local leftists apparatchiks frequently run mass letter writing campaigns to try and influence local opinion (when they are not out ‘helping’ those 37 residents of a single bedsit fill out their postal votes)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1099177/Dear-Mr-Editor-That-Jacqui-Smith-doing-fabulous-job-HUSBAND-writes-newspaper.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/may/22/uk.election2005
I am willing to bet that every town with a population of more than 20,000 has one. As noted these are successful and influential and usually run commercially. Some dare to express real opinions – people won’t buy stuff they dislike so local councils – usually Labour – spend a lot of public money printing ‘free’ propaganda sheets to pretend that the local politicians are god-like in their benevolence and wisdom.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/01/local-council-newspaper-freesheets
I don’t think that there is any arguement for ‘local news stations’ funded by a mandatory poll tax and under the control of the BBC “narrative”.
The annoying things is that the potential is still there, in my opinion the BBC still makes the best documentaries in the world. Unfortunately the bias is starting to creep in a little, but for the most part they try and keep things as apolitical as possible.
Someone at BBC Four most be a railway aficionado because they have been airing a lot of excellent programs on that particular subject recently. I also enjoyed the documentary about the successful attempt to film a Giant Squid, the sort of program only the BBC could make to such a high standard.
‘Unfortunately the bias is starting to creep in a little….’
There’s an understatement if ever there was one! I usually measure the elapsed time from the start of any documentary to the first mention of ‘climate change’ or the first sycophantic snippet about people who follow ‘the religion of peace’ or any other deserving minority. The recent series on Australia with Simon Reeve contained surreal examples of both, making it totally unwatchable for anyone who believes BBC output should be balanced.
I was more referring to BBC Four, the more ‘mainstream’ stuff on BBC two rarely appeals to me.
Re Islam, Muslim Brotherhood, phobias (and not much about the -philias that Islam seems to condone)…there is B.C and A.C.
Before Clare Lopez…and after Clare Lopez…as seen on that post from Leha elsewhere on this site.
Watch it, notepad at the ready…and you`ll find you`ll save alot of time in fruitless agonising or getting het up.
Clare is correct-we need to take note and to act accordingly.
That post has saved me hours of Koran study and Beeb fretting…thank you Leha!
Yes, that video deserves a thread of its own
Even post it as a stickey which stays at the top !
It’s that important
I agree about HBO (Home Box Office). Some wonderful stuff is coming out, far and away superior to the dreary old BBC with its political baggage. A couple of examples: John Adams and Too Big to Fail.