The BBC should be protected by new laws that promote its shows over those of rivals, according to one of the corporation’s most senior executives. James Purnell, director of radio and education, says that the shows the BBC makes must be given more prominence in television guides than those of commercial services Sky, Amazon and Netflix. His demands follow a huge change in television viewing habits with more than 6 million households now signed up to streaming services.
Incredible sense of entitlement.
yup….
Expect increased pressure for a levy on digital communications to sustain the likes of Mister Purnell.
The mindset exposed is simply the logical extension of the BBC’s refusal to adopt the subscription model.
While it is entitlement on a stick – it also shows the corporation’s imperious authoritarian tendency.
Starve the beast …
As we have often said technology is doing for them. The BBC the buggy whip makers of the 21st century.
Dave S
The BBC became irrelevant back in the 1950s when we got ITV and since then the BBC has proved itself to be a stagecoach in the era of Shinkansen
Rather than being protected, BBC operatives should be placed in stocks to meet their taxpaying public.
He and Thandie Newton should so hook up.
Stuart Hughes could run a campaign for them.
Odd, when people are given the choice they avoid the BBC channels. This is so, even if they have to pay additional subscriptions, indulge in ludicrous technical setups or screw dishes to their homes.
I suggest two ways forward for Mr Purnell:
1. make better programs that reflect the actual desires of the UK people along with unbiased docs and news output.
else
2 Have an armed BBC employee in every home to supervise the families viewing activities.
‘I suggest two ways forward for Mr Purnell…’
Actually scribbling, I think that there is a third suggestion for Mr Purnell that might prove productive!
scribbling,
Re. 2. Don’t give them ideas. It is not as far-fetched as you might think. There is always the “1984 solution” where TVs have to be permanently tuned to the BBC 24/7.
sribblingscribe
When it comes to the BBC may I be allowed to to put forward two further options option #3 and option #4
Option #3 Encrpytion..The BBC’s miserable output is encrypted and those who still want to have the BBC in their lives can pay for their BBC fix of lies, propaganda and islam by subscription/pay per view. leaving the rest of us to get on with our lives free of being forced to pay for somthing we neither want or use namely the BBC.
Or
Option #4 the BBC takes advertising and takes its luck trying to complete with the professional {and far more efficient} broadcasters thought that would seem to me to be putting the BBC’s Model ‘T’ Ford up against a Formula 1 car
Josf
Advertising is only marginally better than the BBBC tax. Everyone who buys goods from an advertiser is paying for the adverts shown on TV, regardless of whether they watch any programs on that channel.
I avoid C4 like the plague, except for Homeland, because it is BBBC-lite even though it is partially funded by adverts. Why do I have to pay extra for the food I buy in Sainsbury’s because they advertise on C4?
Subscription only please.
As a semi-captive Radio 4 listener last night, (I was in the car), I heard the second of Boswell’s Lives. Is it supposed to be comedy? This episode was as stupid as the first.
Next up I, the Flock a tale praising illegal computer hacking and suggesting that MI5 would be as crude as to shoot our hero at work at his desk. Dire agitprop claptrap.
Then to Feedback the first loud laugh of the evening! Little trainee apparatchiks repeating the BBC mantra ‘we are not biased’! No doubt they are being taught the trick of indirection: “You can’t say Mrs May is an idiot on air. You can say Mrs May is an idiot off air. You can then say, ‘Some say Mrs May is and idiot’ on air, as that is a truth used to carry an opinion. Job done!”.
This is just typical backwards far left wing ‘thinking’. It was typified in the Harold Wilson years when old obsolete and inefficient industries were kept going by state subsidy, and when it bankrupted the country, it wasn’t Wilson who the left blamed but Thatcher !
It’s like keeping the spare parts for Zeppelins factory open, just because it provides employment, despite the market having long gone.
We should however see this as a cause for optimism. The BBC is in deep trouble, and when you have to appeal to government for legislation to more or less force people to watch your output, then it’s a sign you are trying to buck the market, and we all know what happens then.
The wretched BBC is currently promoting some crude, childish, amateurish drivel called Mrs Brown.
Looks unspeakably bad – and I’m expected to pay for it?
It’s utter crap, but thickos seem to like it, so there’s the Beeb for you!
File this under ‘The Clue Is In The Question’. L’il Jimmy is, of course, a former Labour minister appointed by the BBC to a role that wasn’t advertised, had no other candidates interviews for it, and didn’t even exist up until Jimmy was hired. Thuggish entitlement is in their DNA.
DJ,
And has never had a job outside politics, and I include the BBC in that. Are any senior executives in the BBC who are Tories ?
Grant, statistically there have to be at least a few.
All of them refusing to either admit it, or demonstrate it by any statement or action – wouldn’t want to bring such a financially rewarding career to a crashing halt, would we?
From the title I thought this was a story about BBC hooking up with Uber-taxis or its opponents.
So what do the Uber & the BBC have in common ?
……………………………………… They both take the public for a ride.
BTW Mr Purnell is probably doing the same business tactic Trump uses.
Instead of accepting the anchored status quo and being pushed back from that.
You move the anchor position by making a ridiculous demand ..and thrn your opponents try to negotiate you back to the existing position.
Reading the header to this thread and the replies I get the distinct feeling that the BBC is yearning for the bad old pre 1955 days when the BBC was the sole British owned broadcaster and if you prefered something better than the BBC’s miserable output for your TV and radio entetainment then tough luck as far as non BBC TV was concerned though if you had a decent radio with shortwave capability or a decent areial for your radio that could pick up anything broadcast by foreign stations that wafted across the English Channel then you could avoid the odious BBC even if you had to pay the BBC for it
The BBC, as ever, misses the point.
No matter how much their shows are promoted, more and more people will not watch them, because the content is, in most cases, abysmal.
If their programmes were any good, people would be more than happy to pay for them, in the same way that they already pay for the likes of Netflix or, in my case (being desperately old-fashioned, I know), DVDs.
Incidentally, some of my most treasured DVDs are of BBC programmes – but nearly all of those programmes were made at least 30 years ago!
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-canada-immigration-poll-idUKKBN16R0SI
Nearly half of Canadians want to deport people who are illegally crossing into Canada from the United States, and a similar number disapprove of how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is handling the influx, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Monday.
The increasing flow of hundreds of asylum-seekers of African and Middle Eastern origin from the United States in recent months is becoming a contentious issue in Canada.
He is questioned about it almost every time he appears in parliament, from opponents on the left, who want more asylum-seekers to be allowed in, and critics on the right, who say the migrants pose a potential security risk.
When asked specifically about the recent border crossings, the same number – 48 percent – said Canada should “send these migrants back to the U.S.” Another 36 percent said Canada should “accept these migrants”.
If this is on Reuters then the BBC know all about it, however they are not reporting on anything which might criticise their new golden boy Justin Trudeau described even by the BBC as an ‘ultra liberal’.
It seems his lunatic politics is dividing and destroying his country, just as they have in every other country which has tried them. There’s one thing with left wing nutters, and that is their complete denial that they ever get anything wrong. It’s never their fault, and when it does go wrong someone always has to be blamed – hence the rise of the shadowy right a non existent paper tiger who they can blame for their idiocy reaching an inevitable conclusion.
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/conservative-mayoral-candidate-sean-anstee-12767328
Here is the loon that the Tories have put up for a doomed pop at the mayor of Manchester election.
A man so inept that he thought it would be a good idea to take senior Muslim MP Sajid Javid on a tour of the local Black pudding factory, which makes its product from the blood of pigs !
What kind of message is he trying to send to the electorate, and the Muslim voters in the city, not to mention the senior party members?
Manchester is not a city which believes in democracy, and the election of a Labour mayor is more of a coronation than a election. The brain dead Labour voters would vote Adolf Hitler into power if he stood for Labour, because they vote not for a person, or their policies, but a party, simply because their granddad did, and he is controlling them from beyond the grave!