Bbc Ranting

[Turned Out Nice Again]

DELETED - my error, not a BBC clip. Doh!

[Goat]

That's affected by rose tinted, subjective bias and a lot of the BBC's archival material from decades past that's shown being the better stuff out of the forgotten 1950s to 1990s garbage,

I'm not convinced.

Sure, there's lots of rubbish from the 70s/80s that's long since been forgotten but I can't think of anything produced in the last 20+ years that has really entered the public conciousness or that will bear repeating 20 years from now.

The BFI 100 (produced in 2000 so out of date but....) has it's first entry post 1990 at 17 (Absolutely Fabulous): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFI_TV_100

This list from the Telegraph (BBC2 only) is dominated by older stuff and quite frankly having The Office at number 2 is absurd, especially since it describes David Brent as "a modern day Basil Fawlty" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10772109/The-top-50-BBC-Two-shows-of-all-time.html

[SNACR]

The BBC badly needs reform and they should start undergoing some sort of restructuring now. When they've finished that they should have a celebrity version of BBC restructuring. Then we'll all watch whilst Joey Essex decides who, out of the Newsnight Defence Editor and Foreign Affairs Correspondent gets to keep their job.

[stormymonday_2011]

I'm not convinced.

Sure, there's lots of rubbish from the 70s/80s that's long since been forgotten but I can't think of anything produced in the last 20+ years that has really entered the public conciousness or that will bear repeating 20 years from now.

The BFI 100 (produced in 2000 so out of date but....) has it's first entry post 1990 at 17 (Absolutely Fabulous): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFI_TV_100

This list from the Telegraph (BBC2 only) is dominated by older stuff and quite frankly having The Office at number 2 is absurd, especially since it describes David Brent as "a modern day Basil Fawlty" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10772109/The-top-50-BBC-Two-shows-of-all-time.html

I am not convinced either that my memory is that poor or my glasses are that rose tinted.

In particular news coverage and current affairs are areas where I dont think nostalgia is likely to be impacting my perception that these things were simply done better and with more originality in the past.

Even the BBCs own internal reviews indicate they have a problem

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/apr/29/bbc-current-affairs-programmes-bbc-trust

As for BBC news it is now just an embarrassment which has nothing to do with whether BBCs production team has right or left wing sympathies as Stephen Glover points out in this article

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2832442/STEPHEN-GLOVER-BBC-s-flagship-news-national-embarrassment.html

I watched Newsnights' Emily Maitlis try to interview Michael Gove recently about the governments latest wheeze to prop up the housing market by subsidising HA tenants right to acquire their homes at a huge discount and she was so out of her depth I almost felt sorry for her. I was rather hoping to see Gove given a rough time particularly on the matter of whether a Conservative government should be using taxpayers money to rig market prices for property. Sadly Maitlis failed to lay a single glove on him.

[thecrashingisles]

In particular news coverage and current affairs are areas where I dont think nostalgia is likely to be impacting my perception that these things were simply done better and with more originality in the past.

I can't imagine a BBC reporter making a similar report now without trying to tell the audience what it means or speculating about the implications for UK politics or asking what Obama will do about it.

[Goat]

As for BBC news it is now just an embarrassment which has nothing to do with whether BBCs production team has right or left wing sympathies as Stephen Glover points out in this article

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2832442/STEPHEN-GLOVER-BBC-s-flagship-news-national-embarrassment.html

I'm not so sure, this kind of superficiality is in keeping with the right-on left leaning mindset that permeates the BBC.

[stormymonday_2011]

I can't imagine a BBC reporter making a similar report now without trying to tell the audience what it means or speculating about the implications for UK politics or asking what Obama will do about it.

Precisely.

The first and foremost duty of a news broadcaster is simply to describe what is happening to the best of their ability.

The second is to put it in some form of context.

The BBC still has some first class reporters such as Jeremy Bowen who understands areas such as the Middle East and who got a rare and revealing interview with President Assad of Syria recently. However, most of the coverage is simply trite and a lot of the time we are asked to understand the Middle East through the parochial 'human interest' angle of British Muslims whose spotty adolescent kids have been dumb enough to be lured into acting as cannon fodder for ISIS. It as though the complexities of the real world are just too hard to cover in the news if they dont fit into the rather banal and simplistic PC categories that the BBC now seems to use to view all current affairs.

[stormymonday_2011]

I'm not so sure, this kind of superficiality is in keeping with the right-on left leaning mindset that permeates the BBC.

Well Glover as a Daily Mail journalist thought at least the old BBC Marxists, however right-on, had a degree of intellectual rigour and seriousness in how they covered the news and current affairs even if they were peddling a particular viewpoint. Now it seems the coverage is simply designed to please a rather glib PC Twitterati who view news and current affairs as part of the celeb and entertainment industry

[Goat]

Well Glover as a Daily Mail journalist thought at least the old BBC Marxists, however right-on, had a degree of intellectual rigour in how they covered the news and current affairs ....

True, being a leftie doesn't necessarily doesn't preclude intellectual* rigour, but the frivolous right-on-ness is a product of the left.

* imo it is possible to be an intellectual leftie, but difficult; if you want to be such a thing you need to find a way to rationalize away economic reality.

[SNACR]

I do wonder if the problem with modern current affairs output isn't partly linked to the torpor pervading modern politics.

[Goat]

I do wonder if the problem with modern current affairs output isn't partly linked to the torpor pervading modern politics.

IMO it works both ways, modern politics is a result of the supreficiality of the mainstream media.

[frozen_out]

IMO it works both ways, modern politics is a result of the supreficiality of the mainstream media.

They both decided that they were better off in bed together. It's almost like there's one organisation running the whole thing

[Guest Jemmy Button]

Worst example is F1. Sky Sports - four English blokes. BBC - an English woman, a terminally Irish man, and a Scotsman.

Please! Who cares about F1? F1 is boring as crap. Anybody who watches that is seriously in need of therapy. F1 fans probably are well into having a train set in their loft. F1? Haha...do me a favour for gawdsake.

[thecrashingisles]

Please! Who cares about F1? F1 is boring as crap. Anybody who watches that is seriously in need of therapy. F1 fans probably are well into having a train set in their loft. F1? Haha...do me a favour for gawdsake.

You must be bitter about your brother's success.

[Guest eight]

Please! Who cares about F1? F1 is boring as crap. Anybody who watches that is seriously in need of therapy. F1 fans probably are well into having a train set in their loft. F1? Haha...do me a favour for gawdsake.

I've never known a sport like F1 for getting people who don't like it to go out of their way to express it. I mean, I can't stand rugby. That's why I don't watch it or talk about it.

[Frank Hovis]

I've never known a sport like F1 for getting people who don't like it to go out of their way to express it. I mean, I can't stand rugby. That's why I don't watch it or talk about it.

It's slightly different with F1. I like motorsport, touring cars, motorbikes and even go to banger racing. I find F1 however deeply dull, all down to who has the best cars and endless identical laps with very little overtaking and races won or lost on a tyre change. For me it is motorsport with all the things that I find exciting about motorsport surgically removed.

Yet it dominates the press and the media to such an extent it squeezes out all the motorsport that I actually like.

To take your rugby example if there were a world super league with a dozen of the best teams playing a set of rules that took most of the excitement and interest out of rugby and that was all the rugby that ever got any coverage then I could see rugby fans being very annoyed by the media dominance of this F1 rugby.

[Steppenpig]

I think the beeb made a strategic mistake in targeting younger viewers. The always said they needed to catch them young or risk losing them forever, but I think that was probably never true plus they/everyone underestimated the internet, and older folk probably will return to the telly anyway. They would then get more viewers per pound, plus most people who actually pay the license fee are probably middle aged, The infantilisation doesn't really benefit anyone.

[SNACR]

I've never known a sport like F1 for getting people who don't like it to go out of their way to express it. I mean, I can't stand rugby. That's why I don't watch it or talk about it.

I always consider a motor race a good drive spoilt.

[sPinwheel]

I like F1.

[MrPin]

It's slightly different with F1. I like motorsport, touring cars, motorbikes and even go to banger racing. I find F1 however deeply dull, all down to who has the best cars and endless identical laps with very little overtaking and races won or lost on a tyre change. For me it is motorsport with all the things that I find exciting about motorsport surgically removed.

Yet it dominates the press and the media to such an extent it squeezes out all the motorsport that I actually like.

To take your rugby example if there were a world super league with a dozen of the best teams playing a set of rules that took most of the excitement and interest out of rugby and that was all the rugby that ever got any coverage then I could see rugby fans being very annoyed by the media dominance of this F1 rugby.

I like V8 lawnmower racing and giraffe polo! I am also fond of double-D cup topless ladies accordian bands. None of which is shown by the BBC.

[happy_renting]

I like V8 lawnmower racing and giraffe polo! I am also fond of double-D cup topless ladies accordian bands. None of which is shown by the BBC.

Surely 'Double D-cup' and 'topless' is an oxymoron.

[SNACR]

I like V8 lawnmower racing and giraffe polo! I am also fond of double-D cup topless ladies accordian bands. None of which is shown by the BBC.

Well you must be getting different issues of Big Beautiful Cuties jazz mag to me.

[XswampyX]

It as though the complexities of the real world are just too hard to cover in the news if they don't fit into the rather banal and simplistic PC categories that the BBC now seems to use to view all current affairs.

+1

We are living in probably the most turbulent times since WWII and what do we get on the BBC.... d'wivel.

I saw some news thing late one night on the bbc, where they were describing how through cloning and DNA manipulation they might be able to bring back a wooly mammoth... yes all very technical and interesting.... they then went on to describe what a wooly mammoth was! This is about 11.30pm. Yes, It's like an elephant, with lots of hair and really big tusks! I spat out my whisky at that point, and went to bed. WTF!

[DTMark]

I have a fair amount of affection for the BBC.

Firstly, I won't pay for any of Murdoch's channels, so I won't have Sky again.

We had it once, years ago, with that crappy set top box that crashed all the time, crap terrestrial picture quality, no broadband network so had to rely on BT - what a joke, had to be connected to a phone line so it could report on us, didn't even work properly so you had to ring up to "order" a film, there was no "on demand" - so, so very far behind Virgin Media, which we did have when we moved to somewhere cabled.

But even then, we didn't watch the other channels. Hundreds of channels of real crap. Apart from "The Simpsons". Great in small doses. Then you've seen them all. And lots of American crap for people who are incredibly easily pleased with overplayed religious emotional sentiment, and canned laughter in comedies to help you recognise which bits to laugh at. Oh, please.

Years later when I got a demand from a debt collection agency for £80 which turned out to be because the box wasn't connected to the phone line - which didn't work because it could barely even manage dial up internet and was left disconnected by the Sky 'engineer' - but that "fee" would be waived "if we came back to Sky" I saw the fraud and vowed never to deal with them again. And told the collection agency to get stuffed.

Only the BBC was worth watching. Now I don't have access to Sky these days, I do have access to streaming services, and they're all crap as well. There's so little on them that is worth watching. That people want 'something for nothing' - entertainment is free, innit - P2P and illegal methods of accessing content are free, so why pay? Do go away.

These days I flip through the on screen TV guide, follow the BBC channels across the evening, set the box to series record stuff, maybe look at C4 and E4 and do the same and give only a cursory glance at the other channels.

I am not convinced that the BBC should be doing news (potential for bias abounds), I don't watch it, nor sport - that has gone so far up it's own **** that I'd rather leave the people who want to watch it to pay the football player's fees in their ever-increasing Sky contributions.

[Guest eight]

I am also fond of double-D cup topless ladies accordian bands.

I'm pretty sure L!ve TV used to cover that.