Quiet riot?
Just had a piece of spam through from an set-up calling itself Quiet Riot who have no web presence and appear to be using an aol.com email. They’re asking people to take place in “the countries [sic] biggest ever mass protest this Mayday” bu refusing to pay their TV licenses because it’s not fair that TV watchers have to subsidise the BBC, or some shit.
Strikes me as a load of badly thought out bollocks done by the sort of people who think market forces can effectively provide culture and have no concept of pubic service or the benefit of commercial free zones.
The irony is I have some fairly major issues with the BBC as an institution but I appear to be ideologically aligned with them at present - my enemy’s enemy is my friend, as it were. And, as I always say, I pay taxes on for my drugs of choice (except tea, for some reason), why shouldn’t TV watchers pay taxes too?
Why I am responding to spam on my blog? In the vain hope that through the power of Google I can stop people forwarding this ill-thought out tosh, I suppose.
If you don’t want to pay the license fee, stop watching television. And if you can’t do that, £10 a month isn’t much as mind numbing drugs go.
This is the personal blog and main internet hub-thing for Pete Ashton. What you'll find here is a seemingly random collection of stuff I want to talk about and share. 
RSS feed
Email
Twitter
Flickr
Facebook
Last.FM
LJ feed
Pete Pipe
With all the problems in the world, can’t these guys find something more important to campaign against? I have issues with the BBC, as well, but it is still a national treasure. How many other organisations in the world would have ‘Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation’ as it’s de facto mission statement? I love that far-reaching belief that all people the world over deserve quality information and have a right to be educated. I love that understanding that if people are allowed to learn, the world will become a better place. I know this was all tied up in the British Empire, and it can be patronising at times, but I agree wholeheartedly that it is worth ten pounds a month of anyone’s money.
And if we don’t have the BBC, then we have Murdoch, then we have political interference, hidden agendas, and manipulation of the public for sinister ends. A unique and valuable national asset that won’t be truly appreciated until the forces of greed and globalization have ground it into the ground.
love
Brett (yes I know)
“…the sort of people who think market forces can effectively provide culture and have no concept of pubic service…”
‘Nuff said. Another for my ‘Unfortunate typos’ collection.
Pete, whilst I would not like to see the BBC sold off it has to be said that the halcion days of ‘Public Broadcasting’ are long gone. What does the BBC do to produce and broadcast quality culture? I am sick and tired of the BBC showing the same old crap day in and day out.
For example did anyone see the program about the Burmuda Triangle? This was meant to be a scientific investigation in to the ‘mysteries’ of the Triangle. They took a minimal amount of real evidence, rigged up some very poor experiments (the one with gas bubbles sinking the boat was laughable) and came to some totally unsubstantiated conclusion and presented them as FACT. At the end a really pompous voice over stated that ’science can explain any mystery’…..what utter crap! The BBC does produce good science programs (such as Rough Science) and then shows them on BBC 2 at odd times.
As for political programs, well it seems that everything has to have a ‘dramatic reconstruction’ to emphasis every point, just to ram home what we are meant to be thinking.
Sport, well i’m no sports fan but the BBC is doing NOTHING to represent sport in this country. Womans football? Not on the BBC, no they would rather waste millions in licence fee money to buy the rights to the occassional Premiership game. Disabled sport? Doesn’t exist according to the BBC.
The BBC shows night after night of crap programs or which Eastenders is the best example. Not only is it on almost every night of the week but they repeat it on a Sunday, just for those people too stupid to set a video/Tivo recorder.
So i’m paying over £100 a year for what? Crap TV that is no longer doing anything better than commercial stations. The BBC needs to start talking up to the audience rather than down to it.
I wonder if the problem with the BBC could be resolved somewhat if they were confident that their funding was in place for the next 20 years. At the moment, they are having to compete in ratings wars with every other channel, which by its nature will mean that the programmes they create are dumbed-down.
But there is still a million things the BBC are doing which are really remarkable. It wasn’t so long ago that the Guardian were campaigning to take down the BBC’s website because they said it was extremely difficult to compete against a site that was public funded. The BBC’s website is one of the places I visit most (partly for the sport!).
Add to that BBC radio, which is pretty damn fine.
I totally agree about the reconstruction thing, that’s awful. But going back to my initial point, this is the kind of television that happens when broadcasters are battling for viewers/listeners. I know enough people who work in the BBC to know that they are unhappy with things as they are and if they had a choice they would make better, more rigorous, more intelligent programmes.
Dave, fair point and one I was expecting. To be honest I neither watch BBCs 1 & 2 nor pay the licence fee. I would, however, be prepared to pay a radio/web fee, say £2 a month or so, if it could be collected viably, but that’s another issue.
The BBC it seems to me is stuck between two rocks. If it’s successful then it might as well be privatised (see Radio 1 in the past which had to shed millions of listeners to avoid being sold, a problem facing the very successful Radio 2 at the moment) but if it’s not bringing in the ratings then it’s failing to address the needs of the nation.
It strikes me that the relative merits of the two main TV channels is not the point. The point is that the biggest media organisation in the country is free from both government and commercial influence. The infrastructure built up around BBC TV supports national and local radio, BBCi, the World Service and all the other little bits and bobs that couldn’t survive in the commercial realm.
It’s not going to be perfect and a lot of it is going to be sub-standard, but without that stable core our media landscape would be so much poorer. We wouldn’t have John Peel for a start.
From what I’ve seen BBC TV is being dragged down by the lowest common denominator, especially in the area of factual programming (the vogue for dramatical reconstruction is particularly galling), and this needs to change big time. If only there was an objective way of judging the merits of programs that wasn’t ratings based, but I’m at a loss as to what that might be.
The Licence fee now provides the BBC with almost £3 billion, and yet from that we get BBC 1 which produces cheap television programmes also found on ITV and Channel 4, such as cookery, gardening, decorating, relocation, holiday etc etc. We get digital channels which we then have spend at least £50 on a digital receiver to watch, and in return we get to see more cheap television programmes as listed above. We get radio, yet anyone around the world can receive this, without paying the licencse fee. We get web pages, again which anyone around the world can access. So finally, we come to the “quality programming” which, when defending itself, the BBC holds up as justification for the £3 billion it takes from us. These programmes, few and far between, are shown on BBC2, often late at night, never in the peak times of early evening. I’m talking about Horizon, Late Review, Newsnight, as well as one off programmes such as Walking With Dinosaurs, which was laughable in its reduction of the scientific content in favour of emotive entertainment. I laughed and laughed at Kenneth Brannagh using exagerated metaphors at every breath…the T-Rex was a “lethal assasin” apparently. Why, because it dressed in a black suit and used a sniper rifle? This programme in particular, is an example of the BBC dumbing down its programming to reach as large an audience as possible. It also raises another concern I have with the BBC. Walking With Dinosaurs, among numerous other programmes, is sold to other networks around the world. I’d like to use the freedom of information act to find out how much the BBC actually makes in selling these programmes abroad. Given that the BBC is supposed to be our BBC, although in truth it feels more like viewers are owned by the BBC, why don’t we see anything in return for the sale of these programmes. The money made, actually represents a profit, ontop of what I believe is already a substantial profit. Does the BBC actually need £3 billion+ to function. Imagine that money was spent of education, or the NHS instead? I think we’d be better off as a nation.
So you pay this licence fee then? If you feel that strongly about it, maybe you shouldn’t.
Aren’t there more importing things wasting absurd amounts of money that have little or no peripheral good coming out of them that you should be worried about? Isn’t the BBC just far to much of an easy target? I mean, come on! Isn’t the pernicious influence of Murdoch and the Mail group more cause for concern than a mere £3 billion (which is fuck all when you look at the realities of the situation.)
Face it, this is way more complicated than you like to believe and beating up on the BBC is like kicking cripples.
The license fee seems to be uniquely contentious (among some anyway), probably because it’s unique (afaik) in being a hypothecated tax. Along with tobacco duty and speeding fines, the TV license fee is also one of the most easily avoided “taxes” around. Simply don’t own a television. If you do choose to own a tv, then you play the license. It’s that simple. Don’t speed == no fine. No tv == no license fee.
When people complain, as the chap above does, about “cheap television programmes also found on ITV and Channel 4, such as cookery, gardening, decorating, relocation, holiday etc etc”, they’re actually ignoring the truth in their own living rooms. Even if we look only at that little list, the BBC output is markedly and distinctly different from ITV and Channel 4.
Where, for instance, is the alternative to Gardener’s World? Gardener’s World runs for a large part of the year, in a prime time evening slot. The presenters work in the same garden over several years, presenting an opportunity for the viewer to see it evolve and change over time. There is no equivalent programme on the independent networks, nor has the ever been.
I’m not fan of Delia Smith, so it pains me slightly to hold her “How To Cook” programme up as an example. Again, those were prime time series, gathering a big fat audience, and yet, in another context, they could be regarded as educational programmes. Cookery programmes on the BBC have changed the country’s attitude to food and cookery, from Delia Smith through Ken Hom, Madhur Jaffrey, Sarah Brown, to Floyd, Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver. There no such are equivalent programmes on the independent networks.
BBC programming for children is unequalled. I don’t even have to qualify that. The only serious competitor to BBC news is Channel 4 (also state supported - coincidence)?
I could bang on about this for ages - “cookery, gardening, decorating, relocation, holiday” - the BBC were first with all of those. Here’s a question - would any other network have had a go at putting on ballroom dancing, let alone in the prime slot on a Saturday night? If your answer comes round to “the BBC only could because of the license fee” then you’ve actually missed the point of public service broadcasting.
Well, I don’t like television much. So far this year I’ve watched the three episodes of The Rotters’ Club and feel that the three hours were well spent. But generally I am too busy doing other things.
I have a real problem with the way the BBC has dunned down science. But they are not alone in this respect. Even so, their campaigning for suspect issues like the Kyoto protocol, is far from objective and has created a mindset that is far from scientific.
I have always felt that the World Service is one of the very best of British exports. In many ways the World Service news is better that the national news (and really local BBC stations are much worse than the national)
We pay the license for three basic reasons. One it’s legal, two April watches some TV, and three we do listen to the radio a lot.
Finally, I would put a plug in here for American community supported radio as an alternative. I used to support Pacifica Radio in Houston (KPFT.org) and now listen to KCRW, a Los Angeles area station that has excellent programming. KCRW is listed on iTunes radio. The station has major fund raising efforts twice a year and also has local sponsors. They buy in Public Broadcasting (PBR) and PRI news programs which in many ways are as good if not better than the BBC. Give KCRW a try if you want an example of alternative radio!
Like so many others I’m sick and tired of paying my licence fee each month for poor quality programs and repeats that make up the BBC 1 & 2. I contacted the authority in charge of the licence fee to see if I could have any thing done to my TV so I couldn’t receive the BBC programs so as not to have to pay for a licence, I was told no, also it’s not the programs that you pay for but the signal you receive, he also said if I didn’t want to pay a licence fee the best thing I could do was un – plug the aerial. I feel as 50% programs are made up of rubbishy repeats perhaps I should pay half the fee and end it with saying I paid it in full last year and I consider things now to be even.
Unplug your arial, cancel your cable/sat subscription, cancel your TV licence, get broadband and a nice big monitor for your computer and get your ass to UKNova. Otherwise stop moaning. If you don’t like paying the fee either stop watching TV (again, it’s NOT THAT HARD) or leave the fecking country…