[The Red Arrow]

Screw Sky! What about Pornhub?

[Boiler]

Screw Sky! What about Pornhub?

Lowering the tone...

[Zuriblue]

Screw Sky! What about Pornhub?

I didn’t know Abers was over 75.

[Oblomov]

Didn't Dacre once mutter off the record that the licence fee was worth paying for Radio 4 alone?

[Boiler]

Carrying on from the discussion elsewhere, it seems the licence fee is due for review in 2022.

There's a certain 'something' about the very real possibility of the funding model disappearing in the year of the BBC's 100th anniversary.

[visage]

Given that both Labour and the Tories think the BBC is biased against them I cant see how the BBC will survive unscathed.

[Boiler]

The biggest mistake with the migration to digital terrestrial television was making it "free" - as in, you didn't need a viewing card to watch it (you did in the OnDigital days).

[youngian]

Bit late now you Tory twat

JOHN HUMPHRYS: It was crass to let Andrew Neil treat the Prime Minister as a naughty boy. But Boris Johnson's bullying makes me fear for the BBC
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... y-boy.html

[Boiler]

Well, when the BBC's gone we'll not have stuff like this. I don't see newspapers or the independent television sector rushing to do this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/a-ho ... s-anything

[youngian]

Well, when the BBC's gone we'll not have stuff like this. I don't see newspapers or the independent television sector rushing to do this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/a-ho ... s-anything

The most radical current affairs in this country came out of Granada and Thames not the BBC. They still had to work within a public service framework. And the best stuff I've seen on Cambridge Analytica was funded by Netflix while the BBC produced next to nothing on the subject. John Oliver's HBO show contains the best investigative journalism I've seen lately. Asked why the UK can't do that Oliver said he is given a huge pile of money to fund the level of research and journalistic rigour that the BBC can't afford. The Tory motivation for attacking the BBC is very different to mine but fuck BBC News and current affairs its been getting away too long masquerading as a serious news organisation. And it could be a much better one if its balls weren't controlled by the executive. Or lack of them.

[Andy McDandy]

The reorganisation of ITV was designed to allow Carlton to hoover up franchises and apply a template of bland LCD fodder. With ITN effectively throwing in the towel, BBC got complacent.

[Boiler]

This is the thing I find most depressing. When the public service remit requirement was removed from the ITV franchising arrangements, it fuelled a race to the bottom.

Granada and Thames, as has been pointed out, could kick the BBC's arse very firmly in the current affairs departments. Anglia could equally kick its arse in nature programming (Survival, anyone?).

The decline is so sad to see, from someone who remembers the 1970s television scene well.

[youngian]

You may have seen a Brexiter conspiracy about the EU funding the BBC so they are in their pockets. Its a public broadcast cultural fund for member states to commission quality indigenous programming (the gammons should have liked that on) especially for off-peak retired audiences instead of repeats of Murder she Wrote. That's why Jimmy McGovern has been writing afternoon dramas with some big names like Sheila Hancock. They are not funded by the licence fee but through an alternative method of funding public service broadcasting. The licence fee was always a bad idea but far better than all the alternatives (advertising on the BBC being the worst of them) but now it isn't. Keep the BBC as a public corporation but make it accountable to cross party parliamentary oversight not the executive. The BBC's independence relied on government's showing a certain amount of honour but now that's gone.

[Boiler]

I believe that even within the BBC the licence is viewed as the least worst funding option... but what could you replace it with given the current technology? Not everybody has, or wants, a bin lid screwed to the side of their house or has access to cable services and in some places, broadband struggles to get to 2Mb/sec even now.

[Andy McDandy]

This is the thing I find most depressing. When the public service remit requirement was removed from the ITV franchising arrangements, it fuelled a race to the bottom.

Granada and Thames, as has been pointed out, could kick the BBC's arse very firmly in the current affairs departments. Anglia could equally kick its arse in nature programming (Survival, anyone?).

The decline is so sad to see, from someone who remembers the 1970s television scene well.

I recall reading that for Thames, losing their franchise was partly revenge for their "Death on the Rock" documentary.

Every now and again ITV will do a clip show along the lines of "Embarrassing stuff from yesteryear", with a subtext of "Ha ha, how regional". But I watched one and thought "you know, wasn't it nice when you had programming that knew and was aimed at its audience, and people took risks?".