Abolish the BBC Y/N

the bbc is good when i agree with it and bad when i dont i cant quite decide if that means it should be abolished or not

no prob ogmor, i think you're right that probably filesharing does represent a hard dividing line - once i had access to napster / slsk etc i was definitely more inclined to risk the wrath of the riaa by chasing down stuff i was interested in on my own than sit by the wireless waiting for mark radcliffe or john peel to play it, but for the years where i was starting to develop a music obsession that was my only option

weird that is is such a hard line tho, where people who are only very slightly younger than i might never have listened to radio of their own volition at all

I barely watch the bbc as is but the thing about them running scared of the Tory government has been around for a lot longer than the last few years. I remember there being a lot of people complaining about their lack of coverage of what then became the Health & Social Care Act, especially as one of the original drafts was removing the duty for the SOS to provide a health service (!).

People like to say “both sides being angry with it” is indicative of them being fair, except there’s a bit of a difference between being even handed with the government, who control the agenda, and the opposition, who don’t.

xp I am now surveying all my 30something friends trying to pinpoint this better, there also seems to be a bit of a gender divide.

> it hasn't even tried to create anything for a younger audience.

There was a Friday night pop show filmed at TVC. It's had 2 series so far, about 6 or 10 episodes each. Don't know if more are planned and can't remember the exact name of it, but then I am outside the target audience (by a factor of 2 probably).

Sounds Like Friday Night
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09cnb5g

I'd say filesharing was the start of the decline but it's streaming that's really killed radio. Look at Radio 1's listening figures over the last 20 years, the real collapse begins around 2010.

I'm always sceptical of the romanticised personal and private/'sitting in your teenage bedroom listening to John Peel' view of pop discovery. The way most people under 30 got into music has always primarily been through social situations - friends swapping tapes, clubs, parties etc. Even now streaming has updated that, rather than replaced it, but radio has for most of the last 50 years been a major driver of the artists and scenes providing the backdrop to those social situations.

The first artist name I saw on that Sounds Like Friday Night page was the Manic Street Preachers, which strikes me as a failure right out of the gate.

what was the last good music show on bbc tv outside of one-off docs?

BRING BACK TOP OF THE POPS BBC!!

ok having consulted my world of 30somethings my theory is the turning point is around 34/35. most ppl younger are p2p babies who didn't tape anything or rely on the radio for music, and there's a crossover period for the older 30somethings who did a mixture.

romantic/private listening is going to be much more prevalent amongst hardcore music nerds and the boundaries are blurred when yr on social media in yr bedroom

bring back dance energy with normski more like xp

has there been a single news story since the advent of rolling news which has benefited from being covered as-it-happens

You mean apart from Moaty, it's Gazza?

okay, you got me, that's the exception that proves the rule

'Killing Eve' the only drama I've watched start to finish on BBC in the last few years I think. 'Detectorists' last thing I unequivocally loved. 'Life Scientific' is v enjoyable on Radio 4 and 'Start the Week' is fine (except when Andrew Marr is hosting).

otm - has there been a single news story since the advent of rolling news which has benefited from being covered as-it-happens instead of forever offering the unedifying spectacle of ill-informed news anchors flapping about and offering glib here's-what-we're-seeing-now comments until someone better-informed stumbles in front of a camera?

― a surprise challenge that ended with a gunging (bizarro gazzara)

at some point i watched the first surviving american tv news broadcast - from the 1940s - and i was surprised at how well it fit in with the spectacle of ill-informed anchors flapping about and offering glib comments, because that was pretty much exactly what the anchor was doing there. the dream of rational/edifying monoculture media was, i'm concluding, only ever a pipe dream.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/feb/12/bbc-cameraman-shoved-and-abused-at-trump-rally-in-el-paso

Personally annoying is the focus on 18-35 year old demographic which is turning all the music stations into pop stations. And moving Radcliffe and Maconie to weekends means I have nothing to listen to at work (and the newshow is pop-heavy, see above)

sharp satire

BBC provides US public broadcasting with hours upon hours of the equivalent of direct-to-dvd, off-the-rack programming. If it should disappear, the PBS schedule would look like the victim of a shotgun blast.

Last week I spent three days with my 86 y/o father, whose evening schedule consists of watching back-to-back documentaries on BBC2 & BBC4. I was shocked by how awful most of them were; had I been on my own I would have been shouting at the screen and turning off in a foul mood. Especially noxious were Andrew Marr on Thatcher and a terrible thing about hump-backed whales, which seemed to be aimed at children. He liked them well enough, although he'll have forgotten them by now.

Portillo seems to be on every day too. in fact, twice today.

Andrew Marr, forgot about that cunt. Abolish the BBC.

oh but that really influential doc he made on the shitty, drunken, sunday painter daubs of Winston Churchill will really stand the test of time.

everyone pays for the BBC so it has to represent value-for-money for everyone and that puts it in the position where it has to do opposing things simultaneously, it has to speak to young and old, left and right, etc. I don't think it's got the balance quite right in recent years and they've lost a generation in Scotland due to their wilful ignorance of what was happening with the SNP at Indyref but I don't know how they could do it perfectly for everyone and I'd rather have it than a race to the lowest common denominator of programming

I mean I think about something like Only Connect, which is unflashy and knowingly kitsch and intellectually demanding of its contestants and viewers, and how you would never see that on prime-time ITV in the same way

> they've lost a generation in Scotland

Maybe this will help

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1hx87NrNp3Y45hF2NyQDhFs/welcome-to-your-brand-new-television-channel-bbc-scotland

BBC Scotland's Nine news will show 'world through Scottish eyes

lolling too hard to want to abolish these nobheads now

everyone pays for the BBC so it has to represent value-for-money for everyone and that puts it in the position where it has to do opposing things simultaneously, it has to speak to young and old, left and right, etc.

I feel like there are ways of doing balanced news in particular that don't just amount to "attempt to cover every bias at once" though.

Really worried about whoever the entire BBC1 daytime schedule except for Bargain Hunt is speaking to

100% agree with that - the Reithian principle of education and informing still stand and I think it's utterly ridiculous that eg the BBC News website gives any credibility to flat earthers

nick robinson vs salmond during indyref was all time classic beef

Jeremy_Vine_cowboy.gif

An academic on twitter refused to take part in R4s Moral Maze and:

In case you haven't been following: @PriyamvadaGopal published an email she had sent to the producer of The Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4, saying she wasn't happy to appear with a "known racist"; she didn't name names. The producer, in response, made it clear who the racist is. pic.twitter.com/nycAbRS07p

— Robert Hanks (@RobertHanks) February 13, 2019

R4 sounds pretty awful most of the time (although a few ppl were vouching for its drama but Radio drama is really not my thing)

Gogol's Dead Souls adaptation with Micheal Palin not tempt you sir!?

haha nah I'm cool tx

was watching an old 70's BBC series Alistair Cooke's America a couple of years back and was enjoying it + thinking: it sure helps when the writer/presenter puts some trust in the audience, rather than glassy faced mediocrities like Dan Snow condescending to them like they are all thick as pigshit, or just disseminating ultra dullsville conservative takes on history for ageing Mail readers.

Dan Snow condescending to them like they are all thick as pigshit Dan Snow.

the half interesting ones, like Bartlett the medieval specialist for example. Get about 1 series a decade, to piss poor generalists like Dan Snow's half dozen.

I hate the oh it was better in the olden days but there really is some amazing BBC documentaries , particularly the ARENA ones, that I have watched on youtube and I recently discovered some 70s and 80s interviews by Brtan Magee where its just him and his guest chatting on a couch discussing philosophers.
Such a great premise and I cant imagine the BBC running with it now.

I think I remember those shows from when they were broadcast.

OH GOD HERE COMES ANDREW MARR SAVE ME PBS AMERICA

I've got a persistently annoying rash on my arse that I call Andrew Marr. But tbh it goes a lot deeper than that - I would seriously celebrate his death when it comes tbh. I know that probably sounds deeply unpleasant to outsiders and maybe other UK ppl, but this is what the BBC has done to me. That same peado-golem who got caught whispering "that was good" to Penny Mordaunt and also unwittingly showed his bullying game when he lost his shit under mild duress from Shami Chakrabarti is deffo one of the biggest BBC politico cunts next to Nick Robinson.

I think asking Gordon Brown whether he was on anti-depressants was about as low as I've ever seen an interviewer stoop.

that outside no 10 broadcast he did stanning for Blair/Iraq as well.. what a snivelling piece of shit !

Browsing radio 4. Do I want to listen to this or shoot off my toes and bathe the stumps in acid? pic.twitter.com/NNuqCu0bme

— Louie Stowell (@Louiestowell) February 13, 2019

that program is like being the beef that j petersen eats, but being completely sentient and aware while he digests you and shits you out.

I caught a bit of the moral maze when they were complaining that Hans Christian Anderson had written all the fairy tales and yet Disney kept adding non-white princesses. It was odd.

wtf, what's that about?

i agree with a lot of the criticisms here.

what are people's specific beefs with Sounds? you can think of me as the glenn macdonald of Sounds.. i can tell you what i know and find out if i don't know.