BBC Four

ahhhh Leslie Judd.

Always a disappointment when an interesting looking documentary starts and then Neil Oliver swans up

Oh by the way calz PBS America are doing a Dan Snow day, I lolled.

This is gonna be my moaning about documentaries but still sitting thru them thread from now on

https://www.essexlifemag.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.5499669!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpg

here he is exhuming his grandad's corpse so he can bum it (again)

Lol Google has our chinless nepotee confused with some dude who appeared in a couple of Toxic Avenger movies, check it out

Andrew Graham-Dixon talking about Dutch masters is my ASMR

Love these documentaries that spend hours trying to get you to empathise with the mindset of an executed tyrant and zero minutes imagining what went thru the minds of his victims

This turtle cam no voice-over documentary is exactly the balm my poor useless brain needs right now

Oh wait he just savaged a jellyfish that was a bit harsh

Just watched this and its brilliant! I hate jellyfish so it was good to see one get hacked at

I thought this was really good for being so still and silent. At first it felt like an Ecco The Dolphin walkthrough played on mute but there was something about it that was fascinating, a calmness that seems so at odds with how TV is made in 2020.

jellyfish are bacterial space aliens that are taking over the marine world- it's war! And in the future will probably be our only alternative food source to the old long pig as we go forwards into the abyss.

not watched this yet, but less presenters sounds like a good way for the bbc to go.

BBC4 have done a few of these slow TV things, I mostly love them. There was a fantastic flight over the Great Wall of China from east to west last year, lasted a couple of hours, beautiful. Sleigh ride thru northern Norway (iirc) is aces too

Earlier I listened to John Luther Adams: Become Ocean/Become Desert back to back, a bit off topic but it felt really good and the audio version of slow tv.

Yeah JLA is the business

Slow New Zealand last night was brilliant. sociohistorically or even landscape-wise I wasn't that excited for it but formally it felt like one of the most minimal yet, not too busy with the sur-titles and just gently drifting along until it sailed off into the southern ocean. tbf I was watching with a friend and we didn't give it total attention but it was crazy how it just kept meandering its way with no clear rationale once they left the train. The sheer joy of no voice-over is one of BBC4's finest achievements and I want at least one of these every week, forever.

Was aware of it but didn't settle down to watch it but isn't there something about "we didn't give it total attention"? - I often think of this about music I've heard at friend's houses. It's just on but you hear it and it is great.

these shows are built for drifting in and out of, yeah.

Can't watch Janina Ramirez without thinking "fuck off, melt" any more 😢

I mean her voice is still less unbearable than Tony Cunt Robinson but still

"Edith Bowman talks to Sam Mendes in The Life Cinematic"

you have got to be shitting me

if you put the title of his latest movie into a calculator and turn it upside down it almost spells shit - makes u think!

Sometimes I wonder if BBC4 knows who it's for and then sometimes I worry it really does

i have to admit, when i hear dire warnings about bbc funding and some senior manager says 'for that money we'd have to close bbc four, radio 4extra and two other digital channels' i'm like.... wow don't throw me in the briar patch

No Beeb4 would pretty much finish me for BBC tv

i dunno man, i feel like.... if it's good enough put it on bbc 2. if it's too niche make it iplayer only. you don't need a whole channel.

can you get i-player on freeview? I know it is probably a dumb question and there are other options etc.. but I've just never found it.

I could do without a lot of the stuff on 4 sure, and 95 percent of pop music docs or Edith Bowman gladhanding terrible Brit directors just feels v wrong, but I feel like they've used the existence of 4 to syphon off all the good and rigorous documentaries from BBC2 which has been reduced to god awful "people going about their everyday lives somewhere vaguely scenic" or Michael fucking Portillo docs. I guess if you axed 4 then 2 could go back to being a bit more grown up but I wouldn't hold my breath

Better use of iplayer would be a good strategy, yeah. Some of it feels a bit unkempt and uncared for at the moment. I think there's gonna be a smart tv accessible Sounds soon? That'll be a godsend tbh

Calz you can get iplayer with a smart tv or thru some games consoles

Yeah I think I've got a smart tv, but it always completely flummoxes me when I'm trying to find i-player! It probably would be easier using the PS4.

Yeah if you've got a PS4 it should be straightforward I think, I used my PS3 for years before I got this telly

yeah you can install iPlayer for free from the playstation store.

Sounds is coming to various smart TV platforms and set-top boxes but it'll take a long time to reach all of them. there's a zillion slightly different versions of, say, Freeview Play, or YouView, one for each make/model of TV. i think a PS4 version of Sounds is still probably a long way off.

Rise of the Nazis was quite good and shockingly on BBC2. Although it's currently not available on i-player even though it only went out last autumn. That's a common complaint I have with i-player because I'll either just deprive myself of precious viewing pleasure or maybe even just download a torrent of something I want to see rather than pay a penny for britbox on the chance they have content I've already paid for once that isn't currently on i-player.

Not that I always go looking for Nazi content, but Vol 2 of the Volker Ullrich Hitler biog drops next week!

If you don’t use iplayer they make you register an account

there's a zillion slightly different versions of, say, Freeview Play, or YouView, one for each make/model of TV.

lol not so smart

computers are dumb and they make people dumb

computers and television - never the twain should meet!

OK maybe just shut it down

I miss those days when you could kick a yuppie about in the street!

I was living in a bedsit in plumstead/woolwich and doing a nightshift in a factory at the time this risible garbage aired originally, talk about different strokes for different folks! When you see all these pathetic melts creaming themselves over it, it reminds me why I'm such a sad angry old sad bastard!

I've got no ish with what other people enjoy really, but it's a bit much filling up one of the only channels I watch with some nostalgia soap.

yeah it should be on Dave or some shit like that. but it had a quite a popular response from all the usual suspects when it was announced. obv they also love eternal loops of 80's totp.

I didn't realise they're showing the whole fucking thing. Fffs

probably just testing the water for the jess phillips series that is coming soon.

"Bab and Bougie"

And tho BBC3 is basically not for me I think it fills a public service niche that 4 doesn't. Dropping CBBC is the real crime and I still believe that will be rowed back

they were promoting dab radios and giving free ones to over 70's and saying look at all these great radio stations. I listen to them on a dab radio in my kitchen/bedroom or the portable one when I'm out, quite rarely online. When I listen/watch on the pc it's usually because I've had to download an illegal torrent of something interesting that isn't on i-player at the time and probably won't be on it again.

I have a dab in my kitchen, I still love Radio 1extra and 3 and the sport commentary on 5, and I used to watch something on BBC4 every week, but the whole structure has been gutted over time

BBC4 was meant to provide arts programming that BBC2 stopped churning out at nighttime. And from that perspective I can't think of anything very good for a few years. That the Top of the Pops repeats were a thing I would switch it on for says it all.

Good riddance.

pinefox, keep in mind these channels and stations won't close until 2025 at the very earliest. CBBC gets something like 60K viewers at peaktime. this is very small for a TV station. the transmission expenses for a live digital broadcast channel are considerable. it starts to feel like vanity to keep it on the air, particularly when that age cohort is glued to their phone 24 hours a day already. why should the BBC spend money trying to lure them to a non-skippable live broadcast on their parents' tv? the public expects the bbc to be smart stewards of their money.

4extra is super-serving an already very over-served audience: older radio 4 fans. the idea that the BBC should be funding an entire radio station playing repeats of old radio programmes that appeal to mainly prosperous seniors i find ludicrous. the BBC is bad at attracting young working class people and i can't see how many of them would find the existence of 4extra anything but insulting or irrelevant.

bbc four is a hollowed out husk of its former self and no longer has any commissioning identity. if a channel exists only to churn out repeats, let people find those repeats on a free on-demand video service like iplayer.

it is awkward that bbc three is back on the air, i agree.

pinefox i salute your classic tv practice of tuning in to see what's on but most people's habits are cutting in another direction: repeats, scripted programmes, frankly anything that's not live, are increasingly accessed via the internet. the bbc needs to follow those habits if it's to serve people. that is its mission. but don't worry - the big broadcast networks like one, two, news, etc aren't going anywhere for a long while yet! and even the ones due for the chop are getting at least another three years. that gives you a while to work out how to get iplayer working on your tv :)

I get all of what Tracer’s saying apart from the bit about 4extra which I imagine costs basically nothing to run and I’d be very surprised if the BBC managed to attract more young working class people as a result of closing it down.

It has no commissioning budget but the costs of transmitting, scheduling, checking rights etc add up. The people that listen to it already have tons of stuff made for them on R4 and R3, and if they really want endless Dad’s Army repeats there’s hours of that on Sounds. Obviously switching it off alone isn’t going to bring in more young working class listeners but investing that money in some of the stations that do i.e. R1, 1X, 5 Live - possibly could. Or at least that’s the idea.

Awhile ago there was an idea that 4extra could relaunch as a "young speech" station which I really liked and I'm sad it hasn't happened.

bbc3 does at least get new programmes, so i can see it makes more sense for bbc3 to be broadcast over bbc4. i hope the Saturday 9:00 stuff remains though, perhaps on bbc2. as for totp repeats, i think we've had the best already.

and i think cbbc is collateral damage because it's timexed with bbc4.

i like the idea of 4extra but the reality is that i don't listen live and that won't change if it goes.

the last year has felt like the death of a thousand cuts though. and meanwhile dorries is on sharing Netflix subscription with 3 other people and doing *things* on tik tok

iirc working class ppl have their own broadcaster its called itv

It has no commissioning budget but the costs of transmitting, scheduling, checking rights etc add up. … Obviously switching it off alone isn’t going to bring in more young working class listeners but investing that money in some of the stations that do i.e. R1, 1X, 5 Live - possibly could. Or at least that’s the idea.

It has no commissioning budget but the costs of transmitting, scheduling, checking rights etc add up. The people that listen to it already have tons of stuff made for them on R4 and R3, and if they really want endless Dad’s Army repeats there’s hours of that on Sounds. Obviously switching it off alone isn’t going to bring in more young working class listeners but investing that money in some of the stations that do i.e. R1, 1X, 5 Live - possibly could. Or at least that’s the idea.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 27 May 2022 22:50 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Lumping Radio 3 and R4 Extra together as the same homogenous blob of old people stuff is a bit of a silly and reductive argument tbh, as they clearly serve different audiences. I'm not convinced there's a such a big Venn diagram of people who want to hear old Just A Minute repeats and Bartok violin concertos

In any case, I'm pretty sure the corporation has already invested an insane amount of money into trying to reach a younger audience via podcasting, one article I read suggested that spending for radio-related podcasts was around £120 million(!) in 2020. Perhaps they should be investing some of that money into radio aimed at the younger demographic instead?

I'm betting R4 Extra costs a fraction of that to run (and quite honestly it's a bizarre assertion to say young people are "insulted" by it's existence because most of them probably aren't even aware it exists). It served a purpose when it started, at a time when most UK archive radio was largely inaccessible, and it occasionally had some decent original content. Much like BBC Four it's remit has been whittled down to the point of redundancy but I would still be sad to see it go.

modest proposal: all the at-risk channels should devote a daily section to playing shitty dad indie, watch the petitions fly in

I put 4 Extra on the earphones in the park yesterday and there was a briefly interesting program on about Edward VIII's antisemitism and enthusiasm for Hitler.

Trying to think of anything that got a premiere on BBC4 that I'd think back on fondly and it was a multi-part History of Photography series.

I'm sure there's more but for a channel that has been going on for nearly a couple of decades (?)

I don't tend to agree with most of the views expressed in this thread revival.

Tracer Hand knows more about the BBC than most people, and most people I know, and I must, to a large extent, defer to his factual knowledge and experience. For instance, a central question in all this is "how much does it cost to run a digital TV or radio channel?". Many of us might intuitively think: not much, once you have set up your basic infrastructure (the BBC); hardly more than it costs to put the same content on iPlayer or Sounds. Tracer seems to be saying that that's wrong and in fact broadcasting costs much more. This would be a significant fact in the context of needing to cut.

Nonetheless, it's in a way surprising, and to me disappointing, to see Tracer Hand, someone who has an interest in a popular BBC, unconcerned about the slashing or diminution of elements of the BBC which help to keep it, to some people, a bit more popular than it would otherwise be.

From the point of view of simple self-interest, I find these moves, esp the BBC4 one, odd, as the people who watch BBC are relatively likely to be the people who will complain publicly and say that it shows the decline of the BBC. It is hard not to think that some kind of sabotage is going on, ie: that the Con twat running the BBC wants to destroy it, or something -- though I realise this is taking conspiracy thinking too far.

But the claim "BBC4 is no longer any good, I don't watch it, I'm happy for it to go" seems to be relatively of a piece with the logic, often described, by Chomsky I think: "Cut funds for the health service, watch it run down, people won't like it anymore, then you can privatise it". If the BBC is being run down and parts of it are being cut, and this makes it less popular with you / me / whoever, then this would appear to be a negative and self-perpetuating spiral which is good for someone (Murdoch, Zuckerberg, or whoever), bad for many others.

The claim "I don't consume this particular product, so I don't care if it's axed" is, I think, a flawed one in principle. I probably haven't gone to the National Gallery in 5 years but I would be appalled if I heard it was being closed down and turned into an Amazon supermarket. It's relevant that things are there, in a culture, whether you as an individual are consuming them or not at every moment.

To be sure, you can say that the actual (low?) quality of, say, BBC4 makes this a bad comparison: that we would lose out by losing the National Gallery, not by losing BBC4. But I think a) to a degree the same principle applies, b) the fact that BBC4 is, perhaps, now low quality is also part of the same problem, not another fact that makes everything OK. Again: if a health service is run down so that it's bad, then can be sold off, then the running down is bad, and needs political explanation, not just indifference when it's sold off.

The claim that "you can get everything online now anyway" (not that anyone here has necessarily specifically made this claim, but it's generally implied in the whole debate) is partly true; partly underestimates a diversity of audiences and ways of listening to and watching things. Calzino is spot-on above in saying that we were all encouraged to get these radios, now we're going to have to listen to on them. I could, in theory, turn on a laptop computer and navigate to an online BBC4 extra and listen to that. But I don't want to do that, and I can't carry a computer everywhere to do that, and even if I can work out ways of doing this, there are people even less at home with the tech than me who will want to do it even less.

It's true that many many things are going online, non-live, mobile, etc etc. But it's also a fact that we have an ageing population with more over-80s (etc) than ever. Many of them probably feel even more dismayed by this kind of change than I do.

The other logic of "get with the times, daddio, everything's online now" is: well, why not put BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, whatever, all online and switch off TV and radio entirely? Seems that would save a few bob. But not everyone yet wants to switch off all those things.

Some of the arguments for making these changes may be relatively sound. But it seems to me that they arise, at best, as defensive responses to a very negative situation. Seeing the changes as part of the dire situation we're in - governed by a corrupt government, with a corrupt Opposition, and a corrupt media, on an overheating planet of trash - is accurate. But that doesn't make me feel sanguine or indifferent about them. I see them rather as part of the same spiral of destruction and decline that those other things create.

"I don't tend to agree with most of the views expressed in this thread revival"

This was a poor and ill-judged first sentence to what turned out to be a long post, because actually lots of the views, I do agree with!

I agree with things that Calzino, Tim, Pheeel, et al said. Mostly, I think, I was just responding to Tracer Hand, who happens to have more knowledge of these matters than most.

BBC4 is not the NHS, and it's definitely not The National Gallery. It turned out to be a very poor excuse for properly funded, BBC made, arts programming.

pinefox I understand where you're coming from, and I sympathise. I think it's important is to ask what kind of broadcaster should the BBC be. Well it has a royal charter. It has a mission and public purposes. So there is an answer to that question. Most famously it is to 'inform, educate and entertain' and it is to be a universal service. It should reach everybody, and it should be relevant to everybody. A tall order!

But for many years the public has said in surveys that it recognises that the BBC is good, high quality, etc, but that mostly it's just not "for them". It's for other people. What do you do with that information, if you're running the BBC?

If you see the BBC as being akin to the National Gallery, a steward of cultural heritage - an organisation that makes the shows commercial broadcasters won't make - then you run it a bit like Tony Hall did, the previous DG. You pour money into "prestige" programming. Some of which is very good! But then I think you're probably getting closer to what Chomsky was talking about, where your institution becomes increasingly irrelevant to more and more people. You become a "market failure" broadcaster that only does the worthy stuff of interest to an affluent, well-educated niche. That's what the Public Broadcasting Service has become in the US. Highbrow dramas on Sunday nights, high quality news, a few kids' programmes, and that's it. And then it's easy to just consign it to irrelevance. This is not the BBC's model. The BBC has an obligation to reach everyone.

The last 10 years have totally upended the BBC's centrality. 10 years ago, the Official Charts were on Radio 1 on Sunday afternoons and were the barometer of pop success. Today, my 13-year-old and my 10-year-old haven't even heard of the Official Chart, and they're obsessed with pop music. Radio 1 used to break new bands. This is just not the way it works anymore. It's a similar story with talent. 10 years ago, you had YouTube stars like Dan & Phil begging the BBC for a show. These days it's the other way around - it's talent that has the audience already, and the BBC goes begging to them. 10 years ago Disney+ didn't exist, AppleTV+ didn't exist, Netflix had no original programming. The BBC isn't the biggest on the block, even within the UK, and it probably will never be. So what can it be? It can be the most relevant. But to be the most relevant it's going to need to feel like it's for everyone - not just listeners who can recite the cast of the Goon Show.

For way too long the BBC coasted on its market dominance and now it's realising that to reach fickle audiences who have more options than ever before it needs to work very hard at it. So this new DG is I think doing the right thing - cutting niche channels (though not for another 3 years at least!), and putting more money into programmes for audiences who don't feel the BBC is for people like them, as well as into the digital products that will be the way most people access media in 5-10 years time. (pinefox there's an app you can get for your phone called BBC Sounds - it's got all those stations on it and more :) I think it's responsible and I think it's egalitarian.

Tracer: I partly recognise realities that you describe, partly respect the conclusions you draw from them, in some cases am sceptical; but also think we are somewhat talking past each other.

To throw in 3 points:

* I maintain the thought that even if, hypothetically, the changes to the BBC were good, they might not be as much in the BBC's self-interest as you hope. Basically because when parts of the BBC are cut, it loses support, and in this case, I would say, the support is lost from the very people (let's say, Guardian readers for instance) who were most likely to be happy to pay the licence fee and even to defend the BBC in public and make arguments for it. You can say it's OK to lose these people, they're a minority, but I don't see many people in the rest of the population bothered to take up the defence of the institution.

* re "the BBC is 'not for me'" - I think your implication is that this is working-class people saying the BBC is too high-falutin and middle-class. As a middle-class person who happens to read quite a lot of books, I also sometimes feel it's "not for me" because too much of it is too crass and vulgar. But another reason I think this can be summed up in two words: Laura Kuenssberg. That is: many many people (again, including people who would have defended the BBC) have been put off it - permanently? totally? - by its disgusting and poisonous coverage of socialists and their political opponents, in the last c.7 years.

Again, people like me are a minority. But it seems to me that in this world where, as you rightly say, the space for the BBC is getting narrower and narrower, it also repeatedly alienates many people and destroys what's left of its own base of support.

* you raised, earlier, the issue of social class and how to broadcast on that basis. I reflect on this and I would really just say it's a can of worms. Class is a complex subject and a moving target over time. It is difficult to talk about the relations between class and culture without being entangled. There are all kinds of dubious arguments that one can quickly find oneself in, in this area - eg "X is good because working-class people like it" (this statement is often clearly false), "X is working-class because he has a regional accent" (Gary Lineker was once working-class, I believe), "we shouldn't show complex and difficult things because working-class people don't like them" (but there is a centuries-long history of working-class emancipation through culture of various kinds).

I don't at all think that you, Tracer, would make bad and reactionary arguments about this (it happens that I agree 100% with almost every political statement I ever see you make), but I do think that many people (at the BBC and beyond?) would find "appealing to the working classes" a convenient excuse for transmitting even more garbage than before.

This last point in particular is not meant as an "argument" that you or anyone should seek to controvert, but just an indication that I think that one of the areas that has been raised has massive historical and political complexity and the best approaches to it are not obvious.

PS: I don't present Gary Lineker as the ultimate exemplar of someone with a regional accent (he was a red herring in that context), but as a fair exemplar of someone who probably once counted as working-class (his father a market trader), who is now famously the best paid BBC presenter (and not, I would submit, working-class), who also happens to present a slice of BBC content that probably does have relatively high working-class appeal (as it also does to me).

Alan Shearer was once working-class. Whether he is now may be a matter of opinion. But that's probably a whole other thread, preferably with Grace Blakeley invited.

I think your implication is that this is working-class people saying the BBC is too high-falutin and middle-class

'Twas ever thus.

well now that most w/c people (by Grace Blakely's definition or just anyone who is skint) are locked out of Higher Education, then anything approaching almost to slightly middlebrow will confuse their simple ignorant branes!

Look don't get me started, I'd axe the orchestras too

i'd like bbc4/radio4+ to get more adventurous with the archives, but then i guess the archives already have their hands full.

and yeah, generally against having things only accessible to people with internet connections (and defaulting to HIGHEST POSSIBLE QUALITY like it does) - bandwidth costs money. (even though this is literally my job)

Yeah I'm not sure that the consequences of providing a 'universal service' entirely over the internet someday has quite sunk in with everyone yet. It starts to get party political! You're going to need to subsidize or otherwise pay for literally everyone to have a reliable broadband connection!

Sounds like communism, to me

first 4 episodes of The Roads to Freedom are up on i-player with the rest to follow. It makes a change being able to watch the good stuff on i-player rather than downloading it from torrent sites. Mind you I could never even find this on the torrents and it is brilliant.

Daniel Massey's internal monologues in this are fucking hilarious. Must have been quite shocking in 1970!

Britcom graveyard

Shut it down, people

(Looks at the schedule) Jesus. It used to be the highbrow channel, what happened?

it's this week only, probably a birthday thing

i'm sure it was happening last week too?

no, it looks normal (he says, digging the listings mag out of the recycling). there were two episodes of ever decreasing circles on the Tuesday but that was it.

there have been a lot of story ville documentaries recently, or maybe I've just been catching up with them. the Herzog one about volcanologists was last week and i watched one about midwives.

Friday Night Music nights are just terrible now, an hour of 70s variety performances (they have done Cilla Black, twice!) then two TOTP (ok this bit is good) then one of the 20 or so music documentaries they seem to cycle through, then a dull/predictable clip show, then a live film (which never seems to be any good, they had a 2-hour Status Quo concert from 2010 a few months ago for example - two hours! from 2010!) - I know they are operating under tight restrictions and barebones staff, but with their resources & library it's ridiculous that they can't put something better together.

the wretched schedule on bbc 4 wouldn't be so bad if the rare good stuff they occasionally play was up on i-player for more than just a month. For example The Roads to Freedom that was broadcast a couple of months ago is back to not existing anymore.

I was looking forward to getting around to watching that… one day.

I guess tricky licensing issues with older stuff.

BBC Four reshowing the Amis/Finney/folk horror Green Man from tomorrow:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p031d01y?fbclid=IwAR372ZVTKpQMhfcblAPrPuvV3x1PRttfKW5SR_1bO35ptcC1cdeHSR7lYJg

caught a bit of Schama's History of Britain in passing last night and i'm sure i've noticed and been annoyed by it before but the big melty dope repeats the "rule of thumb" myth as if it was a true fact and were i in a shouting mood i would have shouted at him that he's supposed to be a fucking academic ffs

his basic shtick is tarting up trite cliched cack and passing it off as insightful. The Two Winstons episode from History of Britain was really bad. I hate to think there might be young people who are having their knowledge of history shaped by this pillock! But on the other hand it's probably still better a lot of the other shite they've put out in the last decade.

The last thing I saw him in was that ego trip of a series where he basically put himself in the middle of various 20th century events.

where he compared brexit to the nazi invasion of czechoslovakia, obv just making this up but you never know.

replacing the Saturday night foreign drama with Glastonbury is one thing, it being the manic Street Preachers is twisting the knife.

anyway, Beck back next week (and I'm watching the French thing from More 4 which is her from Crimson Rivers sneaking around so I'm ok for the moment)

Yes Minister is lazily written Tory bullshit and its status as an alleged classic is rubbish