Abolish the BBC Y/N

No, though I fully realize it's easier for me to escape their evil side than it is for you. Lots wrong but I too would suggest radical reform instead of full scale abolishment. A post-BBC media landscape is more likely to be worse a dystopia than the current.

What's the matter with the BBC these days? Haven't been paying attention.

lbi otm, the bbc needs an overhaul (as does the government's hold over their finances tbh) but we def need public-funded broadcasting and the bbc is still the best there is

if we’re doing this then quid pro quo abolish ilx

steady on there, let's not do anything rash

State broadcasters are a bad idea imo, its become far too infected and rotten to be reformed and I want to see the back of it forever.

The main problem is that their news department has gone from being a mouthpiece for the establishment to a compromised mouthpiece for the worst people in the country, this is partially due to some of these worst people being in charge, but also it has been bullied with its own rules on impartiality and fairness to such an extent that any good journalists there seem to be scared to actually speak truth to power rather than perform a pantomime version of the same.

I wouldn't like it to be abolished and replaced by commercial media, I would like it to be abolished and replaced by something along the same lines, but better and more independent. Radical reform doesn't work as it seems that many of the people working there are part of the problem. The English establishment need to be cut out of it completely.

Not saying any of this is likely to happen.

Also, from people I know who have worked there in some small capacity, they are even more infected with the "target audience" stuff than other stations

a state broadcaster and a public service broadcaster are not the same thing, tho, and the bbc is - at least in conception - the latter

the bbc trust could do with being overturned and/or massively expanded, with much stricter rules on who can be part of it, but the bbc has done so much good stuff that commercial broadcasters would have no interest in doing that i am v reluctant to throw the baby out with the bathwater

it isn't like they are even making quality gear like Tinker, Tailor .. any more though.

the BBC's radio output alone is worth the licence fee, even taken with all the problems mentioned above and elsewhere

aye but we can all agree that the greatest dancer is amazing tho xp

got to admit R3/4/WS are pretty much my constant listening, when not music and there is still some quality on there.

neil s otm, i feel like most of britisher music-ilx wouldn't be here if it wisnae for the interest in music that bbc radio sparked and/or nurtured

calz are you talking yourself out of your own trenchant position here already

What is good on the radio right now? There is a fair bit I like, but the majority could be done much better, could go through station by station, but they all seem to be declining in terms of quality, except possibly R3. I have listened to R4 since I was a kid but have finally given up on it in the last 6 months.

... erm In Our Time and erm.. much of the regular schedule is pure trash tbh. usually it is one-off series that stand out like The Ratline recently for example.

Couldn't get Match Of The Day on iPlayer around midnight last night. Game's gone Gary.

margaret macmillan reith lectures was quality radio as well tbf

I listen to 6Music fairly often and I know it has its problems (too much whitebread indie, Shaun Keaveney, retirement home for aging punks etc. etc.) but it does still have a lot of good stuff: Freakzone, Gilles Peterson, Iggy Pop. They should deffo play more dance music, hip hop, reggae etc. but one of the issues is the segmentation of audiences thing, already alluded to above.

Guess I still sometimes listen to In Our Time and Thinking Allowed, but in (awful) Sounds App rather than actual radio.

xp and this is probably not the place to rehash these arguments anyway, sorry all

I listen to 6 music in the morning now Lauren Laverne is there, so guess I like it? But the playlisting is still annoying, started turning it off because "not a bad track but I don't want to listen to it every day"

The US has no BBC and it's worked wonders for them.

Do you think it would an improvement on Fox if they had though?

Not in terms of sick entertainment, it wouldn't.

only one broadcaster brought us nearly a decade of noel's house party and i'll give you a clue it wasn't the one owned by rupert murdoch

I knew mr blobby would indirectly show up at some point on this thread!

surprised it took as long as it did tbh

It is mostly garbage these days, the current affairs/news side is a disgrace - just in terms of quality of output, without mentioning toadying to the Tories and right wing scumbags in general - I never listen to the radio since Humphrey Lyttleton died.

t/s: paying the bbc £150.50 per year for mostly garbage but with some gems vs paying rupert murdoch at absolute minimum £264 for utter garbage

Sky News is miles better than BBC 24 fwiw.

http://i.imgur.com/6rLHI.gif

fun fact from the v entertaining noel's house party wikipedia: the format was sold to belgium, germany, denmark, spain and the netherlands, each of whom produced their own version

any european ilxors care to weigh in with their recollections of those shows, and whether they justified the bbc licence fee?

More importantly, was there a Herr Blobbisch?

Originality. Quality. Excellence.
Noel's. House. Party.

This whole Panorama ‘leaked audio’ thing.. something major? Seems like pretty thin gruel so far. This R0b1nson tosser attempting to cover his tracks and distract people from what was obviously going to be a big expose. Wonder if the programme will still go ahead as scheduled.

xp Never seen a Dutch version of Blobby, can't find any on youtube, and going off by who they say did a Dutch remake, I'm glad I never had to witness that.

booooo

Can we get Frederik B. in here to clue us in on the Danish version?

paging stan m for the rundown on belgian blobby

Found the Danish one through a Danish blobby fan page! (no joke). It's @ 1.10 in this video:

http://tvtid.tv2.dk/2013-09-25-hvilket-program-er-tv-2s-mindst-savnede

a Danish blobby fan page!

truly the internet is a blessing and a curse

this is extraordinary footage tbh, it's incredible in every sense of the word to see blobby on the international stage

Some pedigrees are more recognisable than others. Just from the goats running round the studio, you can tell that Germany's Hamster TV is a Teutonic Pets Win Prizes. And Mr Blobby's presence betrays the origins of Denmark's Greven pa Hittegodset. But you'd need Belgian assistance to work out that Raar Maar Waar, a lively looking show performed in a plaster replica of a classical ruin, was the spawn of That's Life.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/game-on-the-broader-picture-1252893.html

Beth Rigby & Faisal Islam on sky politics are far better than the muck the BBC churns out.

my drug of choice is @BethRigby interrupting Boris Johnson to read him Donald Tusk’s statement & then telling him to his face that he is deluded pic.twitter.com/ZUOiyF8jwr

— Hannah Jane Parkinson (@ladyhaja) January 29, 2019

Sky News is so superior to the BBC its scary. They do allow wankers from spiked on to review the papers though. But still not as infuriating as the amount of absolute cunts the BBC allow on Question Time though. Last week was a joke yet again.

I'd happily just get rid of the BBC news output and concentrate on making good telly.

State broadcasters are a bad idea imo, its become far too infected and rotten to be reformed and I want to see the back of it forever.

― calzino

commercial broadcasters are a worse idea

why not just abolish all media except for ilx?

The BBC gets as many accusations of left wing bias as it does of right wing bias - the people smashing up that socialist bookshop last year were carrying anti BBC signs. I wonder why this is. Maybe it's an anti establishment thing. Or maybe it's confirmation bias. You can see them trying to be impartial but this does lead to equal time for right wing zealots. Also it's a large place so parts of it can be right wing whilst other parts (all the comedy) are left wing.

(And it's not strictly a state broadcaster, the government wouldn't be trying to ruin it by removing funding if it was. It runs under a royal charter rather than a government one. Depends what you mean by state, I guess)

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 new show is pop-heavy, see above)

Also: Sounds.

(I am not in the 18-35 demographic. And even if I was I like to think I had better taste)

Try the new download/app

this statement seems... ill-advised

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/14/bbc-attacked-for-failure-to-provide-abortion-advice

All part of the pathological obsession with being 'fair and balanced'.

NHS comeback was measured and otm but could have done with more spittle-flecked invective about what gormless fuck decided that free access to legal abortions is the "controversial" side of this "argument"

seriously hope somebody loses their job over this

Good evening!

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/feb/15/bbc-this-week-to-end-after-16-years-as-andrew-neil-steps-down

https://www.clashmusic.com/sites/default/files/field/image/bobby-gillespie.jpg

His little setpiece speech about Churchill at the start of last night's show was nauseating - he's such a boilerplate West of Scotland Unionist Orange cunt.

... and Andrew Neil's almost as bad.

I would keep the show but just change everything about it.

whoever thought it would be a good idea to inject some humour into the show, with the comedic talents of portillo/postman twat really deserve a good shoeing.

Can someone turn that pic of Boaby into an animated gif where he's nodding and giving a thumbs up?

(xp) That would be Andrew Neil.

is Fraser Nelson going to be his replacement? the BBC fucking loves him.

Wallcome taw this weeg's odition of Thus Weeg, I'm Freezer Nolson.

Isn't he that shit comedian?

he is about as funny as most comedians with the added bonus of having a mystery daft accent that is NOT scottish, not fucking anything tbf!

Oti Mabuse, Gillian Smart, Mishal Husain, Kawser Quamer and Alina Jenkins are the only reasons I wouldn't say television should be abolished altogether.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

All Britain tensely awaits the verdict.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Cheers break out in certain pubs in W1.

pic.twitter.com/zcNZpxboiV

— Peter Hampson (@IvansMeads) March 31, 2019

Mentioning Orwell automatically means I'm sceptical of that post but there might be interesting bits of detail that explain, and it does name names.

shouting at the sky, Kuenssbergs gonna Kuenssberg etc, and also I'm 2 days late, but I am not liking the wording in the bottom section of this at all
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49972097

"a fair hearing from the EU ... just doesn't appear to have happened"
"Sources say the EU ought to listen 'to the people who won the referendum, not the people who lost'"

accurate, impartial, independent and fair ™

while I'm happy to be subsidising simpering CCHQ fanfic, maybe next time they ought to not make such a fuss when someone says the Klan man is possibly a bit racist.

So did they do good last night? Fiona Bruce also seemed ok? Wonder if there was more care or scrutiny with the QT special last night

corbyn’s manifesto has radicalised them

QT was good last night entirely because it wasn't at all like QT, we will be back to the usual rigmarole next week.

Facebook Tories moaning like fuck about it, looking forward to being told in the pub

Just watched it (skipped Sturgeon). Thought Fiona Bruce did a great job and I felt like everyone was properly held to account with an interesting range of policy questions.

(Lol at that fucking Morales melt tho')

Think there will be a lot of complaints sent in to the been about it from Tories. Don't know what a Lib Dem will do beyond hide under the sofa

they have been spoilt by years of a version of laughable public scrutiny in bbc studios that usually involves a back massage and a pre-broadcast agreement on what questions will be asked. They don't like it up 'em!

Emma Barnett is going to chair a 'young people's Question Time' on 9 December

bbc do have a tradition of letting blond haired lunatics loose on young people tbf

Just watched it (skipped Sturgeon)

Worth watching Sturgeon to see someone actually tell Fiona Bruce she's misinterpreting. It's a very good demonstration of what it looks like when a party leader believes what they're saying rather than parroting rehearsed lines and panicking when challenged or asked to deviate.

Anyway, we seen this doing the rounds on Twitter?

https://t.co/PjhAQsWLoH

new polls looking v good for tories and v bad for Labour in scotland and resolutely unshifting for the Labour-Tory gap. i don’t know where you all find your optimism from.

there was at least some poll variance in 2017 but this seems resolutely unfavourable across the board including that MRP tracking done by Datapraxis. (i know it’s still only as good as the data that goes in but still).

wrong thread.

Wrong electorate

Will try and watch Sturgeon later.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/nov/24/jack-whitehall-review-o2-arena-london

this guy sounds absolutely hellish from this review.

" he has always come across as the Conservative party in standup form"

I don't know how much they pay this cunt but he sounds bad. A search shows he is all over the bbc and according to them is: "one of Britain's favourite comedians". He's a posh Tory cunt who does a tv show with his dad .. no wonder the UK is so fucked.

I have been out of the UK for ages and back a couple of years and one thing I can't figure out is Jack Whitehall, is he supposed to be unfunny? Is he doing a parody of a posh guy who isn't funny but gets by on confidence alone? I feel like it isn't a joke, he is just that terrible, but then why is he always on TV, sometimes with people who are actually good? Do some people actually like him? Why?

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, February 25, 2019 12:03 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Bantz, fella. The Archbishop of Bantlebury. Lord Bantlington. Etc.

― Elitist cheese photos (aldo), Monday, February 25, 2019 12:06 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Death to bantz, double death to posh boy bantz.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, February 25, 2019 12:16 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've never knowingly seen him, but double death to posh boy bantz sounds good to me.

the Brian Logan review of his 02 show is excellent stuff btw!

He was actually good as an irritating clueless poshboy cunt in "Fresh Meat" but that was, er, acting.

BBC making the biggest splash they can with this story, it seemed to take up the first 10 minutes of the 10 o'clock news on R4

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50552068

It's a shameless attack. Same w/ Laura K's "not saying just saying" tru colours, the editing out of the jeering of bojo, etc etc. I was never naive about the bbc, but I can't remember seeing them stan for the tories so much in such a short space of time, with such fervor.

Retroactively - given the last couple of weeks - I would really like to change my vote in this poll to a firm 'N' instead of my initial 'it's bad but 'Y''. Never thought it could be as bad as reported here, but it is. My new vote is:

Abolish the BBC: Y (but find a good home for Catherine Southon).

*I was never naive about the bbc: I didn't watch enough to be convinced to watch less.