the BBC isn't it time we just got shot of it?

[southeastastra]

it's very middle class blue peter biased in my view

not to mention the cover ups of late

i know that the majority wouldn't agree but a subscription service for radio 4 etc would ensure that's continuity

For more examples of innovation in broadcasting being led by the BBC...

1. High quality internet news spin-off
2. Consistently the most comprehensive and well-designed internet presence EVEN BEFORE SKY WAS ON THE INTERNET
3. Iplayer is without a doubt the best broadcast and on-demand TV platform in the world - the commercial ones are embarrassing in comparison
4. World Service - been going for years, yet the idea of well-trained local journalism in 100 countries around the world broadcasting to BBC quality worldwide has still not been matched by the CNN feed bollocks.
5. Music channels like Radio 1 often have better converage of international music scenes than the country's own music channels that are dominated by large commercial media companies.
6. Challenging journalism where intellectual quality is valued even if it exceeds that of politicians or business leaders - that is still a strikingly innovative position when you look at commercial stations who see their role as to be sycophantic and pandering to business leaders and politicians.
7. Much more effective and inclusive use of texts, emails, tweets etc embedded into programming and live debates.

etc etc

For those of you who think the BBC is biased, have you ever watched Fox news?

That the higher standard news came from a licenced BBC model completely negates your rather idiotic view that innovation only comes from a market and profit-oriented model

Innovation comes either from a very young, agile institution. Or in a market where there is competition and a hunger to succeed.

Does any of this sound like the BBC of today? No. BBC is complacent.

It is not being profit-oriented, necessarily, but having competition and having to fight for resources that leads to innovation. Innovation is a constant need to be the best, not settle for a has-been. BBC has captive funding, a bloated bureaucracy. It is a status-quo institution, with no need or hunger to be the best. As long as it has captive funding, why would it need to compete?

And people like you allow it to wallow in its complacency.

Heroine,

If BBC is so wonderful, then surely a subscription service would be the way to go? People would flock to subscribe to partake of its wonderful broadcasts, and it would continue to get money.

And those of us who think it is mediocre can subscribe to SKY or pay nothing and watch channel4.

Freedom of choice for everyone.

Flatbread, you might be a rabid free-marketeer, but you don't have to be an idiot as well.

Why do you consider BBC is complacent. Did you read my list of innovations that the BBC leads the market in? Perhaps you didn't understand it?

Free markets don't really exist you know, but where there is quite a lot of freedom, the market doesn't tend towards innovation and quality, it tends towards crap. You can see this in consumer goods (go to a trade fair and see the halls and halls filled with cheaply produced crap) media (the US is a perfect example but also see Italy for another excellent 'free market' approach). Food is a further example, we have bad or no-tasting fruit and veg with poorer nutritional standards, poorer quality meat (stuffed full of injected water... sorry 'produced with innovative bulk-increasing techniques..) older fish etc than we used to have in the 1960s. We have factory produced bread with high levels of salt and sugar and 'food' is stuffed full of fructose, oils, saturated fats salts etc etc that are NOT a reflection of quality but are a reflection of what you call 'innovation'.

We can see the trend towards crap in the film industry, and in popular music.

In areas like car design, where 'innovation is driven by the market' in fact this is untrue - innovation in the car industry is driven by legislation. Safety legislation, fuel economy legislation, emissions legislation etc etc.

Its nice when stupid people are sure of themselves, but it never means they are right.

Heroine,

Oh, so advances in automotives have nothing to do with competition? It is all to do with government intervention? Well, in that case you must be a champion of the Lada or Volga automotive. Or perhaps there is a Trabant snuggling in your driveway.

I am not a neoliberal fanatic. Nor do I think a profit motive is a necessary or sufficient condition for innovation.

But what is necessary is competition. Even in the non-profit sector, Oxfam etc. have to compete for our donations.

But in the case of BBC, you have an institution that has guaranteed funding and no competition for the funds. What you get is an institution that exists to protect and perpetuate itself.

A balance between government intervention AND competition is required. At this point, BBC does not compete in the most important area - funding. The best way to do that is to make BBC subscription based or funded through voluntary contributions so it competes for funding and is accountable to us.

I think you are too afraid to let go, and people and institutions like the BBC will take advantage of that, and give you overwhelming mediocrity at a high cost.

You really don't fucking listen do you. Typical for a daft free-marketeer.

Heroine, I think until you have lived for a long time in a place where the free market rules supreme and you have seen quality drop over time giving people products and services produced only to make a buck, using as little as they can to produce as cheaply as they can to maximize profits, then many people just don't get it.
Dh was complaining, we have lived in this house 19 years, he says he has pretty much replaced everything at least once. Yet in our old built in the 50's first home, we only ever needed to decorate. All appliances while old, worked perfectly.
Alcofrolic Funnily horrific, the real Fox news isn't it. We call it Faux news.

i don't think getting rid of the BBC would be a good thing.

those commenting on the saville scandal being over-enjoyed by Murdoch et al, think on the over-coverage the Leveson enquiry by the Beeb - i felt thoroughly bored by it, and felt the beeb was getting much prurient enjoyment from it.

I do think there is a left-liberal bias (most of my Beeb is Radio 4 and Cbeebies)

it is also London-centric.

i actually pay for the BBC twice as those parts included in my Virgin package are paid for as well as the licence fee. the beeb could probably make some money that way. however i'm not sure it is enough.

Heroine, what, listen to your rants and strawmen? No

Being rude does not make you convincing. Just the opposite.

Btw, making BBC earn its keep through subscriptions or donations does not change its remit as a public service broadcaster.

All it does is change the funding model, to make it more accountable.

OOoh! Flatbread has looked up some argument dismissal names on Wikipedia!

None of them change the argument that you won't listen to or strengthen your argument that fee-paying models generate quality, where licence fee-paying models do not.

Neither of those positions is backed up by the position of the market. You can ignore and excuse all you like, and attack the way I said what I said rather than the substance all you like, but there is no way that the BBC is less innovative than other broadcasters, and no evidence that opening up the BBC to the market would improve broadcast quality overall.

Its a bit like saying that if walmart owned all supermarkets the quality would go up. It wouldn't.

I am guessing by 'quality and innovation' you mean pricedropTV?

Also Flatbread, why don't we look at your argument another way.

In your argument, there is licenced media (BBC) that you claim is complacent and uninnovative. Then there is the market-driven other broadcast media that is innovative, trends towards quality.

We don't have to worry about whether what you say is true, we simply need to look at your implicit assumption, that the market chooses quality and innovation.

The logic inherent in your own argument suggests that almost no-one would watch the BBC now, or at least the proportion of people using BBC services would be lower than their exposure in the market.

This way of looking at this cannot compensate for the fact that people with no spare money might never choose sky, but what negates that point is the argument that people are prepared to pay more for what they like if it is better than what is there already (the capitalist, market first argument).

Sadly the proportionate use of BBC services remains higher than its 'fair' share of the market if all channels were taken equally versus Sky (in the UK), so there too your 'markets are intelligent at promoting quality demanded by the audience' fails.

I know its attractive and first-year-business school-y to promote market rhetoric, but behavioural economics is what's needed here, not dry economics or just free market crap.

if walmart owned all supermarkets the quality would go up. It wouldn't.

Huh? I have no idea what you are saying and whom you are arguing against. Frankly, you are making no sense.

Are you a bit unhinged heroine? Or do you just work for the british broadcasting communists?

Heroine you're making perfect sense to me :)

Just seen this thread. Have not read all the comments. My tuppence worth:

• the bbc gets kicked by labour and kicked by the tories and kicked by the lib dems. that sounds like impartiality in action to me.
• if Murdoch has his wish and the bbc is no more, just you watch how long the other "free to market" channels will survive. not long. and then anyone who wants to watch tv will have to pay for Sky. With no competition, they will be able to charge what they want - and they can feed people the news/programming that is politically expedient for them (c/r Fox News).
• also - agree x 100000000 with whoever said upthread about James Murdoch being quietly re-elected to the Sky board, completely unaccountable because daddy calls the shots.

Has reasoned argument blown flatbread's mind?? Not a great advert for the quality of person who advocates losing the BBC.

I love the Beeb (and they took me to court for not paying the licence fee....I was young)

They give quality broadcasting, the coverage of the olympics was fantastic. Their reporters frequently get to places in war torn zones that other broadcasters can't. It is universally respected.

Schools programmes are great, BBC bitesize is wonderful, documentaries, period dramas and wild life programmes are second to none.

You are, with the best will in the world, being VFU

Why would ITV, Channels 4 & 5 etc not survive if the BBC closed down?

Really interesting debate. Though Heroine - why the incredibly disproportionate aggression and bile? Weird.

I still think the BBC and what it stands for is worth it.

I agree that the funding model could be re-jigged.

I also think - and have thought for a good many years - that Channel 4 is the new BBC. BBC1 and 2 anyway.

I think all the BBC radio stations suck. Yes even 4.

Iplayer is ace.

Kids channels are ace.

There have been some amazing, recent triumphs on BBC1/2:

Olympics
Sherlock
Luther (is that Beeb?!)
Apprentice
Dragon's Den

And there is nothing like Question Time or even the beleaguered Newsnight.

I've worked in media for a number of years in Australia. If there was a controversial story being run, Murdoch would be on the phone to his editors saying " this is the line we're running". It's how commercials operate. What's going wind up the most viewers - to get more people watching and up advertising revenue, or what's going to attract more advertisers (sympathy stories on nice products). And then journalists friends of mine in commercial tv are told they need "bigger tits" (by the head of news at one organisation) if they wanted to advance their career - nice.
I lived in the US when Reagan removed NPRs funding. He said it was to create a level playing field. It was because business don't like public funded journalism because unlike the commercials, they aren't beholden to them.

Which news corp will run a story about naughty corporations if they have to then turn around and ask for sponsorship?

The BBC don't have a "line they're running" on controversial stories?