The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying • Hacker News Board

Re: The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying

#151

Post by xnyan » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 11:36 PM UTC

xqcgrek2 wrote: post #98

BBC ceased being universal and viewed as legitimate when it delved into politics and political issues. PBS in the US made the same mistake. The era of publicly funding TV should have ended years ago when information and news became free (essentially when US household internet or smartphone penetration reached 85%+)

I'm interested to know which years you consider the BBC and PBS to have been "non-political" or not engaged in propaganda (propaganda in the dictionary sense, not the pejorative sense)? I've watched both for 30 years and also significant amounts of archival footage from both as a hobby/interest in broadcast history, and it's very clear that they have always had politically motivated narratives.

Re: The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying

#152

Post by goatlover » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 11:38 PM UTC

iso1210 wrote: post #16

My kids have no concept of linear TV. My 9 year old came back and told me that a friend had a broken TV as when they turned it on, the program was already half way through. Their 'channels' are netflix, amazon and disney. When I had the choice and they were pre-school then sure, we watched things like Alphablocks on iplayer. I can force them to watch Attenborough or Blue Peter, and they enjoy it, just not enough to w…

Sports and other live events are still linear, to the extent you wish to keep up with real time and not have it spoiled for you elsewhere. Pandemic aside, people still go to bars and friends houses to watch live events (usually sports).

Not sure that will change by 2040.

Re: The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying

#153

Post by eynsham » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 11:41 PM UTC

native_samples wrote: post #121

spinningslate wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't argue with the your observation on consumption: I see the same with my children. However: there's nothing intrinsic to the BBC that requires linear delivery or consumption. iPlayer was, after all, one of the first streaming services: a genuine bit of innovation from the Beeb. I dearly want to see the BBC not only survive, but to prosper. That may be rose-tinted/delusional/whatever. Why? Because it represents a…

There's a difference between aspiration and execution. Every TV channel will claim they aspire to inform, educate and be diverse. No TV channel in history has said their goal is to misinform, dumb down and present homogenous uniformity day after day. The BBC is clearly failing at its goals. Most of the UK population no longer trusts its news output; that's huge and a new phenomenon, although of course it's been a lon…

> The BBC is clearly failing at its goals.

Well, the Proms this year were bound to be disappointing, but I’m sure matters will improve next year. And the cricket commentary is still perfectly sound.

> Most of the UK population no longer trusts its news output

This is simply untrue: >60% of the population trust the BBC’s news output.¹

> The government is, at least in theory, accountable to the people.

It is less accountable when the public broadcaster is under its thumb. This is how e.g. Orban stays in power, and it’s not healthy regardless of the ideology of the person in power.

> Sure, it's only every 4 years and many different issues are conflated together.

Four years? It sounds like you’re rather unfamiliar with the UK.

> The BBC is accountable to nobody

The BBC survives because it is popular. Like any Quango or government body, it can be abolished by an act of parliament. If it is special, it is worth asking why it is special—and the most obvious answer is that people like it.

You also ignore that there are mechanisms other than accountability to ensure that people do things—institutions can have a culture. All your criticisms could be applied to the UK judiciary, yet its culture precludes certain behaviours that e.g. the prospect of removal from office alone cannot explain.

> If the BBC were actually controlled by the government then it would have already been forced back to more mainstream political views.

It is amusingly naïve to think that that would be the only response. I prefer having fair elections and avoiding entrenching one party rule to whatever non-mainstream views the BBC propagates.

> BBC's wokeness and openly biased news (e.g. "Brexit threat to sandwiches" being a memorable headline)

Is that really ‘woke and openly biased’? It’s not that implausible that something in the supply chain is affected by Brexit. The Conservatives, like governments of all stripes, are unhappy with the BBC because it is not in total agreement with government policy, has (excepting a commitment to democracy and human rights) no official stance in the first place making agreement or disagreement with policy something of a category error, and is not entirely under its thumb. That alone isn’t very good evidence of ‘wokeness and open bias’.

> The public no longer perceives the BBC as "society enhancing" but instead society damaging. Yet, they can do nothing about it. The political will to reform the BBC isn't there.

If turning the BBC into a UK version of CCTV were a popular policy, Boris Johnson would not shy away from it: cf. Brexit. Polling clearly indicates that you are wrong and the BBC is still quite popular: this is far more consistent with the evidence than some mysterious unwillingness to impose the will of Number 10 on the BBC.

1: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-repo...

Re: The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying

#154

Post by chuckee » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 11:48 PM UTC

deadbunny wrote: post #78

teamonkey wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iPlayer was, after all, one of the first streaming services: a genuine bit of innovation from the Beeb. This is absolutely worth remembering, iPlayer was revelatory 12 or 13 years ago. Infuriatingly the innovation seems to have stopped there. Case in point, it's a corporation nearly 100 years old, yet its back catalogue is extremely poor. You should be able to watch every episode of Doctor Who on demand since the o…

> Case in point, it's a corporation nearly 100 years old, yet its back catalogue is extremely poor. This was due to the Competition Commission saying the BBC putting up their back catalogue would stifle competition.

Sounds like internal sabotage.

Re: The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying

#155

Post by RickJWagner » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 1:54 AM UTC

As an American consumer of BBC shows and web news, I've got mixed feelings about this.

I really like shows like 'Dr. Who'. I find the news interesting, but am puzzled by the focus on American politics (and always from the left side. I feel they truly don't understand the conservative half of America.)

I wish them luck. I wish they'd present a more balanced view of America, but I wish them well.

Re: The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying

#156

Post by robbiep » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:31 AM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #149

robbiep wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like how opposition politicians are on the governments’ payroll and their job is almost entirely to criticise the government? The government pays for lots of people who are not always friendly to them. Including judges, anti corruption bodies etc. I’m in Australia so I don’t know as many specifics about the BBC but our ABC which is modeled on the BBC in many ways (except it’s not a license fee but actual gov…

> You mean like how opposition politicians are on the governments’ payroll and their job is almost entirely to criticise the government? The government pays for lots of people who are not always friendly to them. Including judges, anti corruption bodies etc. These functions are pretty much guaranteed by the constitution. They ARE the government, not some state funded parallels organization with no way of fighting bac…

Again, over the long history of both the ABC and BBC there has been a strong record of investigative journalism that has been critical of the government at times. The independence for these purposes has been enshrined in law and withstood some pretty strong challenges from governments that were on the wrong side of their reporting at times. The organisations survived. The governments did not in all instances.

Re: your hyperbole on Australia turning to authoritarianism, don't believe the hype. I could just as easily say soon the United States might begin locking up immigrant children or knocking down doors hunting for illegals. Or maybe offer bounties on people having abortions. Oh wait, they already are?

Re: The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying

#157

Post by Proven » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 3:28 AM UTC

boffinism wrote: post #2

It's worth saying the BBC has been 'doomed' for as long as I can remember. Simply pointing out that it doesn't make sense doesn't seem to have much effect on its continued presence.

Well, when customer can't refuse to buy, no wonder they are still in business.

It's like those poor bastards in the EU watching "European" programming on national because that's how national public circle jerk continues. National TV gets euro subsidies if they "cooperate" and broadcast public TV content from other EU countries.

Re: The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying

#158

Post by syntheticcorp » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:04 AM UTC

seccess wrote: post #84

"Instead, they’ll be reminiscing about watching a Twitch streaming millionaire child screaming racial slurs as he rail-guns his opponents on Fortnite." This perspective is reductive and insulting. There are many great, wholesome creators on YT/Twitch who put a lot of work to make their content welcoming and intellectually engaging, even if they are seemingly just playing video games. Just because the author doesn't l…

It’s a reference to one of the most popular youtubers, who had the highest subscriber count for years.

Re: The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying

#159

Post by pharmakom » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:40 AM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #81

908B64B197 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their 'channels' are netflix, amazon and disney. When I had the choice and they were pre-school then sure, we watched things like Alphablocks on iplayer. I can force them to watch Attenborough or Blue Peter, and they enjoy it, just not enough to want to watch them over things on disney. There's so much competition of things to do. > This itself might not say a lot, and I still have a TV license despite the limited…

This feels like saying "why not get rid of government funded schools and have children watch Marvel and Disney instead?". The BBC's mission was to "inform, educate and entertain", Disney's and Marvels is more like "entertain, addict and profit". From Wikipedia about the origins of the BBC: > " The British Broadcasting Corporation came into existence on 1 January 1927, and Reith – newly knighted – was appointed its fi…

But equally has the BBC made a Simpsons? The Wire? Sopranos?

Re: The bargain at the heart of the BBC is fraying

#160

Post by hakfoo » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 6:00 AM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #110

iso1210 wrote: post #16

My kids have no concept of linear TV. My 9 year old came back and told me that a friend had a broken TV as when they turned it on, the program was already half way through. Their 'channels' are netflix, amazon and disney. When I had the choice and they were pre-school then sure, we watched things like Alphablocks on iplayer. I can force them to watch Attenborough or Blue Peter, and they enjoy it, just not enough to w…

What works well is Linear TV with a history, so you can go through a calendar, say, going back 30 days. All the Japanese IPTV streamers work that way and it's a very natural integration. You can watch the current streaming, or just go back in the calendar to whatever you want in your selected channel. And the past items flow from one to the next as if they were live. You watch through last Monday's 8:00 p.m. one hour…

I think it's less about specific times and more a form of curation.

The streaming options out there either tend to be "you wanted to watch one episode of this show, so here's every single other episode of it, followed by the German translation" or a seemingly random walk through the catalog that ends in Elsagate.

The guy running the schedule at the local broadcaster is a little more intelligent than that, and can make a better selection.

I'd love to see a streaming service that let you build "channel-like playlists"-- pick a few favourite series and it would populate a sequence to watch, not just those shows but also closely-correlated other programs. You'd only see one or two episodes of a given series in a row unless you intentionally skipped around on the list.

Ideally, the suggestion logic would be smart enough to identify "randomizable" shows versus "serial" ones, and pick appropriate episodes based on those rules.

There could be various UI refinements-- "I enjoyed Blah, but I've already seen up to Season 5, so skip all of those, but still weight it for the recommendation component."

In the end, it would be like network TV all over again: sit down at 7PM, press one button, and you'll watch four sitcoms and an hour-long drama, before switching over to a news product.