4 ms·

The BBC isn't like Netflix - the license fee pays for TV infrastructure, public alerting, World Service, school revision programmes etc. - you just can't treat

The BBC isn't like Netflix - the license fee pays for TV infrastructure, public alerting, World Service, school revision programmes etc. - you just can't treat a public broadcaster like an opt-in service, it would cease to exist. If COVID-19 has shown us anything in the UK, it should be that the BBC is still trusted and used heavily by the govt to get their message out clearly and loudly

thu2111 7y ago
TV infrastructure these days is mostly satellite and cable based, sticks-on-hills broadcasting isn't that expensive and could simply be run by the government directly as it winds down over time. Public alerting? Government can (and should) just serve videos itself, it can already SMS the entire nation. World Service - was historically funded directly by the government, not the license fee. Should it even still exist? School revision programmes can easily be handled by the private sector. COVID-19 has revealed nothing about the BBC, which is now untrusted by >50% of the British population for the first time. All broadcasters have access to government broadcast updates. Anything else?
- untog 7y ago
  > the BBC, which is now untrusted by >50% of the British population for the first time. Got a citation for that?
  - thu2111 7y ago
    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/16/do-britons-trust-press https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/1... YouGov figures show British trust in the press to tell the truth has fallen, with less than half believing BBC news journalists are honest and impartial Seems a lot of people can't really handle criticism of the BBC, judging that my list of facts is now at -3. I used to love the BBC. Globally respected, good programmes, a voice I trusted to be neutral and fair. They helped me study, they introduced me to new music, made cool documentaries. I bought into it all. I guess like many Brits I'm not quite sure if it's the BBC that changed or myself. It just doesn't seem the same anymore. I think it used to benefit from a 'false aura' of trustworthyness because radio and TV news has very little space, so in any given day there were only a handful of stories the BBC could break. Of those it'd usually be obvious what they should be, so the journalists and editors had quite limited leeway to pick and choose. Now there's BBC News Online and that's how I get their news output. I don't watch TV news anymore. Online there's infinite space and so they can write endlessly about whatever topics they like, including using it as their own personal blogging space. Combined with Twitter it's painfully revealed their biases and desire to shape the audience, desires that were probably always there but limited by available airtime. Nowadays I don't see it as any higher quality than other outlets. Just yesterday their economics editor tweeted this: https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1245380143071342598 https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1245380143071342598 Throw in the millions of tests too, & I’m taken back to quote from developing nation’s diplomat in my book on financial crisis, saying he looked to Germany and Google as examples for how to run his country “both run by engineers, whereas US and UK run by journalists and lawyers” This is just nonsense. Angela Merkel was never an engineer, she was an academic with a chemistry background but went into politics when the wall fell. She's been a professional politician for 30 years, so this tweet is just hopelessly misleading. I doubt Mr Islam is doing it deliberately, he just has low standards and doesn't bother to fact check even his own tweets, so what about the much harder job of checking stories? When I go to BBC News Online and see endless articles with grotesque errors, distortions, biases and personal opinions I just can't care about them anymore. They should have stuck to TV. The internet is killing them, by revealing their true selves.
    - untog 7y ago
      You’re conflating “the BBC” with “BBC News”. Given the sheer size and scope of the BBC that’s a mistake. The BBC as a broad organisation is trusted by the public. It's the same mistake you see often when people complain about the license fee then exclusively talk about news coverage. It's really not the same. I’m not sure why a tweet by a reporter would be particularly noteworthy here. By their nature tweets are off the cuff, and I’m not even sure that one is all that inaccurate. “Run by” does not start and stop with the Prime Minister of a country, it’s a reflection of who is responding to a medical crisis from top to bottom.
      - thu2111 7y ago
        What does trust even mean for most of their output? For music radio it's irrelevant. For comedy it's irrelevant. Trust enters the equation when things get serious and there's an aspect of teaching or communication of information involved. The BBC's news output is symptomatic of a deeper set of political biases, it invades everything they do. Anyone can make a music radio station, many documentaries and dramas are produced by the private sector and then simply bought. There's nothing the BBC does that isn't already done just as well by other organisations, which is why they so often fall back on vague assertions of superior levels of trustedness or quality.
cybert00th 7y ago
If the BBC isn't like Netflix then surely the way to sort this is to break it up into distinct companies that handle its disparate bits?
GordonS 7y ago
> If COVID-19 has shown us anything in the UK, it should be that the BBC is still trusted Oof, strongly disagree! I do think the BBC has some great content, but the quality of their news has been going steadily downhill for at least a decade. Much of it appears to be written with the assumption that their average audience member is 7 years old, and they do the same scummy things that many others do now (click bait, fake outrage etc).

thu2111 7y ago

TV infrastructure these days is mostly satellite and cable based, sticks-on-hills broadcasting isn't that expensive and could simply be run by the government directly as it winds down over time. Public alerting? Government can (and should) just serve videos itself, it can already SMS the entire nation. World Service - was historically funded directly by the government, not the license fee. Should it even still exist? School revision programmes can easily be handled by the private sector. COVID-19 has revealed nothing about the BBC, which is now untrusted by >50% of the British population for the first time. All broadcasters have access to government broadcast updates. Anything else?

untog 7y ago
> the BBC, which is now untrusted by >50% of the British population for the first time. Got a citation for that?
- thu2111 7y ago
  https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/16/do-britons-trust-press https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/1... YouGov figures show British trust in the press to tell the truth has fallen, with less than half believing BBC news journalists are honest and impartial Seems a lot of people can't really handle criticism of the BBC, judging that my list of facts is now at -3. I used to love the BBC. Globally respected, good programmes, a voice I trusted to be neutral and fair. They helped me study, they introduced me to new music, made cool documentaries. I bought into it all. I guess like many Brits I'm not quite sure if it's the BBC that changed or myself. It just doesn't seem the same anymore. I think it used to benefit from a 'false aura' of trustworthyness because radio and TV news has very little space, so in any given day there were only a handful of stories the BBC could break. Of those it'd usually be obvious what they should be, so the journalists and editors had quite limited leeway to pick and choose. Now there's BBC News Online and that's how I get their news output. I don't watch TV news anymore. Online there's infinite space and so they can write endlessly about whatever topics they like, including using it as their own personal blogging space. Combined with Twitter it's painfully revealed their biases and desire to shape the audience, desires that were probably always there but limited by available airtime. Nowadays I don't see it as any higher quality than other outlets. Just yesterday their economics editor tweeted this: https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1245380143071342598 https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1245380143071342598 Throw in the millions of tests too, & I’m taken back to quote from developing nation’s diplomat in my book on financial crisis, saying he looked to Germany and Google as examples for how to run his country “both run by engineers, whereas US and UK run by journalists and lawyers” This is just nonsense. Angela Merkel was never an engineer, she was an academic with a chemistry background but went into politics when the wall fell. She's been a professional politician for 30 years, so this tweet is just hopelessly misleading. I doubt Mr Islam is doing it deliberately, he just has low standards and doesn't bother to fact check even his own tweets, so what about the much harder job of checking stories? When I go to BBC News Online and see endless articles with grotesque errors, distortions, biases and personal opinions I just can't care about them anymore. They should have stuck to TV. The internet is killing them, by revealing their true selves.
  - untog 7y ago
    You’re conflating “the BBC” with “BBC News”. Given the sheer size and scope of the BBC that’s a mistake. The BBC as a broad organisation is trusted by the public. It's the same mistake you see often when people complain about the license fee then exclusively talk about news coverage. It's really not the same. I’m not sure why a tweet by a reporter would be particularly noteworthy here. By their nature tweets are off the cuff, and I’m not even sure that one is all that inaccurate. “Run by” does not start and stop with the Prime Minister of a country, it’s a reflection of who is responding to a medical crisis from top to bottom.
    - thu2111 7y ago
      What does trust even mean for most of their output? For music radio it's irrelevant. For comedy it's irrelevant. Trust enters the equation when things get serious and there's an aspect of teaching or communication of information involved. The BBC's news output is symptomatic of a deeper set of political biases, it invades everything they do. Anyone can make a music radio station, many documentaries and dramas are produced by the private sector and then simply bought. There's nothing the BBC does that isn't already done just as well by other organisations, which is why they so often fall back on vague assertions of superior levels of trustedness or quality.

cybert00th 7y ago

If the BBC isn't like Netflix then surely the way to sort this is to break it up into distinct companies that handle its disparate bits?

GordonS 7y ago

> If COVID-19 has shown us anything in the UK, it should be that the BBC is still trusted Oof, strongly disagree! I do think the BBC has some great content, but the quality of their news has been going steadily downhill for at least a decade. Much of it appears to be written with the assumption that their average audience member is 7 years old, and they do the same scummy things that many others do now (click bait, fake outrage etc).