Paywall for iPlayer?

[Jim web]

In article <559AE65C.8040506 at gmail.com>, michael norman
<michaeltnorman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Forgive me but how does this help us with the present attitude of our
> rulers towards the BBC.  All I said was that they are ideologically
> opposed to public service, thats not a conspiracy theory its what they
> are doing and intend to do.  Defending and advancing the interests of
> media owners who are mainly non doms.  All of which is a matter of
> public record.

I also got bored years ago with the largely vacuous arguments about the BBC
being 'biassed' that crop up all over newsgroups related to TV, etc. Most
such assertions really just show that the BBC don't share the bias of the
complainer. *Every* UK government thinks the BBC is biassed against them.
They are *supposed* to challenge power and call it to account. And
'balance' doesn't mean during every single programme, but overall.

The real problem is that the BBC's news and current affairs programming on
TV has got shallower and shallower, and more and more into the presenter
trying to 'point score' in uni debating club ways to promote their own
importance and that of their programme. It isn't 'bias' but the lack of any
real thought or knowledge and instead going for "short sharp shallow"
interviews, etc.

Interestingly, the coverage on BBC Radio4 when it comes to the
investigation programmes is often much more considered and informed than on
'Today' or on TV. Presumably because they don't use 'star' presenters who
need to maintain their image, and have a small budget to spend on the
actual content rather than flying people about, filiming, etc, etc. They
can also take time to find out things and think about them rather than do
one 2-min item after another.

Also interesting that those like the 'Today' teams never seem to actually
listen to the investigation programmes that are also on R4. Presumably they
have something better to do. 8-]

The main concern here is the way the BBC has hemorraged reporters,
investigators, engineers, etc, over the years. Hundreds have gone. It has
been easy to point at all the layers of management and the birtspeak. But
muscle has gone as well as fat. In itself, this has pushed survivors into
wanting to keep coming up with new titbits as often and as quickly as they
can to "show they are busy".

Hence the concern about the clear agenda of the current government which
may make it even harder for the BBC to produce genuine investigative work,
etc.

Now back to gip...  :-)

I used it this morning to fetch the Parliament 'Home Office Questions' from
yesterday as it seems the annoucements/questions on the BBC were tacked
onto that. Interesting that BBC Parliament seems in one way like R3. The
program running times/durations vary all over the place as 'live events'
don't always keep to the clock. 8-]

Jim

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