Request for BBC Contact - OT

Wed Apr 6 00:08:10 PDT 2016

SB

You make some interesting points.  When I lived (briefly - 4 1/2 years was all I could stand....) in the US (California), I would have GLADLY paid Auntie whatever they wanted in order to access Radio 3, Radio 4, occasionally R5L, BBC2 and BBC4 programmes.

For those of you who have not spent time in the US, the state of broadcast media is dire - even the better outlets such as NPR are mostly terrible and stuffed with adverts/pledge-drives/sponsorship.   Television is SO bad it isn't even worth trying.  I had 400 channels of what appeared to be constant adverts, shopping, formulaic police drama, religion or sports! 

(BTW, I include BBC America as a US channel - we referred to it as "Twee TV" because it appeared to show a US-stereotypical view of British life.  Downton Abbey (yes!), Doctor Who and Top Gear.  Hmm).

I relied on a heap of back-door methods to work-around the lack of movement on an international iPlayer from the Beeb.   I knew (admittedly low numbers) of Americans (mostly who'd live abroad at some point) who were avid Beeb listeners/viewers who also found it incredulous that the Beeb didn't provide subscription-based iPlayer access outside the UK. 

So, quite honestly, the Beeb is missing a serious trick here.  Sweeping generalisation here I know, but we found the cost of cable TV, broadband and mobile phones in the US to be many-times the price they are in the UK and therefore it appears that Americans are willing/able to pay more for their content than we are here in the UK.   There is a source of revenue waiting to be tapped.

But the US iPlayer was canned, programmes that I enjoyed on the BBC World Service (e.g. Just A Minute, A World of Music, drama, etc) removed and massive geo-blocking imposed on BBC radio (and a total block on BBC TV).

Even to serve the British diaspora alone, there MUST be a profitable service here somewhere.  It is hardly surprising therefore, given the mostly excellent quality of the BBC that there is demand and that that demand will be fulfilled in non-conventional ways if the Beeb fail to capitalise on the huge value they hold.

So I'm afraid I have little sympathy here - self-inflicted through Beeb's intransigence, IMvHO. 

D
-----Original Message-----
From: get_iplayer [mailto:get_iplayer-bounces at lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of S Byers
Sent: 06 April 2016 05:30
To: get_iplayer at lists.infradead.org; artisticforge . <artisticforge at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Request for BBC Contact - OT

You could ask here:

missingepisodes.proboards.com

They are not that interested in Radio but they do have the connections you seek.

In a way what you report is inevitable. And I think that you are going to see more of such sharing or trading. At least the person isn't selling the programmes you mention. And what they are offering is likely to be at low bitrates - even programmes from iPlayer are only at a max of 128 kbps. Recordings from DAB broadcasts are even worse.

The OTR scene is huge. The various BBC programmes' fan bases is also huge. And don't forget hundreds if not thousands of programmes and episodes have been saved by home-recordists when the Beeb has wiped its own versions. 

Incidentally a friend of mine had many recorded programmes on reel-reel / cassette tapes from 40 / 50 years' ago. These were offered back to the Beeb - who declined the offer. They were only interested in having broadcast quality recordings of such that would be commercially viable, e.g. Dad's Army, Navy Lark, etc. Since the Beeb isn't interested in what I have then where should these recordings go? Maybe into the public domain - like Paul Temple - or more likely in his case landfill?

But this draconian policy of the Beeb at refusing home-taped programmes from long ago is not all.

Recently the Beeb reportedly lost millions of license fee payers' cash in an abortive project to digitise its own archives.

The BBC Shop has just closed down.

The BBC Store online basically doesn't work.

In recent years the demise of RadioArchive and TB really upset OTR (and other) fans.

So other sharing sites have sprung up. Magnet / DHT is rising in popularity rather than private trackers.

The Usenet Groups are still active - but the technology has grown old.

In the USA there are numerous Yahoo Groups and fans devoted to OTR who are collecting, restoring, documenting and archiving long lost series of radio programmes.

In the UK we have nothing like this.

So the Paul Temple programmes you mention have appeared on more up-to-date media channels. Maybe you and we should be grateful that they have been saved for the fans and not wiped forever.

Just a few thoughts - SB

--------------------------------------------
On Wed, 6/4/16, artisticforge . <artisticforge at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Request for BBC Contact - OT
 To: get_iplayer at lists.infradead.org
 Date: Wednesday, 6 April, 2016, 4:04

 Hello

 I have come upon several cases of current BBC copyrighted  material  being offered for free download on the internet & not by  the BBC.

 One case is offering all 11 Series of Inspector McLevy the  BBC Radio 4 Drama.
 Another case is a Podcast listing on the iTunes Store also  offering  the Inspector McLevy & Paul Temple episodes for free  download.

 I am looking for a contact who takes there violations  seriously and  takes action against them.
 I am tired of the standard BBC e-mail because nothing ever  happens.

 --
 terry l. ridder ><>

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