TV license

[NickFitz]

OK, I am confused - is anyone able to clarify for me whether the BBC is biased towards the left-wing or the right-wing?

I totally agree with this. Those of you complaining about it should try living in a country where there is no equivalent - you'll give up watching TV and spend all day on the internet (regardless of whether a pot-noodle is involved )

I miss the BBC. I only ever listened to one of their radio stations, watched a few of the comedy and drama shows, checked the news website and ignored all the rest, but in amongst all that it produces some gems and the world would be a poorer place without them.

WHS

As for the left/right wing bias stuff: the BBC is independent and presents a balanced viewpoint. As a result, the right wing claim that the BBC are biased in favour of the left wing, and the left wing do the converse.

The one constant factor is that the party in opposition is the one that most frequently claims that bias exists. (I know some of you are too young to remember non-Tory politicians' assertions that the BBC was kow-towing to Margaret Thatcher, but they occurred.)

Those who have power will always object to a presentation of the facts that doesn't favour their viewpoint. Those who don't have power, but crave it, will object even more vigorously to a presentation of the facts that doesn't favour their viewpoint.

The simple fact that an independent appraisal of the facts must, by definition, not favour any particular viewpoint is lost on them.

For further illustration of my point, wait until the usual mob of Tories wake up and start responding to this post in the morning

[BrowneIssue]

I worked for Auntie Beeb for many years. I was a career-focussed, 100-hours-a-week, no-overtime permie climbing that greasy pole as best I could. I was immensely proud of working for the Beeb.

OK, I am confused - is anyone able to clarify for me whether the BBC is biased towards the left-wing or the right-wing?

At the time I was there, they were very proud of their reputation. The senior management were, and always had been, right wing (or, more accurately, 'conservative'). The staff strictly left wing. Between them emerged balanced output, and output biased at each end. Hence a valuable variety of output, some very critical one way, some the other and some very good in-depth analysis.

What they were particularly proud of was that every government had accused the BBC of bias against them. That ended, abruptly, with the decapitation of the beast: the sacking of Greg Dyke. With that and the change to how the Board of Governors is constructed was the end of the old BBC. I, like many ex-staff, believe it is now an emasculated political voice of the government. New Liebour achieved what Maggie Thatcher & that self-serving bastard John Birt never could.

I totally agree with this. Those of you complaining about it should try living in a country where there is no equivalent - you'll give up watching TV and spend all day on the internet (regardless of whether a pot-noodle is involved )

The BBC is a shadow of what it was. It now support government policy and defends government allies. It's reporting is biased and the news is bought from America (the BBC had ceased to be a news organisation by the late 1990s).

I miss the BBC.

So do I. I wish it was still around.

I only ever listened to one of their radio stations, watched a few of the comedy and drama shows, checked the news website and ignored all the rest, but in amongst all that it produces some gems and the world would be a poorer place without them.

Where they went wrong with the output was under the blinkered and ignorant reign of John Birt. He tried and failed to turn it into a commercial organisation.

What follows is technical and important and was not understood by the government in the early 1990s and has now been forgotten.

There are two ways of measuring media output: market reach and market share.

Market share - what proportion of the viewing audience are watching your channel right now.
To sell your series / films / whatever overseas you need to be able to show how popular it is. To do this you put it up against a competitor's output and show it gets a greater percentage. Hence the BBC and ITV intentionally and knowingly make similar programmes clash so that they can show Eastenders gets 55% against Coronation Street's 45%. This is why programmes continuously clash. So that we can sell UK output to other countries, the citizen's of the UK have to be subjected to the inconvenience of clashing output. Consequently, you have to buy video recorders, TVs with hard disks, etc. If, in any given week, only 1,000,000 people ever watch TV, who cares?

Do the BBC and ITV collude in causing schedule clashes? They are not supposed to and claim they do not. Now check your TV schedules - what do you think?

Market reach - what proportion of the population watch your channel at some point.
The Beeb used to work to the philosophy that provided every TV licence holder watches one programme every week, they have fulfilled part of their charter. Hence the formation of BBC2 to broadcast train crash analysis programmes (a fascinating series), chess tournaments (my whole family watched that - and everyone knew Kasparov and Karpov - so nobody wants TV chess?) and obscure arts films (how I learned what boobies look like and how to shag against a wall). Meanwhile commercial TV is trying to get 50,000,000 people to watch Morecombe & Wise (or whoever) to maximise its commercial revenue from advertising.

By forgetting to consider the importance of market reach in public service broadcasting:

• people resent paying the licence fee ("there's nothing on the BBC for me")
• commercial TV is starved of its advertising revenue and its standard drops
• a far larger proportion of publicly-funded TV is spent (wasted) on commercial competitive activity which is always an inefficient, niaive practice
• it is necessary to spend UK licence money on expensive bought-in overseas productions to compete, thereby diluting our own culture

The BBC should stop trying to compete for prime-time viewing and instead concentrate on reaching the minority groups. ITV would benefit, the retailers would benefit, people would not be upset at their 'BBC tax', I would still have a telly and maybe people would still know licence is supposed to be spelled with a 'c' when it is a noun on this side of the herring pond.

[expat]

Market reach - what proportion of the population watch your channel at some point.
The Beeb used to work to the philosophy that provided every TV licence holder watches one programme every week, they have fulfilled part of their charter.

Fascinating insight, thanks.

I have long tried to articulate your point about market reach rather than share: if the BBC were never anybody's favourite, but had something that everybody liked that they couldn't find elsewhere (albeit something different for different people), then they would indeed be doing their job.

[Old Greg]

WHS

As for the left/right wing bias stuff: the BBC is independent and presents a balanced viewpoint. As a result, the right wing claim that the BBC are biased in favour of the left wing, and the left wing do the converse.

Absolutely, hence my naughty comment about them being right-wing. Look at it from a left-wing perspective: in the middle of this monumental economic disaster, there is no commentary that capitalism causes overproduction, leading to recession and that there may be another way of organising the economy. But then again, I don't particularly expect it - the BBC are pretty centrist as they should be. What is true, I think, is that they have a socially liberal outlook.