UK TV is getting worse as younglings shun the BBC et al, says Ofcom If you thought that British TV drama was getting cheaper and there was less of it, Ofcom has just confirmed your hunch. Ofcom's first (since 1998) review of Public Service Broadcasters, or PSBs, the regulated terrestrial TV dinosaurs, has found three things you already knew. Namely, that British TV companies now spend less …
Ever since the advent of home recorders, there's only 2 things I might watch live - a major sports event or a massive news event. Everything else I record, so that I can watch it when I decide to and also FF through the boring bits of course :-)
It does require me to spend 10-15 mins a week scanning through the EPG, but with handy aids like series link (and even Showcase on Freesat), I rarely miss recording anything. Make sure you have twin tuners - there's always clashes!
<cough> _most_ people don't live in a town with an underground system.
so quit whinging, and go to one of the many excellent, operas, exhibitions, plays that everyone in the country so kindly subsidises for you :-D
In 10 - 15 minutes scanning the programme guide you can manage to find anything worth recording? Even enough material that there are clashes? The only TV (live or recorded) I have wached this year was the IoM TT coverage on ITV4. The only BBC programme I've watched this year was a spy drama I watched on iPlayer.
I'd rather watch Netflix.
Yet to find anything on Netflix worth watching.
Seems to be a run by ITV saturday morning programming team with slightly more budget.
Oooh we can have this slightly less old film than we could have.
Back catalogue seems piss poor.
Example - Kids spotted home alone 5.
Ok, lets watch the original then...
Nope.
2
Nope.
5 only 5.
Amazon Prime TV on the other hand seems to be quite good by comparison and far cheaper.
If you're into movies, the selection on NowTV is pretty good. We usually manage to find something to watch if we're available. They are quite good at putting whole series on at once, but they change quite frequently so you need to keep an eye on the 'leaving soon' section.
The sports day pass is however extortionate and I haven't looked into the other bits.
Amazon Prime TV on the other hand seems to be quite good by comparison and far cheaper.
That may well be truer for your neck of the woods... Here in Germany I could summarize Prime here, in much the same way. Which is way I made sure to can my Subscription at the first possible chance after the (We hope you done forgotten about us after Two Weeks) cooling off period. I guess the question remains if Netflix (Germany), would be any better?
But, who needs either when you have Kodi, and its half-dozen assortment of Add-Ons that pretty much cover everything.... Better then the native Android Apps... [sic] Amazon Prime.
I stopped watching Beeb news when I realised, by reading things on the Internet, just what a load of boll0cks is being transmitted as news nowadays. There's so much subtle censorship by omission, or briefly covering a news story at 6am on a news channel, then it's sadly wall-to-wall project-fear for much of Aunties emissions for the rest of each day.
For entertainment, a refurb apple TV aimed at the U.S. Store has quite a few cheap rentals, bit like the old VHS blockbuster days, but I noticed that my 1m25 dish & inverto Ultra Black LNB when pointed at 26degE http://www.lyngsat.com/Badr-4-5-6.html or 7degW http://www.lyngsat.com/Nilesat-102-201-and-Eutelsat-7-West-A-8-West-C.html gets enough Middle East English language films from Dubai, Kuwait etc to entertain the family. A few sporty feeds for those interested, there are also hilarious Persian nighttime "pirate" DVD channels where some Iranian has obviously bought a very recent film in a souk somewhere, then transmits it presumably to undermine western society & Hollywood , one of these channels is "Iran MNTV" another is "Persian Star 2", (some ad breaks seem to be longer than the films) last week had a northern Cops horror story "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3148348/" not bad!
I dont see how the BBC can justify continuing its existence by the TV tax. Maybe if it massively cut down its channels and focused purely on education, religion and ethics but it would need some serious polish of its image to gain trust in education and ethics instead of propaganda and misinformation. I cant comment on religion as I dont follow any and have no idea what the quality of the BBC in that department is.
You have obviously not spent time in the US, where the lack of quality in most output is only matched by the level of adverts, making most programs un-watchable.
Yes, there are some great series, and comedies, but most of those are on cable, and how many of those series - left on a cliffhanger, are then canned as the only thing driving them is audience rating (read advertising revenue).
@AC
"You have obviously not spent time in the US, where the lack of quality in most output is only matched by the level of adverts, making most programs un-watchable."
3 weeks and yes the amount of adverts is terrible, however the quality of some of the shows are actually reasonably good or fantastic (to the point where we pay to watch them over here!). In the UK when I did have a TV licence and watch a bit it was all sky and it was almost all american shows and films. Almost none was the BBC because unless they were repeating an old film I liked they didnt have much to watch (a notable exception being the Worricker trilogy but I missed the last episode and was too late to see it on IPlayer). Now I buy the DVD's so I can watch a show as much as I want and not have to record to skip adverts and not pay the BBC for not providing me any content.
"Yes, there are some great series, and comedies, but most of those are on cable"
Yes. Quality programming that requires an audience to produce. And of course the show either brings in an audience or money is not wasted on packing the channel with stuff people dont watch because of a telly tax. I am as annoyed as anyone over firefly being cancelled and various other shows too, but at least for a time something watchable was created. Something worth parting with my hard earned money for. I am happy paying for content I want to watch, and I think everyone deserves the right to watch what they want without having to subsidise sub standard channels.
I live in the US and I assume you have been here because you are so right!
I stopped paying for Cable or Satellite television four years ago because I was SICK, SICK, SICK of 18 month contracts at close to $100.00 each month to pay for company selected channels - 85% of them I would not watch: Multiple shopping channels, sport channels with all manner of sport one can imagine (from all over the world) except the ones you are actually interested in, religious channels of every persuasion that was no my own (mostly catholic, fundamentalist, or preachers telling you how to live but rarely mentioning a Bible verse. Then there are the numerous music channels of ever sort outside of Swing, the 1980’s, Celtic or Classic Hymns which are the genres I prefer. Television channels? For the bottom rate (mentioned above) you had the option to pay for porn, or watch sitcoms with situations and language that most respectable person would find highly offensive. I can handle innuendo and appropriate swearing, and even some of the social situations of controversy if its not crammed down my throat or thrown in my face. I am certainly no prude, however the lowest of low were in the ‘cheap packages. If you wanted something that was more refined or respectful you had to pay more than than the $100.00 each month or block 85% of the programming. I enjoyed HGTV, Discovery, and other educational programs very much - but not for that price.
HBO, SHOTIME, and other channels that offer current theatre movies or interesting well-written shows came at additional cost ($20.00/mo each). Even the Encore channels (a group of five at the time the offered classic movies or older, cleaner television programs) became grouped as specialty.
Did I mention the Duplicate channels? More of the above mentioned rubbish but identical in every way other than being in High Definition, or spoken in Spanish. They counted this in their tally of over 100 channels. If wanted to watch the BBC (as so many Americans did do like some of the program offered: Miranda, IT Crowd, Doctor Who, Sherlock, Masterpiece, etc) it was inot included in the lower rung packaging, only in the more expensive package of $150.00 + each month!
Really the only seasonal weekly television shows in the 100 + channels package were the five major networks we used to get for free (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS) before these corporations coerced the legal changes for High Definition frequency ‘because the old signal interfered with airplane frequency” ! I believe the polite word for this thinking in the UK would be Bollocks, and a little more strongly would put be to refer to the ones who precipitated all of the changes would be referred to a Wankers.
I finally said NO MORE, and refused to continue on this path of highway robbery, and deceit. I am now quite happy paying Netflix $8.74/months with no commercials, and my son pays HuluPlus $9.00 month for current programs, and pull in some PBS programming free through ROKU - along with a few other free channel offerings. Lets see ... $100.00 per month for rubbish vs. $18.00 per months for an endless array of the sort of programming I personally enjoy watching with $82.00 each month left over for wonderful books, music, leave the apartment entertainment, and .... Well, you do the math. It’s a shame corporate executives aren’t able to.
And yet in the US the networks that *do* produce the premium, watchable content are subscription-based (HBO is the current reigning example).
Subscription-basis means they have already got your money, so can take a chance as opposed to claw onto weekly viewing figures and lowest common denominator stuff. They don't have to be ready to cancel series mid-run, so stories get to unfold (GoT is a popular example) and grow an audience.
Did you see The Honourable Woman? BBC co-pro. Fabulous, intelligent drama, really wakes you up to what utter shit CSI <domain> made by the yard TV really is. We cannot lose stuff like that. Sherlock also, for instance, came from nowhere - no hoo-hah, it could have crashed and burned terribly, but someone was able to take a real punt and look how it has paid off. You can't do that kind of punt-taking if you're chasing weekly ad-rev fluctuations.
On the other hand, just look at how narrow BBC new programme risk making is? How many times has it "re-imagined" (I would love to kick the a**e of whoever it was that conjured that) Sherlock Holmes? Or found yet another dreary costume drama?
The BBC's current vogue is to make everything a competition: <fill in your own first word of title> Masterchef, Saturday Kitchen, <file in your own first word title> Bake-off, Antiques (Roadshow, Bargain Hunt etc), Auctions... - It would be better to simply not broadcast during the day, if only to reduce the 'repeat count' but, perhaps, to find money to invest in truly original, thoughtful content - Top Gear probably exposes mostly what's wrong with the BBC financial and production model - Using licence fee money to generate programmes for worldwide sale means that production values are compromised to those "low, common denominator" markets like the U.S....
(I expect this will invoke a response reasoning how much the BBC earns from the 'world-wide' sales - My counter would be to ask qualification as to how much of those earnings go into producing quality, home-market content?)
"Top Gear probably exposes mostly what's wrong with the BBC financial and production model - Using licence fee money to generate programmes for worldwide sale means that production values are compromised to those "low, common denominator" markets like the U.S"
Except Top Gear was made on BBC2 budgets, proved to be popular and worldwide sales of the programme plus licensing the format made tons of cash. It was not made with the intention of selling abroad.
"On the other hand, just look at how narrow BBC new programme risk making is? How many times has it "re-imagined" (I would love to kick the a**e of whoever it was that conjured that) Sherlock Holmes?"
It does do that a lot - but the ACD stories provide a good framework. Also, the old 'Basil Rathbone' portrayal of Holmes was far from the swashbuckling sleuth of the books.
But auntie also does new work; for example the recent series of Jonothan Strange and Mr Norrell, a book published in 2004, which I thought very good. But I would imagine the lack of title recognition would get it a smaller audience than Holmes.
"Did you see The Honourable Woman? BBC co-pro. Fabulous, intelligent drama"
I found it tedious and pretentious, and did not watch past the first episode, the ongoing episode trailers did not make change my mind and go to pick it up on a catch up service either.
Just looked through the next week's listings for BBC 1 - 4 and could not see a single drama I would be interested in watching. There is the odd thing like Countryfile which I will record and watch later or with a delay so I can skip through the 'coming next' sections.
C4 occasionally has some interesting drama such as Utopia (3rd series canned) or currently, Humans, which even then is teetering on the edge of 'nice idea, shame about the execution'.
"Did you see The Honourable Woman?"
I found it tedious and pretentious,
There is the odd thing like Countryfile which I will record and watch
And there we have it. Totally different tastes. Even the BBC can't be all things to all people so why should they be scrapped just because not everyone likes all of their output? There may well be other reasons for changing the funding model or even scrapping the BBC altogether, but just complaining that they "never" show anything "you" want to watch and then saying you do watch some of it after all is not a good reason. Especially when the BBC still get significant viewing figures for many of the their shows, whatever you or I may think of the quality of Eastenders.
A poster further up just linked to 10GB of classical music. So? I like a bit of classical now and then. But I also have Motorhead in my collection. And everything in between.
@ John Brown (no body)
"And there we have it. Totally different tastes. Even the BBC can't be all things to all people so why should they be scrapped just because not everyone likes all of their output?"
Who says scrapped? Scrap the tax. If people want it they can fund it, if it is their taste they can pay for it. Even if they only want one or two shows they can pay for it. But why must the rest of us pay for it when we dont bother with it?
"but just complaining that they "never" show anything "you" want to watch and then saying you do watch some of it after all is not a good reason"
It is when you look for stuff and try to watch things just to justify the money leaving your pocket. That is the wrong way around.
"Especially when the BBC still get significant viewing figures for many of the their shows, whatever you or I may think of the quality of Eastenders."
Then people watching it can pay for it. I dont like it but it is none of my business if others do. Just as it isnt my job to pay for their channels.
And thumbs up on the motorhead
You can't do that kind of punt-taking if you're chasing weekly ad-rev fluctuations.
Thats what Pilots are for... I'm not a fan of Ads either. But if a Show isn't good, and can't get the ratings it goes, and something better (usually...), comes along. As much as I hate Big Brother, and its ilk of Reality TV, it manages to sell itself. I'm more of a Documenteries kinda guy myself. So I would watch Stations like PSB in the US, or the BBC's 2 & 4. If something were on... These days it seems that they're just recycling old Shows though. Otherwise I actually do enjoy xCIS <DOMAIN>, along with the Walking Dead. If US TV wasn't some of the greatest TV ever. Then I'd say your points were valid. Doctor Who probably wouldn't, or indeed hasn't been able to survive in that environment. it doesn't mean that it shouldn't exist. But why should the majority fund a Program for the minority that get to enjoy it? At leas PBS with its annoying bi-anual beg-a-thons are at least opt-in, and NOT mandated per law!
The CBBC lot has produced some genuinely good programs in recent years, "Horrible Histories" and "Young Dracula" stand out just off the top of my head.
But all else on cable and broadcast has gotten shittier as more adverts are stuffed in, and more channels means less spent per channel on anything worthwhile.
"52 episodes of Clangers"
I was one of those adults! But based on watching that first "new" episode I did wonder why they made a new series instead just showing the old ones again. It wasn't really all that different.
Something childrens TV producers/broadcasters seem to forget is that children grow up very, very quickly and move on to another channel aimed at their ever advancing age group. re-showing the same childrens shows on a one or two year repeat cycle would probably work just as well and be significantly cheaper than making/buying new stuff. My 5yo grandson loves the old Trumpton/Camberwick Green/Bill and Ben/Hectors House etc. He doesn't know or care that they 50 years old.
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'Live' TV is by far the cheapest way to fill a regular slot - cover it with 4 cameras, competent presenters, and there's no post production to worry about - it's already gone to air so nothing to fix, you just get on with filling the next hour.
Kyle is shot 'as live', multi camera but edited for length and drama. He may be the Daily Mail in human form, but Kyle is actually very good at what he does (hint- that show isn't journalism)
"British TV companies now spend less creating original material; scrapping regulations means you get low quality programming; and people are losing the habit of watching live TV."
Let's rearrange that sequence:
1. scrapping regulations means you get low quality programming;
2. British TV companies now spend less creating original material;
3. people are losing the habit of watching live TV.
1 leads to 2, 2 leads to 3 & a feedback loop from 3 to 2 makes the situation a runaway race to the bottom.
Regulation MADE then do programming that would not 'sell', so they had to do it, e.g. good science shows, political analysis, children's series, often compelling religion/philosophy stuff. The companies wanted to make stuff that advertisers would prefer and sold it Govt (who were all for private enterprise) on a platform of 'if we don't have to make shows, we can do what the Public wants, and at a high quality'. Turns out the Public doesn't want it.
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