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🌋CURMUDGEONS' CORNER 10.🌋

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  • Having just seen @steveTu 's post on the reasons to be happy topic about spitting image, I just googled "britbox" as I'd never heard of it but would quite like to see a new series of spitting image.

    To my surprise, it's a paid subscription service showing UK shows. And it's owned by BBC and ITV.

    I don't understand this. I already pay a tv license for the privilege of the significant quantity of live TV nonsense and drivel on the BBC etc. Why do I now have to pay another £70 per year to watch content from the BBC. Surely it should be available on iPlayer, and free as part of the tv license? Forget the whole split between BBC commercial arm for global viewers and the UK broadcasting arm - the BBC would not exist without the license fee, a tax enforced by criminal law.

    Great business model though. Demand money from the public for a service that becomes less relevant every day. Enforce payment through criminal convictions. Make content using this tax, then sell the content to other companies to reuse (BBC Planet earth is slightly edited and becomes Netflix "our planet"). Then use that money to build a new service, and demand more money from the public to use it. All the while pay vast sums of money to plastic people like the current crop of presenters, newsreaders and so forth, and make sure that pensioners are forced to pay the tax as well.

    And people complain about state aid to corporations  :s

    The BBC should wither and die like the pointless relic it is, and be forced to go back to its core, original mission of focused, high quality content, news and so forth. 

    This has really annoyed me.
  • punkdocpunkdoc Posts: 15,039
    Of course you are perfectly entitled to your opinion @strelitzia32, but my life would be so much worse without the BBC.
    Radio 4 in the morning
    Radio 6 for the best new music.
    BBC 1 and2 for the best in drama.

    I couls and do live quite happily without all the "celeb" programmes.
    How can you lie there and think of England
    When you don't even know who's in the team

    S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    Also the educational stuff like Bitesize, Skillswise etc.
    The government's continued interference in the independence of the BBC is worrying though
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • steveTusteveTu Posts: 3,219
    I'm with you @punkdoc - the terrestrial channels in this country have done an amazing job and the BBC (IMO) has been my source of entertainment, enlightenment and news since my childhood - both TV and Radio. I think it still does an amazing job in a time where scheduled programming is dipping out. The terrestrial companies going into a streaming service like Britbox is a good idea and test bed. The trend is for more and more streaming services - personally I think it's a bit naff. Just more and more channels to subscribe to (how many channels to get football now - carabao.tv, premier.tv, BT, SKY, Amazon and terrestrial...who else will take a chunk?)  and (and I know this is a bit stupid) do you remember looking forward to episodes of your favourite shows and talking about each episode to colleagues and friends after they'd aired? Now the whole series is often available immediately and people view at different rates.

    UK - South Coast Retirement Campus (East)
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    And like GW or not, at least it's not sponsored by The Plastic Garden Company or Kill-it-Yourself.com
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    Someone in Meeja studies.
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • @punkdoc I'm not sure I made my point clearly! I agree with you on the high quality, focused content point.

    What I disagree with is the amorphous blob of content the BBC feels it needs to be involved in.

    I also don't agree or understand how the BBC, funded by license payers, can justify or be allowed to create a paid subscription service. A service that, upon brief checking, seems to be filled with old BBC shows like Top Gear and Only Fools etc. These have already been screened on BBC and therefore bought and paid for by the license fee.

    Pay again? For a service inferior to any other streaming platform, from a tax payer funded organization? No thank you. Someone should investigate that.
  • LG_LG_ Posts: 4,360
    It's primarily for the overseas market, who haven't paid a licence fee.
    'If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.'
    - Cicero
  • steveTusteveTu Posts: 3,219
    I think the difference is in the target market. Terrestrial broadcasters by their very nature were local broadcasters. OK they also sold content around the world, but they never had a platform outside the UK. From what I've read, the point of Britbox was to get the content out to a wider audience - and how else do you do that nowadays? How do you compete with the big, global players that are emerging without being global yourself? And what delivery mechanism could they use to achieve a global market? Isn't what they did the only thing they could have done?

    UK - South Coast Retirement Campus (East)
  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,889
    If the BBC didn't sell it's programmes abroad to raise extra money, how much more money would they need to carry on ? and who would pay for it. 
    I think they should have limited ads on radio. Music is in bite sized chunks and I don't think SOME ads would be too detrimental. 
    I love the BBC
    Devon.
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