Strictly Come Dancing is not the BBC’s core broadcasting

Bruce, UK

In short then:

Attenborough and Blackadder and a news organisation that does news, you know, facts, without bias and not a regurgitation of partisan guff. A bit of high culture and "major" national events, sporting and cultural.

Sounds fair enough but I still detest the coercion in collecting the TV Poll Tax.

PS I will declare an interest that watching two dozen or so badly behaved millionaires running around a field spitting holds no interest for me.

cuffleyburgers

In theory, perfect.

But the news programmes are unwatchable, dumbed down and lefty liberal biased...

Truly the only solution is a subscription channel, making quality programming and toping up the numbers by selling it - quality drama of the sort I was brought up on will always have a market in other European countries, the former commonwealth.

You would probably find that if there were no BBC freezing out private investment, a privately funded "quality" player would soon step in.

Marc O'Polo

Very good argument. I fail to see why the BBC produces so much ratings-driven tosh. It shouldn't produce any at all, of course. If they're going to squeeze money out of me - I sure as hell don't want it wasted on Celebrity Come X Factor Dancing Island or whatever these cretinous tv programmes are called.

Alphonse Clench

Three letters: HBO.

Daniel

Good idea, better still though, fund it out of tax (slightly less visible/painfull), make it unashamedly elitist, and instruct it to promote the interests of the UK.

robert

The BBC has alienated a vast core of an audience that would otherwise agree warmly with RL's analysis by its blatant Guardianista viewpoint on every single issue concerning us today

David Short

The licence fee will ALWAYS be 'iniquitous'.

It is a tax on owning any device capable of receiving broadcasts, not just the BBC.

It is iniquitous to poor people, and always has been.

All the money goes to the BBC, even though the licence fee is to pay for receiving any broadcast programmes.

I normally agree with Liddle, but here I disagree totally.

The US has never had a licence fee, but produces the best-written, most intelligent TV programmes in the world (it was always a myth that British TV was the best).

john Walter

Like Rod I used to work in current affairs, not a million miles from his dinky little office.It was once said of the BBC that it's like musical chairs, except at the BBC they add one. So it was yonks ago with the invention of the 'World at One' as the answer to the stodgy old news. Then came whole new management levels,and now swathes of new outlets. Every time the BBC thinks it's in trouble or needs a revamp, it simply tacks on something new it made earlier out of a couple of toilet rolls and some newspaper. I hate to speak ill of the living dead but much of the latter weedlike proliferation is down to John Birt. All the people now currently making a balls of running the Beeb are Birt's babes now in the home stretch to gargantuan pension pots. Thompson was an insane editor of the regional London news programme. Word was, a)nobody ever saw him: b)he was always at a meeting: c)neither a nor b mattered as nobody understood a word he said without a management speak dictionary to hand, so the show went helterskelter on its chaotic way. Will they understand him when he takes his seat in the Lords? I pray he refuses the honour.

TDK

Let's see. An ex-news person at the BBC thinks the news is what the BBC does does best.

I need to think about that when I'm back in my hotel tonight with a choice of CNN, Sky News, Euronews, CNBC, Bloombergs and of course the BBC 24 hour news channel. Clearly the market fails to give us any news.

Oh and the BBC is so so neutral. When I get sick of listening to a left wing slant on CNN I can switch to the lefty BBC.

What the BBC used to do well was documentaries. But some time ago program makers discovered the idea of narrative. Now we sacrifice content to tell a story.

In truth your conception of the BBC is little different than that of PBS. Perhaps you should go the whole hog and fund it the same way too.

Fred Kite

This doesn't take into account that the BBC is largely a vehicle for middle class female employment.
And the girls really aren't that interested in elite broadcasting. They want celebs and shopping.

Martin

Utter rubbish. The BBC is crap. If you want science or engineering prgrammes you have to go to the digital channels like Discovery or National Geographic. There's been a couple of excellent series on the Moon missions recently. Brilliant prgrammes.

From the BBC we get fat celebs dancing in high heels and for some odd reason a programme about over sized cats sniffing each others bottoms.

Scrap the TV tax and let the BBC earn its corn for a change

JohnAnt

Why have a telly at all? it's as outdated as a fax machine. 24 hour news, comment, classical music, comedy: all much more readily available and higher in standard on radio and the internet. I'm quite happy to let those who are unaccountably addicted to tv pay for my radio listening.
No telly = pay no license fee. It also means no annoyance at the constant manipulation of the image by Justin and Cressida.
R3 and R4 with pictures would be a subscription download. Farming Today and 'Wind Power for Blind Book Fans' or whatever the current 'public service' range of all the 'factoid aid' progs on R4 R4, actually serve no real public apart from small minorities.

squin dubh 416

A FIRST RATE ARTICLE

However I suggest Tales from Arabian nights shouldbe required reading if new entrants

wish to discover BURNS O and stellas new novel
slainte
KENMORE

Iain Shepherd

Rod Liddle makes some good points. I don't really care what happened to the crap programmes but my European colleague reckon that the crap BBC programmes (Strictly Come Dancing etc) are much better than their equivalents in other countries. Nobody mentioned the web-site. Nearly all my colleagues – Greeks, Germans, Poles French (even) – use it as their main news source. Whatever is done don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. BBC still makes the best programmes in many fields.

pete lewis

Sorry Rod. You were putting up a strong argument till you got to R3 & R3.
R3 is 200 year old pop music. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. It's not an argument for subsidy any more than rap or zydeco. Classic FM already provides to the market & if the BBC moved out of the way & the audience was there, another provider would take up the slack.
R4? Leave out the three news programs & what's left? A broadcast magazine for leftish intellectuals promoting green environmentalism & state involvement in everything.
Today et al? They're symptomatic of exactly what wrong with the BBC. Irreplaceable? Far from it. If the Today program was axed on Friday it's commercial replacement would air on Monday. In identical form. It's what the listeners want to hear & the forum politicians want to be speak on so why wouldn't a commercial channel take up the format. That none do at present is simply because the BBC has claimed the slot.