It is commercial television that is really in peril

Alfred T Mahan

The Internet is doing to commercial television what it is doing to the music industry: reducing the value added by distribution and also the distributors' commercial advantage over producers and consumers. The government shouldn't stand, Canute-like, in the way of this; better to facilitate the move by making sure that the high value elements of the industry are helped to survive and flourish. Sustainable advantage will lie with the producers of content that people want to watch - either by free distribution (advertising funded) or subscription. It will not lie with bloated distributors with overpaid, bureaucratic staff funded by subsidy or by a licence fee/poll tax. In effect, TV must have its own version of the 'Big Bang' of the 1980's that breathed so much life into our financial services industry. We make some of the very best programmes in the world - we should have the confidence to let the programme makers free.

Retired Teacher

With all the permutations, there is even less justification for the BBC's licence fee, the poll tax of the airwaves. Why should we all be forced to pay for a left-winged biased service when we watch elsewhere other programmes that we prefer?

Alan

Do we need so much TV? What is it that drives TV companies to try and capture viewers? I ask this question in particular of those companies that make programmes which offer very little in cultural value.

Commercial TV attracts advertisers in the way that a fly paper attracts flies. More and more advertising is thrown at us and we have to pick up the tab when we by any of the companies products.

Footballers have gained enormous wealth from the sectionalisation of the sport, yet it is we the public who foot the bill either because we are spectators, subscribers or just buyers of the goods and services that are offered in the adverts that support the TV companies.

It is time for a rethink and I, for one, would not miss commercial TV at all.

David Short

The BBC has so much money (£3 billion plus is a HUGE turnover, and not subject to competition) that it can bribe people who would be its natural critics by giving them airtime, and paying them money from the licence fee, an reverse Robin Hood tax which robs from the poor to give to the rich.

A certain 1980s free market thinking Scottish ex-editor comes to mind.

So does a miniature satirical magazine editor who is paid megabucks to grin and laugh at his own jokes on a news quiz programme.

See how clever the BBC people are?

Slater

"Proper competition for ratings, motivated on at least one channel by profit, ensures high-quality programmes all round. (Look at the Saturday night fights between Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor.)"

"Many of its (ITV's) programmes are derivative tripe..."

I fail to see the connection between pursuing ratings and high-quality programming. I do see the connections between pursuing ratings, profit and derivative tripe, however. And should ITV be allowed to become a profit machine as it has been formerly, which will it choose?

John Thomas

Does anyone really think of Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor as "high-quality programmes"? They are surely programmes where the presenters are given (one can't say "earn") large fees - but thinking large fees and quality are the same thing is probably the key to our broadcasting malaise.

David Short

"It is commercial television that is really in peril"

Where do you get these dopey headlines? Don't you have sub-editors?

'Commercial televison is in peril'

Even though, from the body copy, it is not.

Get an editor that can wag his front tail, before what was the best magazine in Britain dies.

Neil Saunders

The problems with ITV are various, but their main ones are that the government abolished competition on quality as by which you won your franchise, let the companies merge, and made ITV bid for it's very licence rather than taking taxes from it's profits. Thanks to this idiotic system, Mrs Thatcher, in trying to close the closed shop, managed to kill her favourite example of new practices: TVAM.

Co-productions aren't the answer. As Dickie Henderson said of them: "So many end up dropping in the sea between the US and UK with a gentle plop."

Channel 4 with the IT Crowd and other programmes is actually very good at the moment. The BBC spending £400,000 an episode on an American import "Heroes" is not. Think of all the investment in new British talent thrown away.

D Short

Sorry, but no-one can take seriously the opinion of someone who, not just once, writes "it's", when he means "its".

Dumbed-down Spectator; dumbed-down readers.

Martin Morrow

I lived in the US for nearly thirty years.
During that time I was able to watch a most diverse selection of programming.
This became even more sophisticated with Cable allowing me to watch network TV supplemented by Pay programmes such as HBO and Showtime.
Among all this was PBS who, with very little public funding, managed to sit astride the top end of the market by consumer orientated creative programming.
From PBS' joint productions (with the BBC and ITV) of many English writers and playwrights to the supreme Charlie Rose, PBS has managed, with funding drives and little public funding, to give a good service loved by millions.
This is the market and democracy working together.
Apparently not a good model for the UK?