BBC should give up EastEnders, says former Channel 4 chief | Media | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/s ... el-4-chief

Did the Beeb refuse deals with you because you're a greedy twat? Why would any broadcaster sell off something that has people watching shows either side of it? I imagine it's also shown around the world too

And public service shows that are supposedly being hobbled because they're going up against commercial rivals' prime time? Make your mind up.

Then what happens if something original the BBC creates, is then emulated to equal success on a rival channel?
The BBC should just stop making what it created and move on? That's lunacy speaking, that is.

Mark

I haven't watched Eastenders since I moved out of my mums house, so that would be 17 years and 25 years ago (I moved back in for a couple of months, after I sold my house in the UK and before I moved to Germany).

Soap operas play a vital role, in my opinion.

They give me an opportunity to play games on my PC without being moaned at.

If I ever went on WWTBAM, I'd probably get three questions on soaps and be on my way home by the £1000 question. The limit of my knowledge is roughly Hilda Ogden was on Corrie, Dirty Den was on Eastenders and Emerdale Farm is just called Emerdale now. I didn't even know Hollyoaks was a soap until last year - I haven't seen a minute of it, and thought it was the new Grange Hill.

Given ITVs only recent commissioning tactic seems to be 'pick whatever is popular on the BBC then do a variation of it really badly', it's bordering on silly.

BBC could be forced to change time of 10pm news programme | Media | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/s ... -programme

He's in no way a Tory stooge. More distinctive programming? Take your pick from Sherlock, Doctor Who, daily politics shows, Ripper Street, numerous historical dramas, Bake Off, Strictly, Have I got News For You... His arguments don't even correlate within two sentences! The BBC itself needs reform, but there's fcuk all wrong with it's division of interest.



Well, apparently that's when a lot of people watch the news, and you want it to somehow to be more of a public broadcaster, so...



You're standing there complaining about the output of an institution that the public adore, even asking if it should show the news at a sensible time, what do you expect? Murdoch... Everybody in your party from the PM down seems to have links to Murdoch so don't act shocked.



Bullsh1t. Literally a thousand cuts like your party does with every public asset before annexing it and selling it off to friends.



What's that based on?



Yeah, have a butchers at channel five or something, you knobber. Everybody else is expanding and doing rather nicely whether they admit it or not.

ITV attempted a time change for its News at 10.
It didn't go well.
It failed so hard, it had to move it back to the old time and apologise.

Like you say, people seem to want the main nighly news bulletin at 10pm.

Mark

Perhaps it was a long time ago, but the BBC1 main evening news bulletin was always at nine. I seem to recall there was uproar when it was announced the slot would move to ten.

As I rarely watch live broadcasts any more, it doesn't bother me when the various channels are prepared to broadcast their propaganda. Threatening the BBC as institution, though, does bother me.

Didn't it move to ten o'clock because News At Ten on itv moved to eleven o'clock so they didn't have to split films in half with the news?

IIRC that's why ITV moved their bulletin yes. They've manage to figure things out at 6PM - basically both schedule so local news on one is up against national news on the other - so I don't see why they couldn't manage it with the late bulletin. It's not as if there are many things on BBC that are massive properties that would get disrupted, 20:00-21:00 seems the BBC's 'peak time'.

Heather raises a valid point though - maybe one of the things the BBC should be considering in the long term is the viability/necessity of a fixed schedule at all. In the longer term as 'on demand' watching increases and every TV becomes a usable iPlayer terminal, maybe we should be thinking about getting to the point where the BBC operates in a more 'netflixey' fashion - where shows are made available for viewing on request, rather than being broadcast at a specific time.

I appreciate live events still have to be shown 'live' but it's entirely feasible for, in general times, the BBC news department to produce a bulletin update say four or five times a day as content is generated to fill a set running time, and then make one big 'summary bulletin' available at some point in the evening for people to view.

let's posit this : You tell your TV BBC News output is something you're interested in - favourite it in iPlayer say. When a new news bulletin is complete it's uploaded to the service and made 'live,' your TV/set top box spots that and gets ready to stream it - say downloads a portion as a buffer for the stream. When it's ready to show it, it informs you the show is available via an onscreen notification (and possibly also via the BBC news app, should your mobile device have that installed). You know it's there, you can view it on the device or on your TV when you're free to. Or you can tell the system you won't be able to find time to view it and 'mark it as read'.

All of this stuff could be implemented right now, if they wanted to. The thing is, when the majority of us are carrying devices that give us immediate access to pretty much any up to date news content in seconds, there's pretty much no need for a 24 hour rolling news channel any more. When we have devices and TVs that can allow us to access our choice of all of the content that's available at any time and in any place, there's really no need for a schedule any more, is there?

The BBC has the infrastructure in place to do all of this if it wanted to. However the culture change from.. 'schedule based broadcaster' to 'on demand content provider' is a major one. They'd have to deal with the fact they couldn't advertise 'Doctor Who, back at 7PM on Saturday' in terms of the first episode being shown then and instead have to say 'Doctor Who, back at midnight on Saturday' in terms of the whole series being available to view then but this is where things are going and netflix/Amazon etc are already heading. The BBC has the resources and talent to compete in that landscape, it just needs to make the leap to get there.

On demand is fair enough in cities with fibre. Out in the country the internet just isn't fast enough for HD on demand in every house, even if they only used one TV at a time.

True, but when the BBC first launched the number of people without receivers vastly outnumbered those who did, but that wasn't a reason to not do it. We can't hold back on things until absolutely everyone can access the new thing, or we never would - I'm sure there are people who still can't get freeview, does that mean we should all be stuck with four channels?

According to OFCOM, by this year 7m households will have decent broadband - which I believe is consistent 4MB/s downloads. iPlayer HD streams are roughly 2.7MB/s according to BBC documentation. That's what, a third of the households in the UK? If we're going to rethink the way the BBC operates, we shouldn't think of how it is now, we should think of how it will be in 10 years time.

Jon

On the other hand, they should probably give up Eastenders because it's [LIFTED].

Public service broadcasting : To inform, to educate, to bore.

Mark

New BBC streaming service to bring Britain's best TV to the US | TechRadar
http://www.techradar.com/news/televisio ... us-1304538

I'm calling it a commercial broadcaster and telling the vultures to fcuk off to venture capital where they belong