CBeebies is good. And I like 6Music.

Things heating up around Iran again. They've seized an oil tanker and the US have shot down an Iranian drone.

All because Trump didn't like Obama and wanted to spite him.

Blocks100 wrote:

I tell you what is obscene, forcing the elderly to pay a license fee just so Norton, Lineker, et al can get paid their 'market rate'. Culturally entwined? You mean like Dr Who? That turned shit years ago. O'Neil, Marr, Robinson - they're all Tory boys who make a mockery of the BBC's reputation for impartiality. The corporation itself is running scared, for years now, over further reforms to its budget by a Conservative government and henceforth is bent on being it's mouthpiece. For the sake of balance, let's have a Panorama show on the rampant Islamaphobia in the Tory party. No?, thought not.

Sorry, totally missed this last night.

Can't comment on Doctor Who, as I've never really watched it, but here is an incomplete list of things currently funded by the license fee: 9 full-time orchestras and singing ensembles, around 70 radio stations, most of them hyper-local in terms of their news and entertainment output, near round-the-clock childrens' programming, countless educational resources, live music events, sports coverage, the World Service broadcasting in numerous languages, TV and radio drama and other entertainment, films, documentary programming, an array of podcasts, live comedy, and one of the largest news operations in the world. It is extremely difficult to live in Britain for a day and not come up against something directly or indirectly created or run by the BBC. I'd call that fairly well culturally entwined. 

The Beeb is hugely flawed, horribly managed, and like most things in this current hellhole of a country, chronically underfunded. But with a license fee coming in at less than £13 a month to say that it doesn't represent value for money is laughable, especially when compared with the bogging commercial offerings from the likes of Netflix and Amazon. 

We really need to get over this current obsession with impartiality in our media. The BBC as an organisation is impartial by design. The humans running it and editing its programmes are, of course, not. Absolute impartiality in news coverage is a myth, an imagined utopia that gives people something to seethe and rage over whenever the cause or belief that they hold dear doesn't get the prominence that they feel it deserves. This is the same baffling obsession that's plaguing games journalism at the moment. Ironically, the majority of news coverage we get on the BBC is about as close to impartial, down-the-middle reporting as you can get from any source in this country. 

Journalism and media is as nepotistic, incestuous, and self-interested an industry as you can find- I work one step removed from it- and the beeb has plenty of high profile correspondents and editors who skew right and will have numerous of friends in power (though I believe you're wrong on Marr, who I understand leans left). And often the programmes they commission, the voices they invite on, the news angles they cover, reflect that. Funnily enough, the majority of people who work for the BBC are young, left-leaning, and metropolitan. But in such politically polarised times everyone wants the organisation to reflect the facts as they see them. They can't win. 

We've been stung harder by it up here in recent years; the way the BBC handled the independence referendum was seen by so many as cowardly and inept, and that sparked into genuine public anger. I've stood outside BBC Scotland with hundreds of angry protesters as they shouted up at an assortment of baffled journalists while waving flags and placards. The organisation lost the trust of a huge slice of the public in 2014, and the same seems to be happening across the rest of the country now. 

I agree with you that forcing elders to pay a license fee is completely obscene. TV and radio is one of the few things that many older people have left in their lives. I pay a license fee for my dad as well as one for myself, because between working a job that's killing him and seeing his children less and less, being able to tune in to TV and radio at the end of a day is one of the things that keeps him sane. 

But don't be fooled into believing it's so that high profile stars can receive their market rate. it's just one more obscene policy handed down by a government that specialises in them, all for the sake of making its members that little bit richer. How funny that a government that relies so much on its BBC mouthpiece, which is packed with Tory correspondents and schills, continues to undermine the organisation at every available opportunity. Makes you think.

Watching that stitch up bullshit on Panorama and Kuenessberg’s Tory cheerleading on a daily basis is not ‘as close as you can get to impartial’. Sorry, it just isn’t.

It’s not a case of ‘can’t please them all’, ‘some people are never happy’ and the odd occasional inaccuracy, it’s blatant one-sided propaganda and misinformation, that we’re forced into paying for.

But if you look at their coverage of the Miner’s strike, Northern Ireland, the sickening sycophantic Royal’s coverage, Marr’s utterly shameful and embarrassing ode to Blair’s statesmanship outside no.10 after he bravely bombed Iraq back to the fucking Stone Age, etc - it’s always been influenced by the government of the day and always firmly in the camp of the established order.

A subscription fee to access the BBC archive online would be worthwhile, and they do give us Attenborough and Adam Curtis. The BBC is so vast there’s always going to be something of worth getting knocked out here and there, and I’d rather have it than not - but the news and current affairs programming is horrid. A bland, conformist, smug, patronising, middle-class cuntfest that to be honest feels like it exists to keep the populate ignorant, distracted and ill-informed.

++ Larry

I don't have a license fee. I don't have a TV. I don't stream iPlayer or watch BBC news, I get my shit from incorrigible on YouTube, and other sites.

I currently pay the license fee and really should stop; I can only remember watching one thing in the last year, Fleabag, and that was pretty shit.

I pay my license fee and watch almost nothing, only really when I have the folks over, don't even listen to r4 that much either these days.

Watch mostly stuff on YouTube as there is just a ton of great channels dedicated to things I like or find interesting and after that since I pay awful Bezos for the privilege of free delivery and worker exploitation I get some movies thrown into the deal. Mainly just listen to whatever music using YouTube or the free version of deezer (don't hate, it doesn't count to my data usage on 3).

JMW wrote:

I currently pay the license fee and really should stop; I can only remember watching one thing in the last year, Fleabag, and that was pretty shit.

Fleabag's awesome, but it is on Netflix

Ok, not here anyway. It's on Prime.

Prime would still cost, but then at least they deliver stuff I suppose. BBC brings round fuck all.

BBC Radio is top tier.  There really is nothing quite like it. Would be a huge shame to see that go.

I'd happily just pay a sub/licence for the radio service.


BBC TV has one huge plus. No effing adverts. Happy to pay just to keep that intact.  You pay for Sky and still have to watch ads? Fuck that.

I'd be surprised if people didn't like the idea of a pick and mix approach to paying for the BBC.

The TV side should really stop trying to play the indie TV game though. There's too much crap on it chasing audiences. It can do that by differentiating not copying.

What BBC is really good at is developing talent which sadly pisses off all too often. That role would be missed too. It's really good at spotting quirky people who wouldn't be given daylight elsewhere.

Take Sky At Night - they have actually managed to find someone at least as enthusiastic as Moore was and almost as quirky while being just as good at the job.  (Take Sky at Night full stop - say goodbye to programming like that if the BBC went).

And the only people I know who have worked for them racially abused my best mate so it's a net loss for me.

Indeed. I'm sure there are some fine people at the beeb, I've just never met them.