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Nobody reads individual sentences from other books and then takes them (often out of context) as individual snacks of wisdom and truth.

Uh, yes they do. All they time. What is the modern news cycle but a collection of individual sentences (often out of context) from longer speeches or documents, then repackaged as eye catching headlines?

If you want to get more literary, I invite you to read the words of Shakespeare and find out just how many of his individual sentences have passed into common wisdom and truth .

Talking of neanderthals... see what Clarkson tried...

http://www.bbcamerica.com/show...

creating enjoyment out of motion.

Unfortunately the top-selling Lexus is the ES series, which is anything but an enjoyment to be in. It is not by a long shot the worst car ever, but it is also far away from being the most enjoyable.

Another Lexus was also chosen by the Top Gear guys as The Worst Car in the History of the World, as well.

Well, Jack the Ripper's ethnicity is relevant to the story. The sentiment at the time was that the Ripper's crime was so heinous that he must have been an immigrant since no British person would commit such heinous crimes.

First off, now is not "at the time".
Nor is any rationale provided for why would such labeling be of any importance now, nor why would ANY ethnic or religious attributes be relevant to either murders or the identification of the murderer EVER.

There was never any evidence or testimony of any ethnic or religious identity of the murderer.
Nor were murders ever explained as a religious or ethnic ritual - other than in completely made up conspiracy theories involving everything from royal family, through obligatory masonic this or that, to Lewis Carroll.
Because he wrote weird books. Clearly, Alice was written in code, describing his murders.

The whole "connection", including the graffiti you mention, boils down to "some people were very anti-Semitic back then".
Which provides as much reasoning to prominently point out the ethnicity of a supposed "proven" murderer as it would to point out the ethnicity of any famous murderer.

Try it like this...
Do articles about John Wilkes Booth start with the mention of his ethnicity and religious affiliation?
How about Lee Harvey Oswald?
How about John Wayne Gacy?
Theodore Robert Bundy?
Charles Milles Manson?

Here's an easy one... Adolf Hitler. Do articles on Hitler start "Adolph Hitler, a Catholic dictator..."?

What you are providing up there is not a valid reason but RATIONALIZATION of one's either deliberate attempt at sensationalism or utter lack of tact or reason.
I'll exclude the possibility of racism cause that would be beyond retarded.

Goddamn "BBC America" has been pushing itself as the go-to sci-fi / fantasy station, including both British shows (Doctor Who, Primeval, Being Human) and decidedly non-British shows (ST:TNG, X-Files).

Doctor Who aside, this is not a good thing.

.

PBS Newshour, BBC World News America

The link in the article is a blog. It has no ties with the "real" BBC. This is the real one....

Poor Wikipedia...

Could they have just STAYED on strike?

No, please fucking God no, seriously!

While many people here might be single, some of us have wives that like to watch garbage TV and w/o the normal dreck that is shown on TV she had to find something else to occupy her TV watching time. Unfortunately for me that included such highlights as America's Ballroom Challenge and Masterpiece on PBS. If you think Dancing with the Stars was bad, well, Ballroom Challenge is a completely new level of horrendous bullshit that no human should ever have to see (ballroom dancing to rap is surprisingly worse than to horribly outdated music). I won't even get into the Masterpiece bullshit because, well, no one should give a shit less about Jane Austen.

Believe me, even though I don't watch all that much TV (I have been obsessing over BBC America's Kitchen Nightmares and Last Restaurant Standing) it has been fucking hell for me.

Truth hurts, doesn't it? For all your demagoguery, the truth remains is that over 50% of the stuff on your local TV, and over 90% of the stuff on your local "warez" server is produced in America (and copied without permission of the creators/owners).

Ahem, I'm in the UK, and looking at the BBC TV guide for this evening, across three channels, I can only see two episodes of Family Guy, 'Dracula 2000' and a couple of late-night episodes of Star Trek. Not quite what I'd call 50%. Over on ITV, there's a couple of American films spread across four channels of content, and Channel 4 is awash with American-made content, with one whole episode of the Simpsons.

Channel 5 I'll give you, as all I ever see on there is terrible CSI knock-offs and shows about people having nose jobs, but across the board it's about 10% American content, maybe less, and you guys can hardly complain when you have a whole TV station dedicated to showing British content on American TV (though looking at the girls in the Torchwood banner at the top, who can blame you?). Also, I'm sure I read somewhere that France has laws ensuring more than 50% of shows on French television are French language productions produced in France, but I don't have a source for that so I could be wrong, and I can't see the rest of Europe being dominated by American television as you don't actually speak the same language, and nobody likes watching awful dubs all the time.

Then you wouldn't mind people copying your passport, your high school/college diplomas (if any), your date of birth and drivers license, your credit card numbers and bank accounts, your address and pictures of your family and pets in the nude?

There is a not-so-subtle difference between data A (a Metallica .mp3, for example) and data B (my credit card details). It's not like if the RIAA waved a magic wand and stopped piracy tomorrow everyone who would have previously downloaded 'Metallica_Discography_342342Kbps_OGG.torrent' is going to rush out and buy the pieces of crap that were 'Load' and 'Reload', but if I were to publish my bank account details on some identity theft forum, the vast majority of people would go in and steal all my cash. I don't want me or James Hetfield to be deprived of rightfully-earned cash, but the fact is 99% of downloaders wouldn't buy the CD if the torrent wasn't availible anyway, whereas 99.9999% of people interested in my bank account details are only interested in affecting my bank balance significantly and negatively compared to what it would be if that information was not published.

As for the other stuff - and in fact the bank details as well - there is a difference between personal information and creative output. The problem there is identity theft. By downloading The Black Album (to continue the Metallica theme - I don't even like friggin' Metallica) you are not able to steal Lars Ulrich's identity and make his life a living hell to pay for your own enjoyment. You could make your neighbour's life a living hell through the use of the files you downloaded and an amplifier that goes up to 11, but Lars Ulrich wouldn't care. You stealing my identity and using my credit card information to purchase child porn would land me, an innocent party, in deep shit, but I can't think of anything you can implicate someone in by downloading an MP3 of them.

As for pictures of me in the nude... that'd hurt you more than it'd hurt me, but if you really want, I'll bust out the Polaroids.

It's got an X-file's feel; and now they're starting to build up their core characters, so the show is picking up pace...Tuesday's at 8pm

Wasn't this an episode of "Spooks" ("MI:5" in America)

Spooks Brain? "Brain and Brain, what is Brain?"

BBC has *tons* of great programming. Forget that their educational and science programming rivals the best private channels in the USA (Discovery, History, etc). Their entertainment programming is great. Check out BBC America for some BBC-originated programming that you can get on most cable systems here in the states, including classic favorites as well as plenty of original new programming. The intrinsic differences in british acting and american acting aside, I thoroughly enjoy(ed), in no particular order, Life on Mars (just starting season 2), Hex, Touching Evil, Bromwell High, most of Eddie Izzard's stand up comedy, Mile High, Whose Line, and Weakest Link. On the main BBC stations (including Prime), we have Spooks, Eastenders, Mad About Alice, Kiss Me Kate, and a slew of other good shows that I watch on occassion.

PBS sucking is just another example showing that american's suck at providing good social services. We don't want the government to help us, at all.

Well remember we, as license payers, pay for the content to be made. Giving it away to the world for free would probably be in violation of their charter, and would certainly make me ask "Why am I paying this again"?

Ah, if only the truth were so simplistic.

I've seen such arguments trotted out from time to time, and believe me -- I feel for my friends out in the UK who have to pay for a television license. Here in Canada we have no such fee, which is the way things should be.

HOWEVER, don't for a minute assume that your TV license fee dollars are the only funds that go into producing quality BBC programming, and thus that said programming should never escape across boarders through the Internet.

You see, where you pay a license fee to the BBC to own a television in your part of the world, here in my part of the world the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is funded (in part) through tax dollars -- including my tax dollars. And yet CBC Programming (especially documentaries) is shown all around the world, including portions of which are available online.

Aside from that, let's look at one of the shows the BBC is proposing to make available online: Doctor Who. Click the link and scroll down to "Production Companies". Yes, that's right, the venerable BBC Sci-Fi series is produced in part by the CBC.

Thus, I at least have already paid for part of Doctor Who. How many other modern BBC shows are co-produced in conjunction with the national broadcasters in other (esp. Commonwealth) countries?

(Let's not also mention that the BBC already broadcasts world-wide via various cable outlets, like BBC Canada and BBC America, amongst others).

I don't argue with the complaint that the UK's TV licensing fee seems like a cash-grab to my eyes, but that's up to you and your countrymen to fix, and not something I can affect change for. However, the view that your licensing fees are the sole source of funding for popular BBC shows doesn't exactly reflect modern reality, and the desire to prevent such shows from being made available to the world for free online isn't going to put the cat back into the bag: it escaped long, long ago, and probably never should have been in there in the first place.

Yaz.

If Sir Ian McKellen can put solar panels on his roof in England and have it generate more energy than he needs I think you could do just fine in Michigan.

If you ask me, it's you brain making solar power hard, not the Universe. The Universe is dumping it all over the ground around you.

In this drama, the police use illegal means to trap potential criminals.

None of the police are ever criticised or punished in any meaningful way for breaking the rules. The drama shows the rights of innocent people being routinely and egreiously trampled upon.

I see it as the BBC portraying what some people in government would like. No restraint on the police, no rules of evidence, no need, in fact for actual evidence -- just lock up (or better still, shoot) the people you think are the "bad guys". How many people will watch the drama and later think it is OK for the police to take such actions becasue "they have seen it on TV"?

Why does BBC AMERICA carry advertisements when the BBC in the UK does not? In the UK, the BBC is funded by British TV licensing fees. However, by law, the BBC is not allowed to use this money to fund channels outside the UK, and so BBC AMERICA is reliant on advertising sales. Without advertisements, we would not exist.

From http://bbcamerica.com/about/about.jsp

They (BBC America) wouldn't have to pay BBC UK for broadcast rights, but they would have to make enough money from running television ads, and if BBC America runs into financial trouble, BBC UK can't legally bail them out.

Yes, but the Showtime site is *promotional*. If enough buzz is created about a programme, then stations are more likely to import it. The BBC blocks only a very small range of content (actual programmes), and even offers a less UK-centric version of its news page, plus translations of its news site.

The differing attitudes between the two sites, with the BBC trying to be as reasonably open as it can, and the Showtime site just completely blocking everything can be seen as a nice metaphor for the stereotypical differences in attitudes between countries.

Of course, there's also BBC America.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/us/languages.sht ml
http://www.bbcamerica.com/

...or watch it on BBC America...

1) The BBC home service, paid for by the license fee. This aims to give independant quality broadcasting to the public in the UK - and only there. See also http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/running/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/ It is based in Broadcasting House.

2) The BBC World Service is a free, separate organisation that broadcasts to the rest of the world (theoretically not - as far as I remember - to the UK). It has its own news organisation and was previously based in Bush House, although it has recently moved. It is funded only by government grant, not licensing fees.

3) The commercial branch of the BBC is self-supporting. They make shows and sell them, and have various other activities.

(I'm afraid I can't point out links to everything in this comment, most of it coming from family members who worked in the BBC)

macdo10

Well not quite..........

A commercial arm of the public BBC, BBC Worldwide, runs BBC America.

The entire remit of BBC Worldwide is to secure licensing revenue from the commercial market, investing it directly back into the BBC. Last financial year BBC Worldwide directed £141 million back to the BBC. Of this BBC America, through 30 million subscriptions, advertising and licensing contributed a large proportion.

I think this sounds like a form of "international licence fee". BBC Worldwide and the BBC just need to start talking a bit more to each other and extend this model to something like the Creative Archive.

With any luck, BBC America will decide to show it. While I wouldn't mind having it on PBS, I'd rather have it on BBC America so I don't have to worry about whether or not any of my local stations pick it up. (Although I'm pretty sure KCET would, as they showed it for at least a decade when I was growing up.)

If anyone else wants to see BBC America show Dr. Who, go fill out this form on their site and let them know that you want to see it!

Makes for some reading.

You're talking about something which happened 5 years ago.

Was this 5 years ago? If it was then after VIII was aired circa 1999 they were nice enough to show them all for 1 year weekly, and show them all daily.

According to TV tome, there are 52 episodes. If they showed the new season in March of 1999 then repeated them weekly, it would bring us up to March of 2000. Then airing them daily twice for a year would bring us up to March of 2001. I *could* have been 4 years ago they stopped but I don't honestly know. I thought it was 2 years ago as i'm sure there was a nice pause between showing it weekly and daily, but who's to say.

My point is they showed these outside of the marathon. You could have watched them. You didn't. How many times do they have to repeat something for your benifit? You can buy the VHS
videos from the channel 9 store for $15 per season. You can wait for the DVDs if you like. They are a touch more spendy. Or you can make friends with someone who's nice enough to tape them.

The way I see it KCTS went out of their way to show this and make it available to you. Show me another network in America that would carry Red Dwarf fresh off the presses... and repeat it. Show me another network that would go out of its way to carry the tapes so you don't have to wait for mail order.

But if this still makes you unhappy... subscribe to cable and get BBC-America and request Red Dwarf be shown. If they do it won't be comercial free.

Blackadder is shown on BBC America.

You have a choice.

You're talking about something which happened 5 years ago.

Was this 5 years ago? If it was then after VIII was aired circa 1999 they were nice enough to show them all for 1 year weekly, and show them all daily.

According to TV tome, there are 52 episodes. If they showed the new season in March of 1999 then repeated them weekly, it would bring us up to March of 2000. Then airing them daily twice for a year would bring us up to March of 2001. I *could* have been 4 years ago they stopped but I don't honestly know. I thought it was 2 years ago as i'm sure there was a nice pause between showing it weekly and daily, but who's to say.

My point is they showed these outside of the marathon. You could have watched them. You didn't. How many times do they have to repeat something for your benifit? You can buy the VHS
videos from the channel 9 store for $15 per season. You can wait for the DVDs if you like. They are a touch more spendy. Or you can make friends with someone who's nice enough to tape them.

The way I see it KCTS went out of their way to show this and make it available to you. Show me another network in America that would carry Red Dwarf fresh off the presses... and repeat it. Show me another network that would go out of its way to carry the tapes so you don't have to wait for mail order.

But if this still makes you unhappy... subscribe to cable and get BBC-America and request Red Dwarf be shown. If they do it won't be comercial free.

Blackadder is shown on BBC America.

You have a choice.

I personally wish I could get the BBC in the states. They consistently air interesting things, and I would definitely pay for it. PBS plays second fiddle to the BBC.

You can get some of it - although they show other UK programming as well as BBC shows.

www.bbcamerica.com

Yes, Coupling just isn't the same without Jeff...

"I love my brick!"
-Father Jack

Father Ted Crilly is an Irish priest who lives in a parochial house on possibly the worst place on Earth, Craggy Island which is situated off the west coast of Ireland. He doesn't live alone though. Living with him is Father Jack Hackett, an old priest with an alcohol problem and a particular liking for the words: arse, drink, girls and feck. The third and final priest who lives with him is Father Dougal Mcguire, a relatively young... and very dim priest. How he got into the priest hood is a mystery. And of course, every priest needs "a nice cup of tea" so they have a housekeeper, Mrs. Doyle. She's unique in every way and a one off, (which is probably a good thing). what she lacks in a life, she makes up in tea.

They are allowed to sell their programmes (e.g. The Office) and programme formats (e.g. The Weakest Link) to other broadcasters (either just on its own, or through a joint venture such as BBC America), as well as DVDs etc. This is done through a separate company called BBC Worldwide.

A lot of the best BBC programming (together with other top-notch British television output) can be had in the US on BBC America.

We get whatever BBC America gives us. Unfortunately, that doesn't currently include the only BBC program I'd care to have -- Top Gear. Thankfully, you can find some clips on the web, and BBC has some downloads available as well (only available in Real format, though, so I won't bother). However, that's not quite the same as watching the full episodes on my TV. They used to have a page where you could vote on what shows you wanted them to air on BBC America, but I can't find that now (and IIRC, the list didn't include Top Gear anyway).

Many cable systems carry BBC America. It carries only BBC programming, but it is not the same as any actual BBC channel in Britain. It is missing some popular BBC programs. For instance, it does not carry EastEnders because "70 per cent of BBC America's viewers switched off when EastEnders came on".

Many cable systems carry BBC America. It carries only BBC programming, but it is not the same as any actual BBC channel in Britain. It is missing some popular BBC programs. For instance, it does not carry EastEnders because "70 per cent of BBC America's viewers switched off when EastEnders came on".

You can also watch it Sundays at 9PM on BBC America.

Half a dozen variations of the quote have appeared on the Internet, all credited to Baldrick. But the BBC America siteagrees with me.

Video on demand won't replace DVDs for the same reason that proprietary (and possibly all) e-books won't replace regular books.

In a similar way in which a regular book gives me the security of knowing that I don't have to worry if the company that published it goes belly up, if I buy the DVD, I own it (for my own use, of course). I can watch it when I want. I can watch it on an airplane, I can take it with me on business trips overseas. It's going to be a long, long time before everyone in coach can watch "on demand" flicks on an airplane.

When you have a DVD, you're not dependent on the whim of a company. Consider shows like The Family Guy or Futurama where Fox never gave them a fair chance, then pulled the plug. They treated these shows like shit the first time; what possible reason do I have to believe that they're be treated any better "on demand?"

What about British shows like I'm Alan Partridge, Good Neighbors, or Father Ted? At best, I can watch them on BBC America or PBS, but unless I buy the DVD (or VHS, or whatever comes next), what are the chances that I *know* I'll be able to see these shows, when I want, here in the USA?

Then there's the content itself. What happens when the company that owns the rights to these shows goes out of business? What happens if a bunch of Jeezoids decided to buy the rights to something just to kill it (for the chillllldren, of course)? Or what if they just decide that something is insensitive and cut it. Jesus, what if they alter the original: Colorizing it or adding those fucking "informational" popups like they do when they show Double Indemnity on the Lifetime network?

What happens when some soulless bean counter decides that since I'm the only one who wants to watch Seriously Dude, Where's My Car?, they should just save the server space and dump it? You already see this sort of thing in video stores, when they decide how many foreign films can fit in that little section. The Internet Movie Database lists 268,836 movies released theatrically, 35,200 made-for-TV movies, 23,625, TV series, 21,420 direct-to-video movies, and 3,081 mini series. How many of these are going to make the cut? Which do you think will come first, some of those films, or "on demand" sports, so folks can have "Classic Games of when the Red Sox blew the World Series" nights?

Finally, why should I keep paying for the content through a subscription or a download fee each time? Compare the price of DVDs with rentals and pay-per-view -- if I think I might watch it three times in the rest of my life (or I might want to loan it to a friend) why not buy it outright for the extra ten bucks?

This is a paraphrased conversation between The Duke of Wellington and Blackadder dressed as the Prince Regent in the BBC comedy series, Blackadder. Specifically, it is from series III, episode Duel and Duality.

BBC America and the Discovery Channel are airing a program that has some history about the CIA and Afghanistan.

One interview has former President Carter's national security advisor talking about how the US helped Afghanistan make Russia's Vietnam. 10 years of fighting and nothing.

There's BBC America, it is on cable (AT&T Broadband) I have no idea about DirecTV. It's one of the few things that keep me sane living here :)

Now can the rest of the known universe please be allowed to get on with its own business without having to put up with two grown men squabbling over who has the biggest dun-dun ?

Thank you & goodnight

The BBC usually rebroadcast a hand full of their current affairs, business and news programmes in Real Video/Audio format. BBC World Service is broadcast 24 hours a day in Streaming Quick Time 4 format.

Whilst I worked at the BBC, I found they didn't rebroadcast such specialist niche programmes in RealVideo format much, although the BBC Education site does have a wealth of multimedia material to view. Local Hero's being one brilliant example, also the Windrush Project.

Someone mentioned elsewhere about the BBC servers. Take it from me, it ain't a small operation ;-) Also, Beeb.com, the commercial wing of the BBC's online presence has outsources ALL it's servers to ICL. The set up is VAST.

Actually, I haven't yet found any dish service in the US that runs Red Dwarf. There are a few that run 'BBCA' which is 'BBC America', which although it doesn't have Red Dwarf, does have other British comedy.

See http://www.bbcamerica.com/genre/britc oms.html for more information. Also, for a list of the PBS stations in the US that have Red Dwarf season 8, see http://www.reddwarf.co.uk/news/march99/