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BBC To Ditch "Tomorrow's World"
Pipsicola writes "The BBC news site reports their decision to ditch the Popular science show, Tomorrows World , after 30 years. It may not have had the most bleeding edge content (we often dubbed it 'Yesterdays World' ...), but it was one of the few programmes which fired the imagination of young British nerds. Several generations of Britain's scientists and technologists grew up watching TM. Lets hope the BBC fulfills its promise to replace it with more science-based shows using a different format. Which formats have worked in other countries I wonder?"
they should try hosting the show naked.
nudity can make anything better.
While its future shows may suck, "Big Thinkers" will make you think. I would actually PAY for this on dvd (unencoded of course!)
I'm not sure whether or it's shown in Britain, but you should look into it.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
What's he doing now-a-days? I always thought he was cool. Maybe it's just his name? His show must of had quite a budget to do some of the stuff that he did. I think it was owned by Disney.
Sex - Find It
You mean a plastic dinosaur spinning!?
"Bill! Bill! Bill! (It's alive!"
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
There's an Australian magazine show called Beyond 2000 that has run for quite a long time and is screened in quite a few countries starting in 1985 and still being made. The science it covered was pretty cutting edge (or at least it seemed, I was kid since I saw it last, hehe) and had interesting stories presented by interesting reporters.
With the Internet, it becomes more and more difficult to keep shows like this on the air. Once upon a time, 'Tomorrow's World' gave you a glimpse of things you'd otherwise never know existed (at least at the time of viewing). With the Internet, anything heralded on television has been already discussed on the web a thousand times.
Give it a rest man.
For a while he was doing engineering commentary for the show battlebots, but I can't think of anything he's done since then (or if he's still doing it).
Daily Planet (link) is a pretty good show. It was called @Discovery Canada, but changed a little while ago. It runs on the Discovery channel here in Canada. Read the site for more info.
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
It's nice to see something on /. that's not so U.S.-centric. I enjoy listening to 'Quirks and Quarks' on CBC (Canadian public radio) on occasion, but I havn't seen a science TV show of any note ever. I mean, The Learning Channel can be interesting, but they hate to go into detail about anything.
I would venture to say (and I used to work for CBC-TV) that TV is a medium that can't afford to go into detail at all, and therefore will never produce great science programming.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
The show lasted 30 years. In fact, it lasted "almost 40"... but it didn't make it 40 years, just almost.
here on the other side of the pond the Discovery Channel still gives us great scientific programing, like " Dopey interpretations of quantum theory for morons who think Battlestar Gallactica was a historical document but flunked grade school math" and "I was abducted by an alien ghost that rode down on a killer tornado from Atlantis for Jesus".
Man, hard core tech programing just don't get no better than that. Maybe you Brits should import some of it to fill the gap.
KFG
The best one was on April 1st one year where they asked you to vote for something by touching your television screen.
I touched Phillipa.
I often wonder if corporations like BBC aren't too quick to just chuck a long-running series without attempting changes, even radical ones (like the poster who suggested nudity, which was my first thought-but in a 'remove the stodginess' sort of way.
Being an Australian, I have only seen this show a dozen times, but Tomorrow's World really did capture alot of stuff that wouldnt have been seen on other science programs..
In Australia we used to have "Beyond 2000" which ended a almost 10 years ago or so, didnt get quite as nerdy as TM though..
Tomorrow's world will be missed.. by those who watched it... and those who poked fun at it
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
Television could be so great, but instead it's a cesspool.
--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Tomorrow's World ran on BBC 1 (used to be Thursday's before Top of the Pops). It was always a soft science show -- more entertainment than hard science. BBC 2 ran the harder science show "Horizon" - each episode of which was an hour long. I've been away from the UK for nearly 19 years so don't know if Horizon is still going -- but at the time it was an outstanding show - would compare with the likes of the better shows on TLC and Discovery. Sad to see Tomorrows World going -- but it did give a great start to James Burke who went on to do the Burke connection and Connections.
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
Here in the U.S., most science shows have switched to the "MTV generation attention span format". This involves taking 10 minutes of content, then stretching it out to 45 minutes in length with attention-grabbing fillers.
These typically include things like cheesy, inaccurate and endlessly repetitive computer simulations of explosions, ancient pyramid tours or space probe flybys. Also popular are sad attempts at creating a "suspensful" plot, such as a melodramatic voicover accompanying the same tired scene: a computer monitor reflected in the eyeglasses of a scientist pecking at keyboards in a strangely lit office. Time-elapsed shots of radio telescopes at sunset are another sure-fire time filler.
I often wish they'd bring back the "old guy standing in a field giving a half-hour monologue" format. Those guys usually knew a lot about what they were talking about, and they worked to cram it into the time available, not the other way around.
They removed the Christmas quiz with people like Clive Sinclair as guests!
And most importantly, the studio element of the show with scientific demonstrations etc.
Phillipa Forrester really didn't have a clue (see the Brass Eye special), at least Adam Hart-Davis has something to do with science!
Conclusion: bring back Howard Stableford (where is he now?!) and actually invite people in to show off cool stuff! :)
Instead of putting all of your efforts into one drawn out television series, focus instead on one or two strong mini-series of documentaries. "Blue Planet" and "Evolution" (PBS) come to mind as quick examples. The Discovery channel has made a market out of this kind of a thing, with all of the dinosaur and "what if" based shows. Good stuff, and the production quality (I.E. entertainment value) of such ventures are great. Next, interesting works of modern man are always entertaining, like "Modern Marvels". I'm sure that the producers could find some other interesting topic and make a similar show.
Look at the impact this way. Alot of children do watch television. I used to watch it, but not as much. I still flip through the channels however. Many a time, I've come across a channel showing something about technology, or space, or something scientific, and I'll leave it there. Learning something new, is ALWAYS a good feeling. With the loss of this show, we may in fact hinder our chances of having children decided to choose a scientific field, to major in, and thus lose their creative input on the world of tomorrow. I hope they replace the show with another cutting edge science show, or maybe a show that talks about various world events, and the conspiracy theories that they relate to (I love reading about them here at /.)
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From my point of view what killed TW was a gradual, slow change in the kind of stories they showed. When I used to watch TW religiously, back in the mid-late 80's, the vast majority of their items were to do with either consumer technology inventions (CD's, home computers and so on) or physical sciences (string theory, birth of the universe, or, more paractically, the first mention I ever heard of quantum computing and quantum encryption back in 1988 or so). During the 90's, in what seemed to me to be a misguided attempt to win ratings, the show gradually changed to a more human-interest type show, all about biology, genetics, medicine, until by the late 1990's that was all there was: no inventions, no physical science news, no astronomy, just item after item of medical discoveries, biotechnology, with the odd reference to the BBC's 'Webwise' project to get people hooked up to the Internet.
That was when I stopped watching it, it just didn't interest me any more. I appreciate the importance of medicine and the biological sciences (although these interest me less than the physical sciences and associated inventions), but there just wasn't anything else on TW, and it got boring because of this.
I don't think I'm alone in feeling this - I've met quite a few geeky Tomorrow's World ex-fans who say the same thing, they just stopped running the stories that interested them. It's quite a tragedy - in an attempt to make the programme trendier and gain mainstream audience share, they completely killed off their core audience, and the production team seemed to have absolutely no idea what the problem was. It's entirely the BBC's own fault.
Oh well, here's hoping they'll wake up one day, realize their mistake and revive it, just like they have with Doctor Who.
N.B. The last sentence used a technique known as irony. Some of you may wish to study and attempt to understand it.
I've always loved "science of tomorrow" shows. My personal favorites being the old Discovery Channel shows "Next Step" (hosted by the guy with the moustache that later went on to host "C|Net Central" on USA Network, if memory serves) and "Beyond 2000" (a BBC production, if I remember correctly). Admittedly, "Beyond 2000" had a built-in expiration. But it was still quite entertaining.
120x120 at 8bit color. Don't you people think!?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
When they present a story, they repeat the same material three times (using slightly different wording each time) just to make sure that the viewers comprehend. It is like watching Teletubbies.
The content they present is beyond 'light'. They never go into any depth. They don't sray from the press release upon which they based the segment.
And they dwell on safety. All they care about is safety. Did I mention that safety is important to them? (A good example is the segment on a new line of kitchen appliances that have lower magnetic fields. They [or rather the manufacturer's press release] implied that magnets are dangerous to your health. Nothing was offered to back up this claim.)
I remember when the Canadian Discovery Channel purchased Tomorrow's World. They jumped up and down for joy at acquiring the BBC's flagship science program. After airing two episodes, they realised what a collosal mistake this was and pulled it.
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I loved that show. Watched it all the time in 4 and 5th grade. I got quite a collection... in fact, I brought several episodes into my 5th grade class to watch when they matched the current unit.
Perhaps one of the best science/history shows that's ever been on television, and I know I'm not alone in thinking this.
Unfortunately, TLC has replaced it with such inspiring fare as "Trading Spaces" and "Junkyard Wars", and Discovery (Canada) has no hope of picking it up, they're too busy re-running "Guiness Prime Time" - the record keepers, not the beer.
It's sad that every damn form of media is being dumbed down to sensationalist joe punchclock filler - surely there are more than 5 people out there who'd like to see something with SOME substance.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Actualy, I remember on PBS the used to randomly have a show where they would get a group of college engineering students, give them a box of parts, and set up a simple competition for them. They had a period of time with the box of parts to make a small machine for the task, ( i think like a few days) then they had a competition. It was a really good show. But it never seamed to be a real show, just some random few minute thing they threw on tv every now and then. I really liked it.
The show lasted 30 years. In fact, it lasted "almost 40"... but it didn't make it 40 years, just almost.
38 years is almost 40. It's nowhere near 30.
PS Whoever modded the parent -1 offtopic is on crack.
Beyond 2000 use to be on the Discovery Channel 10-15 years ago when the network's goal was to educate, unlike now where everything is about sharks, the military, and guys with accents showcasing dangerous animals.
You're so right.
They had some real crap on Tomorrow's World simply so it'd appeal to Joe Sixpack and five year olds.. both of who WEREN'T THE MAIN GROUPS WHO WATCHED THE SHOW!!
Tommorrow's World would spend tons of time looking at stupid inventions like quicker ways to open tin cans, or 'Young Innovators' fairs where 8 year olds would invent automatic dog food dispensers.
Instead of focusing on such jevenile crap they should have focused on cool widgets, technologies that could change the world, and things of some importance to science, rather than things which make it easier to do the washing up.
mogorific carpentry experiments
I am still pissed off about Bill Nye. He came along quite a bit after Beakman (of Beakman's World), which was many orders of magnitude better that that shallow clone pretender Nye could ever hope to be. It was simply more fun, more interesting, and did a better job explaining the science than Nye's puffery. Plus it had a guy in a rat suit, and the beloved assistant Josie.
Like so many other of the truly fine things in life, Nye had much biigger backing and after a while Beakman was gone. Now I just get sad whenever I see Nye. I hope he has realized his crime to humanity and joined a monestary to live the rest of his days seeking forgivness for displacing Beakman from the airwaves.
If you think my rant is something, take a look at Nye Vs. Beakman. The page is a sad reflection of real life in that Nye still won even though the comments about Nye were dead on.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Absolutely amazing program. All three series of Connections are still available on VHS, and the first on is available on DVD.
s id=22
http://www.documentary-video.com/ShowSubject.cfm?
I treated myself to the DVDs last year, and they're every bit as good as I remembered, and not that dated (since they're mostly dealing with the history of technology). Well, apart from his suit...
It took me awhile to figure out that 'alloy-mini-um' they kept going on about was aluminum.
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The Great Egg Race?
Connections (and Connections 2) can still be seen on the Science Channel, which is a Discovery/TLC offering that I get here on Cox digital cable. It's great.
But don't slam Junkyard Wars, it's a brilliant idea and a great show and definitely in a different league than the Robot Wars type shows (not to mention things like Trading Spaces).
I know this because Tyler knows this.
junkyard wars is great.
I love the episode where the guy carves a prop, with a chainsaw, and it works. If anybody ever says, I won't need math for what I want to do, have them watch that show.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm sure many here would disagree, but the best science show I've ever seen is PBS' NOVA. If the BBC doesn't already carry this somewhere then they absolutely should. This series totally inspired me as a kid, and now that I'm actually doing science as an adult my admiration for it has only grown. Nothing else on TV comes close to conveying what it's actually like to be a scientist.
For lighter fare I'd recommend either Scientific American Frontiers or the already mentioned Beyond 2000.If New Scientist doesn't already have a TV series, though, they really should.
And the BBC are just dumbing down the remaining shows that need 4 brain cells to watch. Sky are hitting them hard when it comes to prime time viewing, the only thing that gets viewers on the BBC is EastEnders.
But I hate the way they have phucked up science programmes. Walking With Dinosaurs was portrayed as a scientific show. IT WASNT! It was a bunch of script writers making up crap from pictures of fozziled bones. How can you deduce all that crap they showed from that?
I'm tempted to agree, although in my case I watched it most when Maggie Philbin was on the team, ie when I was about 8-15 or something.
Still got the impression it was going downhill; it served its purpose in getting one small eejit hooked on things scientific, and then it all got dumbed-down. Bah.
It's not as though _Horizon_ is any temptation either - the reason we adult types have given up watching it is because of the dumbed-down drama - it even has "drama" in its caption. We don't need drama. We don't need the historical perspective, although it can be one means to present an achievement.
I said it at Uni, and I'll say it again: I don't give a constipated monkey whether Einstein *liked* his results, *show* me them and I'll work it out for myself.
RIP TW, then.
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
junkyard wars is great
Then you'll love Demolition. Two teams, an assortment of power tools, and races like "fit this car into these suitcases" and "fit this office into this filing cabinet". It's brilliant!
Tomorrow's World was good. It taught me about cool new things like the internet.
But now we don't need it, because we have cool new things like the internet.
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CBC has a great radio show called Quirks and Quarks. If you live in Canada, you can listen on CBC 1 Saturdays @ noon. Best of all, you can download each segment in ogg, mp3, or real formats, put them in a playlist, and create your own custom show!
... and has been dead for a while.
But I don't think it's necessarily because they alienated their geek audience with all that "soft" science stuff. I think it's because they're simply abandoning proper science coverage completely.
These days, scientific innovation is complex stuff often operating at levels 99% of the population have no clue even exist (e.g. quantum physics). Explaining it in a visual medium reliant by definition on pictures is usually just about impossible. Despite all the recent cloning coverage, I doubt you'd find hardly anyone on the street who could tell you what the Human Genome Project is, or even what DNA is.
The BBC is fighting for its life to defend the licence fee, and to do so it has to broaden its appeal. Science is the first major category for the culling. After One Man And His Dog, natch.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"