Slashdot Mirror
BBC to Try TV On Demand
Shevek writes "The UK Independent newspaper is reporting on a new BBC trial: 'Later this month, the BBC will launch a pilot project that could lead to all television programmes being made available on the internet. Viewers will be able to scan an online guide and download any show. Programmes would be viewed on a computer screen or could be burned to a DVD and watched on a television set. Alternatively, programmes could be downloaded to a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) ... By launching iMP, the BBC hopes to avoid being left at the mercy of a software giant such as Microsoft, which could try to control the gateway to online television.' Yet more proof that the BBC license fee is an unmitigated Good Thing(TM)."
Who do I have to blow to work for a company that hands out PDAs with 512 meg CF to all its employees, just so they can watch TV at work!?
The BBC License Fee is great if it means that us Americans can get all that great programming without having to pay for it! :-)
TV on demand is the future, once you get a taste of it, it's hard to go back.. Luckily for the content providers, TIVO and ReplayTV have already demonstrated the market. Sure TIVO isn't really TV on demand, but it helped define the market.
--
Hot deals!
I've been watching movies-on-demand for almost 2 years now. (time warner)
so yeah, this technology isnt exactly new. well mabye for the bbc anyways.
the bbc already has a thing for the latest news, at reasonable quality. news.bbc.org.uk
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I am not an active TV watcher - I have it on most of the time, but only passively. If I have to "make" it work by "demanding" it, I'm likely to find another source that's easier - a "flip-the-switch-and-go" kind of thing.
I lived in the UK for 4 years and just returned to Canada. I only wish the CBC was as good as the BBC. I do find their style of news to be way to similar to the big, sensational US news outlets but, otherwise, the content is great! Heck, I'd probably even pay my license fee from Canada!
Give me a break. My total cable bill is less than that here in the U.S.
Just to remind everyone, the BBC license fee is a tax on every television set in the UK.
(I don't live in the UK, but I would pay it if I could get this kind of innovation)
They'll go and use RealMedia or WMV and still be at the mercy of some other company.
I doubt they'll use XVID or other open standards. Would be fairly neutral if they released MPEG-2 files, however these would be gigantic.
The BBC will likely do something to limit the International use of this service, as having the shows freely availalbe over the Web might negatively impact their ability to sell their programs in other places, and some of the shows aired by the BBC belong to other companies and they want the exclusive rights to the show in their home territory.
The article refers to this being a challenge, but one they plan on getting over...
It is great to see a company that is willing to provide choice to its customers.
Perhaps this will force American media companies to offer a few better options to their customers.
-
It's a considerable boon to the future of de-centralized media to see a company like the BBC giving this a shot. If Internet users can acclimate towards using an Internet-based tv show broadcasting service, that could put media in the hands of those that deserve it, rather than those that have money and/or are already established as major players in the media industry. i.e. web sites like Slashdot could begin to leverage their user-base into targetted commercial ads, allowing the formation of "television" style shows online. Plus, the last thing we need is a software company like MS in control of the media because it's software is the platform to connect to all the sundries of devices.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
To convert the British programmes into the programs we use in America?
This is an interesting move, especially considering the events transpiring regarding digital televion, TV ripping and the like. I find it refreshing and interesting that while the recording industries (namely the MPAA) push broadcast flag legislation through, in an attempt to end behavior like this, the BBC makes it computer viewable. Also, sites that are providing ED2K links and torrents to TV Rips are beginning to feel the wrath of the DMCA, so I wonder how much this will change things? Probably not much... but hey, I try to be optimistic.
So, I understand you guys pay a license fee based on how many TVs (or TV tuners?) that you own.
But can someone please tell me: do you also have to pay for all the radios that you own?
And if the answer is no -- why is that? Isn't this inconsistent?
But all TV programs are already available on the net,
#tv-torrents
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
That way I can watch just the BBC shows I like and only pay for what I want to watch.
;)
No more paying for Video Tape or DVD copies of BBC shows and waiting for them to ship. Just pay and download, and then burn my own copy to a Video CD or DVD disk. I guess they have controls so that only one copy can be burned?
Video Rental stores ought to get into this gig, get the license to distribute the movies digitally and sell them on their website.
Might as well, would be a much better quality than those idiots who bring video cameras to movie theatres and then upload those videos to file sharing networks.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
This will raise some intersting questions: Apart from resulting in nonTV owners (and hence non licience payers) accessing the BBC it would this not lead to much wider dissemination of the BBC TV outside the UK. Wouldn't this damage the existing syndication relationships that the BBC has set up. I am amased that any broadcaster risk distribution over the internet. Certainty thinking outside the box.
It's about time. The only way I watch TV any more is through downloads or season DVD's who has the time to play the network games when they bounce your favorite shows around every other week chasing ratings numbers.
We recently dropped our cable subscription down to the $10 /mth 19 channel deal, and we're thinking about dropping that. The problem is that we only ever watched one or two channels and we didn't get enough viewing time to make it worth our $99 /mth cable bill.
I would love to be able to just watch the shows that I want, when I want them, and pay strictly for what I watch. I don't want to pay for a bunch of crap I don't want. Why should I be forced to buy HGTV when I'm an overweight fat slob who spends 99% of his day behind a keyboard? All I wanted was Tech Tv (although it's gone downhill bigtime).
You might be interested in /.'s BBC coverage from last week then, in which the BBC has created an open source, wavelet-based codec which ramps from low to high throughput with better than MPEG2 video quality.
Even though I am American, I would happily pay the 121 pound annual license fee. IMHO, the BBC programming is much more intellectually stimulating, and costs far less, than cable/satellite TV in this country. Most of the shows I do actually watch are BBC productions that are airing on PBS.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
You don't need no restrictive technology to make money out of media content, just find an easy-to-use distribution vector and a fair price. Who will want to sweep through a couple of hundreds of low-res DiVx files on Kazaa to download a show when you can get it premium quality for a price this low?
I wonder what is the ROI (Return on Investment) of the boradcast flag when compared to this...I'm a big fan of BBC programming and reguarly download it from the Usenet currently (recent favorites: The Office and The Worst Week of My Life). Because this is based on UK licensing fees, I wonder if it will be available to those of us in the rest of the world? Or perhaps we can pay a small fee to be able to download these episodes as well? This is the way I hope TV is going. My schedule is such that I am in bed before most of the prime time TV is on so the only way to watch it is to download it (or get one of those TiVOs).
TV and teeth on demand! How the hell did they lose the empire?
why not provide shows on bit torrent?
is it because it's harder to advertise?
would people be offended by short adverts played at the beginning of the video files? (eg This Bit Torrent file is brought to you by...)
networks could distribute the seeds across their affiliates to reduce bandwidth cost, etc.
This is The Independent, one of the major newspapers in the UK. That's like mirroring the New York Times.
If it doesn't, I'm going to set up a home-made video box over there just to record stuff, so that I can download it to my PC. "Footballers' Wives", here I come.
...tizzyd
Quick! Someone get all the Top Gear episodes and send them to me.
http://www.maximum-cars.com - My little hobbie.
Yet more proof that the BBC license fee is an unmitigated Good Thing(TM).
Just a pity they can't leave people the fuck alone if they don't want it.
that is pretty good, though I have very little I like on the BBC besides their news, that is a nice thing.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
A couple of days ago, I clicked to view a video on BBC news website and it told me that I have to buy a subscription as international user. I was a bit surprised since so far, BBC had been free and even free from ads.
This page says that: "Broadband video news from the BBC is only available to international users by subscription. Find out how to get the latest broadband video news from the BBC here.
It doesn't explicitly say, but the tone of the article suggests that the BBC's mentality is not much different from the **AA bunch.
"If we don't enter this market, then exactly what happened to the music industry could happen to us... everybody starts posting the content up there and ripping us off."
What would be wrong with the public freely sharing the content? They are subsidizing the creation of it with their tax payments.
Why don't allegedly "public" broadcasters, like the BBC in Brittan or PBS or NPR in the US, produce and release content under Creative Commons type, or other Free licences? That way the public could use, share, and redistribute the content freely. People could even re-edit the content and create new and interesting works. Wouldn't that be a good thing? Isn't the idea behind public broadcasting to serve the public, instead of seek profits?
Instead, the "public" broadcasters have developed the same control-freak mentality of the rest of the media that effectively opposes the very idea of a public domain and favors every byte having a DRM restricted ownership sticker. If that is the case, what is the point of the public subsidizing these broadcasters... and why should they even exist?
I'm opposed to the per-tv "License Fee" charged by the British government on philosphical grounds.
Extracting a tax for simply owning a television set creates a captive audience and the quality of the programming suffers as a result. For every Monty Python's Flying Circus there are countless shows that wouldn't make it past the pilot phase here in the states. If the quality of programming on BBC-america is any indication, brits are being robbed.
I'm curious about something, and maybe some of you british slashdotters can answer some questions for me. What else is there on the air other than the BBC? How many channels do brits generally have to choose from? Is cable TV common, and if so what kind of channels are there on it? Do you get HBO? ESPN? I was told when I was a little kid that the BBC was the ONLY channel available over there. I find that hard to believe. Imagine if the only channel americans had to watch was PBS.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The troll is not trying to provide an actual, helpful mirror. He is trying to drive business towards his hosting service. I wish people would start modding this idiot down, especially when he makes the same post several times in the same article.
> Yet more proof that the BBC license fee is an unmitigated Good Thing(TM).
WHY OH WHY are the only fuckers who realise this not resident in the UK? the public tide in this country (UK) is more anti than pro, and Labour/TB have been doing their level best to destroy the BBC's credibility*.
I on the other hand am very pro-BBC. The only slight problem I have with it is that the fee is the same for everybody (i.e. a poll tax).
* Whether or not Andrew Gilligan exaggerated his story, the government (and Alistair Campbell non-gov) made an enormous issue out of it in order to discredit the BBC, as the charter is coming up for renewal soon. The bastards.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Yet more proof that the BBC license fee is an unmitigated Good Thing(TM)
so a government monopoly is somehow better than a private monopoly?
Yet more proof that the BBC license fee is an unmitigated Good Thing(TM).
The BBC seem to operate under the principal that if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing well.
from8 / :
http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/672947338275913
The most significant revelations were concerning the protection of the content. All content will be DRM'd, only available for a limited period time, once downloaded. As expected, it will also only be available to UK broadband users. In a break with the BBC's long-standing support of Real, Microsoft DRM will be used for the technical trial, but it appears that no final decision has been made.
As was known previously, the EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) will cover fourteen days; seven looking forward and seven backward. The programs that have been broadcasted will be downloadable to the computer simply by clicking on them. A preview of a piece can be watched before committing to download a complete show.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
I don't want to split hairs here; but it's the British Broadcasting "Corporation" not *company. And they aren't even a corporation in that sense. They are a governmental body, funded through the TV licence in the UK.
In other words, it isn't a "company" bringing us this innovation it's the socialistic government enterprise of an advanced european welfare-state.
No, this isn't a communist vs capitalist troll, it's just an area where capitalist media organisations (in their current incarnation) just have too much inertia to innovate like this.
And it's worth remembering, sometimes paying taxes to a government body (a properly set up one) gets you a kick-arse service, and a whole heap of kudos and nods from the rest of the world. Why go for laize-faire capitalism or stalinistic dictatorship.... when you can have the mix of both as you choose. And the evidence seems to be that it's better to pay more taxes than most of us do.
RULE BRITANNIA!!
Man, I hope this catches on in the U.S. with cable stations like Comedy Central and the Sci-Fi Channel. Those two and a handful of others are the only reason I still subscribe to cable. And it pisses me off to no end that I have to pay $40/month for a "standard package" which includes 60 or so channels I DON'T watch.
Individual cable broadcast companies taking this initiative will bring about the same effect as the a la carte cable service many Americans have been asking for. Anyone with broadband Internet access will have access to only the shows they want, on demand, and priced individually.
The only indication of quality in the article was this:
Mr Highfield said the quality of the programmes will be so high that the experience of watching a show on a PDA will be similar to viewing an in-flight film on screens in the backs of seats on passenger aircraft.
In-flight movies are not a real high bar to set..
I would be interested in getting episodes of "The Office" this way, if they were available in their native 16:9 format (encoded in 16:9, not letterboxed), and in a quality comparable to DVD.
Now, for the sake of fairness, let's have a list of US TV programs I will watch on purpose:
Conclusion? The BBC will at least give some series a fighting chance instead of killing them in their infancy. Does this mean that the British shows are always higher quality? Not necessarily, but I'd be a lot happier to pay the TV tax than I would be to pay for American cable...
I, for one, welcome our new cyber-BBC programming overlords.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
There seem to be quite a few Americans here who think BBC produces better quality programs than US tv. But remember, when you view something from abroad, it is usually selected because it is the cream of the crop, it does not nessesarily reflect the overall quality of BBC television. I'm sure few of you would care to see hours of snooker or cricket. Likewise, foreign countries usually buy the best American shows. Foreigners who only see the Sopranos, West Wing, etc. may conclude that US tv is of pretty high quality.
Great, now I can start another lost episode of Dr. Who, when ever I want.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
You Yanks are welcome. You have helped us enough in the past.
My faith is expressed through Nihilism. Do you understand?
"BBC hopes to avoid being left at the mercy of a software giant such as Microsoft"
In that context, what format are they using? Anyone know?
They use Real format right now but aren't they switching to WMA?
That, or his jockey shorts are a few sizes too small.
Why should paying a license fee to the government be inherently better than paying Microsoft? Or, in general, any closed source company?
When I was in Europe, all I could say is "please god Please let me get back to my 500 channels of McDonalds, Wal-Marts, and pure-T drivel, because this shit I"m having to watch over here is BOR-ING."
Government doesn't do a better job than private enterprise.
Isn't the BBC some kind of socialist, government supported thing?
I thought only free-market, capitalist companies in competion innovated? That's what I was taught in my American public school. There's just no reason to improve if you've got a steady, government supported income. You have to be in blood thirsty battle for market dominance to justify doing anything other than resting on your laurels and IP rights. Right?
Where's the innovation in product from the American networks?
Where's customer focus from American media?
Where's the desire to satisfy customer desire in America?
(It's sarcasm. I love my country.)
Does anyone know if this will also provide closed captioning for the deaf too ?
i think that's why the parent said "test launch," boy wonder.
The license fee is not payable by everyone, people over 75 do not pay, and blind people have a 50% discount. TV Licensing
ah, mod points
He's gotten really busy making mirros the last few days. If he doesn't stop trolling soon, he's sure to find himself hit with some kind of DOS. I'm tempted to sign him up for junk mail and catalogs. Tempted, but I don't do that kind of thing.
Can we run BBC programs through a filter that fixes the nasty teeth of those British actors? I watched sliding doors with my wife the other night and thought something was wrong with my new HDTV.
I don't get the BBC on my regular old cable. This would give me a chance to watch some of their shows. If people like their shows in an area then maybe they could expand into that market and already have an audience.
Evolution or ID?
Come on Britain! Get rid of your nanny socialist state and join the rest of the Western world
Unfortunately most of the "western world" is moving towards socialism, not away from it.
Casual Games/Downloads
I just paid mine. For crying out loud. A good thing for *you* perhaps Mr American. I don't even watch BBC TV very often, I really only turn on the box for Sky Football and few other odds and ends. Theres no way I watch 10 quid a month's worth of BBC (equivalent to x3 pay-per-view films).
I freely admit that the main reason I pay for satellite programming in the US is to get BBC America. I'd be willing to drop back to a minimal package (so I still got Food Network, HGTV, TLC and the Discovery Channel), if I could get BBC shows over the internet.
As I see it, I'd get more offerings (not just the stuff that's on BBC America, as it'd be all BBC programming), it'd be more current (eg, Coupling when it airs in the UK... no delay before it's shown on BBC America), and I could set my own relative schedule. [so long as I download 'em within a week of them being on the air].
I would think that in the case of BBC America, it's the BBC competing with themselves, and it wouldn't be as much of an issue. [whereas shows like Scrapheap Challenge (aka Junkyard Wars) or Robot Wars are shown in the US on non-BBC channels], so they might have some issues with those.
I'm most interested in the shows that they don't show in the US, or if they do, it's on PBS stations that aren't in my local area.
Of course, I'd probably only be willing to spend about $200-300/yr for the service. I don't know if they'd make a profit at that rate, on top of the other issues. How much is the BBC license fee?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
You bought the lie. Government wants you to think that. Government works for itself. That is the reality.
So, what. You just mirror everything, regardless of where it's from? Microsoft.com too then? A tiny little server expounding on new technology is one thing, but blindly mirroring a major newspaper that millions log into without any problem just seems excessive. Plus, you're doing it even before you discover that people are not able to see the article. Sounds like blatant karma trolling to me.
*But* stop wasting the license fee on silly shit like this and get us Premiership Football back on our screens. When I can settle down to Liverpool vs. Middlesborough without having the dread hand of Robert Murdoch in my wallet, then we can talk innovation and about a shiny bright little future.
The BBC have no sense of what the priorities of 30 million of their customers are.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Go right ahead and support him. It only hurts his campaign in the US that foreigners that wish the US ill will think Kerry is the best.
Policies
Advertising
The BBC is not permitted to carry advertising or sponsorship on its public services. This keeps them independent of commercial interests and ensures they can be run instead to serve the general public interest.
If the BBC sold airtime either wholly or partially, advertisers and other commercial pressures would dictate its programme and schedule priorities. There would also be far less revenue for other broadcasters.
The BBC is financed instead by a TV licence paid by households. This guarantees that a wide range of high quality programmes can be made available unrestricted to everyone.
The licence fee also helps support production skills, training, local or minority programmes and other services which might not otherwise be financed by the economics of pay-TV or advertising.
The BBC runs additional commercial services around the world. These are not financed by the licence fee but are kept quite separate from its public services. Profits are used to help keep the licence fee low so that UK licence fee payers can benefit commercially from their investment in programmes.
BBC
Thanks! You Limeys are very thoughtful.
Not strickly true. The BBC is controlled by the DG (Director General). He is hand picked by the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors are given their posts by the culture secretary. The License fee is not a tax, you only have to get one if you have a TV set.
Bring on "Robert" Murdoch! Unlike the BBC, his media stations are accountable to the public, and they provide great news and entertainment. He survives on the quality of his content alone. There is no-one being forced to pay a tax to prop him up like there is with the BBC.
Even though a lot of popular American programs are available illegally on the net, there isn't currently a reliable way to get BBC-produced TV programs (although I'm sure they do exist, they're just nowhere near as common). Even if they were though, the fact remains that most current TV downloads are illegal. As a BBC license-fee payer, I would love to be able to obtain episodes legally like this, and it's good to see that the BBC seems to have their customers interests in mind.
and if this is the best way to get it, I'm all for it.
BBC - PLEASE make EE available via a pay-for mechanism (reasonable pricing please!) to those of us outside the UK. Your namesake BBCAmerica has seen fit to cancel it last year, ensuring that pretty much everything on that channel is something they can rerun 100 times a month (changing rooms, ground force, etc). If they could rerun one month of news programming for a full year to keep costs down they'd probably do that too.
I'm sure there are *many* people outside the UK willing to pay $150/year for downloadable EE.
(I can't believe Laura just died either!)
What I don't get is with programs like EE, why *not* sell them online? They're just sitting on a shelf. It's just something which is costing them money to archive, and it's never replayed again (maybe on UK Gold now, but certainly not anywhere outside the UK on a regular basis).
creation science book
sorry, I was ranting and slipped. Ah OK, I'm joking really, but one problem with the BBC is that they claim that rejecting what the market wants is part of their charter as a public broadcaster. The football thing is illustrative of their oversight in this regard. In truth most people want better programs from the BBC, not an internet feed or whatever. I know many readers are biased towards tech (well all readers here) but proprotionally this is a small fraction of the people the BBC should be serving. There are many things they should be fixing first before rolling out new services.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
The "licence fee" is a tax. There are many taxes that some pay and others do not pay.
The BBC is indeed 100% a part of the government in the UK. Its directors are government appointees.
For its own peculiar reasons, beeb shows tend to have extremely short seasons (four to eight shows is not atypical). This likely has positive effects on the quality of the shows.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
I think you'd be more honest if you'd say that yes, you're trying to drive business to your hosting company, but at least you're giving something back.
You weren't a spammer until you started to lie about it, you see.
I don't mean to offend, but if you missed your 500 channels of drivel, why didn't your get cable or satellite? I lived for over a decade in the UK (and some time in Italy too) and saw quite a bit of boring TV, but always appreciated the BBC even when I had hundreds of channels at my click-and-call. Also, for the record, the while the BBC is a public service, it is not govenrment per se. It is independent - witnessed by the tendency of both Labour and Conservative governments to complain about it for being too anti-governemnt. While I generally think that government should restrict its actions to a very small range of activities, the BBC and its independent funding (the "license" which I disliked paying - call it a user-fee, call it anything but a license) is able to take risks that advertising supported broadcasters do not seem to be able to do. Sure they produce some turkeys, but so does HBO.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
BBC (TV) News is broadcast on CBC Newsworld 18:00 - 18:30 EST every day. If you don't have cable but can get a PBS over-air affiliate, many of them also carry it - WNED from Buffalo broadcasts it at the same time as Newsworld (well actually, about 2 seconds later). Many PBS radio affiliates (such as WNED fm) also broadcast BBC news for several hours after midnight.
Yes, I don't have to watch football. I could devote my weekends to travelling to more games. But it is our national sport, so its not like I could be considered unusual in this.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
"WHY OH WHY are the only fuckers who realise this not resident in the UK? the public tide in this country (UK) is more anti than pro, and Labour/TB have been doing their level best to destroy the BBC's credibility*.
:0
I on the other hand am very pro-BBC. The only slight problem I have with it is that the fee is the same for everybody (i.e. a poll tax)."
Even though I do not support your political views, I will support you on the BBC license if it'll return the good Doctor on his quest to fight injustice throughout the galaxy. Iraq's WMD is in E-Space, by the way.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
On a related point the analogue signal is due to be switch off here in the UK in 2010 (or there abouts). The BBC is heavily involved in a move over to digital transmission with Freeview. There is no monthly cost (above the license fee) for this system. Recently a company called TopUp TV has started to provide paid-for extra channels on freeview which require a decoding card to be perchased. This is something the BBC don't want as it starts to ask the question "do we really need a fixed license fee or could the BBC go paid-for viewing?" Fortunatley for the BBC there aren't (yet at least) many freeview boxes with the ability to use the decoding cards. Now if they also allow people to buy and download shows what production is left that can't be quantified and charged for? Radio? - its just a matter of time? ...
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
Of course lots of the good programs could never get shown on broadcast TV in the USA - they freak out over a single female nipple after all.
Time Warner Austin, for example, has about 10 free On Demand channels -- including BBC America. They've been available for at least a year or so, and most of the shows from BBC America are available for on-demand viewing. It would be interesting to see if they will continue to expand "classical" on demand via cable companies
Hyperom.com
I can get Benny Hill whenever I want? Whoopee! The crowning achievement of the British Empire!
Yeah and what's up with that? Exactly when did the British government lose its balls? After Thatcher left? (ba-dump) Does they have pictures of Blair in the sack with Prince Charley or summat?
I know that it sounds flamebait, but it's not meant that way. I really don't get it. You Brits used to have the stones to make your own decisions.
Britons haven't served a foreign ruler in such a capacity since the Roman Empire.
Well, the Roman Empire is back, and the EU is part of it. You can visit the New Roman Empire's web site.
He's obviously American..
If you don't get even the exercise of walking to the pub (and standing) you will end up looking like a Texan.
You get a 1/10 for understanding. Nothing you said contradicts the fact that the BBC is legally a corporation. All you did was detail how the government controls one of its divisions (the BBC).
I listen to BBC radio 4 a lot as they have a lot of interesting programs on. I read news.bbc.co.uk a lot as well. Can't say I watch BBC TV much but I don't really like watching TV anyway. I'd pay my license fee even if I didn't own a TV. I'm more scared of privately run companies than a publicly financed and accountable company.
Quid pro quo - they give us spooks and military satellite systems and we give them culture like Telliy Tubbies, Bob the Builder and Fimbles (what was they smokin ?).
Fair trade !
Exactly. This is shown in the strong left-wing bias in the American government media (NPR and PBS). Follow the money: left-wingers in office are much more likely to give them money than right-wingers (who might even shut down state media organs entirely), so the left-wing bias is in their interest.
If you are a fan of sane copyright laws, avoid Walt Disney's ABC network. If the poor quality of ABC's shows hasn't already turned you off, here are some more reasons not to watch ABC.
Neither do people who don't own a TV.
ITYM 'Come on US! Get a proper welfare state and join the rest of the western world.'
The western world includes the US, Canada, Western Europe and (probably) Australia and New Zealand. Of the above, how many don't have socialised healthcare?
..... how many minutes of advertisements does the BBC show in a day?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I should point out the UK Writers Guild (not the American Writers Guild) is extremely pissed off about this move, because writers won't be getting repeat fees (which can be a large source of income). However, the British Guild has far less power than the American one, meaning not much action can take place over the programmes on demand...
Korean Broadcasting Service has been doing this for at least a couple years. They seem to be about ten years ahead of us on everything -- almost all computers have a TFT screen hooked up to them, everyone has cell phones, etc., etc., etc. And they have one of the most attractive phonetic alphabets around ^_^
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
I was already not watching ABC because of the lousy shows. However, your link made me change my mind. You linked to a page showing how Greenpeace opposes them! This makes ABC to be heroic if they have earned the wrath of these terrorists who push for extremist politics under cover of environmental bad science.
Thanks for pointing this out. As soon as I read the first post about C4, I remembered seeing some sort of disclaimer to that effect on my Father Ted DVD sets, so it made sense immediately. I've been trying not to fall into the trap of believing that any & all TV coming out of the UK is spawned by the beeb, but I think I got dazzled by the BBC logo and ignored the "distributed by" on the shiny packaging.
Hmmm...easily distracted by shiny packaging. Could this be the problem with the majority of TV viewers in the US?
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
TV on demand is only half of the solution.
As long as I am being charged a monthly fee, then the studios will still be motivated to produce cheap crap, like Survivor, instead of more expensive quality programming, like Firefly.
But when I have the option to only pay for the programs that I download, then it won't matter if Survivor is more popular, and cheaper to produce, than Firefly. The only way the studios will be able to get _my_ money is by providing me with Firefly.
Pay-per-program will make quality/niche programming viable, because it will be competing in a different market (a different set of viewers) than the mass programming. Today, when everyone is competing for the same viewers, over the same limited broadcast bandwidth, the only thing that survives is lowest-common-denominator programs.
Of course, having said that, the price has to be right. A few hours per night of pay-per-download programming should cost about the same as my monthly cable access does today. And it should definitely be cheaper than renting from the video store, since there are no tapes to check out, track, replace, etc., and no clerks to pay.
Unfortunately, at least where I live, today's Pay-TV is much more expensive, and inconvenient, than it needs to be. Both the technology and the price need to come into line to produce the revolution I want to see.
The Beeb have a long history of 'innovating' and spending millions of viewers (taxpayers) money only for the technology to fail or to be outpaced by commercial rivals. Don't be surprised if Bill rides into town, flashes WMP10 and/or Janus and they just run with that.
but if they want to get good throughput on a mass scale just use a broadcast protocal.
Last time I checked, hardly any ISPs had implemented IPv4 Multicast because nobody had figured out how to bill for it.
Even better, team up with ISPs (a la BBC Broadband) and deliver content at ISP node level rather than originate it from their own servers.
The Americanese word for that is AKAMAI(tm).
And don't get me started about their broadband service.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Doesn't Google do the same thing?
How many people knew that the Beeb uses Ninnle on all their workstations and servers?
Let's split everything down the middle and call it quits. We'll pay you for what BBC shows we've gotten. You'll pay us for what American TV shows you've gotten. Then you can pay us your portion of the $7 trillion spent over the last 60 years defending your ass from the USSR. I would include the billions from WWII that were never repaid, but you go ahead and pay your share of the $7 trillion and I'll go ahead and write WWII debt off. Now that's a deal! You won't get a better deal from anyone else in the world! And I mean that in an absolutely literal sense.
When is the last time you saw shareholder toss out the, executive or Board of directors of a company?
Major shareholders of The Walt Disney Company managed to demote former chairman Michael Eisner to CEO.
Correction. Since the "Beeb" is one corporation, and the plural does not apply, the correct wording is "The Beeb has...".
err, comedy central shows are available on the web for free, albiet in Real format.
http://www.comedycentral.com/
Time to lose your cable TV : )
WHY OH WHY are the only fuckers who realise this not resident in the UK? the public tide in this country (UK) is more anti than pro, and Labour/TB have been doing their level best to destroy the BBC's credibility*.
Personally I think the anti-BBC sentiment is spin. And just who who are the biggest spinners in the country? And which government friendly media mogul dislikes competition with the Beeb?
Most people I know think the BBC is good for us. Yet, sadly, most people I know also believe what they're told by the media. So they truly believe the majority of public opinion is anti-BBC.
Which leaves poor old Aunty rather defenceless when President Blair comes along with his chopper.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
Can you explain why you come out in favor of The Walt Disney Company's policy related to copyright term extension lobbying?
can't seem to find out whether this is going to be a Windows-only thing -- I seriously hope not -- or if the BBC is going to support the Open Source movement {though the Dirac project would suggest that someone at the BBC already understands the dangers of allowing for-profit concerns to dictate standards}.
:) Quicker than waiting for them to come around on UKTV Gold, as well!
I think this will be sort of similar to Sky Plus, but just for BBC content, and using your Internet connection instead of a Minidish. And, of course, it's the BBC, so no adverts
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
"Yet more proof that the BBC license fee is an unmitigated Good Thing(TM)."
Yes, a good thing for all the Americans etc. that get access to all these online services without paying the license fee (currently Real Video feeds, BBC news etc). Its perfectly feasible to block access using country to IP mapping, look at the Apple music store (and thats another thing that makes my blood boil..), but will they do it? Will they my eye; even though I can't see a reason why not. Is this what I'm paying my every increasing license fee for? Where is Mary Whitehouse when you need her?
The reason he was comparing the CBC to the BBC is that they are both publicly funded and government owned television stations.... NOT that their name start with their respective countries ( which is where I think you got the ABC reference ).
The main difference between them ( aside from the obvious nationality and cultural difference ) is that in Canada there is no "TV tax" like in the UK, so the CBC doesn't have as many dollars to play with, and thus it airs commercials. The BBC has no commercials AFAIK, at least not the BBC news stations.
It's a correct language thing. Proper English speakers use the singular for singular, and plural for plural. Americans tend NOT to use the plural for singular entities.
Do you agree? that I are correct? (since I are a collection of cells, the plural can be used if you are being sloppy.
Surely there is a major risk the BBC is exposing itself to here... if the trial is successful, and the BBC decides to go 'on demand', who will need a TV anymore? If people can just download a program, then they don't need a TV to watch it. If people stop needing TV's, then no licence fee is payable in the UK, and the BBC stops receiving most of its money.
How would the BBC solve this? Argue for a PC Licence?!? This would be very untenable as a PC has so many more uses then a TV.
Would the BBC website become a members only pay site, and then be in breach of its charter?
I'm a cable subscriber. I pay about $100/mo for digital cable and internet access. I dont have a TiVo and my HTPC died. Until I get either of those back up and running I've been downloading The Shield, Enterpeise, and 24. Illegal, maybe. Fair use, might be, do I feel guilty, not when my cable bill comes every month. Put the shows I want on the net and charge a small subscription and we'll talk. I commend the BBC for their efforts and hope it crosses the Atlantic. Kind of analogous to the old days when I had a bunch of techno CDs that got scratched up so I downloaded them again on P2P. I always said if they would come up with a way for me to get what I want online I would. Your looking at a happy iTunes user.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Those ads for its own "programmes" are commercials and nothing else. In fact, these are often the most repetitive and obnoxious ads. No ad breaks: except between shows as you said.
I thought the foreign office paid directly for the BBC world services.
I would have thought they would have regarded it as something of 'the propoganda channel' and cheap at twice the price.
The trick is to put in enough impartial and in-depth programming that the odd "Britian is lovely" and "Drink more tea" subliminal flash doesn't get noticed.
I can't wait for this (assuming they allow US viewers to access the service) because two of my favourite BBC shows, Dead Ringers and Red Cap, NEVER seem to show up on Bit Torrent.
Given that I'm not going to have ANY cable service after the 11th, I'm all for anything that lets me keep on watching my fave shows
Actually, I *am* able to get most of them (I had a source from Nov - March daily) although I missed half of April. Anyone looking for EastEnders via FTP, give me a holler at mgkimsal2@yahoo.com
creation science book
The Norwegian Broadcast Company (NRK, similar license model as BBC) has done something similar for a while now. All the programs they produce inhouse is aired live online, and is also stored in the archive. so you can access it whenever you like.
For the moment this is free for everybody (registration required though), and can be reached abroad (handy for me as an exchange-student in the UK).
-- If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
"WHY OH WHY are the only fuckers who realise this not resident in the UK? the public tide in this country (UK) is more anti than pro, and Labour/TB have been doing their level best to destroy the BBC's credibility"
Go on, admit it. You work for the BBC.
The BBC receive a lot of flak, but they are good at recognising market trends before they happen. They played an important role in Prestel and some of the pre-internet networks, they recognised the Internet and registered their domain name in 1991, and created a web portal when most of the other broadcasters were trying to find the "any" key.
I don't mind the licence fee, though I do wish they would update their system to recognise when you bought a licence in a particular month. I bought my TV licence on March 26th last year and received a letter telling me I should renew it on March 1st 2004. Surely, it would not be difficult to store the day, so my licence is valid until March 25th 2004?
Don't worry, I'm pretty sure we don't vote for our president either anymore ;)
it is under government control no
funded by a government tax no
run under a government charter no
management overseen and appointed by other government officials no
So guys you haven't read the article ?
It seems like the quality of the download will be
low, they are comparing it to seeing a movie in an airplane from the back. PDA's are mentioned a few times.
Nice try, troll. But: the BBC is independently controlled, and socialism != authoritarianism. Take a introductory politics course. And learn to spell, you fuckwit.
I watched it for a few years but gave up: there was better stuff on other channels. No, the PBS news show is not "better". That is a subjective measurement, anyway: and few have made the decision that PBS is "better".
Yeah, because nobody posts TV shows on Usenet or Bittorrent or Kazaa or...
They better get on that, or someone's gonna start making that stuff available to download for FREE!
While there may be a U in harbor in some versions of English, it is not present at all in the place name "Pearl Harbor".
"dumb white folk from across the sea aren't here to help us at all but to exploit us. For a contempory example, see Iraq."
Huh? Iraq is as full of dumb white folks as any place on Earth.
"As alluded to above, what you're describing isn't socialism but fascism"
Socialism is a form of fascism. It is what happens when the fascist leaders say they are doing it to help the poor.
I loved the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series, but thought Red Dwarf was lame and unwatchable. To "you will love Red Dwarf if you love "HHGTTG" is like saying "you will love Diff'rent Strokes if you love M*A*S*H*"
"I don't mind the licence fee, though I do wish they would update their system to recognise when you bought a licence in a particular month."
They do, or they do for me - I received reminders in the month before renewal was due. I then changed to simply paying per month on a rolling basis, and the new licence duly arrives before the old one expires. It sounds like either you are unlukcy or I have been repeatedly lucky for a period of around 7 or 8 years (either are possible I suppose).
I think you are being a little petty complaining about the day when you bought your licence. Yes it would be nice, but I'd rather the BBC was concentrating on making decent programmes than worrying about a small administrative issue that most people probably aren't bothered by. Better new programmes than endless repears of the Good Life, aaaargh!
I have visions of robotic looking people staring gormlessly at their PDAs on busses. Carry around your personal passifier!
WHY OH WHY are the only fuckers who realise this not resident in the UK?
Oops! You got your words wrong. Instead of "realise", I think you meant to say, "think". Realise implies that there's something truthful about it. It's never ever an "unmitigated Good Thing" for you to take MY money. I don't care how good the BBC is, I'll choose whether to support it with my money, not you. You keep your grubby mitts on your own damned wallet.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Fighting fascism with fascism? It was a lover's quarrel. Both of them were fascist, socialist leaders who were quite similar to each other.
The Soviet Union, in fact, ended up being the main aggressor when WW2 was said and done. Germany actually lost land, but the USSR annexed several independent countries to its empire, and it kept these until 1989 or so. This was nothing but naked aggression and imperialism: most of these countries (Latvia, Poland, etc.) never attacked the Soviets.
Companies need to satisfy their shareholders. Their shareholders want more money for their investment, and will constantly pressure management to achieve this. This means that the management will focus on the most popular shows, to the exclusion of less popular shows. Whether you think that ("most popular" == best) is a matter of opinion, I suppose. The BBC, with its licence fee, is not subject to the same pressures regarding the popularity of its programmes, although there is an element of this. And of course there are some British people who think as you do, who would love to get rid of the licence fee.
Why didn't you get cable or a satellite dish? My cable box has > 50 channels, although it's a little while since I flicked all the way through them. There might even be more by now.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
It's called BitTorrent and 1TB of server.
Da Blog
I prefer actual Soviet sources. It was very fascist. In fact, it was the most successful (longest lived, most deadly) fascist regime in history.
"try to get even a basic grasp of the terminology. Just because something sucks, doesn't mean it is equivalent to something else that sucks"
If you are comparing to Hitler, there is no equivalance. Stalin was worse.
Here's the dictionary definition of fascism: "A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
It fits Stalin's rule perfectly (along with that of Lenin).
Better check again. "The Beeb" is both.
You pay an annual fee.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
There are many kinds of football. Just as it is dumb to assume that American football is the only one, it is also dumb to assume that soccer is the only football and go calling it "football" like there is no other.
I think you missed Japan & Israel.
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
...I think this guy has it right. We went straight from WW II to WW III and it's been going on for almost half a century. Everyone needs to open their eyes a bit.
Un-news
Why not! There's a SCO one, and they'll be dead and gone soon.
BBC will still be around for a while.
Take THAT you socialist european ninnies! Further proof that only the free market can drive innovation and meet consumer demand! Don't worry, I'm sure it will make its way across the pond in a couple.. huh? what? THEY'VE got it first?? Dammit.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
No taxes whatsoever go to subsidizing the BBC. The BBC is funded entirely through the license fee and through selling its content overseas. Indeed, there's more of an argument for saying that cable companies in the UK and US are taxpayer funded (they do tend to receive certain grants from governments in both countries to help them roll out infrastructure) than there is for saying the BBC is.
If you have proof otherwise, by all means post it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
>>> Yet more proof that the BBC license fee is an unmitigated Good Thing(TM).
>>WHY OH WHY are the only fuckers who realise this not resident in the UK?
>Oops! You got your words wrong. Instead of "realise", I think you meant to say, "think".
You are exactly the sort of person who doesn't "realise" how good it is!!!!!!
[I say realise because IMO, it is amazing and everyone who doesn't agree a) is wrong and b) hasn't fully considered the consequences of Sky et al. suddenly having 50% less competition
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Incorrect, in every way. There is nothing independent about a division of government (funded like any through taxation, controlled, like any, by the government leaders). BBC is funded entirely through taxes that the government takes from people to give to it (not so with ABC). The BBC is established as a government project by a government charter (not so with ABC, which is merely licensed). The individuals who run the BBC are government appointees, overseen by the government. Not so with ABC.
"No taxes whatsoever go to subsidizing the BBC. The BBC is funded entirely through the license fee and through selling its content overseas"
The license fee is a fancy way of saying TV tax.
"Indeed, there's more of an argument for saying that cable companies in the UK and US are taxpayer funded"
There is much less of an argument. Despite government handouts, the overwhelming majority of funds for ABC, etc comes from regular business operations. With the BBC, it is all taxation.
For the rest of us, it's snobbish cultural elitism. It says, "We know what is best for you, better than you know yourself." That's all too typical of European governments as well as Canada. Europe never really escaped the lord/serf mindset. It just bureaucracized it.
And don't forget that, if the BBC decides it can't protect these webcasts with some sort of protection scheme, they'll be lobbying for laws giving them $200 per Internet connection, like it or not.
That's almost $20/month on top of what someone is paying for broadband. And that's clearly not a "unmitigated Good Thing."
Put me down as glad to live in the good ole USA.
--Mike Perry
http://www.Inklingbooks.com/inklingblog/
LOL - Mr. ego isn't used to being contradicted eh. Tsk tsk.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"Twelve governors ensure the BBC is run in the interests of viewers and listeners. They act as trustees of the public interest and ensure that it fulfils its obligations. They are appointed by the Queen on the advice of Government ministers (there are currently two vacancies)."
That is one funky definition of government you have when something run by government employees with government money is not government at all.
Personally I think the anti-BBC sentiment is spin. ... Most people I know think the BBC is good for us. Yet, sadly, most people I know also believe what they're told by the media.
at my last job there were 6 of us in the pub one day and the topic of the BBC came up, everybody was slating it apart from me and my boss. I got the impression this was par for the course but who knows
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Everone of them should loose their ability to mod forever, and the ones who moderated my message offtopic - if they were able to read english they would have seen 90% of it was very much on topic.
This is general crap. Yes its just some employees, because its a trial! Once the technical stuff works they'll expand the tests to ordinary people! And if that works they'll go generally online, like they have done with the radio.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
your own little world?
Read the link... it's not owned by the government.
It did require an act of parliament to create it, but it's a publically owned company which is financed by it's commercial operations.
They are most certainly NOT a government body!
The BBC is a state-owned broadcaster. This is different to being a government body as they have no remit to serve the government or do what they say.
The governors are supposed to be the independent overseeing body.
Remember, the state = government. Therefore, you are saying the rather silly: it is not a government body, it is a government broadcaster. Shhesh.
>This is The Independent, one of the major newspapers
>in the UK. That's like mirroring the New York Times.
The New York Times gets slashdotted every time it's linked here. All I ever see is a stupid signup screen.
I like my cable modem like crazy, but the same question goes through my mind everytime I here about TV on demand. Why hasn't a cable company used the tech behind broadband to to this? They've got enough room in the wire to do 80 channels analog and still push 8M/min of data back and forth should be able to do some cool things with shows on demand. I know some cable providers offer some stuff on demand, but by combining the two, it seems like a new kind of Cable TV is possible. I'd give them a lot of control due to the more powerful cablebox you'd need, but if they offer a good service, let us decide if we want it. If they offered one version of a show with commercials and a more expensive "version" without, I'd be pretty happy. Just as long as they keep thier hands in the cablebox and keep it away fromt he TV itself, they could do all kinds of fun stuff. Even added features like video conferencing with other people on your cable system would be fun.
Or, how about a community channel that is actaully put up by the community in real time (like bulletin boards or something). Seems liek a lot could be done with the wire currently going into all these houses if you group it all together into a good service.
Even with the setup today, all they'd have to do is switch from thinking of it as a "viewing time" to a "download time" and put some interface on their cable box that hides the details. If I want ot watch the latest Cops, then they can tell me when it will be available to watch. If I want to watch it as soon as it comes out, I can sit there at the right time, if not, I just know that is't been sent to me and I can watch it when I want. I know Tivo's alow this now, but if they did it for us, they'd actually get more customers and less fight all around. They'd screw it up I'm sure, but I'm always curious why they don't try it...
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
The license fee pays for this as well. Much as the BBC annoys me, I wouldn't want a world without the Archers. And from a commerical perspective a radio drama about "country folk" would be a non-starter.
Monty Python got pathetic viewing figures throughout its entire run (something Cleese is whistful about practically every time he is interviewed). Hard to believe now. It wouldn't have been shown on any commerical network back, even back in the day. Much less would they have commissioned a second series after the first.
Don't worry, we've seen it all (Dynasty, Falcon Crest, The Love Boat, Diagnosis Murder, etc etc.) And we don't forgive you for it either ;-)
THOUGHT SO BITCH!!
Saddam, a major terrorist leader, has funded terrorism against Israel, and also against Kuwait and other places. It is completely false to claim that "Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism".
"Empire: 1a (1): a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority. (Merriam-Webster)"
Using this definition, every nations is an empire. Why even use the word at all?
"Several of the nations on the "Coalition" list provided little more than moral support, and some refused to even be named. Quite the coalition, really.
Yes. It is even larger than the first Gulf War coalition. More than 50 countries siding with good against evil.
"5) Was the onslaught of tyrrany when Baghdad fell without a fight?"
No. That was when the terrorist dictator was overthrown. Without a fight? It was taken block by block.
"Were they going to attack us with raw sewage, poor healthcare, a crumpling infrastructure, and a military ready to defect at the drop of a hat?"
Saddam's massive terrorist army, the Republican Guard, melted into the background. It did not surrender. As for worse things than sewage, there are the WMDs. There is overwhelming proof he had them before Saddam forced the coalition to invade: Saddam had even used them. The question is, where did he hide them?
While there is something to be said against the US economic actions (see the steel tariffs), as long as there are governments like that in Germany and France making decisions (such as to prop up dictators like Saddam), the world is better off having countries like this weak and irrelevant.
If you have to provide an alternative to mythical "US hegemony", at least do something BETTER than the US. Saying Saddam's "a great guy! lets prop him up!" just because it pisses off the US is actually working to make the world worse just to spite the US. The same goes for France's atrocious antisemitic foreign policy (supported by massive French neo-nazi marches 200,000 strong), just because it makes the US mad.
Since you are blatantly generalising (in "Europe"? Which country, precisely?), let me retaliate in kind:
;)
You are obviously American, so the chance of you speaking any of the European languages to the level required to watch TV is approximately 1/25 (English) + 0.3 / 25 (Spanish) - no wonder you didn't enjoy it
no taxation without representation!
Commercial TV means higher quality. Sure, you lose thinfs like opera broadcasts. which people say are high quality while they refuse to watch them. You end up getting what the viewers actually think is the best instead of what they say is best.
Hey, remember the Canadian startup icravetv.com (archive link) and the fuss it stirred up. It was a good little service for its time, before getting squashed by legalities. Maybe it would be a good time for them to consider starting it up again.
I do know these stats. It is disturbing how much ignorance and hatred there is in the world, but hey that's the way it is. The ignorance is a PR problem, but the hatred is much more deep-seated. There is a strong sense of imperialist expansion in the Arab world: there is resentment that Israel has reverted more to what it was before the Arabs invaded it, and there is lingering resentment that Spain tossed out the Arab invaders....hundreds of years ago.
Ah, I was in several hotels, in France, Germany, Holland, and Monte Carlo. There was cable, but only hotel-cable.
I did appreciate waking up in the middle of the night due to my jet lag and finding the hard-core porn.
Well, that's assuming you want to keep the ad funded market. I don't see TV as intrinsically needing advertisements. That's a historical artifact caused by the lack of DRM in the analog era - if everyone gets the content for free, you can't sell it directly, and hence ads.
With video on demand technology, content producers could just sell their content directly to the customer, ad free. Certainly a LOT simpler, although a real change for the viewer perspective. And could lead to better programming - companies would only make what they thought people would be willing to pay for. Family Guy would do a heck of a lot better than whatever sitcom followed Friends that year.
Today, a TV station is a company that owns bandwidth, gives away content, and sells advertising. The first two could rapidly become different companies, and the advertising part could go away or change dramatically.
My video compression blog
that might not be necessary, if you make a good value, easy to use product you automatically bypass potential for piracy by making it easier to just do things the legal way.
Since when have you known any media corporation to use that logic?
OT: I'm curious how the price of the TV license is determined? i.e. What is to prevent it from rising beyond its worth (which, granted, is quite subjective)? Not that I don't like BBC programming... I do.
I think you may have misinterpreted the argument I was trying to make, or I did not explain it fully.
My point is that it is a 12 month licence (i.e. 365 days). However, the licence fee system can only handle the mm/yy field. I bought the licence near the end of the month, so have lost 20 days. Imagine you were billed for an Internet connection for three weeks before the line was installed. Would you not be annoyed that you had been charged for use?
Since the state is the government, she is the head of it. Look up the definition of state: all of them mention governing (government).
"The BBC is a State-owned broadcaster and its direction is not influenced by the Government"
but by your own definitions: "the BBC is [government machinery and apparatus] owned but it is not the government".
You are leaving out details. The discussion was about a border dispute concerning uninhabited islands. It was that ONLY. It was nothing like the US giving permission for Iraq to rape the entire nation.
"the US acting like a unilateral cowboy, and that is how we've been behaving - from everything from the ABM treaty to Kyoto to invading Iraq after failing to buy enough UN support "
"Unilateral" is a lie. Even Russia is realizing that Kyoto is a sham. Unilateral means one: you don't have a coalition of 50+ and stay "unilateral". The US also acted entirely within the rules of the ABM treaty.
"The resentment in Israel stems almost exclusively from one thing: land. In 1948"
No, you are forgetting the hundreds-year history of Arab/Muslim oppression and hatred of Jews, including pogroms in the 20th century before 1948. This is the main, root cause of it.
Under Oslo, Israel was well on the path of turning over the land to the Palestinians. However, the Palestinian government felt it could launch numerous terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians during this time (in violation of Oslo). This aggression has stopped the peace process, just like Arab aggression earlier forced Israel to move into the West Bank and Gaza.
Indeed. The Vatican, due to its unique nature, is not a very good example to argue in detail about it being a small country = not an empire. The Vatican is the center of a vast ecclesiastical "empire", with a bazillion parishes and many subject "peoples". There is nothing like this going on with other tiny states like San Marino and Tonga.
"However, he also revealed the basic fact that Iraq *had* destroyed its biological, chemical, and nuclear stocks, with the hopes of convincing the world to end the sanctions"
There is something missing from this story. It doesn't add up. If this were true, you'd think Saddam would be anxious to prove that he did not have the weapons. Instead, he acted just like he still had all of them: he blocked inspectors at every turn for years. Even the Hans Blix report reveals many instances of the Iraqi government blocking the inspections.
"At the time that we invaded, the IAEA was reportedly within weeks of certifying Iraq as disarmed"
Or, the way it was going, years and years. Remember, this disarmanent was supposed to have occured immediately after the first Gulf War, but as with many of the cease-fire requirements, Saddam refused to comply.
"5) By "these guys", do you mean the soldiers in Abu Ghraib"
Yes. Sorry I was not clear.
"The governors safeguard the BBC's independence, set objectives and monitor performance. They are accountable to BBC licence payers and Parliament, and publish an Annual Report assessing its performance against objectives."
Adding that the governors are hired and employed by the government, you have something that is accountable to the legislature, like many government divisions.
> How about in Africa? Are the people of Zimbabwe >better off under Robert Mugabe than they were > >under British administration? Thats like saying are you better of burning to death or being hit by a falling piano. Anyway, Mugabe may well be direct result of UKs failed policy in Africa. Many African coutries succeded in moving towards some sort of stable economic & parlimentary future. Their problems mainly came from; the cold war, where dictators put in power and supported by one or other of the Blocs; ever more repressive control of thier resources by European and American companies; muslim and christian churches who militated against communities working together and improvements in sexual health. Some Africans were complicit in this tragic events, but the people holding the reins were Whitey. The only people who benefited from the British Empire were the British - we still do, much of our income still comes from "investments" overseas. >The areas the Empire "effed up" were Palestine >and the place formerly known as the British >North American Colonies Many indigineous populations throughout the world have been wiped out or disapated by the colonial forces or military, commercial and immigration. Colonial policy was 100% based around religious and commercial desires, not a single thought was given to equalising the African health and education to English standards (which on average were pretty low anyway in colonial times), just to save his soul and steal his possesions. Would you live for one second under the rule of people from thousands of miles away who consider you subhuman? born, live and taxed in the UK, am proud of many of the things we have achieved as a nation (Sinclair C5, Triumph Speed Twin, saving mainland europe from 50 yrs of fascism), but I'm not blind to the long term conseqeunces and the reasons it was done. ttfn Richard
Richard, you brought up many interesting points, but to quote off-hand remarks the US State Department made to Prime Minister Heath's Government, "g**damn it, would you act like you are British?!" That was in response to Heath telling the State Department to go call the EEC (now known as the EU, of course) for foreign policy inquiries.
I seriously doubt the Romans would've apologized for advancing Western Civilization through ruthless conquest in their time. The whole world benefits today because of that ancient Roman bloodthirst. And I don't shed a tear for what Rome did to Carthage (they were baby sacrificers anyway). The British Empire spread western science, education, medicine, industrialism, capitalism, and various forms of Christianity throughout the world. Because of it, a large amount of people on the planet speak English - even if it isn't their primary language. Britain revived the idea of democracy and also spread that to places it never existed in. That's nothing to scoff about.
"not a single thought was given to equalising the African health and education to English standards"
But what were they before the British arrived? Who paid the money to cure tribal peoples of what we'd now consider pathetic diseases? Is Africa today investing in curing AIDS or Ebola? No. Its Western medicine that is leading the efforts. Without the history that got us all to where we are today, we would have no hope of curing all of humanity from such things in the future.
Its sorta like looking at England's conquest and rule of Ireland. Had England given up Ireland a long time ago, say before the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada, we wouldn't have modern democracy today. Spain would've set up shop in Ireland and used the place as a second front in an invasion. England would've been conquerred, and presto, no English Bill of Rights (but the Inquisition instead!). You would still to this day have the strong institutional belief in the divine right of kings (aka "absolute monarchy") and no modern example of political liberalism. With no Parlimentary Supremacy in England, you wouldn't have ever had an Enlightenment and thus no Voltaire in France nor the French Revolution (which was caused by the French King's "Charles I" impersonation in terms of setting up a constitutional monarchy), thus no Napoleon marching throughout Europe for better or worse.
"Anyway, Mugabe may well be direct result of UKs failed policy in Africa."
No, Mugabe is the direct result of the failure of the colonials in Rhodesia (sic) who foolishly declared independence from the Empire because they felt Britain would unravel their priviledged status in order to raise the standard of living and political power of the disenfranchised blacks in the country. Its kind of like the modern "Irish Troubles" where British forces moved into Northern Ireland to actually protect the Catholic minority from the Protestants who didn't want to share power, but then the opportunistic IRA then decided to cry "imperialism" and then attack the very forces that were actually trying to prevent their slaughter. And then they got caught into the quagmire that still hasn't been resolved. It also happened in the British North American Colonies after the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that restricted further Western migration. The colonists were in an uproar over the Crown caring more for the Native Americans than them.
"Would you live for one second under the rule of people from thousands of miles away who consider you subhuman?"
Well, I do that today. Its called being a Californian and having our State government told what to do by the chuckleheads in Washington, D.C. at the Federal level. They steal half of each dollar that Californians send to them in the form of federal taxation so we get to pay for all the other states not carrying their fair share. Its what you in the U.K. will be doing soon enough, except you'll be venting at Brussels and Strasbourg equally, but not in the mother English tongue.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
>what are the problems with it that make people in Britain so reluctant to join?
The EU needs to be large in order to be effective. However, the enlargement drains the larger economies to benefit of the smaller ones. At this moment, the UK economy is the strongest in Europe (Germany is still struggling with the deadweight of reunification).
Previous attempts at economic glue - viz the exchange rate mechanism - placed enormous strain on the UK and showed just how unbalanced things are.
Another problem to manifest is the ludicrous inflation Ireland experienced (which they appear willing to endure as they really *do* benefit from the EU slush funds they're using to build roads).
The very *last* member of the EU to "cry foul" when things are going seriously wrong is the UK - too much of this stiff upper lip nonsense.
The EU *needs* the economic resources of the UK but very few other members (particularly not the French, who're the ultimate driving force behind the EU) will think twice about enacting legislation which hurts the UK if it benefits themselves.
Increasing numbers of people in the UK are simply brassed off because this is *supposed* to be a two-way street.