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BBC to Cull the Cult TV Repository
malkavian writes "The BBC has announced that it's going to be ceasing to host it's Cult TV Repository. At a meager 700,000 users per month, it was decided that this was no longer a significantly useful public resource, as the information was also available elsewhere on the net. Many people believe this to be a grievous mistake on the part of the BBC, to allow the history of their own broadcasting highlights to fragment, and possibly be lost like so much of its other content."
Largely covered? The BBC don't have adverts on their site - so every page viewed costs them money, regardless of the pull of other sections of the site. I mourn the loss of Cult, but I can understand where they're coming from - it's not a unique site on the net - although the quality of writing and articles is a good deal higher than your common-or-garden sci-fi site. It's a shame it's going :(
Whilst we are not commenting on the proposed closure of the cult site, could we clarify a point made in a quote from one of the users of the website? The quote is question is " I mean, 700,000 hits a month, the second most popular BBC site"
The bbc.co.uk/cult does have 700,000 unique users a month, however this does not mean it is the 2nd most popular BBC website. Indeed some bbc.co.uk sites get 700,000 hits in a few hours. The Cult site came second in the BBC's Online Audience Appreciation Survey, which was voted by users of the bbc.co.uk, which is where I believe a misunderstanding has occurred.
We appreciate the opportunity to clear up this misunderstanding and to assure you that we are listening to the feedback given to us.
Alas, there is a new organ grinder in charge and he's introduced proposals for a huge number of job cuts, thousands of people are to go. Mark Thompson became Director General following the resignation of Greg Dyke (over a highly public row between the BBC and the UK Government on the War in Iraq).
No matter what people thought of Greg Dyke - he wasn't actually Evil(TM) but he wasn't without a fair share of legitimate critics either - pretty much everybody, both the general public and BBC employees, hate Mark Thompson (something which on his announcement as new Dir. Gen. was fuelled by the media, who have plenty of material owning to his own past behaviour).
I rather suspect this is all to help make the BBC better suited to transition to a subscription based service (rather than a license fee funded one), though this won't be till after 2008-12, and would probably co-incide with a move to switch of analogue TV all together and go digital (so the government can go through with it's plan to sell of the valuable airspace to next generation mobile/wireless operators).
RTFA. They're NOT dumping their archives, just part of the content of the Cult website.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
2. the suit responsible: Jonathan Kingsbury jonathan.kingsbury@bbc.co.uk He looks forward to hearing from you.
The fact is that the BBC is a state broadcaster. It is funded by the license fee, (read: television tax) paid for by the general public, and maintained by government charter. Every so often this charter comes up for renewal. This gives the government of the day a chance to push its own agenda and influence the future of the BBC to its own advantage. If the BBC doesn't play along, the government can ensure that the threat of charter non-renewal hangs over the organization (effectively the end of the BBC as we know it).
The current government (the Blair administration as our American cousins may call it) is blatantly in love with private industry and wishes to ensure that the BBC does nothing to infringe on areas in which the private-sector could otherwise profit. The Blair government believes that the BBC has an unfair advantage in that it has guaranteed funding via the license fee and does not need to compete with other private-sector companies to maintain its profitability. Therefore the government has decreed that in order for the BBC to receive charter renewal, it has to relinquish anything that is not a "core public service function".
In a nutshell, the government argument to the BBC is: "If you're providing something that the private sector could do, it doesn't matter how useful, beneficial, or loved by the public it is... Kill it... We want our friends in big business to line their pockets with some half-assed imitation of what you do so well".
Sadly this has resulted in a severe over-reaction on the part of BBC management, who have subsquently decided to close down anything which doesn't fit this "core public service function" and have a demonstrable benefit to the license payer. Cult TV just doesn't cut it as far as they're concerned.
They are :)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/imp/