BBC Comedy Show to Debut Online

Phil John writes "According to BBC News, the second series of "The Mighty Boosh" will be available to stream from the 19th of July, A full week before starting its run on BBC 3. Quoth the Article: 'It is one of a number of pilots that BBC Television will be undertaking over the next few months, exploiting the opportunities that new technologies offer to look at how programmes might be delivered beyond the traditional linear broadcast.'"

Comments

Good job BBC

[hugsa]

Is it me or is BBC simply the, how can I put this, 'coolest' media corperation on the planet? They already have a massive online presence, they do have podcasts and the list goes on .. and I am not british.

Anyway, I'm thinking about going to watch BBC Food now.

Re:Good job BBC

[Travoltus]

It's ironic that a socialist funded network can innovate faster than our great and mighty capitalist free market media can.

America used to innovate like this before MicroSoft and their gang came along... before the dotcom bust there was a huge sense of "let's throw money into the great evolutionary genesis pit and see which species wins". Now the winners have been declared by the decree of those with the big money, and new technologies are threatened with patent disputes or RIAA/MPAA lawsuits.

What the heck went wrong? How can we get our free market system working again?

Re:Good job BBC

[petermgreen]

one thing to remember is that the BBC get traffic to most uk internet users extremely cheap because they have direct peering arrangements with major uk isps and are on at least two major london traffic exchange points as well.

also the bbc are funded by the TV license which is essentially a tax. Afaict the main reason for keeping the TV license seperate from normal taxation is to make it harder for the government to get rid of the bbc (not impossible but much harder than just cutting its budget to almost nothing in a must pass budget bill).

Re:Good job BBC

[Travoltus]

... and their gang... you know, like Time Warner, etc., who all suddenly jumped into the online biz by merging with AOL?

MicroSoft = 1/2 of MSNBC, also.

It's hard to do what the BBC is doing in America, unless you have deep pockets to pay for bandwidth costs which are highly overinflated. Which is why we have the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but they obviously are also lagging way behind the BBC, and they've just barely evaded some big funding cuts (er, cuts in funding increases, that is).

Re:Good job BBC

[Sinus0idal]

I for one, am happy to pay for my TV license in order to avoid advertising on BBC channels and the BBC news website. It is amazing to see the so called 'half hour' simpsons finish in about 20 mins when there are no ads.

Maybe though the BBC should check the location of the IP address and stick up adverts to all those outside the UK who aren't paying a license though :-)

Ok, just kidding.

Re:Good job BBC

[donnacha]

I'm not dissing socialism or the BBC. I find it ironic that America is falling behind them

Fair enough, I just get a little touchy because the BBC has had a lot of flak recently because it failed to entirely roll over for the government on Iraq and, as revenge, open season has been declared on what is probably the best funding model for quality content and objective reporting ever seen.

Re:Good job BBC

[donnacha]

I for one, am happy to pay for my TV license in order to avoid advertising on BBC channels and the BBC news website. It is amazing to see the so called 'half hour' simpsons finish in about 20 mins when there are no ads.

Yeah, best 35p a day you'll ever spend, especially as they occasionally hold the government to task on all their spin. Okay, they're pretty timid but nowhere near as unquestioning as the US media.

Whenever I stay in America I'm shocked by how intrusive the advertising is but Americans seem to have become numb to it. I gather, though, that it's only really the poorest Americans who are subjected to the full onslaught, more affluent Americans subscribe to cable which has less ads and educated Amercians tend to simply watch a great deal less.

Re:Good job BBC

[rokzy]

I'm a student myself but you're talking bollocks.

of course the students pay more - you're comparing multiple people to a single person. you can only watch TV once at a time.

in related news, did you know that all the poor taxi drivers pay more in driving licence fees than all the billionaires with their luxury cars? outrage!

Excellent Comedy

[donnacha]

The first season was really innovative and genuinely funny, a good example (along with Brass Eye, Spaced, Peep Show, Nathan Barley etc) of the best wave of British comedy since the Monty Python/Fawlty Towers era.

Re:Better as a radio show

[Spad]

Production Values are something that are often over-valued - similar to Graphics in games.

Take Red Dwarf, for example - a successful Sci-Fi comedy. It started on a very low budget, but it didn't matter, because the scripts were excellent. In fact, it actually went downhill after they started adding fancy CGI because part of the appeal was its "low budgetness".

If the story is good, you don't need a $2 million an episode budget to tell it - people will watch it for the story.

Re:Better as a radio show

[mike260]

Are British people just used to this sort of production value?

I suppose so. I prefer to think of it as valuing content over gloss; I honestly can't see how doubling the Mighty Boosh's budget would have made it any funnier. Anyway, the beeb's not shy about spending cash on programmes that actually require it, so we get to see expensive shows too.

Re:Hope they can be downloaded and viewed later

[Tubusy]

Don't know if you are aware, but the Beeb is already starting to use RSS podcasts for some of their radio, likely they will do a similar thing with TV one day?

And yeah, it would so rock.