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

Re:Good job BBC

[cygnusx]

Don't blame Microsoft-- it'd be less work for them to ship media software without DRM. The problem is that the content cartel (my name for the RIAA/MPAA) are too greedy by half-- they'll stick with the dessicated corpse of Mickey and their old properties until he's no longer cool... it's happening already.

Honestly, the best thing that could happen to copyright is a patent-style 15-20 year regime. The thing is, forget Microsoft and the tech industry, the entertainment business seem to pretty much have the pols in DC in their pocket.

Re:Good job BBC

[acb]

Actually, the BBC is intending to use GeoIP-type technologies to discriminate between British users (who are paid for from license fees) and overseas users (who aren't), in the Creative Archive, which will be available in Britain only. (This is due to a management decision; the people actually working on the project wanted it to be available to everyone, but the powers that be said no.)

Re:Better as a radio show

[jonathan_ingram]

You're right -- TV series in the UK tend to be lower budget than US shows. You can explain most of this just by noting that the UK is a much smaller market than the US (population of 60 million vs. 260 million), and that the UK's much more likely to buy US programming for the main channels than the US is to buy UK programming. We also have a much smaller number of channels. Ignoring the minor satellite channels, only have four networks: the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Five. The main satellite network, Sky, are responsible for a small amount of original content, but almost all the material they show are US imports. Less competition means less need to spend millions of pounds on a show to differentiate it from its competitors. On the other hand, the smaller number of networks means that they tend to stick with shows, even if the first few episodes aren't particularly popular. It's very rare to see the sort of mid-season show cancellation common in the US.

So, you have to realise that the TV landscape in the UK is very different from that in the US. TV is also not the be-all and end-all in the UK: thanks to the BBC we have a flourishing radio network, which commissions new drama, comedy, and quizzes. Many popular TV shows are adaptations of shows which first appeared on radio.

We also traditionally have much shorter series lengths: it's quite typical for a series to only have 6 programmes long, or 12/13 for a longer run, compared to the 22/24 episodes in a typical season of a US show. There are several reasons for this, one of which is that in the UK TV shows are typically written by a very small number of people, compared to the committee-based script writing common in the US.