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

[RickPartin]

Yes, damn you Microsoft for letting our TV shows suck.

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

[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

[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

[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: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

[neil.pearce]

A multi-billionaire with a telly in each room of his 90-room mansion pays less than a student household

Who exactly, of the THREE UK based sterling multi-billionaires is "abusing" the TV licence laws the most?

Duke of Westminster
Richard Branson
David Sainsbury

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!

Re:Good job BBC

[Beige]

They are also taking a lot of stick for their online work. Many see the quality of it to be unfair competition to private companies and in conflict with their charter, which is soon up for review. Those in the government such as Tory Blair that consider themselves above criticism may present this as proof that the BBC has willfully failed to fulfill its obligations. They could then change the charter to suit their own ends, ruining the BBC in the process. The BBC knows this, but it has to do online work or it will fall behind the competition. Hence it is attempting to demonstrate that their online presence is largely an extension of broadcasting, as befits the charter - hence things like this and the creative archive.

Interesting

[ScrewMaster]

"The Mighty Boosh, eh?" Odd that they'd base a new show around the current American President.

Re:Interesting

[geofferensis]

I think you are referring to the show "The Mighty Douche".

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:Excellent Comedy

[jonathan_ingram]

I suppose someone who liked The Mighty Boosh would like Nathan Barley... personally I found them both mediocre. Peep Show wasn't that great, either.

15 Stories High, on the other hand, was genius. "Blue Rat: All the Power of a Rat, in a Can".

Mighty Boosh

[nother_nix_hacker]

The Mighty Boosh is a fantastic show. I think you should all watch it and revel in its comical genious!

Re:Mighty Boosh

[bscott]

It's very weird for me to see "The Mighty Boosh" mentioned here. Rich Fulcher lives near me and now I have to figure out how to explain Slashdot to him... worlds are colliding here, people!

This just in

[RickPartin]

This just in. Reports are comming in that the BBC has just went completely bankrupt after letting people download a TV show for free.

Just wait for iMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

So those of you that don't know, the BBC are getting ready for the second trial of it's p2p programme download service - http://www.bbc.co.uk/imp/ Places on the trial still up for grabs!

Nice

[jb.hl.com]

This just helps cement my positive opinions of the BBC...I'm not usually very patriotic, but the BBC makes me want to start running around singing Rule Britannia at the top of my voice and hitting Welshmen with Union Jacks.

Better as a radio show

[jone_stone]

Personally I thought this show worked better on the radio, where I didn't get distracted by extremely low budget. Are British people just used to this sort of production value? No, I'm not being a troll -- I do think it's a very innovative series, but the TV version just didn't hold my interest. It seems like a lot more shows that come from the UK have much lower production values than we're used to seeing in the US. Anyone have any insights as to why there's such a difference?

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.

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

[Larry Lightbulb]

The BBC have told me that, in theory, only people with a TV license should watch the broadband section of their site, but they have no way of checking.

It's a conspiracy!

[zanderredux]

Actually, the BBC is engaged in a highly secret conspiracy orchestrated by 10 Downing Street and the British Crown to standardise spelling and pronunciation around the British English, putting to an end over than 20 years of American English domination in the global media, in the most un-American way ever conceivable: by giving stuff freely via Internet.

Want proof? If you go abroad, take a look at CNN International. It uses British English as an attempt to present theirselves as a neutral news outlet, in a trend that began around the late '90s

Quality!

[Martz]

The Mighty Boosh is a hilarious, quality TV series. It's slightly off the wall, but it's good to see comedy cover new ground rather than reinvent the old gags.

I'm also proud that the BBC is going to trial the streaming shows, they seem to have been heavily investing in multicast routing with the ISPs to enable delivery. More details about it here: http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/

If anything, you need to watch it to see just how good Vinces' hair is!

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.

Re:what media player will be required

[arkhan_jg]

To be fair, realplayer 10 is a lot nicer than previous versions. It's based on the their opensource helix player, but with the proprietry real codecs added. No adware, spam, or popups.

I have no trouble recommending it now.