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

[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.

Interesting

[ScrewMaster]

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

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.

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.

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.