Slashdot Mirror
BBC Thinking of Canceling Sky At Night
Smivs writes "A year after veteran presenter Sir Patrick Moore died, the BBC are discussing pulling this iconic program. This has unleashed a torrent of criticism from fans of the monthly science-based astronomy show. There is an on-line petition for those who want to have their say."
What a terrible loss that would be. The Sky at Night is a very unique show that is a geared to the amateur astronomer. Seriously BBC, what does it actually cost to have a program like this on late at night, once a month?
well, that's just terrible
Yeah, great idea. Let's clear the schedule for some more fucking reality TV.
Fucking morons.
Why can't he just regenerate?
(It works for Dr Who)
It's about time the BBC was abolished and the licence fee scrapped. Clueless middle class pricks spewing disinformation and downright lies disguised as news and then time and time again cancelling, and destroying archive material, of anything culturally good that somehow manages to get made under their control.
The government doesn't mandate that I have to pay 100+ pounds a year to Heinz for their beans (whether I eat them or not) but thinks I should pay a licence fee to the BBC whether I want to receive their shite or not.
Fuck the BBC.
Why not give the show to Prof. Brian Cox? He'd be brilliant and has a huge following and the admiration of young people. It would foster an interest in astronomy in a new audience for many years.
Elements of the BBC has been trying to finish the Sky at Night program for many years. Back in the Year of Astronomy 2009, I was with a film crew interviewing him at his home, where he talked about the fight he has had keeping it going.
Now he's gone, the knives are out. The program does not fit well within the BBC's output - it is a fact based program without stupid gimics or pointless 'celebrities'. Those celebs that do appear are (very) keen astronomers. It is a program format that works well for it's target audience - and it's an audience that is quite big. Every year the BBC (to their credit) organise a public astronomy event. This has proved very popular with families and individuals. My local astronomy society has seen an increase in members and enquiries whenever this event is on.
The problem seems that although the program format works, it is seen to be 'old' - and as we all know, managers want change for change sake. They may talk about viewing numbers, but the program has been aired at different times - often edited to only 20 minutes.
The BBC want it gone, despite Chris Lintott and Lucie Green doing an excellant job with it recently.
But he's still on Youtube.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
What the BBC badly need to do, is revert the show to its old format - one main presenter (e.g. Dr Lintott) expounding on Astronomy, plus *relevant* guest experts, and loose the current crop of b-list cabaret circuit comedians and fading celebs, who have infested the show like roaches over the past few years - if I wanted to see that lot, I'd be watching the One Show, sick bag in hand.
Like a lot of other BBC sourced science programs (e.g. Horizon), Sky at Night has been dumbing down for some time, and, frankly, both the programme and the licence-fee payers deserve better.
The BBC is funded to provide precisely this kind of fringe programming. They should stop chasing the gutter audience with never ending celebrity chat shows and fucking soap operas.
May be the show is not politically correct enough as per the BBC's standards.
Was thinking of walking on water !! Top that !!
If you don’t watch or record television programmes as they are being shown on TV, on any device, you don’t need a TV Licence.
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check/viewtopiccontent.aspx?id=TOP12
The world got along fine without dross TV shows. Go read a book, play music, paint, exercise, play games, fuck, cook. write. Go to a play. Watch live performace it's in 3D!. Make the world a better place.
As for the BBC make programmes for X. Do you really need another polar bear program?
I hate all young BBC presenters. They all speak as if they're pitching you something flashy and retarded from TV-shop.
Doesn't matter. Broadcast TV is dying.
The BBC has David Attenborough, ffs, and yet still we end up with the program dumbed down, repeating previous "information" on animals, and selling itself on 3D and other crap. And last I heard, it was all moved to the Eden channel which I can't get anyway.
The BBC have no interest in keeping this kind of stuff going, so forcing them to keep it is counter-productive. They'll just do their best to cripple it so it "dies" naturally. Already comedians appear on any programs that have the slightest bit of intellect to them to appear "entertaining" to people who wouldn't care less about the program anyway (QI, Science Club, Sky at Night, etc.). Some of them add something (Dara O'Brien or whatever his name is, is actually quite intellectual but still it descends into nob gags, and the people they bring on with him haven't a clue and are just there to be laughed at for not knowing the answer, basically).
Let them kill it off, one of the world's longest running programs on TV, just because they want to. Let them be the idiots. The alternative is a sidelining that will kill it eventually anyway, which is where we've been for the last few years.
The Internet really needs to have a way for people to find content online that has the same ideals as those programs did early on - to educate and inform, not entertain - and let people discover their own niches free of the BBC's over-paid "talent".
Schools and exams are dumbed down already. Now TV is dumbed down. Appeal to the lowest common denominator as always, and suck every outlier back to the "average".
There's little left of merit on the BBC and what there is I cherry-pick out of iPlayer. Let them re-run crap like Doctor-fucking-Who to their heart's content and then wonder why nobody's paying for a TV licence.
I agree that it is probably unwise for the BBC to compete too much with commercial channels. However, compared to what's on most of those commercial channels, the BBC remains a very different broadcaster with a much broader spectrum of programming. Of the major commercial alternatives, only Channel 4 comes anywhere close.
I think it's fair to claim that, among other things, the BBC offers by far the best news and current affairs reporting of any major UK TV network (investigative/undercover journalism programmes, Newsnight, political debate and parliamentary coverage, several niche programmes on the BBC News channel, plus of course their main news bulletins), numerous excellent science and human interest series (Planet Earth, Human Planet, Our World, Wonders of the Solar System; notably, they cover a range from special interest programmes like The Sky at Night through to popular science with the likes of Dara O'Briain's Science Club), numerous original drama miniseries, better-than-average coverage of major sporting events, a broad range of films, and sometimes just good, old-fashioned entertainment (numerous Saturday night BBC One family shows, thoughtful/satirical/informative comedy like QI and Mock the Week). And of course we get all of this without disruptive commercial breaks every few minutes or having graphics advertising the next tacky programme that appear just to spoil the critical moment in what you're watching.
Compared to spending Saturday nights watching Simon Cowell smugly mocking children who were brave enough to have a go at something, news coverage on Sky that really does make Fox seem fair and balanced, and Celebrity Big Brother 174, I'd gladly pay a lot more than the current licence fee if the BBC did go commercial. In fact, I could happily take the BBC channels and the Channel 4 family and dump almost everything else, because I don't watch that much live any more but almost everything I do find worth watching is on a very limited set of the available channels.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
No doubt they'll replace it with some sort of reality show. Utter garbage. The BBC is synonymous with bad decision making these days.
don't complain about reality TV - sky at night is the *ultimate* in REALITY tv
seriously though I could think of many many more things to axe than this that are much poorer and much more expensive.
Actually check the iplayer, and watch new epsisodes.
The Sky at Night is no longer relevant.
It is no longer in tune with modern, forward thinking. It is a relic from an archaic age, hidebound by tradition and conservative values. It does not deal with issues which are important to contemporary life, like celebrity game shows.
The program purports to deal with technical subjects, which are opaque to BBC commissioning and managerial staff. No estimate of its quality can therefore be made. As far as we can tell, it does not conform to ethnic diversity targets, disability awareness directives or political balance requirements. It cannot be fitted into any of the BBC's entertainment categories. We have found no awareness of or support for the program in any of the lifestyle surveys we have commissioned in all the top artistic, cultural and media centres of North London.
Accordingly, we recommend its closure.
No doubt some Imam is screaming for national arson day unless it's pulled off the air.
For the last time, they ate not cancelling it. They are moving it to America on the Stars channel, but since it was a documentary, not fiction, killing off the Brit to replace with an American was problematic. Now that that's solved...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I have just cancelled my tv licence and gone to full catchup TV and i have found that i do not watch anythhing at all on any bbc channels at this current time, but if you look into bbc wordwide you will find that its a provate corporatation thats worth 1.2 billion that sells all our tv programs we have paid for around the world making the people rich off our backs,
Also the bbc has been prooven to be a very corrupt business that paid out 25 million in severence pay to old directors, supported Jimmy saville, gives a very biased view on all news and also gets money from the EU to push forth their agenda`s.
i will miss the sky at night but there are many shows aimed at the amatuer and professional astromoner on youtube and even a daily program from suspicious observer @ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTiL1q9YbrVam5nP2xzFTWQ which keeps you up to date on the stuff we need to know in less than 4 minutes a day
hope you enjoy my rantsworth :)
Star Gazer is the closest thing to this in the US. http://www.jackstargazer.com/ I grew up watching this show back in the 80's. IIRC, the little 5 minute segment would air between Sesame Street and Dr. Who on PBS in Florida. Don't know if that was true in other markets. And it's still shown today. It's what helped spark my interest in astronomy,
This site is too UK centric. The internet is world-wide, you know!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Nobody cares.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Please, Noooooooooooooooooooooo!
I agree ,I saw her presenting some science show over a decade ago. (when I lived in NZ)
The BBC runs ALL of its current 'science' output using arts graduates, and the BBC 'science' output exists purely as an Orwellian propaganda project, like all BBC news and Current Affairs (daily BBC statements that Syria MUST be bombed), BBC World Service, and the BBC run (via MI6 bases in Qatar) Al-Jazeera (a fake Muslim news service set up by the BBC from its World Service 'Arab' desk).
You Yanks probably remember the much lauded science/history show 'Connections' written/presented by James Burke. This marked the last period the BBC management allowed anything approaching real science on the BBC, and Burke was famously sacked when he objected to the BBC moving all science output to their 'arts' departments.
The 'Sky at Night' was an outlier, kept alive by viewer nostalgia for a presenter who had been fronting the show since its inception. The BBC did what it could to piss on fans on real science by treating the show as abysmally as it possibly could.
Never forget that the BBC (back in radio only days) was created to be the Propaganda Arm of the British government, and today is the official propaganda arm of MI6. All, and I mean ALL journalists and senior management of the BBC are MI5/MI6 personnel working under the Official Secrets Act. MI5 has offices in every major BBC building, and vets ALL significant recruitment to the organisation.
Even so, you'll say, what does this have to do with the science output of the BBC. Well the BBC follows Fabian rules, and the Fabians declared that at this stage in British development, the children of the sheeple are to be dumbed down as far as possible. Manufacturing and engineering was almost eliminated in the UK under this project. The sheeple are told daily by the BBC that Britain should be a 'service' based economy. Orwell's 1984 was actually a description of the consequences of a Fabian take-over of society. Communists and socialists are to be nothing but cats-paws of the real masters- the Fabians (The UK now runs under Tony Blair's rules, and Blair is the most powerful leader the Fabian movement has produced).
Of course, in the age of the Internet, and 'pull' sources of information, no-one should be using 'push' services like the BBC or any other mainstream media source (including all the mock alternative media outlets controlled by Blair's partner, George Soros).
Sadly, most BBC viewers are the thickest of the thick, and swallow hook, line and sinker every vile propaganda line the BBC 'sells' to them. Obama/Blair's planned Syria holocaust was a rare example where even the viewers of the BBC said "NO" to the evil lies the BBC pumped out none stop for months.
From 1967, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ6SbvrjxZA
yep, the killer inrternet app in 1967 was actually a share price ticker.......
Sir Humphrey: "Bernard, subsidy is for art...for culture. It is not to be given to what the people want, it is for what the people don't want but ought to have."
--------------------Courtesy - The BBC.
It was inevitable that some changes would come, as a year ago the long-time iconic host of the show, Sir Patrick Moore, died. But this is one of the truly great science shows, so I hope that it continues...
That said, why is the petition being hosted on the spammy change.org website?