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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?
Yeah, great idea. Let's clear the schedule for some more fucking reality TV.
Fucking morons.
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.
No thank you. If it weren't for the BBC, The Sky At Night, would never have even existed.
If there was no BBC, all we would have to look forward to is wall to wall reality TV.
The BBC is THE best broadcasting agency in the world. It has provided an outlet for so many different arts, science and cultural programs that would never have been made with out the public funding it receives and not tied to being a slave to advertising agencies and the wares they are trying to flog.
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.
What nonsense. BBC4?
The BBC is so cheap for what you get. It has to cater for all tastes, so your not going to like everything.
Yes. The BBC may not be as good as people want them to be, but they are certainly better than all the other channels.
All commercial channels first of all broadcast around 30-35% advertisements. Pure garbage.
Secondly, many commercial shows repeat fragments throughout their shows - especially around the commercial breaks. More garbage.
But most importantly, the BBC have a primary task to inform the public, whereas most other channels have a primary task to earn money.
And I really like it that they allow quite some of their shows to be put on Youtube for the whole world to watch.
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 where in the BBC charter does it say that.
They're not supoosed to chase ratings, but they do.
They're not supposed to promote state views, but they do.
They're supposed to be balanced, but they are far from balanced. Apple good, Android bad. Liverpool, Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea good, every other team bad. Israel good, the rest bad.
Inform the public? That's funny because when you read the news from other websites, you clearly see the BBC choosing not to report certain stories.
Their top story two weekends ago was about former Prime Minister Tony Blair's son getting married. Tabloid bullshit.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
And yet it's programming is still far better than that of any of the commercial channels.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Agreed.
I've been to many countries around the globe and few have TV as great quality as we have in the UK and the BBC is the reason for that.
If it weren't for the BBC's advertising uninterrupted shows and so forth you'd rapidly see the race to the bottom you get in North American TV where you can't go 5 minutes without an advert interrupting your show.
In North America you have to have over a hundred channels just to have a chance of anything decent popping up amongst all the shit. I like the fact that in the UK you can find something worth watching nearly all the time by checking only a handful of channels because the quality bar is set high enough by the BBC that they all have to provide as good or better stuff to compete raising the bar in general.
The BBC is one thing the UK does absolutely right.
You mean Michael Le Vell? Who was found not guilty on all counts.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
It's good value when you look at the diversity the BBC provides. Sure you cant agree with the BBC on everything, but a lot better overall. Look at the Olympics. In the US, they got highlights. The BBC showed just about everything, live, without any breaks, for no extra cost.
Personally, I'd like to see the BBC paid out of taxation, providing it cant be touched by MPs. Link the rate to GDP or something, so there is never any question over how much money they get each year.
Radio 4 is actually excellent, but it's niche. BBC television has a few gems that have been dumbed down over the last 10 years (someone mentioned Horizon and Panorama, which used to be good, not so much now). Other than that it's just the usual rubbish indistinguishable from commercial channels.
There's still some excellent stuff on the BBC, but I do at least partially agree with you. The BBC has been chasing ratings too hard for too long.
The worst part is when they very nearly shut 6 Music because it didn't have enough listeners, when it was the only radio station catering for those who were really into their modern music. I.e. really top quality, but not necessarily commercially viable. Exactly the sort of thing the BBC should produce. Thank Deity they failed and their attempt actually turned into a fantastic advertisment for 6 Music ("Listen to us before it's too late") which massively boosted their listener base.
But I disagree that they shouldn't compete with commercial channels at all. Mass market productions are a hugely important way for the BBC to reach people who may otherwise never have seen the good stuff the BBC does. Large parts of their potential audience would never even have heard about their quality productions if it wasn't for mass-market productions.
I also totally oppose the idea that the commercialism of the BBC is an argument against public broadcasting and the licensing fee. If the BBC has become too commercial (it has), then it should be reigned in and told to refocus more on the education aspect. Abolishing the license fee is the only sure way of making everything commercial.
The BBC just need to remember that the mass market productions are not the goal, they are the teasers that allow the BBC to produce their educational stuff.
It's The Doctor.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Moore's fiance (a Nurse) was killed in WW2 by a Nazi bomb so he was no fan of them. She's also the reason he never settled down with anyone else. His view was he'd found the one for him and no one else would do.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
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.