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End of an Era As Pioneering BBC3 Becomes an Online-Only Station (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson writes: 13 years ago, BBC3 launched in the UK. Last night, the TV station broadcast over the airwaves for the last time. In a bid to slash expenditure, the youth-oriented channel that launched countless comedy careers is now only available online. The likes of Being Human, The Mighty Boosh, Gavin and Stacey, and the like will live on, but only on the web — which the BBC is spinning as an opportunity to be freed from the constraints of regular scheduling. The change has been known about for some time now, and there have been a number of campaigns and petitions to try to get the BBC to change its mind.
It is so sad that they have moved down to a medium which nobody knows or cares about.
I mean, this makes the television antennas in all of our phones practically useless now....
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
I really hope Netflix doesn't copy this model - it could be fatal for their business!
People will point to the odd thing that surfaced on BBC3 that was good. They forget that the occasional good thing was buried in an avalache of absolute shit.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The channel was meant to cover "young people" as the BBC, in its wisdom had decided that they weren't watching enough TV (as if that was a bad thing). However, the BBC's idea of "young people" was a rather arbitrary age range of 16 - 34 year olds. That is a group defined by the advertising industry, but since the BBC is advert free, it's not really relevant to them and can hardly be said to be a "demographic".
Given that most 16 year olds are spotty children, living with their parents who still snigger when someone says "fart" and 34 year-olds are generally on their second baby, with a partner, mortgage, job and a car or two - it's a pretty wide range to please, So it's no surprise that the target audience (who weren't watching enough TV) stayed away. Sure, in the eyes of those people who made a living from BBC3, it was "pioneering" or "innovative". However those people were generally, themselves, not exactly target-audience material, either.
When the TV "digital revolution" (i.e. replacing the small number of wide-band analog stations with a large number of digital ones) started, there was a plethora of new stations. Most of them had very little content that was either new or worth watching. Most of these, especially the new ones that the BBC started, can be considered failures. BBC3 is just the most high-profile failure and probably won't be missed, except by those middle-aged 34 year-olds who still wish they were spotty children - or who are still living with their parents.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Not sure if serious, so I'll answer anyway.
No - the BBC is not the only game in town when it comes to television and radio in the UK. The BBC is uniquely-funded through a "television license" which anyone who watches live broadcast television must pay, regardless whether they watch the BBC's channels or not. There is no commercial advertising on the BBC when watched in the UK (though I understand this is not necessarily the case with the versions of the BBC that are shown internationally).
But there's also the commercial broadcasters:
ITV (a regionalized network of broadcast companies) operates a number of channels
Channel 4 (also broadcasts E4, more4, Film4 (which makes original film content as well as screening Hollywood and independent films)
Channel 5 (again, they operate a few channels).
Sky (satellite TV provider, which has its own channels, but also broadcasts channels from overseas, typically US channels - their set-top boxes also have access to a streaming catch-up service with access to download TV show box sets for you to watch. Sky is hideously expensive, though)
There's the usual assortment of TV shopping channels and adult entertainment
The BBC also has its 24-hour news channel.
Telephone giant BT also has its own service, but it's a streaming service that is (as far as I know) only open to BT Broadband (DSL) and BT Infinity (FTTC) customers.
And we can watch Netflix and Amazon Prime here too. Just not with as much content as the US gets (this is true of Netflix everywhere though).
He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
So, in England...they only had 3 channels...and are now down to 2 on TV?
Pre-digital, there weren't many. We only hit 4 in 1982 and were up to 5 by the nouglties: 2 BBC (public), 1 ITV (commercial), Channel 4 (public-owned-commercial) and the unimaginatively named Channel 5.
Now, on terrestrial digital, The BBC (public, no ads) had 8 channels (BBC1,2,3,4, BBC News, BBC Parliament & 2 kids channels) although 3, 4 only run from 7pm, before that the kid's channels use the same bandwidth. Then there's a shedload of non-BBC channels: ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 now each have 3-4 digital channels, not counting '+1's and HD versions, plus numerous others (I've lost track of who owns what). Of course, the advent of digital also created a 5-fold increase in the available license fee and advertising revenue, to fill this plethora of new channels with premium content :->
Sadly, we also have shopping channels. Prize for the biggest waste of bandwidth (savour this blow by blow):
QVC (a shopping channel, if you need a stretchy fat-dissolving bra with integrated pressure washer )
QVC HD (See the stretchy fat-dissolving bra with integrated pressure washer in glorious 1080i)
QVC HD +1 (time shifted by an hour in case you'd missed out on that stretchy fat-dissolving bra with integrated pressure washer on regular QVC).
I don't want to live on this planet any more.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The only things I personally can think of are Gavin & Stacy, 2 Pints and The Mighty Boosh
Cross Two Pints off your list!
Add:
Little Britain
Being Human
Torchwood
The Fades (shamefully axed after 1 series)
In the Flesh (managed 2 series before the chop)
Our War
I didn't watch 'Nighty Night', but a lot of people rated it.
The BBC licence fee has been frozen (Govt interference!) for a number of years now due to intense lobbying by the likes of Sky and the newspapers. Its not just the Conservatives, Labour under Tony Blair were happy to be in the Murdochs pocket too.
In real terms this means that the amount of money they get is not enough to cover running the channels they had 13 years ago, is not enough to make/commission more than a few new programme ideas and is not enough to compete with Sky for high profile sports programming. Added to this, the BBC has been saddled with funding a government benefit, the provision of "free" tv licences for the over 75s, and with the number of 75 year olds growing, that means a continuous drop in licence fee income.
The BBC used to produce ALL their own programmes. Under successive licence fee settlements, they have been required to commission from outside production companies. The number of BBC production studios has shrunk dramatically. Ther BBC only has the right to rebroadcast shows or obtain extra income from overseas sales when they make the programmes themselves. Otherwise future income goes into the pockets of the production companies or other rightsholders.
Other income streams like BBC Publishing have also been stolen and sold off in the name of the great god "competition" and the BBC is in danger of losing much of their web content because of johnny-come-lately newspapers who have seen their own print readership evaporate and want to appropriate the online digital content pioneered by the BBC.
BBC 3 wasn't a failure. Over its lifetime it aired ground-breaking comedies and dramas. Having it shunted into the on-line abyss is yet another nail in the coffin of strong, independent programming from the BBC.
The whole country since the recession has been in cost cutting mode, and the 60+ generation is basically that which has been protected from everything in every way both in government and elsewhere.
BBC3 has been cut because the BBC has decided to cater almost in it's entirety to the 60+ demographic, and this is highlighted by the fact that the average age of a BBC viewer has crept up from just under 50 to 59 since the recession started and cuts began.
But it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy for them, they've cut everything for the younger demographics, and so the younger demographics have stopped watching, and in turn they justify further cuts by pretending the younger demographic just isn't interested.
The net result is that you've got a majority of license fee payers no longer being catered to by the license fee. The BBC still churns out the odd age-neutral show that younger viewers can enjoy, but honestly, every time I'm bored and I stick the TV on to see if there's anything worth watching it's either a boring medical drama, a boring poorly acted costume drama, a shit talk show, or Clare Balding doing something entirely uninteresting.
And it pains me because I've always loved the BBC, but I'm genuinely having a hard time justifying continuing with the TV license. It's £120 or whatever it is now each year that I simply no longer need to spend, that no longer serves me, but the government is talking about legislating so I need the TV license even if I never watch broadcast TV ever again but watch things like Netflix, and Amazon Instant Video which I already pay for separately. The license fee is turning into an actual tax on watching video all because the BBC has failed to keep earning it by doing it's fucking job and catering to a broad audience and so has been losing fee payers like no tomorrow.
OTA is growing in the US. And for me, the picture quality beats Netflix almost every time.