Talk:BBC/Archive 1

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Sorry to ask a stoopid question, but--are there private television and radio stations in the U.K.? --AnonymousCoward

Yes, there are both national and local commercial radio stations, offering a wide variety of news and music genres. The number of national commercial stations is likely to get a lot higher with digital audio broadcasting being phased in.

With television, the market is even more fragmented. There are 3 commercial 'analogue' channels, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, while on digital services (eg Digital Terrestrial or Digital Satellite), the range is much greater. We have hundreds of (mostly low quality) commercial television services on digital satellite within the UK, mostly showing re-runs of 1970s sitcoms! --Dweir

From article:

Claims of BBC bias

During the middle of the night July 2001 attack by Italian security forces on the independent media centre in Genoa, the BBC allegedly refused to broadcast live footage of the police violence streaming through the internet on the basis that "there were no independent confirmations".

The BBC is generally considered to have given very little coverage to the 2001/2002 silent genocide in Afghanistan, in which some fraction (initially expected to be about 50%) of 7.5 million people were killed by actions (bordure closures and bombings) expected to be lethal by terminating food supply lines. In preference, the BBC and ITN chose, for example, stories such as forest fires in Australia which killed noone.[1]

The BBC is also considered to represented corporate and government interests, and not those of ordinary citizens' groups.[2]

216, this is interesting and potentially valuable stuff. Would you please review our policy on neutral point of view, rewrite it, and put it back in when it conforms to the NPOV? --Ed Poor

I'm going to put the reference to the American Supreme Court back in. At the moment the article says that the BBC is independent of the government and this isn't strictly true. Just as the American President can pack the Supreme Court with people sympathetic to his political views, it's possible for the Prime Minister to pack the BBC's board of Governors with sympathisers, as Mrs Thatcher proved. If anyone has a better metaphor, by all means replace the Supreme Court with it but don't just remove the Supreme Court reference and bluntly state that the BBC is independent of government because the situation is not that simple. And it's not particularly Americocentric. I'm not American and I understood what it meant. -- Derek Ross

Derek, I changed the reference from the Supreme Court to the United States Postal Service. It seems more reasonable an analogy to me. If you disagree, go ahead and change it back. -- Zoe

Now it's even MORE Americocentric. Why does there need to be an analogy! I don't think the Supreme Court article needs to make an analogy to the BBC or the Post Office.62.64.250.162

I don't know what the comparison with the USPO means either. I thought that the USPO was a government department which the BBC isn't. The Supreme Court reference was better. However we do need to make some analogy because many people abroad think either that the BBC is a Government department -- an assumption which *this* article originally made -- or they don't know what its status is. Now a lot of people worldwide know what the relation of the US Supreme Court to the US Executive is so it's a useful comparison to make since its fairly exact. If you can come up with a better one which will be more easily understood globally and doesn't refer to the US, be my guest and use it. -- Derek Ross

Yep, That's a good description of the independence issue. Cheers -- Derek Ross

Hey, I said, if you don't like the analogy, change it. -- Zoe

Good page. I thought some of the statements were not neutral, and the spelling of some of the words confused me because I am used to American type of English. I corrected a couple of typos. But, overall, it was an interesting and long view back at the BBC's history. I say this is an important page to Wikipedia about an important tv channel. The page needs to be NPOV'd, but then again, I cant talk. I used to write the most non neutral articles when I began myself..LOL

Antonio Im So Excited!!! Martin

OK, so what needs looking at for NPOV? Obviously it needs more material on the sort of criticisms and difficulties the BBC faces - it is from time to time accused of bias by both left and right; it uses the licence fee to support activities (such as the website) that compete with the commercial sector; what else?

I think "It is still generally regarded by viewers and listeners as providing news, entertainment and other broadcast services of the highest quality available anywhere in the world." would be much improved by reference to surveys, etc.

"[Licence fees] ensure that the BBC is sufficiently funded to provide for the British public high quality and diverse media content..." might be better as "aim to ensure that the BBC is sufficiently funded..." or something like that.

I've also never been entirely happy with the paragraph starting "In places like Northern Ireland...". It seems to imply that the BBC's import of The Simpsons is specifically aimed at NI. However, I don't know the NI situation well enough to write a better paragraph on it.

It's also odd in singling out Northern Ireland. Scotland, Wales and the English regions also have their own political, drama, comedy and local interest TV programs. There's nothing special about NI in that regard. All parts of the UK share national programming, like Eastenders and the Simpsons, and opt out for local programming. -- Derek Ross

I've attempted a rewrite of this section - I think this is an improvement, although could probably be further improved in some areas. -- Mark New

Speaking of The Simpsons, the article could do with a better paragraph on the BBC's attitude to imports - Dallas was a great hit for them, but imports seemed to fall right out of favour until the mid-90s, when C4's success with Friends and ER pushed the BBC into buying The X-Files... 24 seems to be the Beeb's big import at the moment.

This is getting to be quite a long comment, and I'm supposed to be working. I might look more at this article later. I am going to kill the snarky comment about U.S. spelling, though. --rbrwr 08:57 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

Yes right! Well done. Brothers, sisters, we don't need that transatlantic sarky comment thang! (with apologies to Heaven 17) Oh and what on earth is snarky, and have you copyrighted it, and can I use it too? :) Nevilley 09:07 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

[1][2] [3] and so on. Tannin

A quick bookmark for future reference: The people vs the Beeb by David Aaronovitch in The Observer March 16, 2003.