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[reddragdiva]

Holy Fucking Shit. (Original BBC story.)

Of course, certain interests think otherwise.

Update: The full speech; What the Internet was invented for; Certain interests can just fuck off.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahh yes... private versus public libraries.. The debate continues..

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

On a good day, this might mean that the older Letters From America (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/letter_from_america/default.stm) are available. That will be neat.

[justinep.livejournal.com]

*smile*

What about 'book at bedtime'? :)

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a moron Across the Pond, you simply have no idea how thrilling this is. Here, if any American wants to see any BBC content, we either have to pay extra for BBC America on cable (with damn near every program hacked to ribbons to jam more ads than programming into every hour: I have friends who bought DVDs of The Young Ones and Coupling just so they could see the complete episodes for the first time), or we depend upon the Public Broadcasting System. And God help you if you have to depend upon an incompetently run PBS station like the one here in Dallas: Doctor Who might run at 12:30 on Saturday morning...if one of the station's bimonthly pledge drives isn't messing with the schedule.

I won't even get into the problems with getting programming directors at PBS stations to take a chance on anything new. For instance, in Dallas, most of our BBC content consists of old sitcoms such as Are You Being Served? or Up Pompeii that sell very well to the wealthy and elderly contributors for whom KERA administrators have orgasms. KERA makes a big deal of being the first PBS station in the US willing to take a chance with Monty Python back nearly thirty years ago, but they don't mention that all of those Britcoms run late, LATE on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday nights, when there's absolutely no chance of the bluenoses coming across it...or anyone who has to work or goes out on the weekend. (For the last eighteen years, Doctor Who has always run after midnight on either Friday or Saturday nights, attracting only those Cat Piss Men who can't get laid and aren't welcome in the bars, with absolutely no advertising to let anyone know that this or The Prisoner or anything else happens to be running...and then the programming directors complain about how the show has such a pathetic audience base. However, there's no talk about moving it to a more complimentary timeslot, because "It's always run on Saturday nights"...only because, back in 1985, one programmer decided to take a chance but shoved it into a timeslot where everything else had bombed. Naturally, when it took off, it had to be the timeslot, not the content.) Arioch help you if you ask if the directors would be amenable to running The Tripods or Day of the Triffids or much of anything else; that would imply that these people would have to get up and work for a living.

To put it another way, considering the amount of grief US viewers have with getting BBC content, even on video or DVD, we'd be willing to pay for access to the online material. Anything beats having to deal with some clueless yuppie who personally farts on each and every program request with "Well, we tried running Blake's Seven at three ayem on Wednesday morning, and it didn't get an audience, so we see no reason to try again."

[perverse-idol.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of potential in this. Rather surprising though, but I guess (hope) the decision's been thought through...

Liking the fact that the BBC's being stubborn as ever - licensing off some of its programs would be a disappointment.

[poggs.livejournal.com]

"We are flattered that Tony Ball should be so preoccupied with the BBC but his comments have to be seen in the context of Rupert Murdoch's [BSkyB's owner] long and hostile campaign against the BBC."

That comment rocks. I support Greg Dyke's proposal. BSkyB are probably the most overcommercialised broadcasting company I've seen. Look at Sky Sports' coverage of football - computer graphics are used to the point where it just becomes ridiculous. I don't really give two hoots about hearing an industrial metallic sound every time a "fact box" comes on screen. I don't care that XYZ player uses a certain brand of toenail clippers (and I don't think many viewers care too).

In short, the BBC is the antedote to BSkyB. We need both. The BBC thinks things through, its calm and stable. The BBC is accessible. BSkyB piss money all over the place and try to put themselves in a position of "eliteness".

Sorry, Murdoch - it doesn't work with me.

[nicoalfsen.livejournal.com]

I am so there. Oh wait, I'm poor. At least it's nice to know I'll have something I can look forward to legally downloading when I get my cable connection next month.

I'd forgotten about licensing fees for owning a TV. That's a fairly hefty sum, isn't it?

And if the BBC shares its archives with the world, even us USian non-license payers, then maybe someday our PBS will open its archives. Just think of all those Sesame Street and Bob "Happy Little Trees" Ross painting instructional videos gathering dust...

[mirukux.livejournal.com]

i remember the quote taken from a bbc representitive as he left the conference hall after tony ball's speech; "i think it was a little self-serving". too fucking right.

[reddragdiva]

"I'd forgotten about licensing fees for owning a TV. That's a fairly hefty sum, isn't it?"

£116 a year. I think of mine as paying for John Peel and 6 Music.

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

Which raises the question: will the archive include all the Peel Sessions recordings?

I'm hard-pressed to decide whether that'd be even cooler than all the BBC TV stuff. Pretty close, I think.

[reddragdiva]

Ooooooh, that's a nice question! Because the copyright in those recordings is explicitly owned by the BBC. And they tried releasing them on record in the late '80s and early '90s, but the series seems to have stopped now. Hmmm.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Note for comparison, when people complain about the license fee, that the "basic cable" packages run about US$400/year and often are the only way to get reasonable reception in either rural or heavily urban areas due to signal degredation over distance or multipath, respectively. Granted, that adds another 50 channels or so to the lineup, but few people watch more than the locals and perhaps 4-6 others additionally. The same sorts that watch SciFi don't generally watch ESPN, and where there is an overlap, there's very little overlap with Cartoon Network.

Up for it

[vampwillow]

and how quick will stuff make it to archive ... if it is under a month I'd rather download than have a licence to watch/listen 'live'

My TV cost less than your license fee!

[nicoalfsen.livejournal.com]

1. The mind boggles...1200 TV offenders caught daily? That's a very large TV police force! Can they detect you if you're using a computer with a TV card? What if you just watch DVD's on your computer?

Paying the fees means you don't have to sit through 25 minutes of commercials every hour, right? That alone would be worth paying for.

2. The BBC is still releasing albums here - Stereolab and Elastica both released Radio 1 Sessions recently, which include Peel Sessions. Besides, the Peel Sessions that have been previously released are freely available, more or less, although who knows what gems are stashed in the vaults? The video part excites me; I'd have a hard time downloading an episode of Chef! from SoulSeek.

3. I haven't been active in LJ lately--if it's true that posting limits have been removed, even for free accounts, then I can stop combining everything into one big post--in fact, I can now run willy-nilly with the one-liners, right?

Wheee!

Re: My TV cost less than your license fee!

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

when they say 'caught', I imagine they mean 'sent a series of increasingly snotty letters'. I've never actually heard of anyone having to pay a fine, though presumably it does happen.

Right, but they still need to surf through every.single.stinking.channel.

[nicoalfsen.livejournal.com]

But cable TV subscribers in the UK pay the license fee on top of their cable charges, right?

You get what pay for, I suppose. I'd heave my TV into the dumpster before paying for the "privilege" of watching Fox News.

Re: My TV cost less than your license fee!

[nicoalfsen.livejournal.com]

Oh, so then it's like getting a parking ticket in the U.S.

Wait, I can't use that analogy anymore. People do serve jail time for unpaid parking tickets these days.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

That, and Radio 4.

Re: My TV cost less than your license fee!

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Does that count the increasingly snotty letters sent to people who genuinely don't have TVs? (I have been one of these people. I sent back increasingly snotty replies, as I didn't really care if they raided me - there was no TV in the house).

[arkady.livejournal.com]

About two or three years back there was a Panorama special about the numbers of single young mothers and pregnant women being sent to prison because they couldn't afford the £1000 fine for not having a license.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Watching DVDs on your PC is fine; it's the possession of equipment capable of receiving TV signals without a TV license that is an offense punishable by law. So whilst you can watch DVDs on a PC without needing a TV card, once you add a TV card to the equation you'd better have a license!

[reddragdiva]

Probably.

I am all for the TV license (it seems to produce a decent BBC) and went online to pay it as soon as we bought our television. Their web form didn't bloody work. They emailed me back saying they'd let me know when it did. A month later, I got a snotty letter saying they had received information that I had an UNLICENSED TELEVISION and I'd better pay up OR ELSE. A week after that I got a nice email saying it should work now, could I please try again (and I did, and it worked). I think their Snotty Letter Division operates entirely untrammelled.

[reddragdiva]

1. TV Detection is largely mythical. That said, TV cards in computers count as 'televisions' for these purposes. However, a video player with monitor that doesn't have the RF whatever to pick up television doesn't.

Paying the fees means the BBC gets money, and their most annoying ads are the station identifiers.

2. The BBC isn't releasing those - I'm speaking of the Strange Fruit label.

3. Dunno. Give it a try. And even if the posting limits are still there, you can still update and add to previous posts.

[reddragdiva]

Yep. We paid £350 for the television (28" wide screen), £116 for the TV license and just bought a £75 Freeview box - that's thirtyish television and radio channels broadcast digitally for free. The other common options are Sky (Murdoch/Fox) or NTL cable, and the first is Satan and the second is comically inept and not to be encouraged with money under any circumstances (unless you can get cable but not DSL).

[reddragdiva]

Sorry, £250 for the television (not £350).

[satsumagirl]

I remember that and thinking the sentences that they handed out seemed totally out of keeping with the "crime" and really over the top.

[justinep.livejournal.com]

Hold on- I wonder what the licensing/copyright issues are with 'Book at Bedtime', let alone making it downloadable.

BBC DVD availability

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, DVDs are available for just about any BBC / British program one would wish to purchase. My local library has hundreds of such programs - comedies, mysteries, dramas. Basically anything I've missed on PBS or would like to see again.ü