The day BBC died

tik tok is a beasts wet dream , underage boys and girls dancing around with next to nothing on, on their phones for anyone to look at

a reply to: Freeborn

I really do miss climbing trees and making dens and exploring the countryside.

You're childhood sounds just like mine , I grew up in Grangemouth an industrial town on the edge of farmland in the forth valley

i was born 82 so im glad to know that our lifestyle continued

a reply to: andy06shake

Like many organisations many people work hard to provide a service. When an upper echelon abuse their status due to greed, or other agendas its necessary to call them out. Ur let’s not lynch the lot of them for the misdeeds of a few. Thanks to the genius and hard work of many a BBC employee over the decades all our lives are culturally and academically richer. Those people will be as bitter as you and I about the mess a few above them have made of the precious resource.

a reply to: McGinty

did the same happen to the corporations who helped the nazis during the war

did they all get held to account or was it just the upper echelons.

If people know aren't they also complicit
surely people cant be blind, people talk in big places like that surely it wasnt a BBC secret
even the mail man and the janitor would have known

a reply to: McGinty

Some great people.

But the old saying "one bad apple spoils the bunch" springs to mind through, especially if that apple is the likes of Jimmy Savile.

As to academically richer, i did like the old Open University stuff at 6am on beeb 2 if memory serves now and again.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: McGinty

Some great people.

But the old saying "one bad apple spoils the bunch" springs to mind through, especially if that apple is the likes of Jimmy Savile.

As to academically richer, i did like the old Open University stuff at 6am on beeb 2 if memory serves now and again.

The Royal Institute Christmas Lectures spring to mind when I was a kid.

No LBGTxyzabc gubbins then, just Science (the real kind.)

a reply to: sapien82

To be fair, I grew up in West Brom, which is far more urban and yet I still had a very similar childhood experience. Just less countryside, rivers and trees, and more building sites, local parks and canals. Still used to love riding bikes all day, building forts and climbing trees though. I guess we found fun wherever we could. I'll admit yours sounds more idyllic though.

a reply to: Cymru

a reply to: sapien82

We had it hard, very hard.....and the people were very bloody hard.
But it was great fun and we had a set of morals and values that we have stuck to all our lives and there is a sense of belonging and community that governments have been trying to destroy for decades now.

Climbing trees, bird nesting and building dens were great summer pastimes.
Always enjoyed biking and even walking through the woods to go to the river....but it inevitably ended up in some sort of confrontation with lads from other parts of town.

Sounds pretty idyllic....but there were some really rough times as well.
Perhaps this isn't really the time or place to go into all that.

The BBC was a backdrop to all that.
Looking back it was probably naive of us to hold it in such reverence....it was probably a more open tool of the establishment back then than what it is today.

Some excellent programmes - but then I started REALLY watching the news and current affairs programmes and I realised how biased it was and how it rarely questioned the official line too much or too far.

The Beeb's collusion in the Jimmy Saville case was shocking and that no-one faced criminal charges is a disgrace.

At least programmes like Question Time and Newsnight tried to hold politicians to account, what we have today is an absolute farce.
Very few of the old classic BBC series would get made today - they'd be deemed far too unwoke.
No-one dares push the envelope and everyone is # scared of upsetting one special interest group or another.

I have no problem with the BBC being public funded, provided it maintains the high standards it used to allegedly aspire to, it provides a fair and unbiased view of things, it produces both entertaining and challenging programmes and held our elected officials and other government employees up to the most intense scrutiny whilst operating with total transparency.

As there's not a hope in hell of that happening sadly I think its time to call it a day.

a reply to: sapien82

People that know for a fact that something like saville’s nastiness is afoot, but refrain from saying anything are indeed complicit. But those that hear rumours and rumours of rumours can’t in my opinion be held accountable.

If everyone that suspected any wrong doing were to report their hunches and heard gossip and that acted upon we’d be in a facist state, such China, or North Korea, in which every person must live in fear of a disgruntled neighbour or colleague making up stories about them. None of us want that, do we?

But if they know for sure that someone is kiddie fiddling then go to the police, but first deck the f**ker before the establishment circle the wagons around him or her. Keeping schtum about it is (unless there’s genuine fear for your safety - but even ffs) is imo even worse than the mentally challenged person doing it.

However, the BBC is a massive, desperate employer. There are thousands that would be no wiser to saville’s behaviour than joe public. They can’t be held accountable.

I get your point with the nazi comparison, but even in that scenario, can the infantryman, or even the battlefield general be blamed for the concentration camps, when it’s unlikely they even knew about them? There’s no way the vast majority of BBC workers knew about saville. Those that did should be behind bars.

originally posted by: andy06shake

As to academically richer, i did like the old Open University stuff at 6am on beeb 2 if memory serves now and again.

That stuff was great! Always presented by someone who looked as though it was a gig between modelling for the 70s Joy of Sex book.

originally posted by: Cymru

The Royal Institute Christmas Lectures spring to mind when I was a kid.

No LBGTxyzabc gubbins then, just Science (the real kind.)

Not just for kids, but for man-kids too! I still try and watch every Christmas. I went to when I was 14 or 15 - fantastic experience!

Channel 5 air them know - BBC should hang it’s head in shame for letting them go.

originally posted by: Freeborn

At least programmes like Question Time and Newsnight tried to hold politicians to account, what we have today is an absolute farce.
Very few of the old classic BBC series would get made today - they'd be deemed far too unwoke.
No-one dares push the envelope and everyone is # scared of upsetting one special interest group or another.

I think the slide in standards kicked off with the bbc finally winning back the Saturday evening entertainment slot. Used to be all there’s, but then simon bastarrd cowell and the like off ant and dec made that slot itv’s for donkeys years.

But when the beeb took a hard Left with Strictly Dancing and the anti-science/pro soap opera and populist dr who reboot and they were hits the beeb’s focus shifted. Producers with those sensibilities were suddenly flavour of month and everything g across both channels got ‘sparkly’ overnight. No longer was story, or being true to the material considered important. Instead the priority demographic was very young and very dumb no matter the show or it’s format. Even bloody question time has become a tv version of Facebook.

ETA, Btw, I was 1970, inner London born and bread, but we still had dens everywhere with milk crates for seats. Instead of woods it was the weird catacombs under blocks of flats and hiding from the parky when jumping the fence after dark. We ran round like wild animals morning to night and had great time

a reply to: McGinty

Tomorrows World, was a great show, loved that one.

Then Sci-Fi wise there was Doctor Who, Thunderbirds, Blake's 7.

Not saying they did not produce some top-class shows, canny deny the facts of the matter.

a reply to: andy06shake

Blakes 7!!!

Class.

I can't recall a lot of the names of kids shows from the early to mid 70s but some of them were terrifying.
They'd never be made now and I'm sure some kids were traumatised by some of that stuff.
Fortean Times had a series of articles about those programmes called Haunted Childhood and i keep meaning to dig them out of my collection and remind myself.

Tomorrows World was excellent and I remember them showing the first mobile phone i ever saw .It seemed very space age but today it would be described as "a brick".

a reply to: andy06shake

Blakes 7 was quality.

The Tripods.
It got slated but I loved it.

Dare I say it....Tuckers Luck.

Boys from the Blackstuff was brilliant.

Too many comedies to mention, not one of which would be commissioned now.

a reply to: Freeborn

I must have been about 9 or 10 when BBC done the Tripods.

I went on to read the books since they never bothered to finish the series.

Auf Wiedersehen Pet was another class in a glass affair, mind that one?

If ive got to pick an early comedy im going with "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em" off the top of my nut.

a reply to: Tulpa

"The Magic Roundabout" and "Captain Pugwash" spring to mind.

What i remember about Tomorrows World was stuff called "Starlite" where did that stuff go?

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: andy06shake

Funnily enough, Starlite was also featured in an old issue of ForteanTimes. That's where I first heard of it.
Troy Hurtubise claimed to have created something similar but he was more famous for his bear fighting suit.

Noggin the Nog was an old favourite of mine but I think one of the reasons so many people now hate the BBC is that we all have fond memories of a time when we liked it.
Growing up with only three channels and enjoying the old programmes and believing the BBC to be a trusted institution only makes the current model seem like a huge betrayal.

Now I feel like a grumpy old man!

a reply to: andy06shake

Frank Spencer just wound me up.

Loved It Ain't Half Hot Mum.


Hated Sorry.....Timothy Lumsden also got on my nerves.

there were some decent programs on the BBC when I was young well the ones my parents watched I loved a lot of them.

MY favourite was the Sky at night with sir Patrick Moore , no other program had such an effect on me like that did
made me dream