Murdoch attack on 'dominant' BBC

reply to post by quackers


The BBC doesn't make any profit. BBC Worldwide, the wholly seperate commercial arm responsible for selling BBC and other programming overseas, made a profit of around £83 million before tax in 2008/09.

This money is then reinvested in BBC products, such as iPlayer, web services and further programming that the license fee doesn't cover. It also part owns the UKTV group of commercial channels with Virgin media.

Without BBC worldwide selling BBC products, then the license fee would have to be higher to maintain the standards and level of programming, or else you would see a reduction in the quality programming the BBC is world famous for.

Not really quite sure what the hell you're bitching about, aside from obviously being very confused on how the BBC is structured and what it is the corporation actually does.

It provides a vast array of services, from local news and radio, to national media right the way up to international news for various regions and countries, boosting the image of the country as a result because, like it or not, the BBC is recognised by many worldwide as being a fair and balanced cource of news and entertainment. It is one of the worlds best known and trusted brands. You don't get that accolade from being a pile of crap.

What Murdoch is upset about is that they do all of this, do it well and don't charge for it and he wants to start getting people to pay even more for accessing his products.



[edit on 29/8/09 by stumason]

reply to post by stumason


I don't care about BBC programming, I very rarely watch the BBC now as the vast majority of it's programming is utter crap. I would rather not pay for the BBC.

The BBC do charge for their programming, they charge you and it's called the license fee. Imagine what it would be like if Murdoch got the government to force you to buy a Sky subscription. That is exactly what the BBC is.

reply to post by quackers


No, it isn't. Sky is a privately owned, for profit organisation and doesn't make any of it's own programming, aside from sports coverage. All the money they make is directed into Murdochs pockets.

The BBC (or BBC Worlwide) currently make only one 1/4 what BSkyB make annually, yet put out better quality programming. Any profit made by the BBC is reinvested in improving the products and services they offer.

Just because YOU don't like their programming, millions of others do. For example, Top Gear is watched by 250 Million people worldwide.

The numbers talk matey, the BBC is one the worlds most trusted and recognised brands, whether you like it or not.

The fact I have to pay £11 a month is really not that big a deal considering what I get in return. I pay £25 a month for Sky and all they do is provide me with hundreds of crap channels, I tend to watch the BBC channels more than any of the others, unless Lost or Fringe is on . That £11 a month provides regional and national channels on both the radio and TV, plus internet services, all of which I use.

[edit on 29/8/09 by stumason]

Originally posted by Wimbly
reply to post by Fang

 

I'd much rather place my trust in a publicly accountable institution like the BBC than some shabby little monopolist like Murdoch Jnr.

If thats your stance, than stop whining about Fox and the like. The BBC's own studies have show the network to be completely in the tank for one ideology. I'm so tired of people like you lashing out at Beck, Murdoch and anyone else you don't agree with, than turning around and defending the BBC as "real news". Give me a break.

[edit on 29-8-2009 by Wimbly]

I hadn't mentioned Fox but now you've raised it, yes it is a chilling example of how wealth and power can be utilised to advance a political agenda. If Murdoch claims that profit and competition can provide everything the BBC does at present, let him set up a liberal/left wing counterbalance to Fox news. Show us how the market provides for all views and opinions, demonstrate how a respected, publicly accountable institution like the BBC is redundant. He won't off course because because that doesn't suit News Corps strategic agenda. He wants the BBC out of the way, because behind all this guff about the market and freedom, the Murdoch's are monopolists. Faced with a choice between a multi national conglomerate that owes no allegiance to any particular nation or set of standards and is not even answerable to a board of directors and the BBC, guess which way I'm going to vote.

None of this will bother you because you clearly have no interest in getting information from a diversity of sources and media. Just the one, as long as it confirms your own world view and prejudices.





[edit on 29/8/09, by Fang]

en.wikipedia.org...

The BBC is government run...despite what some Brits here have been saying, where do they get most of their money? Licensing fees from other broadcasters, citizens and government bonds...who else gets to do that? No one.

business.timesonline.co.uk...

en.wikipedia.org...

As to who ever said that the British government doesn't like to be seen meddling in the BBC reporting...the U.S. government is the same to a non-profit organization...it's call the Federal Reserve, no one wants to be seen as meddling with their policy...but they do, it's just so small that most people don't notice it and it's broad spectrum impact.

Like I said, I enjoy the BBC News, and some of their programs like Top Gear...but I wouldn't allow it to be my ONLY news source.

[edit on 29-8-2009 by yellowcard]

reply to post by yellowcard


Er, no they don't. They get license fee money from the Public, not other broadcasters, what utter rubbish.

And no, they are not "Government run". They are run by the BBC Trust, with a board of Governors independent of any ministerial involvement. In fact, it is in the BBC Charter that they must be free from Government involvement and be independant.

Originally posted by stumason
reply to post by yellowcard

 

Er, no they don't. They get license fee money from the Public, not other broadcasters, what utter rubbish.

And no, they are not "Government run". They are run by the BBC Trust, with a board of Governors independent of any ministerial involvement. In fact, it is in the BBC Charter that they must be free from Government involvement and be independant.

They get their money from government bonds and government enforced licensing fees...that means they are government ran, there is no way around that. Was the BBC against the now widespread surveillance program in Britain? Was it against the gun ban? Was it against various other domestic programs? Is it critical of the NHS? You say they are anti-Labour...but that doesn't answer what are they critical of in that party.

If I'm not mistaken there is a transmission fee for other broadcasters, perhaps I'm wrong.

[edit on 29-8-2009 by yellowcard]

Originally posted by yellowcard

Originally posted by stumason
reply to post by yellowcard

 

Er, no they don't. They get license fee money from the Public, not other broadcasters, what utter rubbish.

And no, they are not "Government run". They are run by the BBC Trust, with a board of Governors independent of any ministerial involvement. In fact, it is in the BBC Charter that they must be free from Government involvement and be independant.

They get their money from government bonds and government enforced licensing fees...that means they are government ran, there is no way around that. Was the BBC against the now widespread surveillance program in Britain? Was it against the gun ban? Was it against various other domestic programs? Is it critical of the NHS? You say they are anti-Labour...but that doesn't answer what are they critical of in that party.

If I'm not mistaken there is a transmission fee for other broadcasters, perhaps I'm wrong.

[edit on 29-8-2009 by yellowcard]

It is sometimes very difficult to try and explain to an American of your persuasion how different models of governance and organisation work on the rest of the planet. It is possible to have funds raised for a specific organisation and to guarantee, via legislation and regulation, that the recipient organisation operates within agreed guidelines and is answerable when it breaches them. The BBC has, for as long as I can remember, run stories highlighting problems within the NHS. Was it against the gun ban? What Gun ban? What wide spread surveillance program? Government Bonds? What they are critical of in the Labour party? Explain yourself. If you don't want to learn from previous posts, get a passport travel and learn, or sign up at an evening class at a college. You do yourself and your country no favours by parading your ignorance on this site.

Murdoch is obviously just angry that he's got competition and is not getting the money he thinks he would get if there was no BBC . He wants to get rid of it, just as he tries to eliminate all the competition from other news outlets around the world.

Just greedy.

Was it against the gun ban?

What gun ban? Please extrapolate.

Just an update, the BBC has countered:

BBC says James Murdoch "desperately out of touch"

LONDON (Reuters) - A simmering and very public spat between the BBC and James Murdoch escalated on Thursday, with the broadcaster defending its reputation and accusing Rupert Murdoch's son of being desperately out of touch.

The BBC Director General Mark Thompson made the statement in an email to staff, after Murdoch used a keynote summer speech to describe the world-renowned broadcaster's scale and intention as "chilling."

"The most important thing to say about (Murdoch's) lecture and about many of the recent attacks on the BBC is that they are desperately out of touch with what the audience themselves are telling us," Thompson said.

In a separate letter to licence holders, BBC Trust Chairman Michael Lyons said the corporation was reviewing how it should operate and said it could eventually become smaller, but made clear he was not responding to Murdoch's charge.

Great to see the Beeb fighting back!

a funny review of the Murdoch speech here from Charlie Brooker

At last weekend's Edinburgh TV festival, the annual MacTaggart Lecture was delivered by Niles Crane from Frasier, played with eerie precision by James Murdoch. His speech attacked the BBC, moaned about Ofcom and likened the British television industry to The Addams Family. It went down like a turd in a casserole. Still, the Addams Family reference will have been well-considered because James knows a thing or two about horror households: he's the son of Rupert Murdoch, which makes him the closest thing the media has to Damien from The Omen. That's a fatuous comparison, obviously. Damien Thorn, offspring of Satan, was educated at Yale before inheriting a global business conglomerate at a shockingly young age and using it to hypnotise millions in a demonic bid to hasten Armageddon. James Murdoch's story is quite different. He went to Harvard. Above all, Murdoch's speech was a call for the BBC's online news service to be curbed, scaled back, deleted, depleted, dragged to the wastebasket, and so on, because according to him, the dispersal of such free "state-sponsored" news on the internet threatens the future of other journalistic outlets. Particularly those provided by News International, which wants to start charging for the online versions of its papers. Yes Thorn - I mean, Murdoch - refers to the BBC as "state-sponsored media", because that makes it sound bad (although not quite as bad as "Satan-sponsored media", admittedly). He evoked the goverment's control of the media in Orwell's 1984, and claimed that only commercial news organisations were truly capable of producing "independent news coverage that challenges the consensus". I guess that's what the News Of The World does when it challenges the consensus view that personal voicemails should remain personal, or that concealing a video camera in a woman's private home bathroom is sick and creepy (it magically becomes acceptable when she's Kerry Katona). Another great example of independent consensus-challenging news coverage is America's Fox News network, home of bellicose human snail Bill O'Reilly and blubbering blubberball Glenn Beck. Beck - who has the sort of rubbery, chucklesome face that should ideally be either a) cast as the goonish sidekick in a bad frat house sex comedy or b) painted on a toilet bowl so you could # directly on to it - has become famous for crying live on air, indulging in paranoid conspiracy theorising, and labelling Obama a "racist" with "a deep-seated hatred for white people or white culture". As a news source, Fox is about as plausible and useful as an episode of Thundercats. Still, at least by hiring Beck, they've genuinely challenged the stuffy consensus notion that people should only really be given their own show on a major news channel if they're sane. The trouble is, once you've gasped or chuckled over the YouTube clips of his most demented excesses, he's actually incredibly boring: a fat clown with one protracted trick. His show consists of an hour of screechy, hectoring bull#: a pudgy middle-aged right-winger sobbing into his shirt about how powerless he feels. It's an incredible performance, but it belongs in some kind of zoo, not on a news channel. But that's the Murdoch way. Now there's a lengthy, valid, and boring debate to be had about the scope and suitability of some of the BBC's ambitions but, quite frankly, if their news website (a thing of beauty and a national treasure) helps us stave off the arrival of the likes of Beck - even tangentially, even only for another few years until the Tories take over and begin stealthily dismantling the Beeb while a self-interested press loudly eggs them on - then it deserves to be cherished and applauded. To finish his speech, Murdoch claimed, "The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit." Or to put it another way: greed is good. Then he clopped off stage on his cloven hooves, guffing out a hot cloud of sulphur as he left.

Murdoch's "news" networks haven't done a thing to bring truth or critical analysis on any story for over a decade.

The problem with for-profit news is that people are stupid. They have a recurring and perpetual apitite for entertainment, as opposed to information.

There use to be a time where people would turn on the news expecting to be informed. It was a citizen's duty to become informed, and the news networks OPERATED AT A LOSS.

These days, people complain that the news sucks and doesn't cover real stories. Yet news networks are making more money now than they ever have in the past.

This is what for-profit news brings you. Lowest common denominator coverage of whatever glues people to the screen. Critical analysis, important stories, real news, etc, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it's way more profitable to cover Michael Jackson for 4 weeks than it is to talk about foreign relations, banking reform, or whatever have you.

Most importantly, lets not forget that news networks are in the business of selling ads (even ATS operates in this way). Except ATS doesn't have multi-million dollar contracts with Monsanto, BP, Kraft, etc, while main stream media are slaves to the revenue from these huge companies. If the news network dissatisfies its advertisers, then they can pull their ads, and the network goes bankrupt. This gives big business huge leverage over what you and I get to see when we turn on the tube. So that's another big part of the problem. Again, it all stems from being a profitable entity, rather than a real news source.


And finally, people CAN educate themselves -- but they overwhelming chose not to. Why is that? Because the majority of people are sh#@. They are helpless, bewildered cattle that NEED to be lied to.

reply to post by woodwardjnr


Charlie Brooker is a flipping genius.

Murdoch should just shut up whining...

He has two of the largest newspapers here (Sun/Times), the second largest cable news channel(Sky News), he has one of the most dominant TV enterprises (Sky TV, satellite, very very popular, hundreds of channels, most of which are then sublet to the other systems like cable and digital terrestrial).

I think it's Murdoch that's the dominant one.

No tears were shed during the making of this post.

Originally posted by yellowcard
Was the BBC against the now widespread surveillance program in Britain? Was it against the gun ban? Was it against various other domestic programs?

It's not supposed to be against things. In general it's far better than that. It does things the old fashioned way... giving the facts with journalism most of the time, in as balanced a manner as possible. It's exactly because of the license fee that it's forced to remain as objective as possible, or else half the country would be up in arms every time the BBC supported something.

It's reported on all those things, and in high detail, then it leaves us to decide for the most part.

Is it perfect? No, but then no-one is, everyone has some biases they can't really hide, the BBC does a very good job of minimizing them though, unlike most for-profit news organizations who almost solely exist to provide a mouthpiece for one side only depending on where the money is, or where their owner wants to push peoples views to.