All posts by Martin nr Sudbury
Below are all of Martin nr Sudbury's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
I would be really interested to see some independent figures on the actual marginal cost of the News Channel, beyond the MUX and broadcast costs, and studio costs, it really should be very low, although knowing the BBC it would not shock me to find there is still way too much duplication of work with other pats of the corporation using basically the same content. With proper a multichannel news journalism approach, the real incremental cost of the News Channel should be tiny in the overall BBC cost base, with talk of closure to save money being more symbolic and political than an actual attempt to save money. Ironically, if the costs really are high, it does more to back up the case for radical BBC reform than for the BBC's one for a "no change" charter renewal.
Personally I only rarely dip into the News Channel, although I do often use Breakfast News as a morning background catch-up (and Radio 4 in the car). When major events happen, I tend to surf between the BBC News Channel, Sky and Al Jazeera to get some balance, while simultaneously surfing a lot of online sources. I probably get most of my breaking news via Twitter feeds, which drives me to other online sites (of which the BBC is one, but by no means always the first stop).
The one place I do watch BBC (and ITV) News on the "main" channels (BBC1, ITV), is for local news, which is under served by all UK brioadcasters. The local radio although supposedly more local than the news regions, I find basically impossible to listen to, due to the quality of programming padded around the news.
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Sounds like another experiment that proved why the licence fee should be made a voluntary subscription to me.
The whole argument of "you will lose your favourite programmes" if the BBC were changed is just blatant scaremongering . Even if the BBC were shut down completely, it would make sense to auction off its content and rights to get a return on investment. The popular stuff would be snapped up by other services, and it's hard to think of anything that the BBC would not be cancelling anyway because of lack of audience, that would not be taken up elsewhere. Even the "specialist" content on things like BBC4 usually has large (if niche) audiences abroad (although in fact a lot of what people think is "BBC" science, history and arts content, is often just US content revoiced with UK sound track).
The argument about the licence fee is not "you will lose Eastenders and Strictly" if it gets changed, but "should people be subject to criminal sanction for not paying for media they don't want".
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The old "CA would be too expensive" canard. That was exactly the same argument used for not going digital (along with "granny won't understand", which I expect to be rolled out any moment too). In fact adding a CA system to most modern TVs and set-top boxes could be done with a software update, not even requiring new hardware, couple that with the option of a TV dongle to give online access for others - cost about £30 if standalone, again it would just be software on SmartTVs and existing "sticks" like Amazon FireTV or Roku.
Give enough notice, don't let a government IT organisation specify the "how", let alone try to make it happen (or it will take 20 years and be way over budget), with five years notice most people would probably just get devices capable of receiving the CA services without even thinking about it, the upgrade would be cheap for the rest, and for "granny", just send someone round to plug in a stick for her, much like with the Channel 5 retune. It would be much less disruptive and costly than the "Digital Switchover".
There would also be industry wide advantages - finally there would be a Freeview CA system that could be assumed to be on every device, resulting I suspect in significantly higher take up of other PPV and subscription services.
Or we could be really radical - announce the BBC will be online in five years, then when "swichover" happens, just give the recalcitrance a stick. However we did it, it is significantly easier than solving the problem of all those analogue radios in cars (which are even still being sold as standard in most new vehicles) for when analogue radio switches off.
It just needs some 21st Century "how" thinking, rather than forever looking for excuses "why not".
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Who on earth do the BBC not make BBC online into a commercial venture in the UK? Discreet advertising would turn it from a cost into a profit generator. Before anyone else says it - yes I know it already has advertising outside the UK.
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Thursday 27 November 2014 2:33PM
Way too late, even low end connected Smart TVs already let people access most of these services as do cheap plug-ins like Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV or Rokus. The only thing this proposal has going for it, is the Freeview brand and the likelihood some technology laggards will just get it when they buy a new STB or PVR.
What the market needs is not yet another platform trying to skim off a bit of the "content" revenue for online services but some agreement of standards so that all devices can access all services.
Currently we are in what is effectively a "format wars" stage where all the players want their platform to win so they get the revenue on paid for content.