All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.Brian Wright: I hadn't actually thought of that point. However, for individual programmes, the difference in length is unlikely to be the cause for the overall group costs.
If your shooting something like Downton (which is actually made, like so many programmes these days, by an idependent producer), its cost is relatively high because it is an historical drama, which is particularly expensive (drama is expensive and risky, and historical ones cost even more). Much the same goes for Call The Midwife, The Musketeers, The Bletchley Circle. etc. The cost is in the script, setting up of the shoot, the cast and crew, the period locations, etc. Yes, if the running time is slightly shorter, then there might savings, simply because actors might have less time to be on screen, but its not going to be much.
And again the same goes for drama's such as Scott & Bailey v Line of Duty, or sitcoms, or white floor shows. The production costs shouldn't greatly differ - indeed they might be using the same studio's, etc. Thats off the top of my head, so I went looking for hard data.
Obviously data is hard to come across, but in 2010, someone on Digital Spy was quoting a figure of £750,000 per hour for ITV Prime Time Drama.http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1520546 . Its pretty interesting discussion. This is a schedule of BBC tarriffs http://downloads.bbc.co.u….pdf for independents for roughly the same period, and the costs paid are much different. Basically, it costs what it costs. However, an NAO report did say that the BBC had reduced drama costs by around 20% http://downloads.bbc.co.u….pdf
However, I suspect that ITV/C4 pays what it thinks a programme is worth, as does the BBC (although probably a little less), rather than per minute. Another cost difference which did suddenly occur was although the amount of drama ITV has produced has much increased in the last 4-5 years, the BBC still produces a lot more. And since that costs more to make, its perhaps the different programme mix (and hence costs) thats a key feature. And of course its not just drama - Made in Chelsea most likely costs less than Springwatch.
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Of course i should have typed 'not much different' when it comes to costs....need more coffee!
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Briantist: having just clicked onto this page, I get the map, but not your comments. Using the lastest Firefox.
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M
Which 29 stars wrote Prime Minister Cameron to ask him to proteThursday 3 September 2015 1:46PM
Macclesfield
Nick: For someone who doesn't feel that a reply is warrented (as you've said in at least one previous post), why do reply to me? However, lets go through your comment.
Firstly, the phrase 'lefty-liberal elite' is unhelpful. Its not quite a Goodwin, but it brings an ideological viewpoint which is unneeded. Whatever you thoughts on BBC News, are you aware that RT is funded and controlled by the Russian State? And has featured guests and programming which has led to questions of impartiality from Ofcom, etc?
If you dont like BBC Radio, thats up to you, but RAJAR figures say that for the last quarter, BBC stations got 55% of the audience, with commercials making up the rest, but a 65% audience reach. Radio 1 alone got 19%, and Radio 2 got 28%. That 'cheap' station is the single most popular station in the UK. The largest commercial network (Heart) got 17%
RAJAR
Personally, I dont like all of BBC Radio either, but Radio 4 is a gem, 4 extra is very good, and I'm just getting into Radio 6 (according to CompareMy Radio, they are the only ones to play The Indigo Girls, so thats a plus). The World Service is superb, and its great to be able to listen to it all day on DAB etc, rather than having to listen to it during the night, as we used to have to do.
The commercial stations are frankly a bit samey. My wife listens to Heart, but the playlist is pretty limited ('more music choice' - dont think so), and Smooth is fine for about a hour, but its playlist is amazingly small. BBC figures confirm that even Radio 2 at drivetime has a bigger playlist than any of the major commercials, and Radio 1 and 6 certainly do Is Radio 1 too similar to commercial stations? | Media | The Guardian & Boaden defends distinctiveness of BBC radio | RadioToday . And nobody else seems to be doing Norweign Jazz How 6 Music Defined The Music We Listen To Today
Thats fine for the commercial stations - they have to earn a crust, and there is plenty out there on the internet. However, as a quote from this article shows, the commercial view is that 'A successful national radio entrepreneur I talked to told me that he made his station work by having a very limited playlist, which was then repeated throughout the day. That's the polar opposite to 6 Music's approach. ' BBC - Gomp/arts: Are you sending out an SOS for 6 Music? . Thats why we pay our licence fee. And the excellent 'Compare My Radio' (which I hadn't heard of before, and something that Brianist should be using whenever this sort of discussion comes up) points up the same thing - Comparing: Capital FM to BBC Radio 1 - Compare My Radio . And also refutes the idea that Radio 1 and 2 have a large cross over playlist - data says otherwise - Comparing: BBC Radio 1 to BBC Radio 2 - Compare My Radio
But people do like BBC radio, judging by the number of listeners. And the recent 'deprivation' experiment showed the same thing - that people liked the better mix of music, etc. Reluctant licence fee payers don't like life without the BBC after all | Media | The Guardian . BTW - I notice that our very own Brianist was the first comment!
Ok - so what about that poll? Firstly, its over a year old, most polling puts licence fee supporters at nearer 70% (and ultimately nearer 90% if you look at the 'deprivation survey') and the questions are a bit suggestive. 'The current system of a compulsory licence fee paid by individuals who watch live television' - compulsory is correct, but it also sounds coercive. If you'd changed it to 'that we all pay equally', you might get a different answer. And of course the 'live television' bit is basically obsolete.
Of course people are going to say they want subscription or adverts if you ask them (to be fair the 'abolish the BBC' question did sort of point out the consequences), because thats seemingly easy, and the bulk of the press continually suggests this. Once you point out the costs of going with a subscription model (how would that even work with radio?), and the shortcomings of advertising, then I suspect that most people would change their minds. And remember thats just one poll (from a organisation that claimed it got the closest in predicting the General Election result, but actually got the Tory share wrong by 2.7% and Labour by 2.9%). What does the bulk of polling say?
Did you actually read the website that you linked to? Guido is pretty well known for his style of coverage (UK Drudge Report?) and is hosted by The Sun , but the comments are not just 'BBC knockers', they are actually really unpleasant.
There are comments such as: 'had we arrested and shot in perfectly cold blood all the socialist bastards that could be found anywhere, between about 1884 and 1920.',
'The BBC is populated with shirtlifters, peedos liars and noncing lefties. Nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.',
'Making themselves the official PR agency for third world immigration invasion was the last straw' &
'The UK's record on refugees isn't good. After all we were daft enough to admit Milliband and son in 1940' (since Ralph Miliband volunteered to be parachuted into Belgium to help the Resistance, served in the Royal Navy, and had a number of relatives and close friends murdered in the Holocaust, this last comment seems particularly tasteless). Some comments are actually worse.
I dont want to have a 'field day', I just hope that such ignorance and bigotry is limited to a tiny part of the population.
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Tony Hall is announcing more job losses amoungst middle mangers this week. BBC plans TV and radio services for Russia and North Korea | Media | The Guardian (and reading through those comments is deeply depressing - DKism at its worse)
However, PwC did give it a good report on management. Although some (Armando Iannucci for instance) have expressed frustration at BBC management and the number of levels (which is seemingly being sorted right now), you do need managers, and you cannot expect an organisation which spends £3.5bn a year and does so many things to be run by the same number of managers that get employed by a small business. Certainly pay seems lower than rival broadcasters for doing much the same thing, so we can ignore the usual 'more than the PM' nonsense.
What really costs is making stuff. If you want good costume drama, that costs a lot more than showing clips of old TV shows and wheeling in micro celebs to comment about it. The World Service is fantastic, but can't run on the budget of hospital radio. Original programming costs a lot more than buying in US shows.
Cheap is not cheap, expensive is not expensive.
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M
Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) Full Freeview transSunday 6 September 2015 1:44PM
Macclesfield
Duncan: Check your signal strength - it may be far too high....
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Anthony Clarke: I certainly agree that the BBC is very important to the UK, and it is a shame that they should cut things.
However, I'm not sure how workable your proposals are. I am a bit unclear about what you mean about modifying 'the license fee sufficient to finance the former terrestrial channels.', but if you mean that only the former analogue channels should get financing, how would that work, and what would be the benefit?
If you use Iplayer once every 3-4 days, you've paid as much if not more than the current licence fee in subscription/pay per view. And how would such payments be administered - all transactions have costs, so would it be cost effective? And since the government is finally updating the law, so that the loophole on watching via Iplayer without the need for a licence will be closed, if you are trying to watch without paying, then its fairly easy to find out from your IP address (I assume - can Brianist supply more details?) if you have paid or not.
As for sponsorship, a) Its advertising, which the BBC does not do, b) According to a recent experiment, people really didn't like adverts anyway, and therefore liked the BBC for not having them, c) According to Brianist a while back, they do actually get much cash, relatively speaking, and d) ITV et al are not going to be happy sharing what cash there is.
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B Ekins: So your arguing that the BBC caters to only a very small part of the audience, but because its doing things that the commercial channels do, its also far too mainstream?
Great way to contradict yourself dude.
Brianist: Is there a problem with updated comments? I'm getting problems on both Chrome and Firefox, with new comments not appearing.
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Jack: Since its been agreed (although we are talking about the govenment here) that the loophole on watching via Iplayer etc is about to be closed, that advice is about to be pretty redundent .
And if your equipment does allow you to watch live, then they will (not unreasonably) come to the conclusion that you probably do just that, and ask you to pay your licence fee.
Seems a lot of faff to avoid paying 39p a day...
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Sunday 30 August 2015 7:11PM
Macclesfield
Alan G: I never mentioned anything about Sky - they have a working subscription system, so they have no need to change. And an app can be used as a conditional system, as we all can see from using Netflix, etc. However, its interesting that although BT are using an app for smartphone/tablet use, they bypassed the use of an app for TV acces - that is still a box.
Ok - so what is the percentage of TV's and PVR's unable to be 'upgraded' or accept a payment system? MikeP used the phrase 'not everyone', rather than 'most', but that splitting hairs. The BBC reckoned that only 50% of households had some sort of 'pay-TV system' BBC Blogs - About the BBC - Why subscription isn't the best way to fund the BBC , but of course that includes Sky and Virgin, and as it points out, perhaps only one TV in the house has the system.
No Freeview PVR has a CAM slot, so they cannot use that system. Yes, most TV's do have a CAM slot, but not all. And even if they do have one, would the original manufacturer want to rewrite the software on the TV (if they even could)? Even the big four would be reluctent (whats in it for them, when they could sell you a new one, rather than extending the life of that 7 year old TV?), and for much of the 'no brand' market, the manufacturers might not even exist. It would be facinating to get the likes of 'Luxor', etc to engage with the process.
Lets look at PVR's and set-top boxes, which a large number of people use, rather than the tuners in their TV. No CAM Card, so any system would have to have a return path, so that you could put in a password, etc in order to access content. Of course they were never designed to do this, and even if the software could be rewritten, whats in it for the manufacturer? And how would this system output? My Sony PVR has no net acces, not any way of connecting it to a phone line, and the only USB connection is an imput.
Now from the point of view of selling new kit to customers, it would be like digital switchover all over again, so not so bad from my point of view, but its going to be very expensive.
Superfast broadband? To quote The Princess Bride (always a good thing) You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means. This article points out the confusion over what that phrase means to different people Let's Stop Having Different UK Definitions for "Superfast Broadband" - ISPreview UK Page 2 - in others words, not everyone is going to get broadband fast enough to watch even Iplayer in HD as yet , and when it happen is a question which lots of people are asking. 2mb's to everyone by next year? Maybe, but a lot of people in rural areas are still very unhappy, judging by some of my customers today, and dont even start on 4K. The vast majority of people dont stream, but if they did, think about the bandwidth you'd need for something like GBBO. A while back, someone wrote a very sueful post about the capacity needed for something like that, and it turned out that the bandwidth just wasn't there. Its not the speed of the chip, its the size of the pipe thats the chokepoint.
As for your idea on advertising review - I'd like to see some links to actual data and peer reviewed articles, becuase its not a theory I'm familiar with.
ITV does cost less than the BBC, but ITV does less! It has no radio stations (apart from a number of commercial stations), has one children's channel (not 2), and tends to show just repeats and bought in programmes (although some are UK baseds). The BBC makes original programming instead. ITV Encore, ITV3 & 4 shows repeats, bought in programmes, and films ( a lot). ITV2 also has a far number of films, plus shows a lot of repeats of its flagship shows. Although it is a PSB broadcaster, only a part of its channels or light transmitters (which costs), although they have just added ITV4.
It has a smaller regional news operation than the BBC (it saved lots of money by folding in regions together), plus no 'other language' channels, such as Alba, etc. Its does not have pay the costs of something like the World Service, not any other activities that are 'non commercial', other than ist PSB requirments (and its tried to water down those). Its has no particular requirement to make original programming, or show it in peak hours. And its current affairs output is bascially zero.
And its doesn't make programmes like 'Big Blue LIve' - there isn't any money in it. Nor does it make programmes like 'Boy Meets Girl' - too risky. And its hasn't employed Melvin Bragg to make programmes for a while - just not commercial. The BBC does, and thats why it costs more.
I got the figure about Sky's subscription costs from something that Brianist wrote. I might have misremembered or plain got it wrong, so an article setting out such information would be helpful. I dont know that much about subscription systems, but from what I know, its unlikely to be cost effective. Again, thats why I want Brianist's expertise in this subject.
As for choice, life is the art of the possible. I would prefer not to pay for lots of things from my taxes, yet others might not chose to pay for the services I value - we all pay, which is the most cost-effective way. Choice has its costs (as do markets), and since 97% of people use the BBC on a weekly basis, its a tiny percentage at best which chose not to use the BBC. The greatest good of the greatest number?
I dont do personal attacks, although I get a little testy sometimes at people who refuse to use facts to back up their arguments. So data, not bluster.