All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Eve Steadman: Could be lots of things, but what leaping out at me is the fact that your just 27km from Sandy heath. High signal strength could well be a factor. If your readings are high, then search for 'too much of a good thing' on this website - it might help.
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Nick: I read the letter. The meat of it (in relation to the BBC) was this:
'I timed the BBC in/out EU coverage on News at Ten tonight (02 Mar.2016)two full minutes for stay-in, complete with sophisticated infographics, and just 40 seconds for such a distinguished man as Lord Lamont arguing out ... with no infographics and, as usual, curtailed.
That's a distinct 3 to 1 bias.'
Now I have no idea if it was biased, etc (I'm trying to avoid the whole thing), and there is no 'equal time' rule, such as you get at election time (I've had to measure such things - its really dull, and pretty subjective), so if there are more talking heads, etc speaking about staying in/warning if we leave, then they will probably get the airtime. Lamont is less likely to get airtime, because he's no longer that important, and his views are well known.
My own impression is that the BBC is playing it very straight. However, the reality is the PM, the Chancellor, the CBI, the Chamber of Commerce (not their former director, of course), all the other parties (apart from UKIP) and most large businesses do want to stay in. It very difficult to give equal airtime, when the people for coming out are frankly far less known, and much more fragmented (just how many different 'out' organisations are there?).
I suspect people are seeing what they want to see. And the relatively tiny amount of money the BBC got (for training) is most unlikely to have made any difference at all, which even The Spectator had to admit. If you have actually witnessed the BBC being overtly biased about the EU vote, let us know, but what you've actually cited is someones impression of bias.
As for the Iplayer loophole, I'm glad they are closing it (although you have to asky what Whittingdale wants in return), and of course they are not 'charging for it', but merely normalising its status with watching a TV. There are people who are just using it, and thats an increasing problem, but in fact the number of Licences issued have never been higher.
As for the workaround, I'm sure there is one (although for how long, who knows). But the reality is that the bulk of people will have no clue how to use it or could be bothered. In the same way, I can't be bothered to stream using an anonymous IP address to watch John Oliver's HBO show. I probably could do it, but just can't face the hassle.
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MikeP: Entirely agree - an HD set top box is an easy solution, which is what I did. They can be had for as little as 43 pounds in the high street (although I must admit that my Manhattan does play up, so I'm not sure I'd recommend it). The alternative is to kill two birds with one stone, and get a new Humax. The latest one will have 3 HD tuners, have Freeview Play (so you can scroll back and even record from the last 7 days), get all the on-demand stuff from the four main channels, and is wified. About 200.
And yes, a new TV 'should' have an HD tuner as standard. Of course plasma does have lovely black levels, and its just the tuner that could do with being upgraded, but your right Mike - you can heat your front room with some of them!
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Sue Flower: Your reception (look at the Digital UK link) is a bit hit and miss - Belmont is possibly your best bet. But none of the options seem fantastic. If its been happening for weeks, then you might have a fault with your aerial as well. But check which transmitter your tuned to - it might be you've locked on to a transmitter which is a no hoper, hence the lack of signal.
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Nick: And once again, your rhetoric does you no favours - does anyone who isn't wearing a tin foil hat really think the BBC is Marxist?
I notice once again your getting your news from 'Order, order', but before you assume that there is a vast left wing conspiracy, think about it. In orde to become the new Newsnight political editor (which is a pretty senior job), you have to have the sort of experience and contacts that comes with an existing high level job in political reporting. And the pool of talent for that sort of job isn't huge. Its means you've got to be a senior political correspondent, or a deputy or main political editor.
So the BBC would almost certainly be looking for someone working for another broadcaster (Nick Robinson hads worked for both the BBC and ITN), like Sky, C4, etc. Or possibly editors at the New Stateman/The Spectator. But the most likely route is via one of the broadsheets. So that means the Times, the Telegraph, the FT or the Guardian. The Independent is now no more. In this case, its the Guardian (but there is a one in four chance of any of the papers), but its not unusual for print journalists to make their way to TV, and visa versa. It seems that the guy had not got a slightly more senior job at the paper, and so was thinking of moving anyway. Jouralists leave for all sorts of reasons, although in the case of Peter Obourne last year from the Telegraph, that was pretty clear.
Mountain or molehill?
The '1000 people stopping the licence fee' thing turned out to be nonsense (I looked into that a while back). Its true that some people are just using Iplayer, but not paying up (hence the blocking of the loophole), but the number of people not taking out a licence seems to be more than offset by the growth of households generally, and is you check the Licence website, you can see that the number of licences is at an all time high. I've just paid my TV licence (OK, so its a direct debit and a PDF), and looking at it, I think I get very good value for money.
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Nick: James Harding joined from The Times and so did Keith Blackmore, Kamal Ahmed joined from the Telegraph. Newsnights policy editor, Chris Cook, came from the FT.
Huge number of commentators? Or is that just some people on the net?
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Nick: And again with this...
But if they are all lefties, how do you explain Nick Robinson, former head of the Oxford University Conservative Association? So apparently they are all lefties (all of them - the sceneshifters, the lady who designs the dresses for Strictly, Mr Tumble?), except when they are not.
'I watched the France England match on Saturday, there was definitely more excitement about France' - I suspect that is the very essence of confirmation bias...
The Conservatives and the Telegraph are upset at the BBC hiring an economics reporter who formerly worked for the TUC as an...economist. If the BBC had hired someone from Policy Exchange or the CBI, would they be as upset?
IDS? You are deep within the confirmation bias, because thats a huge story.
When a senior cabinet member (and former leader of the Conservative Party) resigns over cuts to his department (and he wasn't the only Tory to loudly denounce it), and blames the Chancellor (whose running for the leadership), and the Chancellor then has to stand up in the House and say that those cuts will now not go ahead (just days after announcing them in the budget), thats news.
If you dont think it is, have a look at the Telegraph - George Osborne rejects claims he does not care about poor Britons and says their 'aspirations' would be 'crushed' without his reforms - Telegraph . The only reason why its its been eclipsed is because of the terrorist attacks in Brussels, but its a live story, and an important one. Everyone is covering it, not just the BBC. C4, ITN, Sky are all talking about it.
Thats Telegraph article is soooo subtle - the 'how many people paid more than the PM' meme is right there. Of course that was written in Dec 2014, so the actual number of managers will have fallen, and no newspaper ever publishes a similar diagram of the difference between income and expenditure, and the number of people paid more than the PM - I'd be interested to see that. As for the comments - they seem just slightly more unhinged than what I'd expect after an article about the BBC in the Guardian. That Telegraph readers might object to the BBC in some way is not a shock.
Why does biasedbbc.org exist? Who knows? The website is not as crude as some you've linked to, but the site does seem to have a bit of a bee in its bonnet. I clicked on a story at random, and was surprised to find that the Now Show was fronted by people 'with the usual litany of lefty laughs...so-called.' What? Its the Now Show - so its just funny.
Is the BBC biased? does seem slightly better. Although, like many of the others, he takes an almost Matthew Hopkins like zeal in finding witches/bias, he seems to actually really like what the BBC does (and thought that IDS was treated fairly by the BBC!). A little while ago I stumbled on his site, and was intrigued by some of the programmes he commented about. Newsnight I could understand, but I was surprised by any objections to The Life Scientific Is the BBC biased? search/label/'The%20Life%20Scientific'.
Actually, he thinks this is an excellent programme (agreed), but objected to Mike Benton mentioning climate change. Since the Royal Society, NASA and the World Meteorlogical Association all agree that climate change is real, I'm not sure where the bias is. I suspect that climate change does not fit with his world view, as is a number of other things, and therefore he objected to the programme in parts. He's really going to dislike this weeks, which had a flooding expert on, and if they get Michael Mann to appear, his head is going to explode!
He also didn't like aspects of Autumnwatch for much the same reason - a mention of climate change and an interview with George Monbiot. But he evidently loves the programme itself Is the BBC biased? search/label/'Autumnwatch' . And thats the thing - those programmes are simply not made by anyone else, and if he didn't have a bee in his bonnet about certain subjects, he'd probably write a BBC fan blog.
I'm still wondering why he's fussing about Horrible Histories - its awesome, and some of the best music pastiches anywhere (OK, so the new ones are bit underwhelming, but still).
Why do people write these blogs/websites? Because they can. However, that no more means that there is clear and huge bias at the BBC than the existance of large numbers of websites about UFO's mean that there actually are UFO's, and little green men. I notice that such sites all tend to link to each other, as if for mutual encouragement and protection.
Dont imagine that the net directly reflects the real world. 538 has a very interesting tool to look at social media support amoungst the various US Presidential candidates - http://projects.fivethirt…ary/ - a 'Facebook primary'. Looking at that, you'd conclude that Bernie Sanders would be winning the nomination by a factor of 3-1. But of course he's not - he's over 300 delegates behind and has little chance of winning the nomination, let alone the White House.
In the same way - people can do what they like on the net, but that doesn't mean that most people in the real world care about it. And all the surveys about the BBC say they don't - in the real world people who like the BBC seem to be in the majority.
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MikeP: My Sony PVR does - it just scans twice a day, and then gives a message along the lines of 'new channel added'. I suspect its an automatic feature on most TV's, but its not always enabled. On the other hand, the Manhattan HD box doesn't seem to. I can't speak about my LG TV, since its a little older, and since we tend to use the HD box with it, I havn't noticed if it updates itself or not.
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Jamie: In my experience, Sony tuners are very sensitive, but also pretty robust - its takes a very high signal level before they break up. Panasonics are also known to be sensitive, but less robust at high signal levels. So Anthony could well be right - the Sony is simply pulling in more signal over a poor connection.
However, whats the Panny you've bought? For the last year, Panasonic have a cheapish line with their name on it, which is actually made by Vestal, who make TV's for loads of other brands. So the Panasonic TV you have might not have an actaul Panasonic tuner in it. But I'd still check your aerial.
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Tuesday 8 March 2016 6:42PM
Eve Steadman: We need a full postcode, and signal stength on BBC channels.