Alan Bennett attacks multi channel TV

[tincoffin]

And the BBC has not been "forced to get it' hands dirty " .They are just like any other organisation -they like to expand their powers - so they compete unfairly with our money in areas like pop music or internet news which are perfectly well catered for in the commercial sector. They spread themselves too thinly . But of course you have to be on the "right " to see that all organisations behave in the same way. Badly.

[tincoffin]

Well if you prefer a monopoly broadcasting system run by the government to a multiplicity then so be it .I am so sorry that you are so disappointed in it. I don't know what you do next as you have nowhere else to turn

[eddiebraben]

Fry & Laurie on Choice

watch?v=6T2zUEiVQU4

[moodini99]

Bennett makes a good point, nevertheless, he can be pretty preachy and pretentious at times.

[thefletchishere]

thats why we should have more choice not less, look at the creation of bbc3 and four there are now more new writing, and clever documentaries than ever on the bbc because of the smaller channels that don't have to be main stream for that reason. Using the supermarket annalogy was silly because there is more choice of items there than tv channels.

[eddiebraben]

@thefletchishere BBC3 and BBC4 at their finest aren't a patch on the 5 plays a week, James Burke, Jacob Bronowski, Dennis Potter era of old. BBC3, the odd pretension- to-middlebrow documentary inbetween wall to wall yoof tat. BBC4 claims to be intellectual, but seems more at home celebrating Val Doonican than Samuel Beckett. It barely commissions films unless they're a limited budget tears of a clown biopic. Its undeserved reputation is only their to give a facade to TV's the race to the bottom

[JanetteHeffernan]

I got my entire education from BBC. From 1947 until about 1957 the BBC educated, informed and entertained. At four I saw Belsen and Shaw, Shakespeare and Muffin the Mule, Cricket,Football and 1948 Olympic Games. I was better educated than the 18 year old Irish nuns that my father had chosen for my education having gone to the best schools himself.

What would I have done without the old BBC. Ballet opera, drama I knew the best by the age of ten and never looked back. I was rescued eventually!

[tincoffin]

Bennett Blair Brown Campbell the " scholarship boys " are useless  . What point is there of education if you fail to realise what England is about.. Education is about making people feel special because they belong to a certain realm. People who believe in the Common Law instead of giving it away to foreigners. You are a useless crew .

[TheCuriousOrange83]

Alan Bennett has just summed up exactly why I don't watch Tele any more.

[Boratlon]

I love Bennett, but I think that he is wrong on this account. Most TV exists to sell itself, ie provide enough viewers for profitable advetising.

The beauty of the BBC is that they are (in theory) not bordered by such constraints and can produce educational or improving works.

My optimistic view is that people will prefer meaning over soma and will thus continue with the great and good as opposed to the usual Murdoch garbage (excepting The Simpsons and Glee).

[tincoffin]

@Boratlon

The problem with the BBC is :

1 That they confuse even-handedness with objectivity . They think that their remit is to give a litle air-time to a right wing politician and then an equal amount to a left-wing politician and that is balance.But on any given issue they are free to adopt a flagrantly biased and one-sided attitude . Look at their coverage of the climate change debate over the last month .

[tincoffin]

@tincoffin

2.. " The very same people who make a fuss about the nation losing its identity in Europe are quite happy to see national television lose its identity and go the european route. "

Well if national identity goes then of course national television will follow ."

Why on earth are you saying this . has your brain gone soft?

[Boratlon]

First, whilst I loathe that racist toad to whom you refer, it was completely justified to give him a slot on Question Time. I believe I am right in saying his racist mob garnered over a million votes at the European election last May(?). Whilst they punch well above their weight in terms of media and column inches, this is due to their, the BNP and the Press', tendency for sensationalism.

[Boratlon]

I am a great believer in the power of free speech, at least get the half wit on a platform that is not on his own terms, so that we can hear his beliefs etc. I would hasten to suggest the evidence put forward re Holocaust denial, which proves that more sympathy for the survivors is elicited than anti-semitism.

[tincoffin]

@Boratlon :The success of the BNP arises because our government believed that it was right to allow unrestricted & unmonitored immigration to this country. Is it the government or the BNP which held an extremist viewpoint ?

[twopinplugvision]

@tincoffin The success of the BNP arises out of some being ignorant, vindictive scum. If their willing to vote for holocaust deniers, then I applaud any politician that ignores their repulsive opinions. You don't appease idiots like that. The BNP get 1%/2% of the vote. Thats 1%/2% of the biggest arseholes in the country, screw 'em

[tincoffin]

@twopinplugvision The BBC was so frightened by Nick Griffin on Question Time that they packed the studio & loaded the questions against him . The BBC & Nu Labour thought that people who were worried about excessive immigration were "bigotted". Is that what you mean by impartiality?

[twopinplugvision]

What "choice" do the people get exactly? What they're thickest mate says they like in focus group?

Rupert Murdoch has choice, so does whoever own Dave. The people? They only have a choice of programmes these ruthless, lowest common denominator chasing monsters have chosen for them.

Or could someone remind me of all those classic television programmes made by Sky One?

[simonpenum]

three words.......Time, Gentlemen, please

[tincoffin]

@twopinplugvision  : You do have a choice : Get what the establishment wants you to think then go for the British system . Get everything mostly rubbish and have a choice. The US system . I am reluctantly driven to the fact that I prefer the second .

[twopinplugvision]

@tincoffin @rockchick80s But the first describes the US corporate controlled media, not the latter. What you think is the British system is the American system.

[tincoffin]

@twopinplugvision The BBC started off as a propaganda outfit because of the war but in those days it operated within certain limits . Nowadays it adopts a viewpoint on a whole range of issues and that is the fault of the management who cannot be trusted to do their job which is to ensure impartiality. it isn't very difficult after all . Open up the airwaves to a few contrarians.

[twopinplugvision]

@tincoffin I don't know who you got your history from, but the BBC began in 1922, that's seventeen years before the war. The BBC is an impartial news organisation, which puts every American news organisation to shame. Not perfect, but light years ahead of America in that respect. Our drama and comedy has been lagging behind the USA of late, but our news is way way better. As I've said before, your "contrarians" just means Rupert Murdoch biased news based around his self-interest. No advance.

[tincoffin]

@twopinplugvision Murdoch news is biased so I make allowances .BBC claims to be impartial but isnt . Which is better ? US broadcasting where I can get multiple viewpoints or UK where I get one . Well I know which one I choose . I am fed up with being patronised even by Bennett whom I admire .

[twopinplugvision]

@tincoffin The Murdoch news in the form of Sky News claims to be impartial, as does Fox News, which goes under the byline "Fair and Balanced". Which side doesn't get a voice on the BBC? Not the right-wing you mean? Not from what I could see at the last election. Nick Robinson for example was head of the Young Conservatives at Oxford.

[tincoffin]

@twopinplugvision In 1922 not many people watched telly . Why do you think that people like Murdoch & his news services are self -interested and that the BBC composed of pretty similar human beings is not ?

[twopinplugvision]

@tincoffin In 1922 nobody watched television. It hadn't been invented yet. The BBC was a radio service only. As it was during the entirety of World War II when TV went off air.

Every organisation is full of self-interested human beings. Most, unlike the BBC, don't have a legal obligation to be impartial.

[tincoffin]

@twopinplugvision Once you accept the idea that the broadcasting organisations like the BBC or Murdoch are basically similar , self -interested, then it follows that you cannot allow a monopoly to control them . We wouldn't accept a national newspaper so why should we accept a national broadcaster?

[nakedmambo]

@tincoffin Rubbish, the Murdoch broadcaster is not even a broadcaster it is a narrowcaster and works on a profit principle. Think of the way the BBC has given potentially loss-making chances to programmes that originally looked like failures e.g. Only Fools & Horses only to see them become massive successes. Commercial TV would have axed it immediately for fear of losses. The BBC has to answer for it's decisions, Murdoch TV can do what it likes because of the rules of private enterprise.

[nakedmambo]

@tincoffin Murdoch TV also follows trends, often the lowest common denominator; when was the last time Sky nurtured a new comedy talent or commissioned educational programmes that people talk about years afterwards? The BBC has been forced to get its hands dirty in trend following because of the pressures and threats of commercial TV feeding people a steady, lazy diet of sensationalism and mind-numbing drivel.

[tincoffin]

@twopinplugvision And how can the BBC make a pretence of impartiality when it accepts loans from institutions like the European Bank set up to help european integration.

[Eddie123xyz]

Is he advocating a one size fits all broadcasting system? Perhaps people can't be trusted with choice and freedom Alan. They may watch things you dont approve of.

[twopinplugvision]

Please watch this Eddie

watch?v=6T2zUEiVQU4

[tincoffin]

@Eddie123xyz

Does anyone disagree that allowing immigrants unrestricted access to this country was an extremist policy by this government ? How did it arise ?

1 ..Alans chums at the BBC decided that immigration was not a subject to be discussed & so placed a 40 year moratorium on it

2.. Alan supports human rights legislation (EU support) which made it impossible to forbid entry to immigrants and hard to get rid of them .

3.. It then only needed a tiny tweek to bring us to our present pass

[twopinplugvision]

@tincoffin

"Unrestricted access"

So those Immigration authorities and asylum centres and deportations are figments of our imagination?

[LieutenantShweinHund]

too many things in this blurb to be interesting.

[tinytina789]

P.s. There are millions of us waiting for the next seris of Shameless.

[tinytina789]

Can we bemoan the fragmentation of such as thing as television viewing habits while at the same time bemoan the disappearance of small or medium sized regional communities and their local and unique cultures?

[DanTheWhirlwind]

He makes a compelling argument but most programs on satellite seem to be repeats and sport at the moment. And with the power of the internet programs can be watched anytime and anywhere.

[rockchick80s]

Here Here!!! Thank God for Alan Bennett and also Thank God for Rab C Nesbitt. Also anyone who puts the Boot into Jeffrey Archer gets my vote lol

[feliciter84]

Thank God for Alan Bennett.

[Tangoratsfan]

And this is why I love this man.

[MrEustaceTilley]

When I was a lad Mr Grimes brought us one TV programme a week. He'd drop it in yard with a sigh. Mam let us watch it after super. Dad was too embarrassed to join us, 'Nowt be havin' with this claptrap, lad' he'd say. Now it's multi-channel this and youtube that. It's how they like it these days. Thora said a country needs no more channels than a lady needs stockings, one for formal and one for gentleman callers. BBC 1 and BBC 2 do grand for that.

Ha! I satirise you Alan Bennett! I am the best!

[ghughesarch]

Mmmmm. I think, however, that Alan Bennett might proof-read his submissions and perhaps spell "supper" correctly before posting.

[rherrick123]

you're such an intelligent guy.

[parra9876]

wise words