Alan Bennett attacks multi channel TV

Alan Bennett attacks the decline of British television that came with more "choice" thanks to Rupert Murdoch.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Rupert Murdoch
• Alan Bennett
• satellite
• Sky
• playwright
• television
• drama

[feliciter84]

Thank God for Alan Bennett.

[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

[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

[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.

[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.

[eddiebraben]

Fry & Laurie on Choice

watch?v=6T2zUEiVQU4

[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

[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.

[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 .