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Thursday, February 04, 2010
The State of Broadcasting
An enviable global brand, and one of the richest national cultures in the world, yet the Beeb can't seem to get its numbers right:
The corporation did not know in advance how much it would spend covering individual events, from the Beijing Olympics to the Glastonbury festival, because so many departments were involved and they did not liaise on budgets, according to a damning National Audit Office report.
As a result, the corporation was unable to assess whether or not it offered value for money, it said.
The total expenditure for sport and music events in the 2008-09 financial year was £357 million, including coverage and rights. The public spending watchdog singled out the BBC’s construction of a £250,000 studio in Vienna for the Euro 2008 football championships because the one allocated did not have a backdrop of the city skyline.
The way a private corporation determines whether something is "value for money" is profit and loss. The BBC, being a state backed broadcaster with a right to force television owners to pay a tax (called a license) to finance its operations, has no such rubric. Don't watch the BBC? Too bad, you're still paying for Terry Wogan's salary. Over the decades the BBC has also worked diligently to limit its competition, who function at a remarkable disadvantage. In other countries, particularly Canada and the United States, the BBC is cited as a model for public broadcasting. Its vast financial resources allow it to produce quality, yet also popular, television. Well with that much money, and with the latent of the British people to draw from, it would difficult not to produce something worthwhile. Heck, even the CBC has produced some decent non-sports programming, though don't ask me to remember any quite at the moment. But for every Black Adder, Monty Python, Kenneth Clark and Top Gear, there has been a fair amount of dreck, which sounds and looks better than its North American equivalents more by virtue of its accents, than the actual words being spoken.
Posted by Richard Anderson on February 4, 2010 | Permalink
Comments
I'm so happy that someone else out there appreciates Kenneth Clark's Civilisation. I have that on VHS (US$150 in 1999) and DVD (C$90 in 2006) and can't get enough of his take on art. Documentary filmmaking at its very, very finest.
But the CBC should be torched and burned to the ground. It no longer serves any purpose but that of its own agenda. Every penny of its budget ought to be put to good use. If they don't like it, good.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2010-02-04 6:53:52 AM
I agree with Zebulon. I think most of your readers will. Someone should use screen capture, this could be historic.
Posted by: Floyd Looney | 2010-02-04 8:51:23 AM
$200 a year just to have a TV
Posted by: Goff Tayler | 2010-02-04 11:53:41 AM
come, come now fellow bloggers. Could any of us really get through the week without watching Little Mosque on the Prairie, or the seemingly endless number of government sponsored commercials telling us not to do drugs,drink alcohol,eat right, exercise,dont smoke,drive carefully,wash your hands, sneeze into your elbow and on and on etc. etc. This month is "Black history" month and personaly I can hardly contain myself in the anticipation of the coming revisionist mini tales. (When is White history month??). Only 3 or 4 hundred million a year and look at the value we get for that. If you are not waving a little canadian flag by now then obviously you live outside of Ottawa, in which case no one cares what you think.
Posted by: peterj | 2010-02-04 9:46:33 PM
Even someone thinks that this difference does anything else in life besides money. Now I found the BBC but I am sure that all corporations are in the same situation. Broke down this civilization. Let us all be ashamed of how we arrived. The slaves of money.
Posted by: asigurari auto | 2010-02-06 6:30:16 AM
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Posted by: cici | 2010-02-06 11:49:23 PM
A good if not better scenario would have the CBC and BBC eliminated and replaced by limited regulation by government of broadcasting to promote and ensure competition in those media.
Posted by: Agha Ali Arkhan | 2010-02-07 12:13:21 PM
How would government promote and ensure competition? By funding those private stations with fewest viewers? By forcing the most watched ones to fund the least watched?
Posted by: Floyd Looney | 2010-02-08 8:43:01 AM
Floyd, good questions. Relying on government to ensure fairness and competition by any means, will only ensure corruption and less competition.
Posted by: TM | 2010-02-08 4:48:49 PM
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