....does no one any bloody favours, though I like to think I maintain a look of zen-like concentration.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The BBC, from outside.
Have been meaning to respond to this post about the 'dying' beeb for a while.
Seems to me that it is incredibly easy, complacent, even, to complain about the BBC. It also seems to me to be the pre-occupation of the kind of Daily Mail reader who spends as much of their time listening idly to Radio 4 (even if all they actually hear is the Archer's theme and Sailing By) as they do sipping orange juice on the bowling green.
As someone who now has to do largely without the BBC, I cant bloody stress enough just how superior it is to....pretty much any television output in the world. And that its superiority raises those other channels that have to compete with it in the British market.
With the BBC, we are the nation that gives the world The Office, Extras, Life on Mars, Planet Earth, The Power of Nightmares, the BBC World Service, Dr Who, Monty Python, Spaced, Are You Being Served, Fawlty Towers and probably a whole bunch of others I cant remember.
Without the BBC...we turn into Canada or Australia...a nation with no real broadcasting culture of our own, punctuating an undifferentiated blur of advertisements (that swing wildly from vomit inducing sugar to mindless mysoginism)between every five minutes of imported American content (or pallid, pennyless and unimaginative domestic variations thereof).
Theres a reason that British television is shown and reproduced all over the world, and its certainly not ITV.
Seems to me that it is incredibly easy, complacent, even, to complain about the BBC. It also seems to me to be the pre-occupation of the kind of Daily Mail reader who spends as much of their time listening idly to Radio 4 (even if all they actually hear is the Archer's theme and Sailing By) as they do sipping orange juice on the bowling green.
As someone who now has to do largely without the BBC, I cant bloody stress enough just how superior it is to....pretty much any television output in the world. And that its superiority raises those other channels that have to compete with it in the British market.
With the BBC, we are the nation that gives the world The Office, Extras, Life on Mars, Planet Earth, The Power of Nightmares, the BBC World Service, Dr Who, Monty Python, Spaced, Are You Being Served, Fawlty Towers and probably a whole bunch of others I cant remember.
Without the BBC...we turn into Canada or Australia...a nation with no real broadcasting culture of our own, punctuating an undifferentiated blur of advertisements (that swing wildly from vomit inducing sugar to mindless mysoginism)between every five minutes of imported American content (or pallid, pennyless and unimaginative domestic variations thereof).
Theres a reason that British television is shown and reproduced all over the world, and its certainly not ITV.
Terrifying fireball over Edmonton
I wish I had've seen it, but kind of relieved I didnt at the same time (it looks like the end of the world)
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