"Smokers Outside The Hospital Door"

"And with great consideration Mr. Speaker, I put to the house for consideration, the 'Intellectual Bailout Bill' - where funds will be used to prop up the most moronic of companies whose only business interest is making a living out of making crap TV"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"The BBC could be made to share part of the television licence fee with commercial rivals under government plans to be announced later.

The Digital Britain report will suggest ways to help companies like Channel 4 cope with the impact of the internet."

Source

I give up. I just give up.

The publicly-funded BBC was created to provide radio and tv to the masses, and while it was often used as a wartime propaganda tool, it has become something that I think everyone should be proud of. Sure, there are stories written with some regularity about how some say the BBC doesn't reflect them, and sometimes they are chastised for using part of the licence fee for steep contracts for certain performers(In stories often written by the most well-paid talking heads that the press can afford), but I gotta say, this idea - of sharing the fee around - is JUST stupid.

First off, the BBC is without a doubt, the highest calibre content provider in the UK, and regarded as one of the highest content providers in the world. Compare it to the output of ITV, 4, any of the channels on Sky or Virgin, or......does five even broadcast anymore?

Seriously. I love the stuff they put out, and I'm far from alone. True, I may hate the relentless plod of all the costume dramas they put out. But I'm not the audience for that. I also roll my eyes whenever I find shows like "Two Pints of Lager & A Packet of Crisps" not only on tv, but on an awful lot. It's just drivel. But I'm not the audience for that.

The thing is, the BBC also produce an awful lot of stuff I do like. I watch News 24 every day(It's the best choice for news in my mind, less subjective than the Jeremy-Kyle-esque show that Sky News puts on, and simply better at reporting the news than CNN or FOX), I love listening to just two radio stations - Five Live and 6 Music - both BBC stations, both without peer. I could go into more detail, but seeing as I've already stated I think the BBC is great, that would be me missing the point of my own article.

Try as I might to think about it, I don't know many parts of the British population that the BBC does a disservice to. There's a fair amount of people who think there should be more religious programming, and while I don't think there should be(On the basis that those people can coddle each other's ignorance at home, the same way they did in the dark ages), I recognise that apart from the craziness of the 400 Club on early morning Sky One and some of the more well-hidden Sky channels that serve an entirely religious purpose, the BBC is currently the only non-subscription channel that offers ANY consistent religious programming. I'll freely admit that it seems confined to happy, clappy christians on Songs of Praise, but that seems a fair amount of time to give to people who should be in church at that time on a Sunday anyway.

There are dramas, comedies, documentaries, music, opinion, news, news analysis, reality shows, lots of children's shows for absent parents, business shows, stuff that really just chats to you and talks about stuff like "The One Show", and for people who don't like television or laughing, there's "Two Pints of Lager & A Packet of Crisps".

And that's missing out the radio and web stuff they do, including the brilliant iPlayer, the best effort by pretty much any tv channel in the world at bringing content to their customers, something which I feel has a lot to do with why the other networks don't DESERVE any of the licence fee.

I watch a lot of American TV. I also read a lot about American TV, which I feel helps educate me to the nature of the biggest tv market in the world. There are a lot of shows that come out of America that I like, and some that I absolutely LOVE. But I tell you, that those shows get made at all, when they're produced or bought by networks that are run by people with wood for brains is staggering.

Leaving aside the astonishing decisions that are made on a monthly basis to cancel good shows that aren't immediately popular, in order to give life to bad shows that dumb people like to watch, U.S. tv networks are in a similar pinch to some of the U.K. tv networks. Ad revenue is down, the viewing audience is way down, and executives spend so much of the day scratching their head and wondering why no-one will watch their crap, they come home bald with their scalp looking like a tomato. It's partly to do with the audience being treat worse and worse every year, ever crappier and more banal shows being put on in an attempt to make numbers for shareholders, to a point where anything new or difficult, or (God forbid), intelligent is put on the air, the audience just don't know what to do with it. You'll have heard the name HBO, and perhaps even Showtime. These networks do actually consistently produce some stuff that ranges from "Well, at least it's different", to "Wow, this is good", to "When this finishes, my life will be empty". But these are subscription channels, which have a direct source of income. And they know what their audience likes, because if they start losing some of their audience, they can try something new to bring them back.

The major networks in the U.S.; ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and if we must, the CW, are all in different amounts of strife, but all are affected. CBS is the current leader of the pack - laden with such diverse shows as "CSI", "CSI Miami", "CSI New York", "The Mentalist"(Portable CSI), "Cold Case"(CSI but with flashbacks and no office budget), "NUMB3RS"(Predictive CSI), "NCIS"(Air Force CSI) and the forthcoming "NCIS: Los Angeles"(I wish I was joking), they've surged ahead of the pack on a consistent basis. But they're not immune to the economy - recently they had to choose between expensive-to-make procedural police drama "Cold Case", and expensive-to-make procedural FBI drama "Without a Trace", and are starting to rely more on shows like their procedural S.W.A.T. show, "Flashpoint", which works for them because Flashpoint, like a number of new shows for 2009, is made for cheap in Canada, then sold at a competitive price to the U.S..

ABC, home of LOST and Desperate Housewives, has seen the numbers fall, but stay strong for LOST, but just fall for Housewives. Ugly Betty continues down a hill, while recent shows like "Private Practice" and the show it span off from - "Grey's Anatomy", splutter often, but remain relatively strong. ABC is also the home to such guff as "America's Funniest Home Videos", "The Bachelor" and it's spinoff "The Bachelorette", "Dancing With the Stars"(aka "Strictly Come Dancing" with people you've never heard of but the same judges are there), and the U.S. versions of "Supernanny" and "Wife Swap". I guess what I'm saying is, imagine ITV with LOST and Desperate Housewives and you've got the picture.

FOX is famous over here for being part of the name for a film studio, aswell as bringing us the Simpsons, but is also responsible for showing us all that even in the 21st century, an ageing drunk can still be a spy, via "24". They also have shows I like, such as worldwide favourite "House", the "X-Files but with sort of a story" show that is "Fringe", and several animated shows like "Family Guy". But FOX have garnered a reputation for chopping and changing their schedule often, and often lose viewers on struggling shows when they get moved around. How ever the shows do, it never really matters, because as long as America has an "Idol" addiction, FOX will be afloat. Although with Simon Cowell said to be considering walking, we'll see.

NBC......Oh, poor NBC. It's not that they don't like good shows there, it's just they don't like making them or promoting them. For a long time now, NBC has lost both viewers and money hand over fist, partly because they often make bad shows that disappoint, or they make expensive good shows, then drop them so fast, you'll question whether it was really there. I'd go into it, but I think there's an entire article I could write on NBC, so I'll leave it. Suffice it to say, it's the ultimate bureaucracy. Too many people on too many levels making too many decisions. Their endless faith in Ben Silverman, a supposed "wunderkind" producer is just something I can't wrap my head around. His latest "golden egg", is to have adverts feature as part of the show you're watching, involving the sets, and maybe even the actual actors as they recommend something to you. I've seen it, and if you don't know it's coming, it feels like a really weird, non-sequitir scene of the show. Like either you're on drugs and hallucinating, or what you're witnessing is a TV show begging for money on the street.

The CW is a network I don't know much about. It makes "Supernatural", which means it deserves my respect, and it makes "Smallville", which means it deserves my rotten eggs. The best thing I can tell you about the predicament at The CW, is that they recently gave up their ENTIRE weekend primetime schedule, unable to make it work at all, and set it out for tender to other companies.

Something you might have wondered over those paragraphs, as being conspicuous, is internet strategy. "We've got the iPlayer and the knockoffs the other channels have put out later(I know 4's was first, but it didn't really work til recently), so what did the Americans have?". Answer is nothing. They honestly had nothing. While we've only had things like Sky+ or V+ for a little while, the Americans have grown used to having the Tivo, an identical system that records programs onto a hard drive for playback later. Let me explain that - for many years, the American consumer has had a box sitting under their TV, that digitally records every show the viewer wants - turning them into a video file like the ones on your computer - so you can watch it later, and it allows you to skip the ads completely. The one thing that the networks have resisted again and again, was the ability to convert said Tivo files into something you could watch somewhere other than your living room. Say, your computer, or your iPod.

The best you could do was either visit a network website to watch ads for the new episode, or a small version of the previous one. The next option would be to hit YouTube, and see if any of the videos of the show had survived the morning blitz of the network lawyers.

A while later, after people started finding out they could illegally download their favourite shows via such things as torrents, tv channels started offering their wares on the iTunes store. Now, I'm a fan of the iTunes store. It may still be riddled with DRM and file formats that mean you're stuck using it on an iPod or your computer, but it has a lot of content, often free, and until recently, was the only method available for purchasing digital content over the internet in ANY kind of legal fashion. Yes, there have been myriad other online mp3 stores, most recently the Amazon store, but until Amazon began offering itself, no-one has been able to compete with Apple's shop.

All of this is to say, that TV networks, moreso than movie studios, have been......how best to put it.....REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY slow at accepting new things. At first, the internet was "A fad", and regarded as the modern version of teletext - you'd use it, but it was just for reading the headline news, your stock price and the footie results. Then, it was a den of thieves, with nothing but despicable digital pirates, with their mp3 players and peg-legs, having the gall to record tv shows, put them onto their computer, and share them with friends/strangers. I mean, the utter CONTEMPT, that these thieves showed to tv networks that couldn't even be bothered to offer up a version of their show to be watched on their computer or video mp3 player, the NERVE of them to feel they should be able to get the content in a way that suits their needs and not the schedule. Then, in a slight change of heart, tv networks started saying "Yeah, kids, we still think of you as thieving bastards, but if you can get your dad's credit card, we'll sell what you can find for free, or watch for free on tv, or buy for less on DVD, over the iTunes store.". That all kind of went stupid, when in the middle of this period, NBC, still feeling all high and mighty with the successes of Friends and The West wing, began a fight with Apple over their "pricing structure", and in a fit of temper, NBC withdrew all of their shows from what was still the only legal way to get a digital copy of a tv show. They threw a wobbly with the best option out there, to get the stuff out, admittedly at an inflated price. If that's the best game in town, you either make a better game or accept what you need to do. Again, to be clear, I'm a fan of the store, but even I know it's very expensive, but then unless you want the illegal option, tough luck - it's the only choice.

Flash forward to now.

NBC is one of several networks selling through iTunes, aswell as several other digital systems, but not currently via the Xbox Live Video Marketplace - a service similar to iTunes, except done through an Xbox 360, with a similar service expanding through the rival Sony PS3. Their numbers are dropping, while they attempt to re-focus their efforts on services such as HULU. HULU is basically YouTube, with nothing but legal content from providers like NBC and FOX, but with adverts in the videos and on the website. In other words it's free to watch, just less fun than you might want.

So, the networks audiences are down, and so is the amount of money being paid for advertising on tv - because the audiences are lower - and it's because of two things.

One: the networks continue to value popular crap that further lowers the audience's expectations and ruin any chance of being able to make something good AND popular.

Two: The most important part. After spending YEARS ignoring the internet, then blaming it and criminalising impatient viewers who couldn't wait for a corporation to catch up with them, then trying to extract blood from a stone by asking people to pay more for a tv show download than it costs to get the same thing in a DVD that has better quality and extra features missing from downloads, the American TV networks are FINALLY getting to the point where they look like they're going in ANY kind of direction that won't ruin them.

And you know what? The U.K. commercial networks have followed the EXACT same path. ITV's numbers are down? Screw them. Channel 4's numbers are down? Whatever baby. I love you, but whatever. Channel five has numbers? Knock me over with a feather. They've spent a LONG time either ignoring the problem, or being kept on a leash by American networks they refused to press into action. So I don't know why these companies should deserve their own bailout. True, if they received state funding, it would mean protection to prevent them being bought up on the cheap. But these are corporations, and in the case of ITV, I can't find a show they make that I feel represents me in ANY way. I'm completely serious, I haven't watched ITV in YEARS, and unless they start doing that, I have no idea why the licence fee should be shared with morons. While Channel Four is an institution around as old as me, and I have loved it dearly, if it can't do better than it is, I will bid it farewell. If only to serve as some kind of warning sign to the heads of other networks. Jon Snow, I love you man, but Hollyoaks ain't enough.

To put it another way: Either it goes to public service broadcasting, or it doesn't. I won't pay any licence fee that goes to a channel that produced Love Island, or continues to pump money into the looney bin that is Jugs and Jugless Inc.