"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"

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"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.

"On Pie and Politics."

I paid a visit to my Grandparents the other day. Went with Jac and Murphy, and while I took my Gran & Jac to the supermarket, my Grandpa had all sorts of fun sharing the house with Murphy, a dark-haired retriever who's all kinds of soft. At times these days I wonder if in the year before he found himself in the dog shelter we found him in, he was raised by cats.

We had pie and chips, and I failed to convince the elders of my family of the benefits of green tea - mostly failing because after I convinced them to try it, it turned out very weak. Not used to making tea in a pot, but I wish it'd gone better. The pie was M&S's mince, which meant it reminded me of the many times I'd had similar meat and pastry over the years. Which is to say that I enjoyed the feeling, aswell as the pie. Finished off with a Victoria Sponge, which as historical a dessert as it is, is a much more recent experience for me, but nice too.

Shortly after, my Grandfather asked me a question, that by the looks of Jac and my Gran through my peripheral vision, they wished he hadn't.

"Chris, are you at all political?"

I couldn't tell you how my face looked at that moment, but I like to think it communicated what went through my head when he asked me:

"Hoboy."

What followed was to say the least, not pretty. I had to start from a point of speaking loudly, because he suffers from a chronic hearing problem, and combining the fact that I began by having to shout to talk to him, plus my own bull-headedness on issues, was a recipe for testiness. Especially when his first follow-up question was "So what do you think of Gordon Brown?". I sighed a little, and started to explain I was not a fan. First, there's the issue of succession. I'm not a fan of having a leader being bestowed upon us by the previous occupant, who despite his appalling cuddliness with the worst leader of the western world(Possibly ever, which is not just my opinion), and the pious use of his faith after leaving office, was the duly elected Prime Minister. To put it as I said to my Grandfather, "We don't have a Prime Minister right now, we have a Dauphin. A prince.". I'm well aware that the current system is what allows this, and the current system also means that an election to allow the people to decide if we really do want Gordon to stay in Downing St. is, and can only really be called by Gordon. I just don't have to agree with it, especially if(And I defer to my Grandfather on his knowledge on this subject), the succession part of this is enabled only by the rules of the Labour party, not law.

We went back and forth a few times, feeling the need to interrupt each other several times, where I explained that Gordon was one of the people to blame for the recession and recent world financial debacle, because he'd been one of the world leaders to strip out the barrier that protected customers from risky bank practices by preventing savings banks also being trading banks, meaning if moronic trading practices cost a trading bank a lot of money, the people who had money in a savings bank wouldn't be so badly affected. I was on finger one of a three-finger routine, when I was told that the situation had been caused by bankers, who had loaned money to people who shouldn't have been loaned the money(See: Sub-Prime mortgage market in the U.S.). I felt like I was correcting him by saying they were only able to offer loans and mortgages to such bad customers because of lax financial regulation, which had been stripped of it's teeth by late-term President Clinton and his fed chair Alan Greenspan, whole-term President Bush II, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for most of that period, whose name escapes me. He then felt apt to further defend my spurious suggestions about the PM, by pointing out to me the strengths of the Labour party, and that the Labour party was "working-class people".

Then I moved onto blaming other stuff such as short-selling, but it was becoming clear what the gist was. I was angry about a generation of political terms being spent making sacrifices of legislation to the altar of "The Free Market", in order to grease the wheels of said market to keep it running at an ever-more profitable rate. The free market concept is essentially one of "just leave it alone, it can take care of itself". The main idea behind it is that the market can decide what is good and bad for the market, and if followed wholeheartedly, bad practices would be punished by a lack of confidence and therefore a lack of profit - leading to said bad practicer going out of business or changing it's ways - whereas the best business practices would lead to a stronger business, and by osmosis/following the example, the market would be stronger. Thing is, "The Free Market" is an idea. And with ideas, they can be good ideas, they can be bad ideas - hell, write them out in enough detail, you can get your idea called a great theory - but the problem with ideas, is that they lack a key ingredient. People. Add people to the free market, and take away the lifeguards telling people not to run, you end up with swimmers holding people under the water while taking bets on how long the victim will hold their breath, and if someone can't pay that bet when they lose, they sell that debt to someone else so they can pay their losses, while the debt they sold gets sold some more, and some more, until no-one knows what it's actually worth or who owns it.

After reading the last paragraph, you'd be forgiven for thinking:

"The gist? What the hell, Chris?!?"

But trust me, that's the short form of it, with metaphors instead of shouting. My Grandfather, on the other hand - a long-term Labour member and supporter(They proudly told me a while ago they were known by name to their current MP and Foreign Secretary, Stephen Miliband) - posited the following observation to me:

"So, you're quite right-wing then. You believe that the Government should control what the banks do?"

I have to say, I couldn't help but laugh. While it's the second time in my life I've been described as "right-wing"(Evs got the cherry on that), I would never ever consider myself as from the right of....well, anybody. Maybe Karl Marx or Gandhi, perhaps. It was a bizarre moment for me, because I had to use my fading laughter as a cover while I tried to wrap my head around the notion that because I wanted the Government to protect me and the rest of the people from a tiny but powerful majority.....I was right-wing?

That ending of the discussion stuck in my head for the last twenty-four hours or so, and the reason why, hit me a few hours ago. For something to be right-wing, as my Grandfather proposed, would be to place faith and power in the authority of your rulers, and recommend that it would be best for all to accept the wisdom and authority of said overlords, and for them to choose what is best for us; with our views on the issue never a factor in what decision they made, or how it should be implemented. So, on that basis, I was being described as "right-wing", when I was suggesting(While shouting), that the people be protected from the nefarious ways of bankers and their worst mistakes, that the leader of the Government should be elected, not selected, and I resented the PM, for failing on both of those counts. Whereas I was being accused of this by someone extolling the virtues of the Labour Party as "working class", and in fact that they were virtuous because the party was "working class", and that the PM should be supported because of that.

My point is, I'm not really sure as to which of us in that discussion was more right-wing.

I don't know if I'm right-wing on any political or ethical issue. I know I probably come across that way because I can be stubborn to the point of people asking me "Do those ears work?", but that comes from an issue inside me where I always need to be right, and I read and listen to opinions from all sides, aswell as empirical data, before I make my mind up on anything. And when, as happens, I'm proven wrong, I thank the person who has, because they've given me the ability to go on, and be right again with this new information. But I have, and always will support the right of someone to voice a differing opinion. And I will always make sure people know that, just before I get into an argument with them about which of us is right. While I'm always going to think less of someone who has what I see as an ill-educated position, or is ignorant of the whole picture, or is just so WRONG.....I'll always hold them in high regard for discussing it with me, even if they never change their mind. The only people I hold in any low regard, is people who refuse to have an opinion, or hide it to avoid being confronted.

The reason why? Someone I hold in high regard once wrote the following.

"If you hide your ignorance, no-one will hit you and you'll never learn."

Source

And so, despite still being crippled in my life by the hits I've taken, I say this: Here's to getting hit. Cheers.

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Note: It's an hour later, I should have said that while I was referring to Aaron Sorkin writing that line in "The West Wing" episode "Two Cathedrals"(S02E22), he did not create the line - it was originally written by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451.

Today on "Politicians say the....Oddest things"

The Labour party suffered some massive injuries lately, including their worst performance in Wales and Scotland for nearly a century. Amidst that, I was listening to the coverage on the radio this afternoon, and I heard Rhodri Morgan, the current First Minister for Wales, say something that I'd imagine was intended......not quite the way he put it.

"The war is next year. I think of this as a Dunkirk moment

not a D-day,

el Alamein, or Stalingrad, that's next year"

from PoliticsHome

That wasn't all of it, and I had to dig to find that part, because the BBC story I found missed out that part(Which was a little weird, seeing as I'd heard it on 5Live.)

"It's time to move forward now. We have lost the battle but we have got the prospect of success next year in the war. This was Dunkirk."

from BBC News

Regardless, here's the bit. Read the first quote, specifically the bit "not a D-Day". I've tried and tried to look at this from another perspective, where I'm wrong and it still makes sense(Please mention it if you can see it), but.....did Rhod Morgan just compare the Labour Party to.....the Nazis?

Princess? A moment of your time.

I'm still a massive fan of 2D animation, and in many instances I prefer the 2D over the 3D, even if it's the same story done twice.  Don't get me wrong, I think Pixar do some great work, and there are tons of talented 3D animators producing their own stuff around the world.  I bring this up, because Disney have a feature film coming up, one which made my heart sing when I started reading about it, and watching the line tests I'd been lucky to find online.  While it's pretty obvious that the film - "The Frog Princess" - isn't aimed at me, and I don't think I'm ever going to see it, I'm still excited that so many people are being paid to make a film like this.  Mind you.  I was wandering over the IMDB this morning, and I saw some publicity stills of the film.  And they left me with a question in my head.

Did they have to give her a glass eye?  I mean, her eyes really aren't looking in the same direction.

Dude, seriously. Leave the house once in a while.

My boy Synastro now has his first flying mount.  Finally.  Afterrr......gawd, about three years.  World of Warcraft has it's naysayers and critics, but I am but a casual player, so this was an honest achievement for me.  Suck it, bitches.