Thompson, revealing more about the scope of his strategic review of BBC operations, said the corporation would be smaller in scale, reducing programme and content output in some areas, including its website.According to Plunkett, he also "implied [that] digital services such as BBC3, BBC4 and 6Music could face the axe."
He also promised that, after the digital switchover in 2012, a higher proportion of the licence fee would be spent on original UK content and less on foreign imports.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thompson's BBC predictions
In The Guardian, John Plunkett reports on Mark Thompson's speech to a Voice of the Listener and Viewer conference in London.
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FROM THE CHAIR OF THE TV COMMITTEE
ReplyDeleteAt last the BBC is seeing sense. For the past few years, it's poured millions into new channels/ new buildings/ new everything except its core function: new programming.
The BBC has had the hardware (the extra channels and platforms) but not the software (enough programmes to fill them all.) Hence we get to see the same shows on BBC3, then shifted to BBC2 and... if we're really lucky... BBC1. A rose by any other name.
Added to that, BBC 3 + 4 are now doing what BBC2 used to. A little rationalisation would go a long way, and result in more and better British programmes. Isn't that what the BBC is all about?
I can't see BBC2 ever going back to being the artsy eclectic channel it was 15 years ago, and BBC4 really does have a distinctive public-service identity. I'd hate to see it get axed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about BBC4, but think of channels not so much being axed as amalgamated. Our television sets are not half empty, but half full... actually that's the problem. Not enough new shows being made to go round!
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