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BBC: Quality programming or Politically correct rubbish

The BBC does make a few exceptionally good programmes but not nearly enough. Nowadays if you were to rely on the BBC for your total entertainment package you would soon end up finding an alternative amusement like knitting or watching paint dry. Given the choice I would stop my subscription to the BBC and watch alternatives on Sky or Virgin or Freeview or DVD but in the UK you are not allowed to do that. Just having a working television in your house means that you have to pay the annual TV licence which goes to fund the BBC. You have to pay for the BBC service even if you never use it.

A typical BBC evenings viewing these days is an unending list of ancient repeats, humorless sitcoms, and low budget drama series. Most evenings when I have finished work I like to tune in to something for an hour or two before going to bed but only on very rare occasions does the BBC have anything to interest me. Most of the time I end up watching a movie or documentary on Sky.

News programmes on the BBC have always been hailed as excellent and unbiased. This has always been accepted and it must be true because the BBC is always telling us so! Nowadays we have alternative news channels available and through these we can independently assess the truth of the BBC claims. I subscribe to Sky and this gives me access to around fifteen news channels. I have found many stories covered on Euronews or CNN for example which never got a mention on the BBC so these days I tend to rely on Euronews first and look to the BBC for local coverage. Even the local news coverage is poor in my view. As for the unbiased claim it is difficult to see how a wholly government funded organisation can be immune from government control and propaganda broadcasting.

Expenditure is always spiraling out of control and the BBC is always trying to persuade the government to increase the licence fee to cover its philanthropic spending. As a broadcasting company that is supposed to be free of commercial advertising it is offensive to see the amount of expenditure on adverts for themselves. Yes the BBC has commercial breaks but unlike commercial television the cost of the advert breaks are payed for by the viewer and the content, which is limited to extolling the virtues of the BBC, is mindbendingly boring. Another example of uncontrolled reckless spending can be seen in the number of newscasters/presenters/weather men and finance gurus used in their daily morning news programme. Presenters add nothing to this programme except sometimes mindless drivel and incoherent mumblings which detract from the story line. Euronews provides an excellent morning news programme with superb coverage and newsreel and its all done without presenters and probably costs around a million a year less to make

Once the purveyor of excellent high quality programmes the BBC has not stood up to competition and its standards have sunk to an all time low. They are still capable of making the occasional quality programme but for the most part relive past glories and fob us off with repeats. This is not a quality service, it has plenty of rubbish and it is doubtful if even the rubbish is politically correct. The best test for the BBC would be an end to the practice of collecting licence fees by extortion and let them survive or not by their own commercial enterprise.

Learn more about this author, John Waters.
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