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The situation with the BBC is not wholly of its own making. The corporation has been pressured to be popular, and, simultaneously, a public service broadcaster. And many people moaned when it was a public service broadcaster, during the patriarchal age of broadcasting. Now people are moaning that things have gone too far the other way. Quite correctly. My argument against popularity at the expense of quality is fairly simple: If the BBC makes programmes in popular formats, that are of the same quality as those available on commercial channels (or worse), there is nothing to distinguish it from the commercial channels. Making questions about the license fee inevitable. That is the situation today.

The assumption about an audience, needed to arrive at a conclusion of inaccessibility, is worrying. Accessibility is totally wrong. The most patriarchal thing since Abraham is that broadcasting needs to be accessible. I don’t necessarily think there’s an assumption people are stupid, but suspect there’s an assumption people are not interested in complexity. So, as a result, controversial issues turn into tabloid, bite size chunks, which alarm people irresponsibly, or presentation heavy documentaries, light on detail and low in accuracy. Maybe people being turned off by politics, science, the arts, and current affairs, is, in part, because they associate it with ‘accessible’ broadcasting. People sense that they’re being spoken down-to.

There should be an assumption that the majority of people are not stupid, and that complex subjects should be presented to inform. That is a different assumption from accessibility, because it assumes the viewers are intelligent and capable of learning. That not everything in a documentary needs to be so dumbed down it is accessible to the majority of viewers. People are capable of looking things up that interest them. The BBC used to produce decent fact sheets. As such there is zero replay value in many BBC current affairs programmes, and documentaries, because the information within them is so light very few people would have a problem with remembering their contents. Unless distracted by the special effects, and music track.

The BBC needs to compete to survive and in order to compete, with the other channels, many of whom are now producing documentaries of acceptable quality, the BBC needs to produce documentaries that are better. They desperately need to take a step-backwards. Until the late nineties BBC documentaries were the envy of the world. The BBC is the broadcaster best placed to attract the next David Attenborough(s) and needs to do that right away if it is to survive.

And the BBC could. Because the talent tucked away in places like BBC 4, a channel that receives a tiny fraction of the license fee and speaks for itself. Likewise Radio 4. Accessibility should be regarded as a failed experiment.

It virtually goes without saying that producing reality television, from talent shows to DIY, when everyone is doing it, makes the BBC less distinguishable from the commercial channels. Sacrificing long-term survival for short-term popularity. BBC 3 is, to my mind, schizophrenic, veering between sub-Channel 4 youth television, and, occasionally, decent drama/comedy. Half of what is on BBC 3 is done on commercial channels, and often better. I don’t think there is a dearth of talent - the talent is out there – the BBC needs to aggressively seek it out.

Someone needs a big brush to sweep away accessability and replace it with talent. Talent should reflect the subjects they’re involved in. There should be no more broadcasters covering subjects that leave them so out of their depth they look stupid.

Much of the above applies to the rest of the media but I don’t care about them as much as the BBC. I would like to be able to mock foreign friends about how much better BBC documentaries are than theirs. I felt smug when I could do that.

This.  I think the video demonstrates my point and I will say nothing further on the subject.

The recent stories in the press about high-tech dust that helped grow a severed finger back are nonsense. Furthermore they’re old nonsense. It will make you angry but today’s Bad Science column is essential reading and worth sharing. The stories of the ‘pixie dust’ were bad, in many ways, and on a very simple human level - there’s going to be people who, in desperation, will badger doctors for something that doesn’t work as well as the stories they’d seen in the press implied. When I saw the story this week I took a minute, and did a Google Archive search, it’s a little like LexisNexis (something many journalists have access to), and it turned up the following results:

Click here to lose a little more faith in humanity.

And, was somewhat perplexed that the story didn’t appear to be new, given the widespread coverage it was receiving, and that, furthermore, the finger didn’t appear to be severed in any sense of the word. I think Ben Goldacre is right to draw attention to such risible coverage from people we rely on for news. See also.

I would never poach a quail egg. Quail eggs are OK. Nothing special. Small eggs. You eat them and think “hmm. That’s OK”. I won’t eat hem unless someone else is buying them and someone else is cooking it. This isn’t an issue of snobbery. I feel the same way about black pudding. And beer. And newspapers. You don’t have to prepare beer unless you are opening a can or pouring it yourself. That’s preparation of a sort.

You can prepare newspapers by finding discarded newspapers on the train, scrunching the pages into loose balls, and putting them in a big pile in your back garden. Then joyfully spunk methanol all over them (from a spare lens cleaning kit), and set fire to them. Shouting “I’m burning the media, man – and I didn’t even pay for it”. (I have no respect for people who burn flags because, often, they’ve bought the flag. It’s mental). Then read the websites of the newspapers you have burnt without ever, ever, clicking on the advertising links.

Even if they’ve got a potentially good deal on a camera advertised or a featured book written by the sub-editor’s wife’s nephew. Then, much later, when the awful realisation dawns on you that you’ve made a Jeremy Clarkson/K Foundation-like statement (I suspect they’re one and the same). Hang your head in shame and drink Ribena. To wash down a fish-finger sandwich. And have a good hard think.

There are qualities that exist in all great film-drama characters that are hard to pin down. It is too simplistic to say that the characters have depth or complexity because some great film characters aren’t complex and don’t have depth. An element may be that while a part of a narrative, at some point in the film, (or even all of it) a great character’s motivations are not obvious to the viewer. So elements of the character are open to interpretation and the character is interesting as a result. Another factor may be the freshness of a role. As defined by the script and/or director and/or acting skills. A memorable character - because they’re novel and a benchmark by which others will be judged. And, I suppose, the pathos or revulsion the character can elicit from an audience.

All in varying proportions. Of course. One day a twat will paid peanuts to put together a shoddy equation for the benefit of a cinema chain. Who’ll pump out press releases on the unsuspecting public like bukkake. Mopped up by the news.

I have been mostly thinking about:

• Suicides In Bridgend, and
• Broken Britain, and
• Obese Britain, and
• Illegal Immigration, and
• Hospital Deep Cleaning, and

Other Such Problems; regularly capitalised by distasteful people wont of a conscience or brain. Cunts the lot of them. Basically, in a nutshell and to summarise, all of the above things are bollocks. As are Other Such Problems. People who believe in such things as big issues are ill-informed. People who don’t believe in such things, people that should know better, are turds. I have decided, as Lord High Ruler of this fiefdom of bollocks of a blog, that I know the answer to all of modern society’s woes. The problem with society is, in its simplest paraphrased form, a chain of thought that begins with:

• It may be bollocks, but …

Because what follows “but …” is:

• it suits us/me because, and/or
• it’s what people believe and I will make no attempt to correct them, and/or
• it’s always been like that, and/or
• there are multiple truths;

When

“it suits us/me because” - is basically saying there’s a lot of fucktards out there and we’re going to make use of them. Nasty.

“it’s what people believe and I will make no attempt to correct them” - is reasonable for religious belief or anything else that can’t be easily measured (provided it stays within its own domain). It is a piss-poor excuse for misleading statistics, blatantly untrue headlines, and politically motivated red herrings. It’s saying “hey, I know they’re wrong, but I’m not going to take any responsibility for correcting them”. Don’t stick your fingers in the plug socket dear.

“it’s always been like that” - an excellent excuse for sexism, domestic violence, racism, homophobia, and other shitiness. Which is exactly why it’s no fucking excuse. Anyone who uses that excuse is as bigger threat to Britain as a hooded teenager swigging cider and shouting at girls. I.e. Not that much, but quite annoying, and not that much use either.

“there are multiple truths” - but not when things can be measured, you fucking idiot. That is why we measure and quantify things. If something can be measured and you disagree with the results find a problem with the methodology or fuck off. Seriously. Fuck off.

See how many times you can spot “it may be bollocks, but…”, in any of its guises, today. Every time someone says something stupid, and we don’t correct them, we’re guilty of it. I was talking to a very wrong cab driver last week who began saying “prisons are holiday camps”. I just looked out of the window. His views are in-part a product of the newspapers he reads and the politics that he follows. How do you tell someone they’re wrong without getting thrown out of the cab? There’s an important philosophical point there.

But I could be lying and I may not of been in a cab. I could, in fact, have talked to a twee city gent about the price of black tea and how to clean marble kitchen tiles. A gent who knows a great deal about the prison system, having been incarcerated for stealing sixty diamond encrusted mouse-mats from a particularly tacky Swiss furniture shop (which is tackier and more expensive than anywhere else in the world). Although I could have made that up too. However, I was in a cab, and that one way conversation about prison as Butlins did actually happen.

Unless I dreamt it.

Do they have Toblerone in Swiss jails? And skiing?

No doubt there will exist, or has existed, a Swiss cab driver telling someone all about prisons full of skiers eating Toblerone. And their passenger may be looking out the window towards the Alps by night.

Fuck it. The end.

I don’t get people who upload copyrighted clips to YouTube by pointing a video camera at their television and re-recording the material.   The legal position is similar to someone who covertly records a film in a cinema.  The law is stupid, however, attempting to circumvent it by recording from a camera pointing at a television is also stupid.

Thought of the day

Celebrity news is thought to attract viewers.  Does it represent a net gain in viewers, or temporary gains?    How loyal is an audience attracted by the saga of Britney Spears?  Can main-stream news channels compete with dedicated celebrity news outlets?  Has diversification in the name of popularity increased or decreased viewing figures for all channels that have gone down that route?  Is there an niche for news channels that  provide quality analysis of important news?  Is it possible to diversify to the point that what distinguishes a news channel is gone?  Do Perez Hilton and TMZ do a better job at covering the minutiae of celebrity news than CNN or the BBC?  What happens when they, and entities like Heat Magazine, get their own digital television channels?

Thought of the day

With online news polls vote for the most stupid option - regardless of what you actually think.   It’s funny and only idiots take them seriously; it’s not like there’s any serious consequences.