How very apt

[MrGongGong]

"There's no point to what we do, that's the point
we don't understand nature either"

John Cage : M

[Frances_iom]

Katie Derham won Pointless Celebrity tonight. .

maybe (with luck) an instant start on a new career path - now she can smirk to the masses instead of those who just wish she would shut up and actually want to listen to the music.

[french frank]

I've only ever seen the last couple of minutes of this show before the news at 6, and don't really understand it, but isn't the point of it for the contestant to be enough of a smartarse to come up with something obscure enough that the stupid audience don't think of it? In which case.....

Perhaps I've misunderstood completely, but please don't bother to enlighten me

I watched, selectively, whizzing through to the end after the lengthy introductions and a few questions. It was really just a not hugely informed guessing game, I thought. And hideously boring with 'celebrities' trying to enter into the spirit of things by being 'off-duty' facetious. Very distancing. I take it this is the tiny fraction of BBC TV output that is allowably not public service broadcasting. When people grumble (some do!) about having to pay for Radio 3, all licence fee payers have to pay for this too.

I was reminded of the current BBC chairman's joke: that his daughters say a 'celebrity' is someone dad hasn't heard of

[Richard Tarleton]

And hideously boring with 'celebrities' trying to enter into the spirit of things by being 'off-duty' facetious. Very distancing. I take it this is the tiny fraction of BBC TV output that is allowably not public service broadcasting. When people grumble (some do!) about having to pay for Radio 3, all licence fee payers have to pay for this too.

Tiny fraction time-wise but huge budget? The same can be said for Strictly Come Dancing, and something called The Voice which I have never watched but features Tom Jones. I really don't see why the license payer should cough up for this rubbish, as presumably the BBC makes loads of money out of it anyway by selling both the programmes and the franchises. With so much excellent drama and documentary being made elsewhere on TV, and such excellent dedicated arts coverage, erm, elsewhere, I'm coming to the conclusion that the license fee is, er pointless.

[french frank]

I'm coming to the conclusion that the license fee is, er pointless.

As the chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee recently put it, somewhat drily: "The BBC is very good at carrying out surveys which show the public thinks the licence fee is good value for money." [approx.]

Getting back to the cost of Radio 3: everyone is paying far more for programmes they don't watch/listen to - and don't want to watch/listen to - than for programmes that they do; television being a far bigger guzzler of money than radio.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Tiny fraction time-wise but huge budget? The same can be said for Strictly Come Dancing, and something called The Voice which I have never watched but features Tom Jones.

The budget for Pointless (a programme I greatly enjoy - 'tho' I avoid the "Celebrities" offshoot) is miniscule - that for the other two is huuuuuge, but which has enormous viewing figures - which is why they're made: a substantial fraction of Licence Fee-payers want to watch such programmes. I don't mind that at all - what I do object to is the current Beeb's attitude that there shouldn't be as much care and attention devoted to "minority-interest" programmes, or as much consideration of the requirements of these programmes' audiences, as there is for the "Light Entertainment" content.

Or - a prospect which depresses me even more - "the Beeb's attitude that they are putting as much care and attention into these programmes as they do for those with high viewing figures". I don't know which is worse - malicious determination to discredit the requirements of the perceived "middle-class intelligentia", or woeful ignorance of the difference between, say, Katherine Jenkins and Barbara Hannigan.

[Flosshilde]

Tiny fraction time-wise but huge budget? The same can be said for Strictly Come Dancing, and something called The Voice which I have never watched but features Tom Jones. I really don't see why the license payer should cough up for this rubbish,

Quite a lot of them watch it - far more than listen to R3. The BBC does have rather a fine line to walk (?) - if they go too far in the populist/ratings direction they get attacked because they aren't being 'public service' enough (but what does 'public service' mean, really? Isn't providing programmes that lots of the public like to watch 'public service'?), but if they appeal mainly to minority interests then it's legitimate to ask why they should be funded by an almost universal tax & not subscription?

[teamsaint]

As the chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee recently put it, somewhat drily: "The BBC is very good at carrying out surveys which show the public thinks the licence fee is good value for money." [approx.]

Getting back to the cost of Radio 3: everyone is paying far more for programmes they don't watch/listen to - and don't want to watch/listen to - than for programmes that they do; television being a far bigger guzzler of money than radio.

Sadly, expenditure on this kind of stuff means that other budgets suffer. Sport gets £300m Pa, somewhere around 6 % of the budget.
I would suggest that this doesn't actually reflect the nation's interest in sport, and that a figure of around 10% would be much " fairer".
There is no live club football worthy of mention on BBC, yet this (by a spectacular distance) is the country's most popular spectator sport.
As for arts coverage................

Figures are suspiciously hard to find, but given spending on the five terrestrial channels is about £44 m, then a BBC figure of £30 million is probably close enough.
It makes the sport budget look generous, but is not much more than half of one per cent of BBC expenditure.
No wonder Tony Hall could (rather unchallenged) trumpet his 20%rise on spending. It will amount to just over £5m PA.

Pathetic.

[french frank]

There is a spending dilemma that seems to have no satisfactory solution. If you have two radio stations operating 24 hours a day, why should there be any connection between the number of listeners and the amount of money needed to run the station? A 90-minute play will cost exactly the same to produce whether 500,000 listeners tune in or only 50,000. If you allow only 10% you get a less good product.

Why should a service which has fewer listeners have cheap programming? Each licence fee payer is an individual who forks out a flat rate: why should one get £1bn of programming for his money and oodles of airtime, while another gets £50m and not very much for the same payment?

On football: just one match will provide, say, 3 million people with 90 minutes programming: why should they get 2 matches, when the drama/theatre viewers gets nothing at all?