Farage wants Dr Who off the air...!

Do you watch anything on the BBC? If so, that's why.

Source?

dr who was too risky without a state-owned network? was family guy too risky for fox? :|

No, I don't. The one thing I used to watch was self financing and subsidised the other rubbish peddled by the BBCommies.

And even if I did, there is no reason I should be charged £70 a year when a more modern format would charge me £1 a program (depending on demand) or something like that. I'd be happy to pay £5 per episode over the year for Top Gear (around £70), but to pay £70 for the garbage the BBC peddles in general aggrieves me. The reason they have that poll tax is precisely because most of what it finances cannot self finance.

Cancel your TV license then. Simple.

No, I don't. The one thing I used to watch was self financing and subsidised the other rubbish peddled by the BBCommies.

And even if I did, there is no reason I should be charged £70 a year when a more modern format would charge me £1 a program (depending on demand) or something like that. I'd be happy to pay £5 per episode over the year for Top Gear (around £70), but to pay £70 for the garbage the BBC peddles in general aggrieves me. The reason they have that poll tax is precisely because most of what it finances cannot self finance.

Lol yeah, knew you'd make an exception for Top Gear. Classic stuff from the right wing: use market forces and arguments to force stuff with the wrong political line under while using the same arguments to show the opposite for things you approve of.

Newsflashes for you:
- The modern TG wouldn't exist without the BBC. You really think a private company would take that sort of risk?
- Who would also be self-financing.

This is in the case of both shows an example of how true quality, profitability, innovation and market advantage can be had in the long run with state stimulus to get them through the difficult first years. I don’t believe anything like either show in terms of format, uniqueness, story, cultural impact or content would have got far in a risk-averse free market system.

Well.. I can see your point, because JC has often been politically incorrect.

But I think we can't really say based on what we know. Channel 4 does some really politically incorrect stuff. It's not clear cut.

Regardless, I'd be happy to pay individually for TG and make JC 10 times richer, provided it was done on a commercial pay per view basis and nothing went to the BBC.

I watched the video and it seems his words have been twisted - as per usual.

Dr Who is an immigrant...

Not just that, but the entire "three blokes and their banter" format and the stupid games and challenges. All very costly if it doesn't take off.

The thing is, if diffused on a private channel, very few people would be able to see Top Gear, and it wouldn't ever reach the tipping point it needs to reach to become a cultural phenomenon. Without the fans, a programme is nothing, no matter how much you might like its politics: I know because I've been a fan of things with barely any fan community and it quickly gets ehh. Certainly the presenters wouldn't get as much, you'd have to pay a lot more than 10x as much I would have guessed.

So I think it's quite ironic that you'd rely on the taxpayer to build up TG to the massive international success it has been and then restrict access by taking this thing people have an attachment to and whose success they paid for and putting it on a commercial channel.

But I guess artificially restricting access to things people "need" (insofar as fandom is as close as it gets to need with TV) in the name of profit is just the right wing free market way isn't it?

Just watched the interview right through. Farage particularly mentions local radio and websites. He talks as if these are strangling competition, as if there is some worthy local company ready to fight each one in the regions. This is cobblers of course. Local radio and newspapers have mainly struggled because of Google and other websites taking all their trade. The local radio and news channels (and many of those commercial websites) are in turn owned by big media groups.

Now I've reviewed the interview properly, I think Farage was campaigning on behalf of the media giants he is a client of. For example, Murdoch and the Daily Mail/Rothermere groups. They hate the BBC for offering them competition and it's a convenient whipping boy for their own historic inadequacies in failing to fight off the growth of web.

He said nothing of the sort and as you've attacked a politician in this post, as opposed to the party, you've actually libelled him. Quite frankly, you've twisted the words of the conversation to suit your agenda in the most pathetic fashion. He said 'The BBC doesn't need to do entertainment'. The only person who mentioned Doctor Who was the interviewer and Nigel Farage didn't even get drawn on the subject of specific shows.

Still a baffling statement to me...why on earth shouldn't the BBC do entertainment?

Again it depends. TG didn't start off like that. It was much more review based at the start. You're looking at how it ended as how it started. I've been watching a season 6 cd and it's hardly like what it became.

Look at Breaking Bad. Very risky but a private company, granted a small one, paid for it. But there've been lots of promising flops, like Arrested Development.

Ultimately what works in the free market is ratings.

http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt1628033

TG didn't start off badly and they only got better. In a private system that'd never be cancelled, but only encouraged. I suspect if TG was a private program it would've focussed less on entertaining gaffes (reliant as they were on offending the uptight BBC) and more on specials. The specials were really beautiful programs.

As for initial audience, suppose non news BBC was privatised and the number of channels remained the same. Why would TG receive any less attention? I would think it would receive more attention as it could be advertised more effectively.

However, advertising during the program would've ruined it.

So there were benefits to being in the BBC, but I think we don't need to have that kind of TV anymore. Everything can be digitalised and pay per view and we can get a genuine free market. I don't think the sky closed system is a free market, and I don't think we need a sky box. Things like Netflix or Huli could be put into the TV, or different providers could compete to provide products at the cheapest price and the individual could choose between them. Thus we can have a truly free market, where people can choose adverts or pay per view, what programs to watch and so on.

I could imagine it as some sort of small OS that is installed on TVs which allows you to connect it to your debit card and search a database of legal sellers competing to sell stuff. I could imagine Amazon participating too.

I think this would also greatly reduce piracy by giving people the ease of a cheap, one off purchase, and if piracy is successfuly reduced, it would also increase income and reward creators, pushing down individual purchase costs.

Wouldn't that be better than the obsolescent state funded tax model of the BBC?