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BBC hits new low-Hungar games.
Tracy
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BBC to pit low-paid against each other in Hunger Games-style show to find Britain's Hardest Grafter
The BBC will make the unemployed and low-paid workers compete against each other for a cash prize in a controversial Hunger Games-type show to find “Britain’s Hardest Grafter”.
Only the UK’s lowest-paid workers will be invited to compete to “show their worth” in the reality show, capitalising on the trend for “poverty porn” established by the Channel 4 series, Benefits Street.
Applications for Britain’s Hardest Grafter, which will be screened on BBC2, are limited to those currently earning less than £15,500 per year.
The BBC is seeking 25 British workers, a mix of the unemployed, the under-employed and those earning the minimum wage, who will be given the opportunity to “prove themselves” through a series of challenges. A cash prize is on offer for the winner.
A representative of the production company Twenty Twenty told the website Graduate Fog: “In each episode, people will be put to the test in a series of challenges and tasks.
“At the end of each episode, those who have produced the least will be eliminated and by the end of the process, just one worker will remain. The winner will receive in the region of £15,000 which is a year’s living wage (outside of London).”
An advert for applicants asks “Have you been out of work since leaving school? Are you sick of living off your parents? Are you losing out on jobs because you’ve got no experience? Have you got a degree but not a graduate job?” The producers are seeking “people who feel passionately about the issues in the UK today”. The series will investigate “what effects people in the workplace”.
The producers, previously responsible for Benefits Britain 1949, in which claimants volunteered to live by the rules of the first year of the welfare state, asked Graduate Fog to publicise the show on its website “so we can attract more graduates who are struggling to secure a decent living wage.”
Twenty Twenty said participants would be paid a compensatory figure “not below the national minimum wage” for the length of their contribution to the programme.
Graduate Fog questioned whether the show would simply “exploit desperate young workers for entertainment value.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bbc-to-pit-lowpaid-against-each-other-in-hunger-gamesstyle-show-to-find-britains-hardest-grafter-10279386.html
The BBC will make the unemployed and low-paid workers compete against each other for a cash prize in a controversial Hunger Games-type show to find “Britain’s Hardest Grafter”.
Only the UK’s lowest-paid workers will be invited to compete to “show their worth” in the reality show, capitalising on the trend for “poverty porn” established by the Channel 4 series, Benefits Street.
Applications for Britain’s Hardest Grafter, which will be screened on BBC2, are limited to those currently earning less than £15,500 per year.
The BBC is seeking 25 British workers, a mix of the unemployed, the under-employed and those earning the minimum wage, who will be given the opportunity to “prove themselves” through a series of challenges. A cash prize is on offer for the winner.
A representative of the production company Twenty Twenty told the website Graduate Fog: “In each episode, people will be put to the test in a series of challenges and tasks.
“At the end of each episode, those who have produced the least will be eliminated and by the end of the process, just one worker will remain. The winner will receive in the region of £15,000 which is a year’s living wage (outside of London).”
An advert for applicants asks “Have you been out of work since leaving school? Are you sick of living off your parents? Are you losing out on jobs because you’ve got no experience? Have you got a degree but not a graduate job?” The producers are seeking “people who feel passionately about the issues in the UK today”. The series will investigate “what effects people in the workplace”.
The producers, previously responsible for Benefits Britain 1949, in which claimants volunteered to live by the rules of the first year of the welfare state, asked Graduate Fog to publicise the show on its website “so we can attract more graduates who are struggling to secure a decent living wage.”
Twenty Twenty said participants would be paid a compensatory figure “not below the national minimum wage” for the length of their contribution to the programme.
Graduate Fog questioned whether the show would simply “exploit desperate young workers for entertainment value.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bbc-to-pit-lowpaid-against-each-other-in-hunger-gamesstyle-show-to-find-britains-hardest-grafter-10279386.html
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Then it's not Hunger Games like, sounds more like I'm Unemployed Get Me Out Of Here.
What next - A competition to get your family out of Gaza? Syrians competing for the chance for their family to be fed for a year in a refugee camp in Jordan?
If the BBC is using licence fee money to commission this material it really is time for an end to the licence fee. If people want to watch this type of programme they can subscribe to it or watch adverts to pay for it.
Isn't this exactly the sort of show the BBC committed to phasing out several years ago?
Quick, somebody blame the Tories.
More than those taking part could hope to earn in a year.
I'm happy to do just that.
And I'll blame the yellow and red tories as well while I'm at it!
In fairness, it is their fault.
"Yeah!
No worries!
Cool!"
10 points for a causal fruit picker to 500 points if you mow down a third generation unemployed with more than 5 kids.
Why not put rich people in there too? Let see if its hard work that made them rich, or inheritance or the right connections.
What about pensioners on less than £15,000? I could do with £15,000, buy myself a canal boat
I agree.
Good idea!
I lolled at this comment.
The way the hard left wing media are portraying things, it make it sounds like Iain Duncan Smith is going to shoot the person who is to be "eliminated" in the head! Actually, knowing IDS, I wouldn't put it past him!
I'm no fan of 'poverty porn' and seeing the poor being exploited and slurred for ratings but I also no fan of clickbait headlines and grossly hyperbolic news reporting - 'Hunger Games style show'... really?
http://graduatefog.co.uk/2015/4058/britains-hardest-grafter-worker-bbc-hunger-games-style-reality-tv-show-young-unemployed/
And unsurprising the Daily Mail has naturally turned it into an attack on the BBC. If this programme was commissioned on Channel 4 or 5 I'd bet we wouldn't hear a peep out of them.
Have to wait and see what the program is like.
Might well be a lesson in the program for some of those who think anyone in a low paid job or on the dole must be a lazy, dopey waster.
I don't watch any of the Benefit, Scrounger or similar in the title programs, don't need that in my life.
(With the exception of the post just before mine, that is
Of course. even when it is eventually shown, no-one is forcing you to watch it.
:kitty:
That's a fair point Carl. I guess after the likes of Jeremy Kyle, Benefits Street, Saints and Scroungers, the 'White' series on the BBC, and On Benefits and Proud, people, like me are naturally wary of the way in which commissioners and programme makers depict people at the bottom of the pile. And fear, quite reasonably, that this television programme will be exploitative and humiliating; not the 'serious social experiment' that the programme makers claim it will be.
Saints and Scroungers is a BBC product.
The BBC makes it's share of annoying $hite these days, not that I've seen the program, wouldn't want to either.
BBC One is the home for this sort of low wattage populist, playing to the cheap seats cack, but I rarely watch BBC One these days.