Originally Posted by James J:
“Still avoiding the fact that the Bbc increasingly behaves like a commercial network with regards to Bbc1 and that this is actually squeezing the immediately obvious results in the eyes of the general public.”
With all due respect, this has been said virtually non-stop since ITV began in 1955 and there's absolutely no truth in it whatsoever.
Originally Posted by aberdaberdonian:
“I have to say, I'm not convinced that the BBC is increasing behaving like a commercial network. Yes it scheduled a single episode of strictly come dancing on a sunday that landed up against X-factor, but that's a single episode.
Sure they shifted their children's programmes to their children's channels (about 1 and 1/2 hours of non-primetime viewing), but if the argument is that this has had some massive impact on ITV's business model, then I fear ITV was pretty much dead in the water already.”
Yes, exactly this. Ten years ago BBC1 showed an entire series - not one episode, an entire series - of Fame Academy directly against Pop Idol as a blatant spoiler. Twenty years ago they had Caught In The Act and Eldorado in primetime, commissioned purely for the ratings. Thirty years ago they commissioned The Late Late Breakfast Show expressly to take on Game For A Laugh as well as dreadful game shows with low production values like Monkey Business and Get Set Go. Forty years ago Paul Fox was writing in the Radio Times about how they were going to show whichever World Cup matches they liked and didn't care what ITV did. Fifty years ago they were scheduling big shows like Steptoe and Son and Till Death Us Do Part opposite Coronation Street purely to dent it.
Last week BBC1 showed an hour-long programme about the Scottish referendum at 9pm, nationwide. Earlier this year it showed a documentary series about the First World War at 9pm for four weeks. That is not what a commercial channel will do and, in addition, it's not what BBC1 has done in the past. In the mid-nineties People's Century -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Century - wasn't on in primetime, the first batch of episodes were at 10pm on Wednesdays, the second at 5pm on Sundays and the third at 10.30 on Sundays. Meanwhile classic dramas like Middlemarch and Martin Chuzzlewit were on BBC2 while BBC1's drama was by-the-numbers things like Dangerfield.
As for the kids' shows, the BBC are acting in the interests of children who want them on childrens' channels. Children today don't know a time when there wasn't a CBBC channel, it's been there all their life - and every child in Britain has it, and it's promoted extensively across the BBC. You may wish to compare this to ITV who abandoned their weekday kids' shows in 2006 before every child had digital and, indeed, before the CITV channel was even on some platforms. It's the way kids want to watch it. You may as well criticise them for not showing schools' programmes anymore. Schools don't need them.
And then there's things like Radioplayer and the BBC website always linking to commercial operations (even in such things as saying which channel a football match is on), which is definitely not reciprocated.
Suggesting BBC1 is "increasingly" acting like a commercial channel is to totally forget the last fifty years.
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