....Labour Party donations. The ultimate Champagne Socialists.

Absolutely right on all counts. Ads ruin the flow of a show and any drama and tension that is attempted is disrupted. Pace is slowed dramatically too. Ads cheapen content. Bake Off with ads? It's a 'no' from me.

I agree. In fact, as we licence fee payers invested in Bake Off (happily), Love should reimburse us all for the loss of Bake Off after years of investment.

Complete with the lady's pout!!

What are you on about?

Licence fee payers didn't "invest" in anything. We had no control over that cash. Investing is a choice. The British public had no choice whatsoever.

It was our money Aaron, licence fee money, which allowed Love to make the show in the first place. Love have now run off with their show (due to their own greed only) depriving the nation of their favourite show in the process. I demand a refund from Love. They can't just mug us off like this.

You'd have to ask the 14m people who watched the final. The most-watched show so far this year; again.


There was very little in the final I watched last week.


No. What jonbwfc posted was factually accurate and 100% correct.


Absolutely. All they need to do is lose around 12 mins of content.

The BBC invested the money on behalf of the licence payers. They also helped develop and nurture the programme (when no other broadcaster wanted it) until it became the success it was.

So be pedantic over a couple of minutes!

Apart from your pedantry, what you've said is exactly what I said - either lose content or extend the running time to keep the content.

This whole fiasco raises serious issues about the role of the independent producer who uses LF money to develop a programme and then flogs it off to the highest bidder when it's a success.A 200% increase in the cost is clearly ludicrous and plain extortion, it was right the BBC did not go along with it.And it sounds as if LP did not try very hard to negotiate a deal with the BBC as they knew C4 were in the background.

The BBC have to shoulder some of the blame for that, though. When they signed the original deal with Love Productions, they didn't include any safeguard to stop the current situation.

I would imagine there's an ongoing internal inquiry to establish how a repeat can be avoided; I'd be very surprised if the conclusion wasn't to either buy new formats outright (instead of just, effectively, "renting" them for a few years), or at least take a financial sake in them which would need to be bought out for the programme(s) to move channels.

The upshot of that might be the BBC taking fewer risks on unknown formats. Indeed, it's possible GBBO might never have seen the light of day under such a policy.

It is worth saying that there are many shows on the BBC produced by indies, which could never be sold for anything like what The Great British Bake Off has been sold for, it is a rare example of a BBC commission going insanely popular.

I have said in previous posts that whilst not fair on the BBC, its an easy argument to make that if a show can support itself commercially it does not need the licence fee (obviously AFTER a few years on the BBC), I wonder if this is a role C4 would like to fill in the future.

I do agree that the BBC should take part ownership of a format, it is our money these so called "indies"* want, so if we give them the start up capital why not take a share of the product for its whole life time.

In terms of "so called indies" Love Productions is owned by News Corp.

Wasn't the whole concept of ''independent producers'' forced on the BBC by a previous government ? Wasn't the purpose to create jobs and more diversity of programming, not for a producer to rip off the BBC and the licence payer.Clearly the rules need to be revised.

Some years ago someone came up with the crackpot idea that as soon as a programme became popular then the BBC should be compelled to sell it to the highest bidder. Hard to think of a better way to lower morale at the BBC and also upset the viewers as can be seen from the outrage over losing Bake Off to Channel 4.

If we were talking about a drama or movie I'd agree with some of what you have said, but a baking programme, seriously.

There's a high probability they will insert the ads at the end of a challenge/before the judging or after the judging, therefore keeping the important parts of the programme intact.

In fact the ads will give those who watch with family or friends a chance to reflect on the challenge or result they have just seen instead of talking over the programme.

Indeed it was. Given that the govt. wants the BBC to eventually outsource everything, this is going to become a growing problem. Obviously if the BBC own the rights to a particular show, then it can't be poached. I would certainly like to see the BBC retain a degree of control going forward. I don't want it turned into just a publisher-broadcaster like Channel 4.

Certainly the contracts the BBC signs with the indies - where the indies own the IP - need to be much more robust and tighter. Licence fee money shouldn't be used for private sector gain.

There's two different ways of using an independent production company.

The first is where the production company has the idea and pitches it to the BBC. The BBC then say yay or nay and sign a deal for X episodes or hours over Y years. The BBC will have a lot of say in how the programme is made, but the rights are retained by the production company. This is what happened with GBBO and The Voice.

The second is where someone at the BBC comes up with an idea and, after an internal process, it gets commissioned. At this point, the contract to produce the programme is put out to tender; whichever production company wins the tender makes the programme. But the key thing is that because it's a BBC idea, they retain the rights. All the production company has is the income from the contract; if the format is a success, it can't be taken to another broadcaster unless the BBC themselves sell it.

That's impossible.

If such a rule were in place, the BBC literally couldn't operate because they wouldn't even be able to buy lightbulbs.

Anything the BBC buys will boost private sector profits somewhere along the line.

...along with the negative impact on BBC commissioning. Why would the BBC commission and invest in a show if they thought said show would be poached by an ITV or a Channel 5 the minute it became popular?

I would say that they (the ads) have a jarring/disruptive impact regardless of the genre.

What I am saying is that public-private balance has shifted towards the private. A re-alignment needs to happen whereby 'the private' works for 'the public' not the other way round.

So the viewers will almost inevitably have the "coming up..." voice over in a lame attempt to add a sense of drama to the programme before the ad break and then the "recap" after the ad break because programme producers think viewers have the attention span and memory of a goldfish.


Do you really believe that? I don't for a single second.

if anything those who do watch are more likely to record the programme and start watching it 10 minutes after the broadcast starts to fast forward through the ad breaks, as so many people do now.

People in general do not like ad breaks in programmes.

That's the point though, it's their show so they can do what they want with it. And they're not depriving the nation of it, it will be on another Freeview channel not a subscription service. Good luck getting your refund.

Given the controversy over the programme I would expect the producers to keep it as original as possible, that being ads after each challenge so little recap is needed.

It was a lighthearted remark to the poster who has strong views against ads, hence the wink emoji.

It has always been an unwritten rule that a programme stays with the original broadcaster until the broadcaster decides they no longer want it. Then is can be taken up by another broadcaster. So there was no need for safeguards.

Love broke that unwritten rule by demanding an extortionate amount of money for renewing the contract. The BBC had been paying £6 million, Love wanted more. The BBC went up to £15 million, but Lve wanted £25 million - for a programme that nobody would take until the BBC took t and made it into the success it is.

There won't be an enquiry. All the other independents agree that what Love did was wrong and has changed the way these deals are made so that in future there will be a "for the life of" clause in contracts.

Under its charter the BBC has to offer 60% of its programming to independent production companies.