# This is getting dangerous - BBC preparing to go online-only



## HarmonKard (Dec 10, 2022)

Disheartening, and very dangerous to those making a living from perf royalties









BBC preparing to go online-only over next decade, says director general


Tim Davie outlines vision for a world of ‘infinite choice’ where broadcast TV and radio are being switched off




www.theguardian.com


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## ZeroZero (Dec 10, 2022)

IMO The BBC is already dead it has as much courage as a dead trout, it caters for the banal and it’s news services are late, irrelevant and bend over backwards to be innoffensive even to the most ridiculous figures. Trump would be an example. The Man is a mad psychopath and we should call him this, but we don’t, we see him smiling at the queen and commentry on his wife’s dress. It’s inane, it’s below average intelligence, especially the commentators and breakfast indoctrination. The BBC has lost its dentures and it’s reading glasses and really has nowhere to go. Once John Pilger went into the Vietnam and filmed the suffering, now we get sanitised bloodless coverage of damaged buildings. The BBC used to unite the U.K. but no longer, it’s really just mind numbing platitudes and news sans the unpleasantness
I think we do need it, but it’s a corpse


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## DoubleTap (Dec 10, 2022)

Good to know that Davie has a capacity for understatement:

"He said a challenge is how to reach the millions of Britons – often older, poorer, or in rural areas – who do not have a strong internet connection and could be cut off from an online-only BBC."

How do you reach those people? The answer is that you don't, without TV and radio transmission. Most of these hard-to-reach rural areas will require 5G or satellite broadband, which seems unlikely given that the UK can't even afford to pay for enough ambulances and A&Es. 

In ten years' time, I expect that at least 10% of people in the UK would have no way of accessing the BBC if it was online only. Which government is going to allow the BBC to switch off 7m people from the national conversation? So, why would the BBC give up its main advantage over every other media content provider which is that it's the first thing you see when you turn on a TV from default? Davie is a moron who apparently doesn't understand either the media or people, but I doubt he'll be in post for more than two years so it probably doesn't matter.


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## ZeroZero (Dec 11, 2022)

Akoustecx said:


> I have to disagree. It has certainly drawn what may well be a few of it's last breaths, but that is largely because it has been held hostage by the Cnutservatives, via their threat to rip the independence the BBC once held, due to the unique way they are funded, from under them.
> It's akin to the way they held the Lib Dems as a Hostage Shield during the coalition, and the Lib dems are subsequently held as failures ,even though they managed to get all of their manifesto pledges passed, bar one. Regretably, sacrificing their stance on student finance seems to be held aginst them more than any success they achieved, and while that must certainly be acknowledged as a telling misstep, I am more concerned that more people don't recognise it as being a prime example of the smoke and mirrors that every tory leader, since Major, has relied upon.
> The BBC is certainly not what it was, but it remains at least something of a castle, despite the shifting sands that it is forced to stand upon.
> In much the same way that their frequent shifting of electoral boundaries strengthens the Conservative hold upon power unjustly, the way they have gained an unjustifiable level of control over the BBC BoG, gives them an opportunity to undermine it's independent voice, shift it's public perception and call it out regarding that shift, with little threat of redress amongst the majority.
> ...


I would like to breathe life back into the corpse too, but I see no sign of living tissue, no breath in it's lungs. It should be banging on about wealth distribution in the UK every day - the top 10% take half of all wealth, Inrtentional tax loopholes, offshore money havens, whilst the NHS "cannot be afforded". Instead, if you look at the new channel, you weather, more weather, getting padding trailers about how wonderful they are, more weeather, interminamble natter about some "tragic heart story" weather, Bake Off, weather Strictly or celeb this and that. Major headline news today is about how to de-ice your car


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## rembrant (Dec 12, 2022)

I mean they're still flogging the 'red button' as a service which came about as an integration of teletext moving forward. BBC Three's transition to online-only didn't exactly go to plan given it ended up back as a linear broadcasting platform. So I'm not sure the end is as nigh as the article may imply.

You can bemoan their news output, as many people seem to do when faced with critical conversation about the BBC, but they are far more than just news. They cater for so many different categories of people in various formats, across ages, genders, cultures and religions. It's no mean feat, hence the global reach and respect.
How people consume media has changed dramatically over the last decade and to continue to provide for millions and to survive the BBC needs to move with the landscape and adapt. This won't be a process overnight either. If you know how the BBC operates, due to its scale, you'll know it really will take more than a decade to roll something as gargantuan as this out.


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## Roger Newton (Dec 13, 2022)

HarmonKard said:


> Disheartening, and very dangerous to those making a living from perf royalties
> 
> 
> 
> ...


They haven't been that in royalties for years now. They are in financial difficulties today compared to years ago. Too much competition form the Internet. Recent poll in the UK showed 95% of voters not wishing to pay the TV licence. There again, you ask anyone if they actually want to pay anything they'll probably say no.

Incidentally, do you get much in the way of royalties from Sky?


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## tc9000 (Dec 13, 2022)

I don't think that the British Streaming Corporation is going to have the same ring to it... I hope someone has thought of that


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## Roger Newton (Dec 13, 2022)

Well streaming is the key word here. Streaming TV basically means a subscription service. Have you any idea how people right now are knocking out as many subscriptions as they can atm. The dichotomy for most right now is things they need are going up and things they want are going down.


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## SirKen (Dec 13, 2022)

Who cares? BBC is CNN of UK when it comes to news.


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