BBC license

[lymehoop]

lost the football, racing, rugger, cricket, golf and now bake off

[brightonr]

lost the football, racing, rugger, cricket, golf and now bake off

Just the dancing left then.

[Jeems]

Dont forget F1!

[nanocopic]

The BBC spreads itself too thin. I used to date a girl who worked for the BBC before I met my wife and she was doing a job that whilst was useful, probably wasnt something the BBC should be doing. It trys to be all things for everyone, yet that doesnt work. I think all the 4 channels could have easily been condensed back into two. A lot of shows on BBC Four could easily have been shown on One and Two. The Scandanavian dramas would esily fit on one after 10, and the documentaries on four are far better than what is on two. They have become a bit too ITV I think and it is costing the opportunity to show live sport.

[Bigdave]

It's an absolute travesty that we have to pay £140 a year to those cants

[Hubble]

They lost Bake Off because the production company - Love Productions - which is 70% owned by Sky - demanded a 4x increase from the Beeb, so it's understandable they let it go. Apparently they offered to double the amount they pay for it to £15M, but that wasn't enough for Sky-owned Love Productions. They will get around £25M for the show on C4.

The BBC is limited, as a 'public service' broadcaster, by how commercial its programmes can be, and of course, how much it spends. I think it has overspent massively in the past, and now it is doing a bit of a QPR. I think Nano is right that it is overstretched. It has shed one channel of course, and made it online only. At the same time, Sky/Murdoch want to see the end of the Beeb, as do many Tory MPs. They believe it should all be about raw competition. However there are many new factors that come into play in the internet age. One is advertising, a model for funding that is rapidly going down the swanee, as people don't like adverts and will do all sorts of things to ignore them, like using adblocker, for example. Also Netflix has shown that pay per view without advertising works as a model - which is basically what the BBC is. Perhaps if they made the licence fee optional - i.e. if you don't want to watch the BBC you don't have to pay - that would be the way forward.

[jmelanie]

They lost Bake Off because the production company - Love Productions - which is 70% owned by Sky - demanded a 4x increase from the Beeb, so it's understandable they let it go. Apparently they offered to double the amount they pay for it to £15M, but that wasn't enough for Sky-owned Love Productions. They will get around £25M for the show on C4.

The BBC is limited, as a 'public service' broadcaster, by how commercial its programmes can be, and of course, how much it spends. I think it has overspent massively in the past, and now it is doing a bit of a QPR. I think Nano is right that it is overstretched. It has shed one channel of course, and made it online only. At the same time, Sky/Murdoch want to see the end of the Beeb, as do many Tory MPs. They believe it should all be about raw competition. However there are many new factors that come into play in the internet age. One is advertising, a model for funding that is rapidly going down the swanee, as people don't like adverts and will do all sorts of things to ignore them, like using adblocker, for example. Also Netflix has shown that pay per view without advertising works as a model - which is basically what the BBC is. Perhaps if they made the licence fee optional - i.e. if you don't want to watch the BBC you don't have to pay - that would be the way forward.

The BBC sells an enormous number of it's programmes abroad and people love them. I am not sure what they charge, but I don't get the impression it is very much. They could start by charging more.

[Hubble]

The BBC sells an enormous number of it's programmes abroad and people love them. I am not sure what they charge, but I don't get the impression it is very much. They could start by charging more.

This is true, but only to a certain extent, and it is becoming less so as independent production companies produce more and more content themselves. As the following article explains:

"Although the Sunday night stand-off between shows such as Poldark and Victoria is still conventionally seen as a fight between BBC and ITV, both were actually made by the same independent producer, Mammoth Screen. This trend – known as “publisher broadcasting” – was introduced to Britain with the launch of Channel 4 in 1982, but, encouraged by successive Conservative and Labour governments, has increasingly spread to ITV and now the BBC.

Of the BBC1 trinity of hit autumn franchises – Bake Off, The Apprentice and Strictly Come Dancing – the only one wholly owned by the BBC is Strictly, a clever reboot of Come Dancing, which had run since the 1950s. The Apprentice is originally an American format, from which Donald Trump recently became the first TV presenter to take leave of absence to run for US president. Bake Off was invented by Love Productions, which just secured a better deal from Channel 4. The Voice has just moved from BBC1 to ITV in similar circumstances, although amid rather less dismay.

The ownership of shows has not always been straightforward: the original Come Dancing was created by an external impresario, Miss World mogul Eric Morley, but he needed a TV company to make it. The rise of independent production has removed that barrier. And the BBC will only become less likely to own its hits under a stipulation in the current government white paper on the future of the BBC that almost 100% of its non-news output (rather than, as before, a minority) should be available for external commercial tender on a “compete and compare” basis that assesses commercial and cultural value."

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/sep/13/the-great-british-bake-off-disaster-why-the-bbc-got-burned

You could say they lost Bake Off because they didn't have enough dough...