My girlfriend would gladly pay for being able to access BBC UK series, but that's apparently impossible. They've made some horrible contracts with BBC International that seem to prohibit that. It makes no sense that she has to resort to illegal streaming even though she'd love to be a paying customer.

Another problem is also that BBC International creates and distributes US productions that are far below their normal standards. So if you're looking for BBC nature documentaries, for instance, you have to manually sort out all those trashy international productions that are like National Geographic commercials. As I've said, it's a shame.

That's interesting what you have to say about international vs domestic documentaries. Could you give an example of either group?

I mean, I appreciate the BBC documentaries that I've seen for their high production quality and photography, innovative CGI and all, and I think they inspired and pushed the limits and budgets for TV documentaries worldwide. But personally, I prefer old-school quiet and scientific documentaries having extended interviews with leading scientist of a field and generally are about a scientific discourse rather than CGI-heavy interpretations of historic, cosmic, or paleo events; you know the kind where dinosaurs look up to an approaching meteorite in sorrow, or idk Alexander the Great is portrayed as a vulgar commander yelling at his men, with lots of made-up ethno kitsch and sensationalist commentary. But perhaps these latter ones are exactly the kind you're not so appreciative of.

I do as well. The BBC actually produces a lot of these types of documentaries but they are probably not sold to broadcasters outside of the UK. I presume it's because they lack the big-budget, glossy look that is attractive to bigger audiences (and to international broadcasters). Or sometimes documentaries are trimmed or edited for international audiences. (I don't know if this is the BBC editing the programme or the broadcaster who bought the programme.)

A lot of the "old-school quiet" documentaries can be found on BBC4 - a specialised channel that shows programmes on specialised or niche topics.

The production cost ratio is probably 1-100 or 1-1000, at least, between the old school, interview-an-expert type, and the dramatized CGI-heavy ones, so it is strange that so much money is put into production of documentaries with so little factual content value.

Honestly I think it has a general pro-government-of-the-day-bias - as you say, 'used to be the witty cry', indeed! Under New Labour it was still broadly speaking pro-government (generally, it's never totally uncritical, just tending towards friendliness relative to the opposition of the day), it was just a different government with different values.

But people don't notice when something stops being biased against them if they've already stopped paying attention to it because they were previously put off by their perception of its bias, so many of these older perceptions of its bias still exist. This creates the illusion that there's bias both ways, based on people's claims, and that it therefore must be 'balanced'.

>It seems impossible to imagine the BBC being truly unbiased

Thought example. If there was a truly objective, unbiased source of information about political and physical reality, wouldn't it be far too valuable to put in charge of a news desk. They should be running the government in place of the parliament and politicians!

Of course, if you find the idea somehow troubling, this is to demonstrate that unbiasedness is actually more difficult concept than is sometimes given credit for.

But in all seriousness I do accept that unbiased outlets basically don't really exist and it is an impossibly high bar. The reason I talk about this in the way that I do is not as some kind of campaign against the BBC: on the contrary, I think public service broadcasting is in general a good thing and frequently produces higher quality content than the vast majority of privately owned outlets, at least in the UK, despite its biases.

It's just that to me, everything has a bias, and it's important to understand what any particular outlet's biases are before you start accepting information from it. I'd say this is the one redeeming feature of our print media, despite how much crap they often produce, they are at least usually very open about their biases.

You can get a lot of good information out of the BBC news and politics programmes, but I'd say you do have to use a fairly critical lens to get the most out of it.

It's not possible to be an unbiased news reporter. The only thing we can wish for is reporting that wears its bias on its sleeve.

What is this "unbiased" reporting anyway? It can only mean that I happen to share the bias.

Any reporter who thinks their work is unbiased is a reporter who is unaware of their bias; which is much more dangerous than a reporter who is biased, and doesn't care who knows it.

Usually a solid amount accusing her of towing the party line, being friends with Boris, Tory mouthpiece etc then another bunch accusing her of being an example of how the BBC is full of leftie communists who want to reverse brexit. Both equally vitriolic.

The way she draws the hate from both sides is impressive.

Edit: it's definitely going to get worse. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-richard-s...

There is no way that anyone with that level of donation to any political party can ever pretend that they or their organisation is "impartial". Being a Brexiteer just makes it even more ludicrous and guarantees that all the ongoing problems and losses of Brexit will be hidden by the state broadcaster.

I was about to say the opposite:

https://order-order.com/2021/01/08/bbc-uses-old-picture-to-h...

Regularly watching BBC World I've yet to see the both-sideism you describe. As if on the same level? Well in relation to another bete noir, you'll likely get to see an interview with Greta T. (zero academic qualifications) while waiting interminably to hear any (usually edited) counter-position from (for instance, there are many others) Richard Lindzen (with around 200 peer-reviewed papers in atmospheric climatology, MIT emeritus professor) or Judith Curry (https://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currycv.html).

That said, it depends on the demographic you want to represent.

https://www.britbox.com/

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/06/new-bbc-chairman-richard-...

The DG was also a former deputy chairman of Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative party.

https://inews.co.uk/news/tim-davie-new-bbc-director-general-...

There's the Britbox streaming service, but I have no idea whether it is international. Otherwise, there's limited amounts of BBC content on Netflix. But again, that may just be the UK version.

small demography of 9MM, so the only way to differentiate themselves against bigger German channels is to produce content specifically for that niche. Shows in Austria/CH only value-add are a "local dialect" of actors, or setting the plot/story within Austria/CH. Other than that it's either a poor local copy of German shows (which are often copies of international shows).

Having been spoiled by British quality TV for a couple of decades I'd say the BBC is an incredible high yardstick, impossible to reach not just for Austria, but there is nothing like it in DACH.

One of my biggest annoyance by far is the dubbing of OC into German. They have only a handful of voice-over actors who they rotate for these jobs so the lead-act of every other movie has the same voice[0].

As a child I thought one of the reasons Eddie Murphy was so funny was because of his incredibly high-pitched voice[1]. Once people sit through the dubbed content most of the meaning and jokes are lost.

While other Europeans grow up watching things like Father Ted, Only Fools and Horses and such classics in their __original__ language, I have not 1 German-native friend who is able to follow English language on TV (even there are subs) and they will never get to appreciate other excellent shows like Norseman, Gomorrah, Suburra, because it's "too difficult to read the subs" and they didn't have to since they were kids.

[0] Dennis Schmidt-Foß has given voices to Ryan Reynolds, Chris Evans, Eddie Murphy and others. In fact the situation with E Murphy was so bad/ridiculous that they decided to give him a _new_ voice!! That's right the same person now has a different voice and nobody thinks that's odd.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKGAOM0mAOo

Good series or programs produced by public television you can count on one hand. Literally.

Indeed, they also invest most of their money in entertaining old people. This may be due to the aging population, but I'd rather assume it's good old grifting.

Indeed very few programmes appear to be made by the BBC.

It seems like what happened/happens is that producers form their own private company, do the work for the BBC but the public don't get to keep the benefit of the work paid for the benefit gets locked away to provide private gains.

Long running programmes are now made by third parties when they could easily be made by the BBC proper, Gardeners' Question Time, say.

In part is to serve 'talent', but BBC's remit is to fill the gaps where commercial programmes don't go, to be distinctive, so they should never be paying £millions for a talk show host.

If you're going to use public money then you should be benefiting the public as much as possible, not carefully twisting it to get private profits.

This is by notorious awful tv station Channel 5, and is not paid for by the license fee. (In fairness, it's not amongst their most terrible content; about half of their programming amounts to "Look! Poor people! Haha!", and despite the name this isn't really an example of that.)

Everyone else often had cable or SAT, which gave you all the German and also Swiss networks, particularly the private ones, where the program is aimed at different demographics (also possible because of vastly larger pockets: German ad market >> Austrian ad market)

At least ORF tried to modernize its image, but do you want to lose your main demographic as well? Can you compete (financially) with German private TV and pay TV? Not to mention Netflix, Disney+, etc? There is not really a way out.

So were stuck with Skiing, Austrian Soccer, Tatort and Gaming show clones. At least there is a lot of cooperation/joint shopping with German and Swiss (public) stations.

The self-created German content could be worse though. Tatort can be quite nice, it is not aiming to be CSI - and that can be a good thing.

I do have to agree, so, that the home-grown entertainment sucks. In Germany as well. It is funny, so, that german public TV is not allowed to create their own streaming service and a lot of content has to removed from their online offerings after a certain period of time. Which kind of sucks. Especially since the rights catalogue of the public German networks, ARD and ZDF, used to be quite impressive. They just decidded to never show any of it before midnight, if at all.

This is the kind of TV program that I think has contributed to the UK's extreme stinginess and bureaucracy of benefits; in aggregate it's probably got people killed. Cherry-picking the most lurid stories to make people look bad.

It's also not a BBC show, it's by Channel 5!

I'm with a lot of people that the BBC can produce great stuff, but only when it remembers to be Reithian and the managers aren't looking. These days most of the BBC content I watch comes from BBC4, plus the output of David Attenborough.

(ORF produce exactly one show with an international reputation: the New Year's Day concert from Vienna, which is lovely)

The show that demonizes, humiliates and dehumanizes working class people by filming them being evicted?

> The show that demonizes, humiliates and dehumanizes working class people by filming them being evicted?

The show that highlights, amplifies and prioritises the voices of working class people by filming them being evicted?

Thank you for pointing this out. I don't know British TV well so I wrongly assumed it was another show, because it sounded like it. The show I originally thought OP was referring to is called 'Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away!'. It is bile. That is what my above comment is really responding to.

It's sad to see people actually laughing at others' misfortune such as this youtuber, who has made a compilation of 'Craziest Freakouts Ever!' with clips from 'Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away!': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0kO9TA96h4

Often the enforcement agents have empathy with the people they are enforcing against, particularly when it's clear that the person has a struggle that's no fault of their own. They're far less sympathetic to wealthier people who are just ignoring their responsibilities and trying to get away with it.

At least that's how I remember the show, I haven't actually watched broadcast TV for at least 2 years now.

There are many working class people who are not on benefits or being evicted. You may wish to look for evidence of bias closer to home.