* Posts by Mark

4 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Aug 2007

BBC Trust moots new licence laws to cope with net

Mark
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Ok, well, I tried not to.

"We're all PAYING 140 quid a year to fund a tidal wave of content which the BBC pumps out via dozens of TV channels, radio stations, magazines, books and whatnot in an effort to justify it's existence. The whole country is wall-to-wall with BBC material WE'VE PAID FOR, of course 95% of us encounter 5 mins of BBC radio/TV or a paragraph of web content in a month. Do you expect us to walk around with our eyes closed and our fingers in our ears in order to make some obscure point?"

Yes, well done, you can't escape it can you? Not surprising considering it's so well-funded. And why's it so well-funded? Because of a compulsory tax. Hence it's everywhere.

Ah. The argument is circular. In fact - and to make Reg readers succumb to their very early memories of computer science - it's almost tautological.

(Have you all just succumbed in your pants?)

Anyway, you don't generally measure reach at random. For instance, radio requires you to fill in a tedious diary of 15-minute listening. TV is measured by a box in your living room. And web sites are measured by some mystical, ooh-it's-all-made-up mechanism, aren't they?

My point is: the BBC's reach is established not by those who glance upon its content, or who acknowledge it exists, but generally by those who admit to consuming it.

I could go on but the way the Reg's articles work, most of you by now aren't reading, so WTF.

If you are, please reply. I'm just bored at work. And trying to defend something British.

Mark
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FFS, I'm back...

...but can't be arsed to write as much this time.

Anyway: re comments like:

"Whats with some of the freetards comments, this isn't about getting shit for free its about having a choice to not get reamed for £140 squid a year.

If I don't watch the BBC - I STILL pay to watch the BBC."

Right. As I said, reach of BBC services tends towards 95% per month. I can't therefore claim you're lying, because you could be one of the 5% which research suggests doesn't directly consume BBC output.

But there's no way everyone who claims that doesn't consume something from the BBC. I for instance, have never downloaded music illegally. To do so would be most outrageous...

And quite why we think we're the only country to have a licence fee is beyond me. We're not. It's not perfect - I never said that - but it's pretty good for raising funds to pay for a British-based broadcasting system that's more independent than most.

(Is there some kind of alert system that tells all licence-feetards - sorry, provocateurs - that there's a discussion going on that they should crash? I don't believe the ratio of comments here. I don't care. Make all the heat and noise you want - you're just wasting energy.)

Put it to a vote - and I'd happily see this - and I bet most people in Britain would vote FOR it compared to other options. It's not a perfect slogan, I admit - "The BBC - it's better than the alternatives" but at least it's honest and accurate.

A dirverse broadcasting landscape naturally produces a more diverse set of allegiances. But for the reasons I made this time yesterday, the BBC should really hold a special place in our hearts. (Here's a clue again: it's in the first B. And for unicast-tard, here's another: it's in the second B too.)

Could the BBC be smaller? Undoubtedly. Would it therefore cost less? Probably. Would it be as good? Possibly. I'm not saying it's flawless. I'm saying it's better than the rest, that most readers of this owe it a bigger debt of gratitude than they are aware, and that, like Opal Fruits, you'd miss it when it's gone. We certainly wouldn't invent this model today - but maybe that should be part of the attraction?

[And unlike most other comments here I've tried to avoid the negative stereotype (but now of course can't) - eg Murdoch/unpaid taxes; ITV/commercial pressures; ILR/coma-inducing output; etc, etc.]

Mark
Stop

License feetards

You really are a load of uncomprimising pillocks.

First of all, if you don't have a telly, you have nothing to fear. If you watch online only, as the BBC themselves tell you, you have nothing to fear.

Secondly, I imagine most of you had an education supplemented to some large degree by BBC output - either directly or indirectly.

Thirdly, if you're paying license fees despite having no tellies at work yet three laptops, then frankly, your business is probably not going to outsee the G20 conference, because you're a pillock. In fact, you're either King Pillock or King Troll. No License Required.

The age of blasting RF energy into the atmosphere is passed? Nice one, unicast boy. *You* make it work. Nobody else has. It's called broadcasting for a reason, and it still works. And even if you turn all the 50KW transmitters off, what then? Disable aviation radar, NDBs, VORs? Turn off all microwave ovens?

And surprise surprise, some of you expect something, once again, for free. Freetards. Maybe we should invent a term? License-feetards perhaps? The argument that you ultimately pay for ITV is a stretched one, admittedly - even if ultimately true - but someone has to pay for the BBC, and pay upfront. It's the deal, and it's written in black and white (and since 1969, in colour too..) Don't give me this crap you don't use it. Or that it just puts out American shows. (And anyway there are, actually, some good American shows.)

The BBC has a 90% weekly reach in radio and probably similar in telly. And weekly reaches, as the Reg readership stats presumably bear out, are always lower than monthly ones. That means, in any month, virtually all of the population consume the BBC's output to some degree. It's ad-free. It's reasonably unbiased. And it has to be paid for.

(Reach, in case you don't understand, is the percentage of the population who consume a product in a given period. 90% a week. Not bad for all the fuss people make, is it? Maybe that's the problem - 90% is too good. Success - and we know *how* we hate that don't we?)

If someone made an analysis of the ratio of quality to crap, or of homegrown to foreign talent, or risk-taking to risk-aversion, or any similar assessment, the BBC would be in the right.

Equally, you might argue the relationship of BBC-talent cost to ITV-talent cost is a skewed one, one where the BBC pays too much (and too much of our money); and I'd agree, and hopefully that will prove to be an short-lived aberrition. But that's a side issue.

I really wish we'd rebrand "TV licence" as "UK Culture Licence" - because that's what in effect it is. If that means having to dole some out to Channel 4, or to lesbian painters, then so be it.

As much as the Reg is - to its core audience (ie, presumably you) a British institution, standing for British values, culture and humour - so is the BBC, but on a scale that attempts to reach the *whole* population, rather than a purely IT-literate subset.

If you try to be all things to all men, then I suspect all men will have all things to say about you.

And it's not easy addressing the British population when 1 in 7 of the British population wasn't born here.

For Christ's sake, accept the BBC as about the only social glue we have left - assuming you're British, of course - and happily pay the fee.

And if you're still not convinced, ask yourself this: what would ITV or - heaven forfend, Heart FM - be like without the measure of BBC competition? And if you can't bring yourself to comtemplate that, imagine what the world would be like if the only IT website in the world were this one. I suspect even Jon Lettice would baulk at that.

NASA: no fix needed for shuttle

Mark

Historical basis

I'm constantly surprised that anyone thinks NASA should be surprised by this kind of damage. It's not as if the 2001 incident was caused by the first ever foam strike. This was in New Scientist magazine the week after Columbia was lost:

"DURING Columbia's lift-off from the Kennedy Space Center launch pad, debris from the huge external fuel tank was seen falling off and striking the fragile thermal protection tiles on the underside of the craft. While the shuttle was in orbit, teams of engineers scrambled to analyse the launch video, and turned cameras on military spy satellites to photograph the shuttle's underside and assess the damage. Others analysed its potential effects, with inconclusive results.

Sounds familiar? The landing came two days later, on 14 April 1981. During the shuttle's fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, observers on the ground and the astronauts themselves were hoping and praying for the best, but fearing the worst. It was the maiden voyage of the space shuttle, and it returned to Earth safely. When its commander, John Young - NASA's most experienced astronaut, who had walked on the Moon and is the very epitome of the fearless, gruff, reserved American with the "right stuff" - stepped out of the orbiter, he was smiling exuberantly. He trotted down the steps, and after exchanging a few greetings headed back under the shuttle and spent a long time gazing up at its shiny, black-tiled surface. He looked surprised to be alive."

(From a great article at the NS website).

They'll have plenty of historic evidence to compare this tear to, even if they don't want to go public on it. I imagine there are plenty of NASA ground crew with hair-raising tales about damage found to the craft upon post-landing inspection.

I'd also expect that if they lost another craft, that's it, game over. No more shuttles will fly - and since that's the main reason for NASA to keep going right now, you'd hope they'd take it seriously.

They'll never get rid of the foam-strike problem - it's inherent in a design where the orbiter is carried below the tank. Every mission until retirement will face the "repair or not repair" question. They were "lucky" it took as many as 100-odd missions for the problem to become catastrophic.