Curses on the BBC

[John S]

I've been away for a few days and have only just caught up with this thread, I take the Sun story with a very, very large pinch of salt.     I presume it's just coincidence that The Sun is owned by Murdoch who also contols Sky TV, this story has a very strong piscine odour to it. 

The story would stand up much better if they were talking of needing the money to keep BBC 3 on air. So far as I can tell there is a loyal if small audience of professional middle class viewers for 4 and the BBC has won awards for a lot of the programming, whereas 3 is the butt of a lot of comedians jokes.

Because of the influence of it's audience I don't think the Beeb has a hope in hell of pulling BBC 4 funding, it has aquired the same iconic highbrow status as Radio 3 the classical music channel which was mysteriously kept well outside the debate on resource rationing in radio last year. But then, throwing BBC 4 in the mix is probably the mischief making element to the 'Murdoch owned' Sun article. 

[Alianora La Canta]

The number of factual inaccuracies in the Sunday Times story (which sparked all this off) indicates that F1 has not been axed by the BBC. It is under consideration, but so is everything else in the "sport and children's" department.

The BBC has a mandate, but it's quite vaguely-worded. Each of the BBC's channels also has an official remit that it must meet in order to be licensed.

In the BBC as a whole, F1 is considered a valid choice of sport because it is a global event that brings the country together - hitting both "global" and "community" purposes. (The other purposes are citizenship, learning, creativity and digital).

BBC One (which is where live F1 is primarily screened) has a remit to be the most popular mixed-genre service with many different good programmes. It's supposed to have as much original and international programming as possible. F1 meets all of the above, so that's the channel BBC needs to use for it.

It doesn't help that the BBC didn't precisely plan to take the F1 rights in the first place; it traded them for some underperforming football rights when ITV decided F1 was too expensive for it. As such, the BBC wasn't expecting it to do a whole lot, but it's exceeded the broadcaster's expectations in each of its measurements and was one of its most successful sporting rights properties according to the last review (done in 2008/2009, so the review would have included such things as the Olympics and Euro football championships). The only other sport to hit all its targets with the BBC was Wimbledon.

F1, the Premier League, the Olympics, Wimbledon and the Six Nations are 70% of the BBC's sporting spend between them. That amount cannot increase because the licence fee remained the same.

[lkjohnson1950]

I suspect this is just Murdoch's people stirring the pot over the bid to buy out CVC. If the price of TV rights goes down, CVC makes less money and would be more likely to sell.

Lonny

[Alianora La Canta]

If it can persuade the BBC to pay more (without Sky itself buying the rights), then it gets a free boost in value, provided it times its entry correctly.

If it gets the rights, then the advantage to Murdoch is obvious.

In short, Rupert wins whatever happens as a result of his little ploy.

[Willy]

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) is kinda like the BBC, but they do have commercials.  It is mandated to show 'Canadian' TV for a certain percentage of their programming.

This is due to Canadian Content Laws.

It show up most annoyingly in radio. We have to endure "one-hit" bands still being played as they are Canadian. 

Anyone remember the "Northern Pikes"....what crap!
Oh, wait...if you are in Canada and you have a radio of course you remember them...you have to listen to them every day.