End of an Era As Pioneering BBC3 Becomes an Online-Only Station (betanews.com) 85
Mark Wilson writes: 13 years ago, BBC3 launched in the UK. Last night, the TV station broadcast over the airwaves for the last time. In a bid to slash expenditure, the youth-oriented channel that launched countless comedy careers is now only available online. The likes of Being Human, The Mighty Boosh, Gavin and Stacey, and the like will live on, but only on the web — which the BBC is spinning as an opportunity to be freed from the constraints of regular scheduling. The change has been known about for some time now, and there have been a number of campaigns and petitions to try to get the BBC to change its mind.
Too bad (Score:5, Funny)
It is so sad that they have moved down to a medium which nobody knows or cares about.
I mean, this makes the television antennas in all of our phones practically useless now....
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I found my old dial-up server list, but none of them are named "Bulletin Board C3", is this one of the ones where I need to find a different area code's server list?
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I couldn't find anything about it on Gopher.
I'll check out the CompuServe chat rooms.
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They were FORUMS, not "chat rooms".
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They won't sell us phones with ATSC tuners here in the US.
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Side note, apropos of nothing: Alibaba will sell to people in much of the U.S., but not to those of us who live in Washington state!
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From what I can find there is no cellphone with support for ATSC. I see that I can get an ATSC adapter that will allow me to watch tv but that's hardly the same.
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What's a TV antenna doing in your phone? Wouldn't it be useless without also having a tuner of some sort in there?
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ahhhh, *that's* why it never worked... Here I was adding tinfoil to the telescoping antenna and everything...
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So, like every other channel then. Well, I'd say the hit/miss ratio on BBC3 was a bit above average.
Since I don't have a smart TV and won't watch on my phone/tablet/laptop that's basically the end of BBC 3 for me. You don't need a licence to watch iPlayer (except the live stream) so maybe I won't bother renewing now, as that was basically the only thing other than news I ever watched live (in bed) anyway.
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The only things I personally can think of are Gavin & Stacy, 2 Pints and The Mighty Boosh
Cross Two Pints off your list!
Add:
Little Britain
Being Human
Torchwood
The Fades (shamefully axed after 1 series)
In the Flesh (managed 2 series before the chop)
Our War
I didn't watch 'Nighty Night', but a lot of people rated it.
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Re:Title (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure if serious, so I'll answer anyway.
No - the BBC is not the only game in town when it comes to television and radio in the UK. The BBC is uniquely-funded through a "television license" which anyone who watches live broadcast television must pay, regardless whether they watch the BBC's channels or not. There is no commercial advertising on the BBC when watched in the UK (though I understand this is not necessarily the case with the versions of the BBC that are shown internationally).
But there's also the commercial broadcasters:
ITV (a regionalized network of broadcast companies) operates a number of channels
Channel 4 (also broadcasts E4, more4, Film4 (which makes original film content as well as screening Hollywood and independent films)
Channel 5 (again, they operate a few channels).
Sky (satellite TV provider, which has its own channels, but also broadcasts channels from overseas, typically US channels - their set-top boxes also have access to a streaming catch-up service with access to download TV show box sets for you to watch. Sky is hideously expensive, though)
There's the usual assortment of TV shopping channels and adult entertainment
The BBC also has its 24-hour news channel.
Telephone giant BT also has its own service, but it's a streaming service that is (as far as I know) only open to BT Broadband (DSL) and BT Infinity (FTTC) customers.
And we can watch Netflix and Amazon Prime here too. Just not with as much content as the US gets (this is true of Netflix everywhere though).
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There's also a few +1 channels which show programmes an hour later than on the other channel.
I'm just waiting for them to come up with -1 channels!
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So, in England...they only had 3 channels...and are now down to 2 on TV?
Pre-digital, there weren't many. We only hit 4 in 1982 and were up to 5 by the nouglties: 2 BBC (public), 1 ITV (commercial), Channel 4 (public-owned-commercial) and the unimaginatively named Channel 5.
Now, on terrestrial digital, The BBC (public, no ads) had 8 channels (BBC1,2,3,4, BBC News, BBC Parliament & 2 kids channels) although 3, 4 only run from 7pm, before that the kid's channels use the same bandwidth. Then there's a shedload of non-BBC channels: ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 now each have 3-4 digital channels, not counting '+1's and HD versions, plus numerous others (I've lost track of who owns what). Of course, the advent of digital also created a 5-fold increase in the available license fee and advertising revenue, to fill this plethora of new channels with premium content :->
Sadly, we also have shopping channels. Prize for the biggest waste of bandwidth (savour this blow by blow):
QVC (a shopping channel, if you need a stretchy fat-dissolving bra with integrated pressure washer )
QVC HD (See the stretchy fat-dissolving bra with integrated pressure washer in glorious 1080i)
QVC HD +1 (time shifted by an hour in case you'd missed out on that stretchy fat-dissolving bra with integrated pressure washer on regular QVC).
I don't want to live on this planet any more.
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Yes. Even with death panels pruning out the no-hopers socialised medicine is so expensive that even 2 is stretching the budget.
And of course all TV channels are government run, which is what happens if everybody doesn't have a gun.
This is what happens when govt runs media (Score:1)
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As it is in so many other contexts, Fox is even worse!
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No, you're just an ignorant dumbass.
I was referencing the fact that Fox cancels bunches of good shows [hubpages.com]. In other words, with Fox, "If you like your shows, you can keep your shows" is less true than it is for the BBC.
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The simpsons? X-files? 24? A lot of shows that saturate popular culture came from Fox. Nevermind that the BBC actually recycles a lot of US content, which in many cases ends up being more popular than the domestic content.
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The simpsons? X-files? 24?
Fox news! You're talking about fictional entertainment, right?
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Think more along the lines of "if you like your Firefly, you can keep your Firefly."
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Nevermind that the BBC actually recycles a lot of US content, which in many cases ends up being more popular than the domestic content.
Example please? The Beeb aren't renowned for licensing shows. Quite the reverse in fact; what's far more common is that BBC shows are exported to the US, where they are remade for American tastes and so end up being absolutely awful (e.g. Red Dwarf, The Office).
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I don't know everything BBC broadcasts, however I do know that they presently air Family Guy and American Dad, both of which are from Fox.
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Oh wow, downhill fast. (Score:4, Funny)
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I've tried every position on the dial, from 2 to 13 - but I can't find this "Netflix" anywhere!
Wait... is it in the UHF band?
Launched "countless" careers? (Score:2)
>> 13 years ago, BBC3 launched...that launched countless comedy careers...
In the words of John Oliver, settle down people. It's only been around 13 years. Surely, the number of people who are still working in comedy after working on that channel is finite. Here's a list of the most famous, I guess: http://www.theguardian.com/med... [theguardian.com]
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OTA is growing in the US. And for me, the picture quality beats Netflix almost every time.
I'm in my 50s... (Score:2)
... and even I hardly watch any "over the air" television anymore. Most of the shows I watch are available on Hulu or Netflix (including at least a few of these particular BBC3 shows, which aren't otherwise available to me as a non-Brit). Surely a "youth-oriented" channel can somehow manage to survive the move to an Internet-only presence.
I'm sure the BBC's primary motivation here is indeed to save money - but I don't see how this move has to be construed as a negative one.
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If BBC wants some money, they should open up iPlayer as a subscription service to the US. Obviously, any show they manage to license to a cable network would not be included in the subscription, but everything else is just sitting there untapped. I am not going to buy cable just to get BBC America.
It's an experiment in the future of "Television" (Score:2)
Everything is ultimately headed over IP. BBC3 is a good brand with which to pioneer this with it's relatively young and tech-savy demographic. Once "smart" TVs start living up to their name you'll be able to watch it just as you do now over DVB.
Crazy or fraud? (Score:2)
Transponders and multiplex slots don't cost a fortune to rent. You only have to look at all the garbage channels to know that it's cheap. In any case, it shares a transponder with a kids channel, so should only pay half. The programme costs will be the same whatever the distribution method. Furthermore there is a cost to streaming to the internet, which I wouldn't mind betting is similar to the transponder costs.
I p
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The whole country since the recession has been in cost cutting mode, and the 60+ generation is basically that which has been protected from everything in every way both in government and elsewhere.
BBC3 has been cut because the BBC has decided to cater almost in it's entirety to the 60+ demographic, and this is highlighted by the fact that the average age of a BBC viewer has crept up from just under 50 to 59 since the recession started and cuts began.
But it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy for them, they'
Pioneering? (Score:3)
The channel was meant to cover "young people" as the BBC, in its wisdom had decided that they weren't watching enough TV (as if that was a bad thing). However, the BBC's idea of "young people" was a rather arbitrary age range of 16 - 34 year olds. That is a group defined by the advertising industry, but since the BBC is advert free, it's not really relevant to them and can hardly be said to be a "demographic".
Given that most 16 year olds are spotty children, living with their parents who still snigger when someone says "fart" and 34 year-olds are generally on their second baby, with a partner, mortgage, job and a car or two - it's a pretty wide range to please, So it's no surprise that the target audience (who weren't watching enough TV) stayed away. Sure, in the eyes of those people who made a living from BBC3, it was "pioneering" or "innovative". However those people were generally, themselves, not exactly target-audience material, either.
When the TV "digital revolution" (i.e. replacing the small number of wide-band analog stations with a large number of digital ones) started, there was a plethora of new stations. Most of them had very little content that was either new or worth watching. Most of these, especially the new ones that the BBC started, can be considered failures. BBC3 is just the most high-profile failure and probably won't be missed, except by those middle-aged 34 year-olds who still wish they were spotty children - or who are still living with their parents.
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The BBC has plenty of good content for its channels, it just won't show it. BBC 4 is full of modern crap, when they could be showing great documentaries from the 60s, 70s and 80s. From the time before the great dumbing down.
never had any sense to it (Score:2)
Given the number of repeats shown on BBC1 and BBC2 there was always plenty of space in the schedule for new, innovative and interesting material.
There still is.
Forget putting BBC3 online, shut it down entirely. Anything that's good enough can be shown on BBC2 - it's got to be better than endless repeats of Coast, daily doses of Flog It and whatever the fuck they call that atrocity that's on at 7pm.
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Not really - BBC produces amazing Nature documentaries with David Attenborough.
I also miss seeing Ground Force.
And soon we'll have the Orangutan back with Captain Slow, and Pearly white. Never thought I'd get Amazon Prime - but to see the trio in Action again is worth it.
There's a BBC3? (Score:1)
Its not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
The BBC licence fee has been frozen (Govt interference!) for a number of years now due to intense lobbying by the likes of Sky and the newspapers. Its not just the Conservatives, Labour under Tony Blair were happy to be in the Murdochs pocket too.
In real terms this means that the amount of money they get is not enough to cover running the channels they had 13 years ago, is not enough to make/commission more than a few new programme ideas and is not enough to compete with Sky for high profile sports programming. Added to this, the BBC has been saddled with funding a government benefit, the provision of "free" tv licences for the over 75s, and with the number of 75 year olds growing, that means a continuous drop in licence fee income.
The BBC used to produce ALL their own programmes. Under successive licence fee settlements, they have been required to commission from outside production companies. The number of BBC production studios has shrunk dramatically. Ther BBC only has the right to rebroadcast shows or obtain extra income from overseas sales when they make the programmes themselves. Otherwise future income goes into the pockets of the production companies or other rightsholders.
Other income streams like BBC Publishing have also been stolen and sold off in the name of the great god "competition" and the BBC is in danger of losing much of their web content because of johnny-come-lately newspapers who have seen their own print readership evaporate and want to appropriate the online digital content pioneered by the BBC.
BBC 3 wasn't a failure. Over its lifetime it aired ground-breaking comedies and dramas. Having it shunted into the on-line abyss is yet another nail in the coffin of strong, independent programming from the BBC.
This Has Been BBC3 (Score:2)
It's just gone 8 o'clock and time for the penguin on top of your television set to explode.
Streaming the good tuff (Score:2)
So when will I be able to stream "My Word" and "My Music", auntie Beeb?