Tech Ops correspondents’ professional eye view on the future of the BBC following on from a “Newsnight” discussion (see also: Comments on Current Productions 2015)
John Howell
The BBC is surely doomed if Lord Hall thinks that one of the highlights of the past year’s programming was the live edition of “EastEnders”. I thought it was slow and unexciting compared to the usual fare. He may have judged it by the number of cameras, scanners, or staff (or cost?) but I’ll bet even after the relentless trails the viewers hardly noticed.
Ian Hillson
It’s the relentless trails for everything on BBC tv that raise my blood pressure.
Keith Wicks
I don’t mind the trails so long as they don’t interfere with the ending of a programme. But I think it’s an insult to performers and programme makers to have the credits shrunk down and a high-volume announcement of things to come made over the closing music. Why is it OK to deny the people concerned their proper credits? I sometimes wonder why the sufferers from these atrocities do not get their unions involved in persuading the BBC to stop using such insensitive methods.
Dave Plowman
Perhaps sadly, the vast majority of the viewing public are not interested in credits, and may just channel hop when they’re on. And if they find something interesting, stay there. So a ‘what’s on next’ over the credits may persuade them to stay on that channel.#
The same reason most of the commercial channels show breaks at the same time.
Ian Hillson
#Except it is then followed by ‘what’s on a week on Thursday’ and when you get three or four trails at one programme junction there’s little defence against the Beeb taking real advertising…
Pat Heigham
The crass intervention of ‘presentation’ or ‘continuity’ over end credits is a blatant ‘Oh, please don’t switch away, we’ve got something to interest you’.
Tony Hall did promise to sort this, but I’m not sure that he totally achieved it.
More concerned are the commercial channels who wish to push the ads* that pay for their survival. I have a good friend who absolutely refuses to view channels with ads – if I think he’s missing a good programme, I record it, cut the commercials and send him a DVD!
The comment about people not being interested in credits holds true in cinemas, too – as soon as the credits roll, the punters are up and out – and in the smaller digital theatres, often blocking the projector beam. Working in the film industry, I want to see who of my colleagues have been responsible. The only time that the audience stays in their seats until the bitter end when the tabs close, is at Pinewood’s premiere theatre, showing films to the Cinema Guilds members, ‘cos we all know the ‘British’ guys and gals.
Actually, if the film is American, I tend to rent it on BluRay, and watch at home with the subtitles on! Mostly beautifully recorded, but lousy delivery from extremely well-paid actors. Now where have we heard, or not, that before?
Ah, "Jamaica Inn" – I personally know both the Production Mixer and the Re-recording Mixer on that, and they are superb professionals, but they can only work with the material that they are given.
An example of artiste co-operation, though – (Robert Altman’s “Gosford Park”) – Altman shot one scene of a dinner party with a roving camera, not saying which part would make it to the final cut. Actors hate wearing radio mics, but they all wanted to, on this one, in case their bit of dialogue was used!
*Advertisement and Sponsorship.
I worked on a 7-part doc (for the BBC, but and independent prod. co.) following McLaren’s Formula 1 team around. The sponsors can buy space on the cars, and even have their names in reverse on the helmets, as the on-board cameras see it in the wing mirrors! There is a team of scrutineers who view all the TV footage with timecode and calculate exactly how long a name is visible to the viewers. Thus the price of a name on a part of the car is arrived at. The front spoiler carries a figure of £1m (in 1993!) as the cameras usually concentrate on a head-on shot).
Roger Bunce
I could cope with trails between programmes. It’s the trails inside the programme, for other bits of the same programme, that get to me. ‘Coming up soon’, ‘Later in the programme’, ‘ More on that in a moment’, etc. If they scrapped all that, they could actually have more time for content!
Keith Wicks
I have always assumed that these internal trails were a means of saving money by reducing the time allocated to costly content. There is the other time consuming feature – repeating earlier parts of the programme with a voice over starting "Previously… ." The only good thing about all this is that we can skip watching the first half of some programmes, confident in the knowledge that we will be brought up to date by summaries before each new segment. But this is not the way we should have to watch television in order to make it relatively painless.
Alasdair Lawrance
The "previously….." annoyance seems more prevalent in the commercial channels. I object to a 50 minute programme being padded with a ‘this is how difficult it was to make’ 10 minute segment, this being the amount of time the commercials will take up when the programme is sold, or put on Dave.
Speaking of commercials, I’m still amazed that somebody, somewhere, having viewed Mrs Ozzie Osborne in that weird set-up, said "Great! That is precisely the image I want to project of my financial website!" Strange days indeed…
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John Howell
Another annoyance goes as follows:
News Headlines: "Something has Happened"
Main news item: "Something Has Happened" and we go over live to get the latest from our Special Correspondent.
Special Correspondent:” Well I am at XXX and, as you say, Something has Happened and I am now repeating everything that has been said in the way of an introduction, so, there you have it, the very latest from XXX".
Main newscaster: "That was our Special Correspondent at XXX and if you want to know more about the Something that has happened you can turn the television off and go to our website for the very latest repeat of the known facts."
Dave Plowman
Followed by the obligatory interview with a ‘community spokesperson’.
Geoff Fletcher
What I dislike about the BBC now can be summed up in "Nobody seems to care!". Case in point from this morning (16 July 2015) – Reporter at St Andrews on item about golf – cut back to studio presenter for a few seconds – back to reporter with left top corner of screen tag "Northampton". After another 30 seconds or so – tag goes and is replaced by correct one saying “St Andrews” after several more seconds delay. OK – small thing in itself – but the cumulative effect of these "small things" is huge and seriously detracts from the output quality. I remember to this day when I was given the job of loading the slides into the projector in the small hell-hole room off Production in E or G at Lime Grove on a “24 Hours” or “Tonight”, and I got one – just one – wrong. It was put up on Preview ready for supering – instantly removed – and all hell broke loose and I got a severe public bollocking from the director over talkback. I made damn sure I never did that again. Somebody cared you see.
Before anyone adds that this applies to all channels – it’s because I was so happy and proud to work in BBC TV from1963 to 1970 when the standards were so very high that it hurts so much to see how far they have fallen now. The BBC that we all knew and cared about doesn’t exist anymore – destroyed by politics and by useless managers and accountants and their ilk. The general viewing public doesn’t know what we are on about and doesn’t care anyway. We are voices in the wind crying for something precious that’s been lost.
Albert Barber
I agree the BBC isn’t what it was and we all can remember when the BBC had more money and more staff.
We tend to forget to compare a BBC of today without money with the BBC that was that had money. To a large extent with money it meant then we had a larger staff of all ages. This meant that we learnt through those that had been there and in idle moments by playing on very expensive kit. Now the people in the BBC at all levels are pressured with having no extra time to do the job properly let alone work on the expensive kit by mucking about with it and from those older than us who had the time to help us learn and give us a chance. Much has been written on this by us over the years in remembering moments that put us in the deep end by people who cared for the output and us.
Now Producers who would not be called producers then are very young, like we were once, but with no one to look up to. They often try and fail, we see the results but unfortunately the public don’t so we should voice an opinion but with some caveats.
A proper funding base amongst positive ideas is a better idea than looking back and not offering solutions to aid the present BBC to go forward to the BBC’s values that it should have, but for the next generation. I fear like many of us that it may never reach what we knew but at least we might offer something that could help.
Nick Rodger
The commercial stations are terrified of the Beeb being funded by advertising, because they’d blow them out of the water. And there is absolutely no similarity between trailing forthcoming programmes (even if overdone) and funding by advertising.
It is true The Beeb is not what it was, in days that were perhaps more innocent. Nothing is.
Since I started at Television Centre in 1970 the old girl has been assaulted by politicians of all colours, newspapers jealous of broadcasting’s greater immediacy, and now media barons jealous of most peoples go~to BBC websites, whereas they see the web as merely another revenue source; independent producers who went whinging to Thatcher “…please Miss, make them show my profit making programmes, it’s not fair they’ve got lots of talent stopping my shows being made..”; and then subscription platforms with more money than any publicly funded organisation could ever dream of.
The license fee is £145.50 per year. PER DWELLING.
That’s 40p. a day. Per dwelling.
TV in the lounge, kitchen, two children’s rooms, that’s 10p. per TV per day.
Radio, all radio, is worth 40p. a day on it’s own.
TMS is worth that alone.
Broadcasting is one of the few fields of endeavour in which Britain is pre~eminent. And a bad BBC, which it isn’t, is better than no BBC at all, as we’ll all realise once it’s been emasculated beyond redemption.
Dave Plowman
The commercial companies have many years of experience selling advertising in a competitive market whereas the BBC gets its income regardless.
Obviously if the BBC went commercial, much the same pot would have to fund them all. But I’d be very surprised if the BBC came up smiling. And lots of the programmes they make that I watch would no longer be viable.
Albert Barber
MANIFESTO
Developing the best of BBC past into the future by those who were there
| 1 | That BBC Worldwide is given more powers to make money for the BBC and not sold off – Family silver and all that |
| 2 | That the income of the BBC remains either as a household tax or as a continuation of the licence fee and is index linked |
| 3 | That the BBC has a Programme making base so that it will encourage production and craft skills as it has in the past |
| 4 | That it still retains a technical operational and research base to further and better the whole British media industry |
| 5 | That it does NOT become a publishing house, thereby keeping a tradition of independent editorial decisions free from outside commercial interests |
| 6 | That a member of government and opposition sits on a Board of trustees in order to realise what the BBC is about and its problems from the inside |
| 7 | That the BBC Archives is formed into a charitable National Archive with the ability to be available to all and to sell it’s content where copyright allows |
| 8 | That the BBC remains independent of Government and Government interference so that the Royal Charter remains outside of Government intervention |
| 9 | That the BBC and National Television is given the right to offer Free to Air national events and in ‘Particular National Sports Programmes’ as in Australia |
| 10 | That a proportion of tax generated above a certain threshold by other media organisations is given to the BBC |
Geoff Hawkes
Wonderful wish list, if only it could be realised.
Perhaps clause 3 should include “ along the established guidelines of “…to inform, educate and entertain.” Is that plaque still there in reception at BH?
An addition might be “That it continues to recognise and respect *BECTU and (other named unions as appropriate to the various skill groups) as the principal collective bargaining body for its staff and casual labour force.
* Providing these represent a true expression of staff, not management or Government wishes
Keith Wicks
The BBC is no longer the great organisation that most of us admired so much. In fact, so many people in the tech-ops group have been critical of the BBC in recent years that it seems likely that most of us would like to see drastic changes to the Corporation. After all, there is no point in our trying to save something if we feel it needs replacing by something better.
Personally, I would like to see the BBC condensed into a much smaller organisation with the emphasis on quality, and not on audience figures. Then it could concentrate on doing what it does well. For example, I’d like to see good consumer programmes on television, rather than the mostly pathetic efforts we now have. If the programme is really helpful, then there is no need to insert feeble jokes in every other sentence – especially when most presenters don’t have the professional comedian’s expert sense of delivery and timing. Treating important matters in such a frivolous manner makes it hard to take such programmes seriously.
Of course, comedy is important too. I must admit that I don’t find most of today’s comedy as funny as that of a few decades ago. Is that because it’s to do with age or fashion, or has comedy just not returned to the heights it achieved during its ‘golden age’? I have no general objection to people pulling faces, shouting or swearing, if the circumstances justify it, but I do object to such things by themselves being passed off as comedy.
An irritating technique used in factual programmes is splitting stories into several parts and then interweaving them. Do the programme makers really think we will get bored and switch off if we see the whole of one ten-minute story without a break? If it is worth watching, we will stay. But what is boring is the constant recapping about what we have already seen and, after a short update, the promises about what we will see later – if we are still watching.
Perhaps padding out the programme material in this way is simply a way of making programmes cheaper to produce. Or does it really have the effect of keeping viewers glued to their sets? Does anyone know the philosophy behind this technique?
An important thing that the BBC has is its impartiality, and this seems about to come under threat. In general, political parties are never happy with the coverage the BBC gives them. Occasionally, an interviewer may appear to be biased, but I believe that the BBC does strive to treat all parties fairly. And it is absolutely unacceptable that any government should be able to veto political content in programmes by a broadcaster that has set such a fine example of fair play that it is admired and relied on throughout the world.
