BBC is on the Game

More and more of the BBC's 'light entertainment' output seems to be about indiscriminate product pushing. A media self-attractor appears, uses the format, whatever it is, to ruthlessly plug their book, CD, series, show, tour. The host for the format appears submissive and resigned to just being an escort from one plugger to the next plugger, waiting in the wings. Each plugger in turns taking every opportunity to thrust their product at the camera. At least the shopping channels are up front and open about it, they are just there to sell product. The BBC comes, or rather came, with loftier ideals. 

The BBC and its audience is in a deep relationship of free give and take, based on trust and goodwill. The BBC offers itself for free and the public accept that free offering  with the assumption it is untainted. Clearly a commercial programme maker is dependant on generating revenue and that need impinges on what and how it goes about making it programme offerings. Clear and understood by them and their audience. 

Its charter requires the BBC to appeal across the broad spectrum, inevitably its business is feeding the voracious appetite for 'celebrity' titbits and light entertainment new arrivals. They have to be in and on the media circus where the trade is "I make myself available to appear with you, in return I get to talk about my product". They, the BBC is inescapably in the selling game, of tease and seduction, a role that is as close as it gets to prostitution. Where the waters get muddled and muddied is the degree of how free and easy are you? Is the BBC there as a common-garden whore, harlot, hooker, strumpet or rather as some refined courtesan? 

The distinction that separates a slut from a courtesan is fine but hugely significant. The difference at the lowest point where anything goes as long as you want it and long as you pay for it, to the other highest discreet end, where an accommodation of desires is reached without overt commercialisation and all veiled in good manners and refined conduct.  Where prior selection, distinction or approval are the order of the day not the going rate.

One consequence of being on the game, at whatever level, is that it brings with it the attention of the pimps. Those that want control and influence on the money generated, the how's of the 'service's' provision and restricting who does or does not get access and to which aspect of the 'service'.  The courtesan, to retain self-respect and that right of prior approval and selection, has to negotiate a way past these leeches who seize every opportunity to coerce the abandonment of these lofty ideals.


In the beginning when everything was all corporately funded and sourced it was more like a marriage of mutual convenience. Then the BBC, no longer the sole provider, was seen along side and judged in comparison to the  'successful commercial' providers, brazenly displaying attractive wares each carrying clear price tags. To keep, up with the 'commercial successes', the BBC has whittled away its corporate distinction, in the process losing the sense of what set them apart. It has reached a point now when the question has to be asked, do they still set their own agenda or have they become a mere vessel open for exploitation by the commercial world?

It is no longer clear with any BBC programme whether it is freely sourced,  unbiased and presented purely from some artistic, cultural or educational endeavour. Or is it, as is now so often the case, linked or even tied to some other objective manipulated by others outside of the corporate BBC. We the viewers can no longer rely on the impartiality of the BBC. That trust has gone.  Every programme offering has to be assessed, is it given freely without qualification, is it a disguised free offer of inducement or is it just a blatant bribe? Lets be clear here. The BBC has opened itself up to commercial exploitation and joined the world of prostitution. It offerings can range from the benign, its own commissioned  programmes from independent producers, to buying an outsourced complete programme, to bidding in auction wars with rivals all the way through to accepting programmes just as vehicles to sell product. Where now is our courtesan?

Weekly Sanity Check

Just as I despair of the all the attention seeking, the shallow me only selfishness and the endless mindless prattle that fill every day along comes Alison Graham's weekly column in the Radio Times. A breath of sanity. A welcome no nonsense, face life as it is and get on with it attitude. She, like we all, has her lapses when she get overcome with girlyness. Fair do's and she does forewarn with an unmissable klaxon before she gives into her temptation. Her doing girly is of course gritty, blunt and scalpel sharp to the point. Gets over it and gets back to her plain, but so nicely couched self. So often she mirrors, or rather she hones in with clarity on thoughts that were rambling around in me. Or perhaps more honestly, she plucks out of all the chatter a key essence of social conduct that I wish I had had the sense to see, before her enlightenment. And consistent, week after week. No overblown ego, no inflated sense of importance, just another generous insightful observation sparked off by some TV media event.

Her day job, the one that pays the bread, those previews of all the up-n-coming schedule programmes she is paid to write are equally pithy and to the point. A degree of dissemblance is entirely forgiveable. She is employed after all to promote programmes appearing in the schedules and though she seems to have a range of freedom, it is clear she cannot just say, it is all rubbish this week but has to find something. Over time it has become very clear those days when she is of a mind it is all unworthy rubbish, then picks out some long standing formulaic series or some oft repeated golden classic to make her choice for the day. Her linguistic somersaults and verbal gymnastics become words of wonder, as she trips lightly through many varied degrees of faint praise to satisfy the only upbeat requirements of her paymasters. Not that that stops her, occasionally firing both barrels from the hip, finding up-beat words to scathingly expose the nature of rubbish that she has been paid to praise.

A very loud thank you, Alison Graham. Each week you restore my faith as I brace myself for another week's bombardment of trivia. Thank you pay-masters, for carrying on having the courage to give her her head.

Oh yes as a ps, whatever she says is liberally drizzled with high octane irony, delicious!

Stolen

It has been a long time since I was so bored by a well-intended programme. The do-goody and moral indignation screamed at you at every so laboured and clumsy turn. The clichéd contrasts with social good life were banal and thin of any substance as to be an irritant. No wonder the scarcely one-dimensional characters struggled to fill their allotted space. No dialogue worth mentioning, no character to offer and a plot that struggled to make sense to all involved, other than the author. Credit where it is due, he surely, at some time must have believed in his story. Even the staged car crash, no not the programme but an actual scene, was so staged and hammed up that no one, crew, actors, extras least of all the audience believed, or cared. Thanks goodness for the mobile, that get me out of here plot changer, so heavily used, was there a scene change that did not rely on it? Such worthy actors, such a worthy cause and so wasted opportunity. Filmed in a city I know not where, even the guessing game of where on earth, England or a Eastern European cheapo location failed to keep my arm twitching as I checked my watch so frequently, yes, really yes the minutes dragged by. Hope against hope that finally something would be said that mattered. There you have it. A dismal failure of drama. Nothing of content to even launch a documentary and not even enough to puff up a docudrama. Just a miserable failure. But we do care, we want to understand the issues behind child trafficking. We want to know why the 'police', the agencies involved, are all so helpless, we want to know how the traffickers can get rich yet be beyond the law. There is a programme there, waiting to be made. But it certainly was not Stolen.

Programme ratings

The most unlikely programmes get these surprisingly huge audiences, 7M at the last count. Everyone congratulates the programme for its cutting edge, insightful, raw drama, searing dialogue, what-ever content with the usual awards to follow.

Almost nothing to do about the quality of the actual programme. It is all to do about scheduling and the lack of any quality alternative. Despite the talk of the youth migrating to view on demand TV, the majority still settle down to watch scheduled TV. You only have to look at the keenly contested 8:00 and 9:00pm slots to see this. The problem and the irony is that with the ever increasing channels to choose from there is the stark lack of choice. American serials, the non-ending repeats of repeats and continually recycling old films. More often than you would care for there is little choice on offer at the key viewing times. Cheap to make reality show exploiting human vulnerabilities, game or makeover shows predicated on the same weakness and just occasionally a documentary that does not endlessly trail the content with a recap of the content incase you missed the laboured elementary point that was about to be made, except of course, first we must be shown what is coming up.

That may be the only diet our cousins across the atlantic can cope with but we Europeans are made of sterner stuff. We can take sharp, fast, insightful documentaries, just as we can absorb dramas with a credible plot that is sustained across all episodes and characters that grow and develop and can actually mouth dialogue that bears some resemblance to every day speech. With the everyday pap american skewed programme offerings is it any wonder when anything, anything that treats its audience as adults and gives them something tangible to watch and think about gets disproportionate viewing figures. Even if its apparent depths are superficial rather than sustainable, it is still better than alternate offerings. So a silent protest by the masses ever searching to find content that is not mind numbing infantile in concept.

Long gone are the expectations of routinely offerings of programmes of quality. But what a real treats when that occasional titbit does surfaces attracting veiwers well beyond its actually hitting power.