[nvm0n2]

> the BBC has never really had a sustained drop in content quality

The article is about a Netflix sci-fi show. The BBC just point blank refuses to make those despite the enormous popularity of the genre; the history of BBC sci-fi is so tiny it would fit on a postcard. What little it has made is either meant for kids, or is a comedy, which nicely sums up the Beeboid attitude to the sort of people who like it. You can't experience a drop in quality if there's nothing to drop.

And in this we see the reason why the BBC, despite its enormous budget, is quite simply no threat to Netflix and never could be. The quasi-communist license fee approach insulates it from what people want so well that it can ignore the most popular type of TV show for ideological reasons and nobody even bothers to complain, knowing full well that it's pointless. 99% of the energy of the BBC's critics gets absorbed trying to push back against its bias in news reporting, leaving none left for trying to improve its entertainment output.

[augustulus]

>quasi-communist

I must have been asleep the day paying for things became communist. the BBC has the same payment model as netflix, except you pay yearly instead of monthly, and it’s done on an honour system instead of at the door. total communism, man

>no sci-fi

Doctor Who? Life on Mars? Red Dwarf? Doctor Who is arguably the biggest or second biggest sci-fi show of all time. it’s certainly the biggest to remain under one name

>the most popular kind of tv show

it may be the most popular in your circle, or your mind, but this is demonstrably, obviously untrue

>ideological reasons

what ideology is against sci-fi? are you trying to claim the BBC are luddites? or that sci-fi is inherently… right-wing? or what?

>bias in news reporting

why not just cut to the chase?what you really mean is “I’m compromised intellectually by my political position”

[nvm0n2]

License fee evasion is one of the top traffic sources in the British court system, the idea that it's done "on the honour system" is mendacious. There are people in prison right now for not paying it. The BBC is at its most foundational level a state-backed company built on state power.

Doctor Who is a children's show and dates from the 50s. There have been reports for years that BBC executives hate it and would love to kill it, prevented only by its popularity [2]. Red Dwarf is a comedy and hasn't been made for decades. It was greenlit only because the BBC had spare budget left over from some other show, not because they actually wanted to do it. As I said: the BBC thinks sci-fi is for children or to laugh at, and barely even that.

> it may be the most popular in your circle, or your mind, but this is demonstrably, obviously untrue

It's a few years ago now but e.g.

https://tbivision.com/2018/04/25/netflix-ordered-more-sci-fi...

"following the success of flagship series like Stranger Things, sci-fi and fantasy was the most popular genre on Netflix"

If you look at the list of the top shows on Netflix then sci-fi, fantasy and horror are consistently amongst the most popular shows:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-watched_Netflix_o...

The BBC just doesn't do these, at all.

> what ideology is against sci-fi?

The BBC was fundamentally founded on a deeply classist Reithian ideology and it has never fully discarded this culture. It thinks its primary role is to improve the public and TV/radio production is just a means to that end. Given a choice of making an expensive period drama (what it calls "culture"), an expensive lecture on climate change or an expensive sci-fi/fantasy show they will never pick the latter, it just culturally displeases their executives at a very fundamental level to do so. Netflix also has problems with ideology [1] but it doesn't hold them back to the extent of neglecting whole genres of TV/movie output (with the possible exception of news, but you could argue that combining entertainment and news isn't natural and only an artifact of bandwidth constraints in earlier eras). Netflix's primary mission is just to give people what they want to watch.

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/netflix-blackwashing-parodies

[2] https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/bbc-hates-sci-fi-a-little-less-...

[augustulus]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/genres/drama/scifiandfantas...

it’s not communism if you don’t have to pay for it. it makes me so angry that politically compromised right-wingers choose to misunderstand this. if I go to the supermarket and just walk out with my shopping, that’s a crime in the same way that it’s a crime if I get on the train without paying or turn on the BBC and watch without paying, this isn’t some authoritarian communistic impingement upon your rights, it’s just goods and services. and before you repeat that “state-owned, state-backed” nonsense, publically-owned bodies are not communism. the military is not communism. the NHS is not communism. the BBC is so far from communism it’s a joke.

you would think that right-wing people would love the BBC’s model. the BBC isn’t funded through taxes, the consumer has choice, it’s constantly being restricted in order to maintain private competition, but no. why no? because “BBC bad” is constantly pushed through the right-wing media because they have a literal direct profit motive for you to see it as bad.

if the BBC doesn’t fit your incredibly specific ideas for what content it should pursue, how about this? just don’t pay for it. watch something else. vote with your feet like you can do with any other streaming service. send them a letter telling them why. you can be damn sure they’ll pay more attention to it than Netflix would.

finally, “mendacious” means lying, I’d make sure to understand my words before I use them, if I were you

[nvm0n2]

> if you don’t have to pay for it ... the BBC isn’t funded through taxes, the consumer has choice ... just don’t pay for it. watch something else ... vote with your feet like you can do with any other streaming service

You keep talking as if the license fee is a normal TV subscription. Are you British because there seems to be a really deep misunderstanding here?

The license fee is a tax. You have to pay it if you watch or record any TV broadcast and that includes streaming, any live TV at all in the UK, and that applies even if you never watch the BBC and don't want to. Got a Sky TV or cable subscription? Doesn't matter, you still gotta pay the BBC. There is no just watch something else and don't pay. There is no vote with your feet. That's why it's called a TV license and not a BBC license.

[augustulus]

what I don’t understand is why people say things that they don’t know are true. you can’t know this is true, because it isn’t. next time the tv license people send you a letter, actually read it

[nvm0n2]

From the UK government website:

https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/tv-licence

"You need a TV Licence to watch or record programmes on a TV, computer or other device as they're broadcast, and to watch on-demand BBC programmes on iPlayer"

In this thread you keep insisting I'm lying and I keep showing you, with evidence, that you're wrong, but you just keep doubling down and ranting about right wing people. What specifically do you object to in my description?