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An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
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coppice:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on February 02, 2022, 11:19:20 am ---News coverage is horribly biased. They way they've dealt with COVID-19 and the government's response just proves this. They've failed to adequately challenge the government's policies: lockdown, school closures, mask mandates etc. Perhaps they were right and necessary, maybe the BBC agreed with them, or perhaps they were an over-reaction, with greater harms, than benefits, but that's not the point. It was their duty as a public broadcaster to question policies which placed the greatest restrictions on our freedoms, during peacetime.

--- End quote ---
That's not entirely true. While the BBC's actual news program coverage of COVID has been really bad, I've listened to several genuine analyses on Radio 4. Things where they have broken down government announcements, shown how deceptive they are, and basically called out the lying scumbags.
coppice:

--- Quote from: Gyro on February 02, 2022, 11:45:48 am ---Firstly, to quote your own comment back at you...


--- Quote from: coppice on February 01, 2022, 09:07:01 pm ---.... The BBC used to be excellent, but we never watch it any more.....

--- End quote ---

If you never watch the BBC, then it seems that you are hardly qualified to be able to give an informed opinion on its output. Most of the output you do watch seems to be 10 years old and on other networks.

--- End quote ---
I only stopped paying the licence fee last summer, when I realised we hadn't watched anything on the BBC for the 3 month since my wife went to care for mother outside the UK. She was still watching a few things on the BBC until she left, and I saw the poor quality. I especially saw the very poor state of BBC news coverage. Currently she's not living in the UK right now, so I had no reason to renew our licence.


--- Quote from: Gyro on February 02, 2022, 11:45:48 am ---
--- Quote ---It used to be that all the channels offered pretty good documentaries. ITV has never been quite as down market as most people remember. They are all pretty bad now.

--- End quote ---

You illustrate my point perfectly, The output of ITV and most other channels are governed by their investors and advertisers. They go for the lowest common denominator - soaps, game shows, 'reality TV' etc. The lowest effort and expenditure for the maximum financial return. The result - low end crap. A possible exception is the Channel 4 / Film4  etc umbrella, who do finance film projects, though not as much as they used to (they are relying on imported US shows and 'reality TV' more and more though). The BBC has none of these restrictions (other than the amount of money available from the license fee).

--- End quote ---
How does what I said illustrate your point? ITV revenue has always been driven by pulling the maximum audience it can, and used to find the best approach was to produce a diverse range of high quality material. More BBC1 thanBBC2, but not garbage. Once audiences become split across a wide range of options its very hard for any of them to gather enough funds to produce high quality output. This has happened over and over across the world, especially since satellite channels exploded the number of broadcast channels possible. As you say, the BBC has not been starved of resources to the extent of others. It just didn't have to try very hard against cash strapped competitors, and gave up caring.
rstofer:
As I understand it there are two issues for BBC:  Mandatory subscription if you own a television, whether you watch the channels or not, and the fact that BBC took sides over BREXIT.  They absolutely should lose their protected 'public' status. And paying for a service you don't want seems problematic. 

In the US, we have PBS, a poorly subscribed Public Broadcasting System.  It is funded by donations and attempts to avoid taking sides:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS

PBS creates some very interesting content but I haven't watched it in decades.  I'm not sure why...  Maybe because I don't watch any news or documentary channels.

coppice:

--- Quote from: rstofer on February 02, 2022, 06:58:20 pm ---As I understand it there are two issues for BBC:  Mandatory subscription if you own a television, whether you watch the channels or not, and the fact that BBC took sides over BREXIT.  They absolutely should lose their protected 'public' status. And paying for a service you don't want seems problematic. 

In the US, we have PBS, a poorly subscribed Public Broadcasting System.  It is funded by donations and attempts to avoid taking sides:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS

PBS creates some very interesting content but I haven't watched it in decades.  I'm not sure why...  Maybe because I don't watch any news or documentary channels.

--- End quote ---
There was a time when some of the US PBS stations, like WGBH in Boston, produced a lot of great science and natural history series with the BBC. They were mostly edited and redubbed for the local audiences, because it seems Americans can't understand English, but 95% of the program's contents were the same.
cdev:
A huge monitor OTOH is a very useful thing to have and a good investment, if its also cheap.

I'm much more productive with a big monitor because I am kind of disorganized and like to have things out and visible.

I think research on productivity and multitasking has been fairly conclusive as to the usefulness of multiple monitors and big monitors. Then, you can also use it for watching videos (what I think of when people say "watching TV") Its been several years since I actually watched TV from the cable. (Although I do sometimes watch OTA TV from New York City, which I get here, fairly well now, for free) But I find that most over the air TV programming is fairly lame. (with the exception of some comedy shows that I like a lot)
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