The BBC's future
2021-Sep-08, Wednesday 17:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matgbSo, made a very long comment on an old contact (![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
psythor) Substack, in response to his The BBC is heading into a death spiral and we should worry about it and having never commented there before it might've got lost in the shuffle
As I'm sat at my desk (weirdly, appears my desire to sit at a desk grows in August/September?), you lucky lucky people get to read it as well, just in case. I'm not formatting it too much tho because, well, effort ;-)
==
I think, overall, you're right, but...
There are two points regarding the BBC competing with streaming that are something that could be solved easily, because it's to do with the mindset within the Beeb
Because even on a much lower budget, they're not even trying--most of the bigger, succesful streaming shows, especially Disney, are genre based, superhero, SF, fantasy, supernatural. The BBC still, despite decades of evidence to the contrary, thinks of that as kids stuff, and therefore we get Doctor Who and occasional attempts to replicate a "family" show
The idea that YA/teens/40+geeky adults might want to watch genre stuff aimed at them is culturally beyond them (yes, I am still bitter they cancelled The Fades for spurious reasons)
The other is costs--a lot of the cost of US big budget TV is cast/crew, US shows famously overpay their stars by international standards, and that is dragging pay up in competing global sectors but...
The BBC can make similar shows, in a similar style, on a much smaller budget
The biggest problem is they don't, at all, want to try :-(
As I'm sat at my desk (weirdly, appears my desire to sit at a desk grows in August/September?), you lucky lucky people get to read it as well, just in case. I'm not formatting it too much tho because, well, effort ;-)
==
I think, overall, you're right, but...
There are two points regarding the BBC competing with streaming that are something that could be solved easily, because it's to do with the mindset within the Beeb
Because even on a much lower budget, they're not even trying--most of the bigger, succesful streaming shows, especially Disney, are genre based, superhero, SF, fantasy, supernatural. The BBC still, despite decades of evidence to the contrary, thinks of that as kids stuff, and therefore we get Doctor Who and occasional attempts to replicate a "family" show
The idea that YA/teens/40+geeky adults might want to watch genre stuff aimed at them is culturally beyond them (yes, I am still bitter they cancelled The Fades for spurious reasons)
The other is costs--a lot of the cost of US big budget TV is cast/crew, US shows famously overpay their stars by international standards, and that is dragging pay up in competing global sectors but...
The BBC can make similar shows, in a similar style, on a much smaller budget
The biggest problem is they don't, at all, want to try :-(
