[Dixielandjazz] Re: Public Broadcasting

[PATRICK LADD]

I thank my lucky stars for public broadcasting,>>

Hi All,
In  the UK the BBC is our only publicly funded service in that you have to 
have a licence to receive TV pictures of any sort. Radio as well for that 
matter. That money goes to the BBC and they carry no advertising. All other 
channels , Sky, ITV etc are paid for by advertising. To attract advertising 
they have to chase the ratings with any sort of trash which will keep the 
audience watching their channel. Big Brother, I am a Celebrity..,Jerry 
Springer etc.,
The BBC on the other hand , freed from the restraints of having to chase 
ratings (although they do to some extent) can spend the license fee income 
on producing  first class `classical` drama, music etc,  with a more limited 
appeal.
My first encounter with American TV was a shock. Firstly because of the 
appallingly poor technical level of the picture compared to the UK (this was 
some years ago and you have now nearly caught up) and secondly because of 
the frequency of the interruptions of the programme by advertisements.
Here the amount of advertising shown per hour is limited by law. In the 
States I found that commercial breaks occurred so often that it was 
difficult to follow the programme. Also as the denouement of the play, film, 
whatever, approached, the number of interruptions by advertising increased.
I watched Clint Eastwoods `Pale Rider` in an American hotel room and by the 
end of the film there seemed to be `commercial breaks` every two minutes.I 
can see that in a twisted kind of way this makes comercial sense but it 
entirely ignores the viewing publics interest and reduces them to shopping 
fodder. The worst part was at the end of the film when Clint rides away into 
the sunset. The final fade was approaching and there was yet another 
commercial break. The film resumed, ran for about 10 seconds and then the 
credits rolled.Awful!.
The current license fee is £121. I would happily pay twice that not to have 
programmes constantly halted by adverts.

Cheers

Pat 



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