SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
BBC:
Video streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime now have more subscribers than traditional pay TV services in the UK, new data from Ofcom has revealed.
The media regulator says British TV will have to change the way it operates if it wants to compete with the internet giants.
Sharon White, Ofcom's chief executive, says: "We'd love to see broadcasters such as the BBC work collaboratively with ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 so that they have got that scale to compete globally, making shows together, co-producing great shows that all of us can watch.
"I think it would be great to see a British Netflix."
BrexitFlix?
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
'Netflix Effect' Poses Challenge to British TV
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 52 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
You will have domestic happiness and faithful friends.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday July 19 2018, @11:55AM (3 children)
Or why not work with Netflix, Amazon and international companies that aren't your immediate competitor on co-productions... which is already happening.
Off the top of my head, the forthcoming Good Omens is a BBC/Amazon co-production, "Electric Dreams" (a.k.a. "whoops, we shouldn't have let Netflix take over Black Mirror") is Channel 4/Amazon - meanwhile BBC shows are all over Netflix for which BBC is presumably getting paid...
(although I'd be interested to know why I had to go to Netflix to watch the final season of Orphan Black, a BBC America production that the BBC seemed bizarrely reluctant to promote in the UK - sounds like a case of "not invented here")
Frankly, though, although its nice to have the BBC as a differently-biassed source of news that is still less bad than the alternatives, I no longer see a case for the TV license in terms of drama/entertainment, with the likes of HBO, Netflix and Amazon turning out high-production-value shows which are often part-produced by UK talent (e.g. GoT) and providing ad-free subscription services on which to watch them. The TV license as a ring-fenced tax on TV equipment is already living on borrowed time in the internet age and I don't trust the current bunch of cockwombles running the country to "modernise" it without turning it into another general tax that vanishes into the treasury's bottomless pit and faux-privatising the BBC (i.e. some big services company gets the assets and the taxpayer keeps the liabilities).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:14PM (2 children)
"less bad" is the operative part of that phrase. They have grown worse, to my eye. They have begun to synchronize with the worst impulses of the American MSM. I have retreated to Der Spiegel, because they are not yet obsessed with the same nonsense as English-language media.
I don't know how English-language journalism ever comes back. The real newsmen, with ethics and standards, were let go 20 years ago and no one with integrity remains to teach the younglings how to do it properly. It's a regular occurrence now that pieces from major outlets are full of typos and bad grammar. It's commonly done that reporters slap new headlines on corporate press releases and pass them off as their own. Nobody does original research or investigation any more.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @04:40PM (1 child)
Der Spiegel is now full with the same anti Trump, Russia, Turkey, Polish, Hungarian pro Hillary(Soros?) junk as the Bezos Post. I just read the comments now, but there are tons of propaganda comments in there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @03:53AM
Add anti-Italian propaganda to the list, since the new Italian government has stopped accepting "refugees".
I don't know what happened to German media. You used to be able to count on tough investigative reporting, and a critical attitude to incumbent politicians. Now in the 14th year of Mommy Merkel's reign, they sling the same innuendo against Trump that CNN has aired, run a "your masters know best" line belittling democracy by characterizing policies that the people actually want as "populism", trash their Russian gas supplier, call for an escalation of the war in Syria (though they seemed to have toned that down recently). In short, they take the positions that the losing side in the US has chosen.
Some may say they are trying to form society to prevent the AfD from getting elected, but that is not what journalism is there for.