T'was the night before Christmas...

... and there was feck all on the telly.









Christmas TV always manages to scrape the barrel of the television archives and this year is no exception.

Aside from some big-name film that can now be found in the £3.99 bin at Blockbuster, Christmas TV, especially Christmas Eve television, tends to involve repeat after repeat after repeat of Blackadder, however many versions of A Christmas Carol that currently exist and The Santa Clause.

This year, a thumb through the TV guide reveals nothing, absolutely nothing worth watching.

Aside from the 'Christmas Eve specials' of various soaps designed at the 'OK Magazine' reading share of the audience, the film offering consists of either 'Pirates of the Caribbean; Curse of the Black Pearl' on BBC One or back-to-back showings of the chav favourite 'The Fast and the Furious' and '2 Fast 2 Furious' on ITV2. I've no idea what ITV1 are showing as they try to expand their audience of complete morons.

BBC Three has 'Football Gaffes Galore' - probably the same DVD that you'll be getting for Christmas tomorrow followed by wall-to-wall Little Britain.

The only saving grace is a 'Father Ted' marathon on More4.

So Christmas Day.... what have we got? Shrek 2 and Finding Nemo? That might work. ITV1 are showing some crap from X Factor and I've not idea what the other channels are showing.

Oh, and there's the Christmas speech - whoop-de-fecking-doo.

Is it any wonder why we're so good at binge drinking? Drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol is far more preferable to a night in front of the box.

Getting the message across?

The BBC are in a bit of bother again this week, except this time they aren't pulling a premium-rate phone scam or getting 9-year-olds to fake a competition win.






As part of a HIV awareness drive, the Beeb have introduced an educational video which has been attacked by "parent groups" (no me neither). It's probably worth mentioning that the Metro happens to have some link with worst rag in the UK, the Daily Mail, a publication that is hardly supportive of the BBC it has to be said.

Judge for yourself:



Now I don't care what anybody says - that's funny. OK, so the overall message might get lost in translation, but it's definitely got people talking and no doubt the hits for that online video will be skyrocketing.

Mission accomplished surely?

Missing a trick here.

The BBC have apparently ditched an idea to screen one of those eco-nutter enviromental save-the-planet type programmes after the dross that was Live Earth back in July.




Judging by the working title of "Planet Relief", it would have been similar to those telethon type shows like Children in Need and Comic Relief where all night the viewing public are subjected to hour after hour of dancing BBC news-readers, signing Eastenders stars and hour after hour of Graham Norton.

The show, which would have been presented by Ricky Gervais, wouldn't have been asking us to phone up and pledge money, the BBC aren't doing that at the minute, but instead they would have insisted on a "big switch-off".

The Beeb's decision has angered the eco-nutters no end but I'm very pleased that the BBC have decided not to jump on the global warming band-wagon.

The last thing we need is another programme pandering to the cries of the environmental lobby and trying to persuade me that by taking my TV off stand-by and unplugging my mobile phone charger, I will bring the polar bears back from extinction and save a jungle tribe in Papua New Guinea from the apocalypse.

Let's face it, any good work that we do will be more than undone by the world's growing economies. 'Going-green' clearly isn't encouraged by public transport policies and it's very clear that our elected leaders are using the global warming bandwagon as an excuse to hide additional forms of taxation.

But this big switch-off thing, that could have been a success. Usually the first sight of these telethon shows, or anything with Ricky Gervais is enough to make me turn the TV off.

Why we need the licence fee

Next year, we'll all be paying slightly more for our TV licence, a piece of paper that costs £131.50 and keeps our national public service broadcaster up and running.




Now the sheer fact that you have to buy this piece of paper should you happen to own any equipment capable of receiving television transmissions doesn't always go down well with certain sections of the general public and it certainly doesn't go well with any media organisation that isn't the BBC (apart from Channel 4 perhaps).
Their argument is that the BBC, like any other business, should be self-sufficient, relying on advertising rather than a public subsidy and perhaps more crucially, be able to operate at a profit.

And it's that latter point that is responsible for the current the mass media slump.
We the consumer have more choice than we have ever had. The established and traditional mediums are seeing increased competition from digital broadcasting and online rivals. Media services now cater for every possible interest, community and niche market and that's just fine.
But that has it's problems. With all these niche markets, advertisers can pick and choose where they aim their products. Got a power drill to sell? Why advertise on ITV when there's a dedicated DIY channel with exactly the sort of viewer you want to speak to?
The net result? Advertising revenue within the mainstream media has plummeted. Overall, television advertising has fallen 3%, with ITV sales dropping by 11%. Google UK now makes more in advertising sales than Britain's biggest independent television broadcaster. The story isn't any brighter in radio.

With the drive for profit not yielding, costs need to be slashed and that has meant quality being sacrificed for quantity. Saturday night is a prime example. Unless you want to watch a talent show of some variety, you're pretty much stuck. Last Saturday's offering included, as far as I could decipher, a contest to see who could fold themselves in half in the most stupid manner possible.

The drive to cut costs has eventually led to the new 'Jack Radio' format kicking off. The idea started in the US and literally involves plugging an iPod into a radio transmitter and .....erm........er.......going home. No DJ's, no talk, just the iTunes collection of a complete stranger.
The worst part is, it's now crossed the Atlantic and heading to Oxford. Many have heralded this as the death of the DJ and have proclaimed that rather than video, it'll be the Internet that kills the radio star.

It's this very idea that means we should still keep the BBC as a public service. Let's just assume that those "privatise the Beeb" mob get their wish. You can say goodbye to BBC local radio for a start. Radio Leeds has seen it's budget cut in recent years and one of their presenters has told me before that they are literally having to fight for more cash from Wood Lane, just to stop themselves from becoming another Radio Aire or Galaxy. There's no way that Radio 4 would continue in it's current form and Radio 1's 'Newsbeat' would soon disappear. OK, it's not exactly hard-hitting journalism, but as an informative piece, it is very effective in delivering to it's audience. No commercial independent, with the same target audience, does anything to rival that.
The BBC website, regarded as the most respected and comprehensive in the world, would soon become a classified publication of online casino and 'shoot the duck to win an iPod' banners.

TV programmes would suffer a similar fate.
"wastes" a monumental amount of film in pursuit of the perfect programme. A typical programme works on a 20:1 ratio. For every 20 minutes of film shot, one minute makes it on screen. Top Gear uses nowhere near that ratio. It uses an estimated 500:1 ratio. Commercially, it's completely You'd never for instance, get a show like Top Gear on a commercial channel, it's just two expensive. The estimated £500,000 per episode cost doesn't tell half of it. The real story runs on it's filiming ratio.
A typical programme runs roughly on a 20:1 ratio. For every 20 minutes that you shoot, one minute makes the airwaves. For Top Gear, to get one minute into the final cut can take a staggering 500 minutes of tape. Commercially, that's just not viable.

As for the BBC's remit to entertain, educate and inform, when was the last time you saw anything educational or informative on ITV? Scrub that, when was the last time you saw anything entertaining either?

Still, if you don't like it, you can still keep handing £50 every month to Rupert.

That is So Unfair!

See that person there? That's Kevin the Teenager. One of the most popular characters from the TV show "Harry Enfield & Chums" which took pride of place on the BBC's comedy line-up in the late 1990's.


He was a comedic depiction of the typical teenager as any parent of teenagers would testify and his trademark line "That is SO unfair!" is one of the most remembered phrases in modern TV.

And today it emerged that the Sun is now edited by Kevin the Teenager.

The television licence fee, the primary source of funding for the BBC, will increase by £3.95 to £135.45 per year for a colour television licence. The increases were actually less that the BBC's requested "above inflation" increase for what it claimed was needed to cover spiralling costs, the relocation of BBC Sport from London to Manchester and concerns over the cost of the digital switchover in 2012 whilst the National Union of Journalists supported the BBC's request over concerns of job losses.

But not everyone is happy. The BBC funding has always been a sore point for commercial media organisations who would love nothing more to be as respected and trusted as Auntie, but who are bound by commercial pressures and the whims of their advertisers.

The Sun today ranted on, with it's usual plethoric use of BOLD CAPITALS, that such increases in the TV licence fee have no place in their idealistic immigrant free, human rights devoid world.

Apparently the BBC wastes my cash on programmes that I don't want to watch, or so says an inaccurately written piece of garbage. You know that the "journalist" in question (term used very loosely) is talking rubbish when he claims that none of the BBC's rivals receive any TV licence funding - not a single penny, completely oblivious to the fact that Channel Four are currently benefiting from a £70m cheque from the very same fee.

The poor audience figures are cited as a primary reason why the TV licence should be cut. What isn't mentioned is that public broadcasting is not about attracting audience ratings, it's about meeting the diverse needs of the populace. Producing trash TV to appeal to the lowest common denominator is the realm of ITV, not the BBC whose remit is to produce quality entertainment, informative and educational programming.
Now your typical Sun reader would be pretty confused as he read 'quality', would understand to a degree the word 'entertainment' but then would be completely lost by the time he reached the words 'informative' and 'educational', so would your typical Sun columnist.

The other sore point is the BBC website. Rather than having a quality website with accurate journalism and outstanding feature writing which can be read across the world free from advertising, the Sun would prefer us to be bombarded with adverts for 'online casino' and 'big money bingo'.

But none of this is surprising. The owner of the aforementioned rag happens to be Rupert Murdoch, the very same individual who owns Britain's biggest multi-channel broadcaster, BSkyB.

Murdoch, who has made no secret of his dislike for the BBC and it's funding is essentially telling us that whilst we should be outraged at being asked to pay £135 a year to watch quality news, documentaries, sport, entertainment and of course, Kevin the Teenager, we should still be racing to the phone to pay even more to watch the proverbial TV wheelie bin containing "Cirque de Celebrite", "Sexcetera" and "Eurotrash".

But what Murdoch or the Sun won't be telling you is that tonight, the BBC will allow you to watch both sport and a movie for £10.96 per month. Mr Murdoch on the other hand, will charge you nearer £50 for the month for the same privilege.

Now, who was ripping off who again?

Today's Outrage: Outraged Football Fans are Outraged

The other day I was banging on about how useless the BBC is when it comes to getting opinions from the general public through it's "Have your Say" section on BBC Online due to the moronic comments is attracts.






Well it seems that BBC Radio Five Live isn't just as bad, it's even worse. Rather than asking a suitable question and letting it get taken over by idiots, Five Live start with a stupid question and then take the results of that to get comments from one of their multitude of 'experts'.

In this instance, they devised a poll asking if England manager Steve McLaren was suitable for the job. Nothing wrong with that at first glance. But then you learn that the poll was started immediately after England's loss to Croatia.
The result? A host of disgruntled England fans phoning / texting / clicking about how disgruntled they the Sun had told them to be about England's performance.

Ignoring the fact that this happened to be a very tough game against a very good side, one which England were probably going to lose anyway before you consider that England had players missing through injury and suspension , what were the Beeb actually trying to achieve? They most likely knew that asking a group full of football fans after a defeat would get a reaction and so, in a typical act of lazy, poor quality journalism, they exploited that to give them a story to run a few days later.

Next weeks poll - We go into a packed council estate pub at 11:00pm on Friday and ask "Who wants a fight?". Find out the results next week.

Auntie's Gone Barmy

The BBC, a British Institution. A media organisation that is respected the World over, free from commercial pressures and free to operate without conforming to the ideology of powerful press baron.





So with all that, you'd expect the BBC to be providing only the best possible quality content for it's various mediums, including television, radio and online?
You'd expect that, but you'd be disappointed.

I've never been a major fan of the Beeb's "Have Your Say" section and today's current topic sums it up perfectly. The discussion is "Why is the North fatter than the South?
What sort of discussion is that exactly. Whilst there might well be government research to show that people in the North are more prone to smoking, drinking, eating and the like, which half-wit decided to throw the discussion open to the public?

Now, the discussion has just been littered with moronic comments. I've said before that whilst the BBC discussions are moderated, they sadly aren't moderated for stupidity.

Here's a few pearls of wisdom:

People from the north are far less affluent than their southerly counterparts and tend to view life from a day to day perspective. Instead of thinking if I invest £20,000 in XYZ company today it will be worth £100,000 in 15 years time they think, I might well be dead tomorrow, so I will go and spend my last £40 on 5 pints, a packet of fags and a kebab. - Brian from Fife

OK, so let's ignore the fact that Leeds is now the second biggest financial district in the country and the growing affluence of cities like Manchester, Newcastle and Liverpool.

Apparently Northerners love gravy with everything and alot of foods consumed with gravy is fattening! - Jag from Wolverhampton

Spot the Soccer AM viewer who can't tell the difference between reality and a tongue-in-cheek phrase.

It's colder up North. They need the extra insulation - Jay, UK

Spot the idiot who thinks he's funny.

Simply, they do not eat real food. They just eat fast food. Burgers and french fries - Ali from Doa

Brilliant! "They" eat rubbish! Use the word "they" in a discussion about a racial issue and it'll go straight in the trash can. Yep, us Northerners all eat complete garbage.

With the collapse of the coal mining, steelworks and shipbuilding industries
there is little else left for them to fight the flab. - Peter, Borehamwood

Oh eye, since t'pit went under we've just bin sat on ther arses for't past 15 year.

The reason is that the people in the north are less likely to work for a living. People who work for a living are more likely to think that you eat to live rather than live to eat. - Jeanne, France

Unemployment rate in Yorkshire & Humber : circa 4.7-5%. Unemployment rate in London: 7.2%. Guess again Jeanne.

I've always said the the BBC "Have Your Say" page is probably the biggest waste on bandwidth on the entire Internet. Having said that, it's probably more amusing than their latest 'new' comedy.