I know there is a lot of criticism. And you should never believe any media agency outright. But generally the BBC are pretty good. A lot better than Fox / Sky etc :P
They do a lot of good special interest programming like Horizon which plays at difficult questions/subjects really well.
> Secondly, this is EXACTLY the process by which a little bit of government interference can sometimes completely distort a market.
The BBC is NOT a government body. It IS state funded, yes, but it is a separate entity with a board a charter and lots of non-governmental oversight.
> Yeah, speaking of that: "BBC blocks open source video players"
True, a bit of a hiccup there. I cant believe their timing on such a fuck up too :( really screwed my argument
> We have the FCC; how is that different?
It's very different. Ofcomm is actually heavily consumer oriented and they seem to find a good balance between restricting content and being sensible. Certainly they are very unlike the FCC in my (reasonably limited) experience.
> Firstly, CSI is an American franchise. Advertisements over here are likely making up the difference for those smaller commercial breaks over there.
Im not sure it is. Channel 5 will pay a fixed rate to show the CSI franchise over here. They can make that money back in whatever way they want/need. Also I dont think it equates like that (I have no figures but I watched a documentary on CSI a few months ago that said most of the franchise's revenue comes from overseas licencing).
> But you can't say one way or the other what kind of television you might have if the BBC didn't exist, because it's been with you since 1932.
Perhaps true. But the BBC is reasonably unique. And in my opinion (and it really is my opinion, but I know others share it) we have the best TV programing in the world. A mix of all things
> There are solutions to our many television problems, and all of them involve LESS government, NOT more.
As I mentioned - there is a difference between tax funded and government owned. Italy has govt. owned TV (also their PM owns a shed load of the network) and I would never recommend anything like that!
But tax funded is pretty good because it's answerable to us, the viewers. Which is nice.
> that could otherwise be utilized by broadcasters who are actually accountable to their viewers (and their viewers' wallets)?
I guess ultimately it's not clear outside the UK what the BBC actually is. Hopefully I've explained it better. I think the BBC is MUCH more accountable to us viewers than pretty much any other network I've seen.
(Also we get major sports and other stuff on the free channels (olympics, world cup etc.) which I think is a huge bonus. For me it's worth it just for that :))