He doesn't like new media types or Twitter

Work has its benefits; I get plenty of telecom's news letters and this one from The Register amused me this morning:

Here's a conundrum. Top Media People want to come out of the shadows and get "closer to their listeners" - it's what the Web 2.0 people urge them to do. BBC people in particular are obsessed with being seen to be bossy or "out-of-touch" - especially since three out of four license payers have a gripe with the corporation.

But the more of themselves media people reveal, the more the public sees them as clueless, self-referential and narcissistic bunch so many of them are. And the more time the BBC spends on peripheral New Media wankery, the more people wonder why they're paying a license fee. You'd need a heart of silicon not to enjoy their agony. The poor souls.

Which came first - media bias or readership bias?

The Left love to tell us how newspaper bias, driven by the ego and political views of their owners, are affecting the politics and voting of their readership, with particular scorn poured on The Sun and Daily Mail. The right have their targets as well, normally the BBC, but The Guardian is often reviled, but probably not to the same extent the Left hate Murdoch's Sun.

An interesting study has been carried out in the USA and reported in last week's Economist* which provides an answer, and not the one the Left will want to hear, but sadly it can't be used to quieten the Right. I am not going to post the whole thing here, just the conclusion:

First, they measured whether a newspaper’s circulation responded to the match between its slant and its readers’ views. Not surprisingly, they found that more “Republican” newspapers had relatively higher circulations in more “Republican” zip codes. But their calculations of the degree to which circulation responded to political beliefs also allowed them to do something more interesting: to calculate what degree of slant would be most profitable for each newspaper in their sample to adopt, given the political make-up of the market it covered. They compared this profit-maximising slant to their measure of the actual slant of each newspaper’s coverage.

They found a striking congruence between the two. Newspapers tended, on average, to locate themselves neither to the right nor to the left of the level of slant that Mr Gentzkow and Mr Shapiro reckon would maximise their profits. And for good commercial reasons: their model showed that even a minor deviation from this “ideal” level of slant would hurt profits through a sizeable loss of circulation.

Showing that newspapers have a political slant that is economically rational does not necessarily answer the question of whether ownership or demand determines bias. Here, the academics are helped by the fact that large media companies may own several newspapers, often in markets that are politically very different. This allowed them to test whether the slants of newspapers with the same owner were more strongly correlated than those of two newspapers picked at random. They found that this was not so: owners exerted a negligible influence on slant. Readers’ political views explained about a fifth of measured slant, while ownership explained virtually none.

Assuming we can translate this to UK, and I don't see why not, it looks like they have sorted out the chicken and egg conundrum of newspaper bias in this country. It would be nice to think that it will at least put an end to the hard left's bleating about Murdoch being the root cause of the country's ills, but I doubt it.

But what of the Right's claims about BBC bias**? Sadly this study can't be used either way as the BBC does not need to respond to a market, any market, so it cannot be measured and will remain open to the Right's allegations.

*Unfortunately it behind a subscription wall

** FWIW I reckon that at worst the BBC is guilty of group think by people who have never felt the cold wind of competition and so don't really understand markets, rather than any conspiracy.

More evidnce BBC doesn't understand "customers"

Working from home again today and I've had Radio 5 on and off this morning and the two female presenters I have heard have really got in to a lather over this story :

Quantum of quiet: Cinema group bans children from Bond film so adults can watch it in peace

children will be banned by one cinema group from seeing the new James Bond film so that adults can watch it in peace.

Legally, because Quantum Of Solace has a 12A certificate, children can watch it - although those under 12 need to be accompanied.

However, Vue cinema group found many adults resent children talking, texting and noisily eating in cinemas.

The presenters couldn't get their head round the fact that some adults don't want to be around other people's children. More importantly though they had the MD of the cinema group on at lunch time and he keptanswering the questions with "Our customers have asked for it", which was met with further questions asking him to justify it.

I know the beeb has to be all things to all men (women, ethnic, sexuality etc), but surely they have presenters who are mature enough to realise in the real world if we want to eat we have to provide a service our customers want and will pay for. It wasn't as if this company isn't offering some screenings parents with children and for children on their own.

Hang them, and hang them very high, but only after we have got our money back

To think our licence fee pays for these vulgar, infantile, antics:

Sachs, who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers, was expected to be a guest on the programme, but was unable to appear due to unforeseen circumstances.

Brand and Ross went on to leave a series of messages on the 78-year-old's voicemail during the two-hour radio show, which included obscene comments about Sachs' 23-year-old granddaughter.

In the first message, Ross suddenly swore and said Brand had slept with her.

The very fact they they did this, no matter how spontanauosly, shows that the organisation is rotten to the core. Doesn't anyone there set standards of decency and respect or are they all so bessotted by the stars who walk amonst them that they are blind to what is happening?

If that wasn't bad enough they they went on to make 3 more calls, treating the whole thing as a joke:

Later in the programme, Brand said the only way to rectify the incident was to make another call - but caused further offence after he suggested Sachs might kill himself because of the previous message's revelations.

A third call saw Brand and Ross singing an apology to the actor.

Brand sang: "I'd like to apologise for the terrible attacks, Andrew Sachs. I said some things I didn't have oughta [sic], like I had sex with your granddaughter."

During the fourth call, Brand said: "Now when I watch Fawlty Towers I think I'm going to think I've hurt his feelings."

What were the producers up to? Wasn't anyone else in the building listening and think it was time to put a stop to it? Why aren't we reading about these two oafs being sacked?

Update

I've just seen the 6 o'clock news and learned it was a pre-recorded program. Right then, that's the 2 presenters, producer, editor and everyone in the management chain who is even remotely responsible for this program ahead of the politicians to the lamp posts.

Seriously though, can anyone think of a single reason why there shouldn't be sackings over this?

BP and Shell profits - twat comment of the day

Listening to a discussion on BP and Shell's profits at lunchtime I heard a comment that just about had me careering in to a bus I was so enraged. Some twat was arguing that the high taxes on petrol are protecting us from the price hikes. His argument goes something like:

We have very high taxes on fuel, unlike the Americans. So when we get a price rise of say 4p in a litre of fuel we hardly notice it because it is only a c.0.4% rise. However because Americans pay so little for their fuel a 4p rise is the equivalent of a 10% rise to them and so affects them more.

Where do the BBC find these idiots! I'm getting fleeced but its OK because it makes price rises seem lower, WTF are they on?

Today's St George's day poem from a Scotsman

Only the BBC would think about commissioning a St George's day poem from a Scotsman. I heard it this evening and found it quite amusing, although I tend to have a bit of a thick skin for these things:

Once more unto the breach, dear Morris Dancers
once more
Jingle your bells, thwack sticks, raise flagons
Cry “God for Harry and Saint George!”
Gallant knight and slayer of dragons
Patron saint of merry England –
And Georgia, and Catalonia, and Portugal, Beirut, Moscow
Istanbul, Germany, Greece
Archers, farmers, boy scouts, butchers and sufferers of
syphilis
Multicultural icon with sword and codpiece
On, on you bullet-headed saxon sons
Fly flags from white van and cab
But remember stout yeomen, your champion was Turkish
So – get drunk and have a kebab

Fair enough you might think, but can you imagine the howls from over the border if they had commissioned an Englishman to write a disparaging poem about St Andrew or the Bonnie Prince?

They do have a strange view on life at the beeb.

Berlusconi 'wins' Italy election

Its been intersting listening to the beeb report Berlusconi's win. Last night he was "the right wing billionaire", this morning he is the "conservative billionaire", pejorative terms that show more about their disapproval of the stupid Italians than reporting facts. There was also reference to his TV and media empire, no doubt implying that he somehow bought the election by having unfair media exposure.

I find Berlusconi a bit of an odd ball but he has character and may at least liven up Italy's politics, he also has the knack of winding up the EU, which can only be a good thing. I wish him well, he can't do worse than the Prodi and the left, which have failed Italy and Italians yet again.

French "BBC" strike to keep advertising

I'm just catching up on my Economist reading and came across this* one from a couple of weeks ago. French broadcasting unions are striking because they want to maintain advertising on the public broadcasting service:

THAT France's unions led a one-day broadcasting strike last week was scarcely a surprise. The French have grown used to non-stop piped music on the public airwaves during walk-outs. But the cause of the disgruntlement was unusual. The plan the left-leaning unions object to does not call for the privatisation of public television, but the abolition of advertising on state-owned channels. The unions are, in short, fighting to remain dependent on private-sector advertisers. Without them, they fear, jobs will have to go.

So here we have a wonderful example of the left not knowing which way to turn. In the UK if anyone mentions ads on the beeb they are Philistines at best and fascists at worst. Could you imaging the beeb's unions' attitude to adverts - apoplectic rage followed by histrionics followed by petulant claims that it would reduce quality of television.

The article deals with this last argument as well.

Mr Sarkozy seems to think that ending advertising will improve matters. “Public television must be ‘dangerous’ and audacious. It must take risks,” he said, arguing that the way to ensure this is to free it from the need to sell eyeballs to advertisers. But there are three objections to his plan.

OK, I can see that argument and its the one that the beeb's supporters use as well. But does it really happen like that?

First, experience in other countries shows that there is no automatic link between public finance and higher quality. The French seem to consider Britain's BBC, which has no advertising on its domestic service, as a model. Yet the most popular programme on the main BBC channel last year was a soap opera, and its prime-time schedule is packed with reality TV and talent contests.

That's not very helpful to their argument is it? So why is that then?

The reason is simple: if, as with the BBC, public television is financed largely by a licence fee or TV tax, it must still chase ratings in order to justify levying the tax. Since France also levies a licence fee, which provides 64% of the public-television budget, state broadcasters—with or without advertising—will be compelled to lure big audiences, and are likely to do so with low-brow, popular shows.

The rest of the article goes on to discuss how Sarkozy plans to replace advertising revenues:

Third, Mr Sarkozy has promised public broadcasters that he will replace every euro of lost ad revenue with public money. Exactly how is unclear, but he has said that, as well as taxing the extra ad revenues won by the private channels, he may introduce an “infinitesimal” tax on mobile phones and Internet access. Politically, this may be appealing, but economically it would be a mistake. Given the sluggish state of the economy and the relative lack of high-tech investment, a tax on all things digital would be daft. As one French boss puts it: “It would be shooting the French economy in the foot.”

For my part I blow hot and cold with the beeb. When it is good its very good, and when it bad it horrid. I wouldn't object to some PSB but its probably too big now. Its stepping on to areas that are being filled by private broadcaster and distorting markets. Perhaps a reduction in size, back to say 1, or 2 at most, TV channels and 2 national radio licences. It probably doesn't need to be in local TV and radio either. If the BBC does develop popular programmes like Eastenders or formats it should be made to sell them to the highest bidder and/or make get some licence fee for each new series to bolster it revenues.

That's probably enough for now, I'm sure I'll return to this subject in the future.
















*I think you need a subcription to be able to read the article.