‘Being efficient and offering better value for money’ is a very subjective principle.

In comparison with Sky TV, the BBC offers ‘only’ 7 or 8 full-time equivalent TV channels and a similar number of radio stations. However, if Sky TV disappeared overnight its place in British culture and society could be filled very swiftly.

The BBC at its best is beyond value.

It is of vital importance that the BBC’s offering is unique and distinctive. It should not seek to emulate commercial broadcasters unless it is to improve significantly upon their offerings.

I stopped listening to BBC Radio 1 during the daytime about eleven years ago as I found its output had become so mainstream that it could barely be distinguished from many local commercial stations.

A lot of BBC 1′s output is repetitive and formulaic (weekday mornings, in particular, are dreadful in this respect.)

BBC 3 has had its successes (such as Gavin & Stacey) yet, despite knowing many people within its target age group and being, myself, only just outside that group, I know of noone who habitually watches the channel.

The BBC has, within the UK, an unparalleled record of supporting the best in music, including classical, pop and rock.

BBC 6 Music embodies all that is best about the Corporation’s support for the more creative and risky end of contemporary music.

The BBC’s televised music coverage is less impressive. While ‘Later… with Jools Holland’ is a fine programme it appears also to be perhaps BBC TV’s only contemporary music programme.

The BBC’s sport coverage could at the moment be left almost entirely to commercial broadcasters. I enjoy sport but would prefer to see the BBC’s coverage devoted to sports with more of a minority interest.

The Director-General’s proposed editorial priorities are:

*
The best journalism in the world
*
Inspiring knowledge, music and culture
*
Ambitious UK drama and comedy
*
Outstanding children’s content
*
Events that bring communities and the nation together

The Trust thinks that the proposed editorial priorities fit well with those things you have told us are important to you in our previous research, but we want to consider how these priorities should be delivered to you in the future.
Do these priorities fit with your expectations of BBC TV, radio and online services?

Absolutely.

I would in particular point out that the priority of ‘inspiring knowledge, music and culture’ is fulfilled by two existing radio stations: Radio 3 and 6 Music. Both of these stations are exceptional and, just as Classic FM is no rival to Radio 3, there is no commercial rival to 6 Music.

Doing fewer things and doing them better

Much of Radio 1′s daytime output could, in my experience, be left to commercial broadcasters. The genius of BBC 6 Music lies in the knowledge of the vast majority of its presenters, their passion for the music they play, their independence from restrictive playlists and their engagement with a lively and intelligent audience.

BBC local radio could possibly be improved by sharing more output at certain times of day but care must be taken not to create another national network by stealth (rather as ITV now has barely any regional programming).

Guaranteeing access to BBC services

For DAB truly to be a success, a modern encoding system needs to be adopted, allowing for better sound quality within the same bandwidth. DAB+ could provide a solution which would also allow for better reception in cars.

It is reasonable to accept that more and more listening will take place over the internet and via digital TV services. Noticeably, however, BBC local radio is not currently available in this manner.

The BBC archive

The BBC has already had great success in selling CDs of Peel Sessions. I am quite sure that, rights permitting, there would be sufficient demand for a pay-as-you-view system to be sustainable.

If you are concerned about the BBC’s value for money, please tell us why.

The BBC is a bargain. Some of its output may well not be to my taste and some ought to be left to commercial broadcasters.

However, a fundamental principle of the Corporation ought to be that quality is more important than money. It would be rash to measure success in terms of audience share rather than to use the less tangible measure of depth of audience appreciation.

Setting new boundaries for the BBC

No national commercial broadcaster has come close to emulating BBC 6 Music. Although XFM broadcasts across much of the country on DAB, its programming is in fact such that it ignores much of the country and the music remains quite commercial. 6 Music has the freedom to play quite challenging music at all hours of the day.

6 Music has played a vital role in nurturing new bands and artists. It is the BBC’s freedom to take risks that has allowed this to take place.

Where the BBC buys in programming from abroad, it ought to ensure that it is buying the best and that it is given a regular slot in the schedule.

As I have mentioned before, the BBC ought not to be buying the rights to events which will be covered just as well by other broadcasters.

Money could be saved by reducing expenditure on some of the most commercially viable areas of the BBC. For example, does Simon Cowell’s latest protégé need any further promotion by the BBC?

iTunes is an a la carte model: you see the track you like and pay your 79p. A big drawback with iTunes is that it has inbuilt digital rights management (DRM), which prevents you playing ‘your’ music on anything other than an iPod [my emphasis], although iTunes has begun to introduce some DRM-free tracks. On Napster, you can listen to your chosen music for as long as your subscription is valid, including music stored on your MP3, but it too is not ‘your’ music (you can’t burn it off your computer onto CDs).”

It’s always disappointing to see how the press continue to misrepresent the iTunes Music Store: you can in fact play iTMS downloads on anything because you may burn each track to CD as often as you wish and any given playlist five times. The dealbreaker with Napster must surely be that when the customer (and it’s nice of him to write) stops paying his £14.95 a month, or when the service closes, the music files become useless.

It would surely be sensible to view iTMS as a shop that makes life ever so slightly awkward for customers who want to listen to files on their Creative Zens, iRiver or other mp3 player (as well as cassette player, minidisc, 8-track cartridge…) while Napster is a subscription radio station that allows its customers to choose the tracks which they would like to hear each month.

On a completely unrelated note: I was nearly mown down at a zebra crossing yesterday. The rider of the scooter in question made no attempt to brake until I stopped, irrationally, in his path (demonstrating the pedestrian equivalent of target fixation). He left two or more metres of rubber on the ground and stopped within a couple of inches of me. I tried to say something like, Have you ever thought of taking lessons to use that thing? but think I may actually have said, Have you ever hungmpht dabrkl…

As the rider repeated that I should go forth and multiply out of his way (or something on those lines) and then tried riding his bike through me, I rang the police while realising that the chap was now surrounded by witnesses who were noting down his registration number and giving me their details. The police are coming tonight to take a statement. At the very least, they should be able to prosecute the chap for riding on a street which is open only to buses, taxis and bicycles and for not giving way to a pedestrian on the crossing.

Before long, Sony will be telling us that we need to pay each time we choose to play one of their songs as customers are clearly copying the music in to their own heads.

I feel obliged to restate my position: home-taping is spreading music. However, it occurs to me that it is highly likely that the head of litigation for Sony BMG might own a Walkman. Would Ms. Pariser like to assure the world that she has not stolen ‘just one copy’ of any music, whether she has purchased it or not?

If she has, will she do the honourable thing and resign?

Author Tim Moore wrote a book, Nul Points, about acts which failed to score at the Eurovision Song Contest.
He told the BBC News website what he thought of this year’s competition, won by Serbian singer Marija Serifovic, and particularly the performance of UK quartet Scooch, who finished joint 22^nd out of 24.I actually thought Flying the Flag by Scooch was a fine song in the true tradition of Eurovision.Yes, it was a bit cheesy, but it was frothy, bubble-gum stuff.I thought it had all the ingredients for a good Eurovision song – but perhaps a good Eurovision song in 1996, and that was probably where we went a little bit wrong.Generally speaking over the past few years, the big four – the UK, France, Spain and Germany – have been right down at the bottom at the end so this was not unexpected. But I think it deserved to do much better than it did.The only act to score fewer points than Scooch was Ireland’s Dervish
Scooch had a catchy tune, but all the other ones tended to blend into a big, forgettable morass of power-ballads and soft rock.Really it was dreadful – I thought it was the worst Eurovision in living memory, frankly.

The chap has a point. While some journalists are trying to blame everything on Scooch themselves, I think the journalists should perhaps take a long hard look at those members of the British public who voted for Scooch to represent this country in Europe when they could have been voting for Hawkins and Brown. The fact is that the rest of Europe seems to have realised that there’s more to a song contest than outright cheese.

As for the oft-repeated suggestion that This voting for neighbours is a nonsense now. You could sit there last night and you knew who they were going to give the 12 points to, every single time, it would be fairer to recognise that the Czech Republic is not Montenegro’s neighbour. Nor does Russia have a border with Serbia. It is just ever so plausible that the Slavs recognise the vocal patterns of other slavonic languages and vote accordingly.

Cyprus, however, has no excuse. They will give Greece 12 points for at least the next twenty years.

Shoeburyness. That name brings back memories of days spent far away from the cares of home, when everything was fun except bedtime. The beaches are still there but the green Morris Oxford has gone the way of so many precious things and I shall never see it again. Me and my dad have joined the Saxons and the Peasants Revolt in history but the A13 is still there, rolling through a Springsteenesque landscape in which riverine Essex takes the place of the New Jersey shore, a tarmacadam trail to the Promised Land.

For once, I don’t criticise the music industry about this: they asked for the money and received it. That’s not immoral and it’s not stupid. It’s just simple, bare-faced cheek! In the mean time, if you buy a Zune, feel free to help yourself to the Universal back catalogue.

Now I wonder, are you allowed the entire catalogue, or just US$50 worth?

Update

Daring Fireball has a more reasoned article that appears to suggest it’s only one US dollar. I did laugh at Edgar Bronfman’s comment, We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don’t have a share of iPod’s revenue. We want to share in those revenue streams. He’s the boss at Warner Music, by the way.

As my dad might say, You can want all you like…

Should white vans face an extra tax on the grounds that they may be used for storing swag?

50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was created, or,
if the work is released within that time: 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was first released.

Does this, therefore, mean that Miles Davis‘s Birth of the Cool is no longer covered by copyright?

Technorati Tags: copyright, Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool

Fella’s got a point. See also Song 2 not called Woo hoo