>> "if I want (I don't generally) soaps, trivial quiz shows, talent (?) shows" - nor
>> do I want them but I guess as these are on a peak times we
>> may be in the minority. One man's meat etc...
The BBC has always felt under pressure to compete for a large audience. If it could only do quality stuff the audience numbers wouldn't justify its existence. And reality TV in particular is cheaper to produce than quality drama.
Audience size is a daft way of measuring worth of course. The very existence of the BBC and the standards it sets are IMO a large part of the reason why British TV has been so much better than nearly every one else's.
There's also the point that artistic value doesn't necessarily correlate with potential for advertising revenue, and the twin drivers of ad revenue and production savings when everything is purely commercial is potentially a race to the bottom.
In the arts, subsidy of some kind is sometimes essential. You can't improve the productivity of a symphony orchestra for example, it's impossible to make a profit from one and it inevitably becomes more and more expensive in relative terms so they needsubsidy or sponsorship. Same goes for opera, and most fine art despite Hockney with his iPad.
Of course stories of BBC waste and inefficiency, especially in the TV duopoly days, are legion and mostly true. I have a couple of friends who were BBC employees. But its achievements have been extraordinary. As were ITV's which I don't think they would have been had the BBC not existed and set the standards it did.
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BBC cuts new
BBC cuts new
