Politics Thread!

[pogo]

The meddling falls out of wanting to get any business advantage they can. Kind of funny they spend so much effort on getting governments to work for them when they avoid paying tax here.

Fine, you believe what you want. If you can get the Labour party to think the same way and blame losing the election on Murdoch and not their own failings then even better. For the Conservative party that is, who will be the main beneficiaries of Labour losing the plot again and basing their strategy on far-fetched conspiracy theories.

What are you on about? Who's mentioned Labour? You don't think Murdoch's support was essential for Labour's 97 victory?

Did you watch that video? Against my better judgement I did. He blames Labour’s loss on Murdoch. Labour was not able to get their message out, about "death of the planet", poverty and inequality because the Murdoch press banged on about Scotland. Not how I remember it: I don’t remember their green policies but they had no problems getting their message on poverty and inequality out. People just didn’t buy it.

[gravy]

I'm not talking about that video and have never mentioned it.

You've a consistent pattern of replying with "yeah but Labour!" to any criticism of the current government even if it's irrelevant.

[gravy]

I thought particularly fascinating that he left the Guardian - who seems unfazed about competing with the BBC, and probably the strongest online presence of the UK papers (although the Mail is undoubtedly a serious competitor too now) - out of the list.

That's because it was built when the Guardian was a charitable trust funded by Auto Trader.

It's probably as ideologically annoying to the Cons as the BBC, they just can do anything about it.

[KlaxonCow]

He wants that to end and reduce the choice people have so his own paywalled rubbish can flourish.

Indeed. But, the thing is, it pragmatically won't work.

Even if the BBC (and the Guardian) ceased to exist, leaving us only with Murdoch's bullshit as the only option, then his paywall strategy still wouldn't succeed anyway.

That's what he wants, sure, but he's completely failing to comprehend - because he's so used to the old world view - that the Internet and "New Media" has completely changed the rules. It's changed people's expectations. It's gradually changing how the entire human race operates and views itself.

He's reacting as the music industry initially did. As if the Internet were a passing fad. As if it just represents a new competitor to be crushed and got out of the way, not a complete rewrite of the rules from scratch. As if it's just a case of re-applying the physical bottleneck onto a new market, failing to comprehend that you're dealing with a non-physical medium here, theoretically capable of "infinite supply" (and by the economic forces of "supply and demand", an infinite supply inherently equals "free", irrespective of the demand, as an infinite supply can meet any and all demand - so there is naturally no bottlenecks, but the ones you artificially create).

Eradicate all his commercial competition. It won't make a blind bit of difference.

I mean, the truth is that his commercial competition are also suffering as he is in this new climate. TV is dying across the board and the BBC is suffering that just as much as anyone else. Newspapers, of all stripes, are a dead man walking, regardless of their ownership and journalistic standards (in fact, journalistic standards are so desperately piss poor in this day and age, exactly because they're all so fucking desperate for someone - anyone - to pay the slightest bit of attention to them. Hence all the celebrity gossip and fear-mongering bullshit, as psychological candy to tempt the fat kids into the sweet shop).

And the real problem is that he's completely misinterpreted the situation entirely. He's still viewing the world in the old school way and thinks that crippling his competition - the BBC, the Guardian, etc. - will magically mean that, thereafter owning the monopoly, everyone will have no choice but to come grovelling to him and subscribe to his paywalls.

But that's not what's going on and that's not how it's going to work and, in fact, if he succeeds, then he's effectively committing suicide.

Less people are watching TV and reading newspapers across the board. If you kill off the BBC (and the Guardian and the Independent and so forth), then you won't have a mass exodus to Sky and Murdoch's shit rags, you'll just increase the pace at which these ships are sinking.

These non-Murdoch media have at least, in some part, managed to adapt to New Media and make it work somehow. Not brilliantly, but they're not the growing complete irrelevance that Murdoch's empire is rapidly becoming.

If he kills that off and replaces it solely with his paywalled "Old Media" empire, then the world will just switch off from traditional news sources entirely. It'll be Twitter and Facebook and blogs and forums instead. And, yes, there is bugger all journalistic integrity to these sources (not that Murdoch is any better in that department but you know what I mean - these are not exclusively news sources run by professional journalists but literally just ordinary people sharing a conversation) but I'm perfectly sure that that won't really matter shit.

If Murdoch succeeds in murdering his competition, at this fragile existential time, then he'll just succeed in making all "Old Media" extinct.

There's little more dangerous than an ignorant man who thinks he's being so damned clever.

I mean, take the demographics of our little group here, if you grew up with Llamasoft games in the '80s, then you're at least in your 30s or 40s. How many of us here are actually bothered to watch live TV anymore? And, you know, we're far from the worst. The youngsters following behind us have no real legacy whatsoever of watching TV. They're even more a lost generation to Old Media.

Without being too melodramatic about it, they're already dead. Old Media is a dead man walking. It's already gone, but is being preserved solely by the life support machine of older generations who are, of course, by definition, a forever declining number.

The war is over. The Internet has already won. The genie is out of the bottle and it's never going back in. The worms are never going to fit back into the can. The only options now are "adapt or die".

I agree with you that this is what Murdoch wants. But my further point is that, well, King Midas needs to be very careful of what he wishes for, because he might just get it.

Killing off the BBC at this time will only hasten the death of Old Media entirely.

Lacking a profit motive, the Beeb has been able to somewhat adapt and give Old Media at least some degree of traction in this new world - to not become utterly irrelevant. Murdoch might not realise it but the BBC are helping to keep his TV and newspaper empires alive.

Kill off the BBC and just watch the TV viewing figures drop stone cold dead. Without the Internet news sources of the Beeb and the Guardian, watch folks just completely 100% fall out of the habit of consulting any professional news sources at all. Ever. We're arguably already half-way there as it is anyway.

No, Mr.Murdoch, they won't magically all transfer over to your channels. You're completely mistaken in your assessment of what's going on. That's not how it's going to work at all.

But you know what? Why am I giving him any warning? Go right ahead, Rupert, commit Old Media suicide, if you want.

[KlaxonCow]

If you read any other news web site on a regular basis you see the struggle many have with making money. Almost all run adverts, often in very obtrusive ways. Some have sponsored content, sometimes only subtly distinguished from editorial content. Many have paywalls.

Exactly. They're desperate as fuck. Because their entire methodology is dying a horrible lingering death.

I mean, come on, the BBC have a popular website, sure, but if you think it's all 100% down to them and removing the BBC's presence online would suddenly mean the entire population would happily rush over to subscribe to Murdoch's paywalls and everyone would become rich and, thus, we wouldn't need so much advertising and sponsored content and...

...well, even with your notorious ideological blindness, I don't think even you could be made to believe that would ever actually happen.

If anything, the BBC (and Guardian) are helping to keep the entire industry afloat by not making the whole thing a total and utter irrelevance to the average punter. Kill them off and you're just hastening that already inevitable death. That's all it can ever do.

[venusian]

If you read any other news web site on a regular basis you see the struggle many have with making money. Almost all run adverts, often in very obtrusive ways. Some have sponsored content, sometimes only subtly distinguished from editorial content. Many have paywalls.

And this is exactly why the BBC needs to exist and to be adequately funded. Public service broadcasting (including web and social media) is not the cause, it's the solution.

[pogo]

...well, even with your notorious ideological blindness, I don't think even you could be made to believe that would ever actually happen.

It’s not ideological blindness: about half the population think how the BBC is paid for should be changed (the exact % depends on what question you ask). And probably the most popular alternative way of paying for it is adverts, which works well enough for other free-to-air broadcasters and which the BBC already carries for its own products.

The whole point of public service broadcasting is to supply something that can’t be supplied commercially. But a news web site when there are so many others? Think of it this way: before the internet people would read their news in print newspapers. There was no public service option, and no-one thought of creating one. So why do we suddenly need one when the news goes online? Especially one paid for in such an odd way, by a tax on everyone that watches live TV?

[gravy]

The whole point of public service broadcasting is to supply something that can’t be supplied commercially.

No it's not. This is what they're required to do by law

The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows—

(a) sustaining citizenship and civil society;
(b) promoting education and learning;
(c) stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
(d) representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities;
(e) bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK;
(f) in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of
emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a
leading role in the switchover to digital television

You're describing what you want it to be so you can then justify wanting rid. But that's in your head.

[KlaxonCow]

Well, completely dodging the question I posed there, pogo, isn't entirely helping to convince folks that you're not blinkered to an already pre-determined position.

Yes, I'm sure that most of the population doesn't want to pay for anything. But this hardly tells us anything useful about the best way of actually running things.

Heck, ask them if they want free Sky TV as well. No subscriptions and everyone gets a free satellite dish and set-top box. Just ads paying for all of it. Let's see what people say about that one, eh?

Let's do that and then force Murdoch to be beholden to the answer. "What's good for the goose..." and all that, right?

But, anyway, ignoring this entire change of subject, let's get back to the question I posed. Do you believe, if the BBC just vanished in a puff of smoke, that they'd be a mass rush to Murdoch's paywall? That all those BBC News and Guardian readers - or at least a sizeable majority of them - would just transfer wholesale over to Murdoch's offerings instead?

Do you think this magical Utopia of corporate profits would actually come to pass, or do you believe that, as I contend, this would really just be hastening the death of "Old Media" having any useful influence whatsoever?

[phattslagg]

Heck, ask them if they want free Sky TV as well. No subscriptions and everyone gets a free satellite dish and set-top box. Just ads paying for all of it. Let's see what people say about that one, eh?

Now you come to mention it, with the amount of f'ing adverts we have to endure on Sky TV, they really are taking the piss with the subscription fees, aren't they?

Sorry - as you were, folks...

[KlaxonCow]

Now you come to mention it, with the amount of f'ing adverts we have to endure on Sky TV, they really are taking the piss with the subscription fees, aren't they?

Massively so.

Sky's multiple income streams include:

- Charging for the hardware (the set-top box, satellite dish, etc.)
- Charging for subscriptions.
- Making you watch ads (with more and longer ad breaks than other commercial channels).
- Charging broadcasters for bandwidth on their satellite (e.g. the Discovery network or SyFy or UKTV, for example, pays Sky to deliver their channels via the Astra satellite).
- Pay-per-view and "season passes" for special events (and you've STILL usually got to watch shitty adverts!).
- Charging other providers - such as Virgin Media - to broadcast their channels (remember the dispute they had before, where Virgin took them off-air, because Sky were, in Virgin's opinion, taking the piss with the amount they charged them to show the Sky channels?)

And note that the BBC does it all with subscription only. ITV and Channel 4 do it all with advertising only (and don't show as much ads as Sky too!). Freeview does it all with selling hardware only. Netflix and such do it all with pay-per-view only.

The point being that Sky's rivals are all able to do what they do - in its entirety - with just a single one of these streams of income. Just one of these is good enough to fund the other television empires. Yet Sky has all of them simultaneously!

More over, what are you getting for your money? What's Sky's outgoings?

Well, first of all, discount the majority of the channels. The Discovery network, UKTV and so forth are their own organisations. Indeed, they pay Sky to be broadcast, not the other way around. They're an income stream, not an expense, for Sky.

So, let's look at Sky's own channels. You've got Sky One, Sky Two and so forth. These are basically endless repeats channels. They just show repetitive streams of syndicated American imports.

For example, pulling up their schedule for today: Hawaii Five-O, Hawaii Five-O, Desi Rascals, Desi Rascals, NCIS: Los Angeles, UK Border Force, the Real A & E, the Real A & E, Monkey Life, Monkey Life, NCIS: Los Angeles, Hawaii Five-O, Hawaii Five-O, Hawaii Five-O, Hawaii Five-O, NCIS: Los Angeles, Forever, NCIS: Los Angeles, Futurama, Futurama, the Simpsons, Futurama, Futurama, the Simpsons, the Simpsons, the Simpsons, Modern Family, Modern Family, ...

And this is far better than it used to be. At least "UK Border Force" and "the Real A & E" are home-grown UK programmes. It wasn't that long ago that Sky's original UK programming was exactly zero.

Now, the trick with syndication is that it's cheap TV. You're not making the programmes but just paying to show them.

In the case of Fox-made programming - for example, Futurama and the Simpsons - then, as Murdoch also owns Fox, Sky is effectively paying fuck all for them (well, I'm sure, for accounting purposes, as Fox and Sky are technically different companies, a "nominal fee" is exchanged but it all ultimately ends up back in Murdoch's pocket in the end, so it's all academic and just for book-keeping purposes).

Some shows - Stargate is MGM, Hawaii Five-0 is CBS, etc. - aren't made by Fox but America has an extremely well-developed syndication network. They all, in effect, swap programmes with each other all the time and do package deals. MGM have their own movie channels and such, so they likely have little arrangements between each other like "let us show X-Men on our movie channel and we'll give you Stargate". And, as they're all doing this with each other's channels, swapping programmes, then it kind of all somewhat cancels out anyway.

Sky's main entertainment channels are just international branches of the Fox American syndication network, basically (as also is "Star" in Asia, because he doesn't only pull these tricks in this country alone, you know).

So though non-Fox syndicated programmes will cost them to screen, it's not nearly anywhere near the cost of, you know, actually making their own original UK programming. As all the other terrestrial channels - and even some of the cheap-and-cheerful repeats channels, such as "Dave" commissioning new series of "Red Dwarf" - do all the time as a matter of course every single day.

(Just for comparison, BBC One's schedule today:

Breakfast (original UK programming), Neighbourhood Blues (original BBC programming), Homes under the Hammer (original UK programming), Call the Council (original UK programming), Helicopter Heroes (original UK programming), Bargain Hunt (original UK programming), BBC News (original UK programming), Wimbledon coverage (original UK programming), more news, The One Show (original UK programming), Nigel Slater cooking (original UK programming), BBC News, Eastenders (original UK programming), Panorama (original UK programming), ...

You get the gist. Every single programme on BBC One today is original UK programming made by the BBC. There's a very light touch of repeat - "Bargain Hunt" is often on rotation and Graham Norton later on is a repeat of Friday's show - but the vast majority of it is not only original UK programming, but brand new original UK programming. Today's latest episode.

And the BBC schedule basically always reads like this pretty much 24 / 7 / 365 across multiple channels. That's what the TV licence fee pays for and it's an awful lot more than any other channel comes close to achieving.)

And, of course, to top it all off, these American imports on Sky One and Sky Two are the old and shit syndicated programmes. All the new and exciting ones - such as "Game of Thrones", for example - are pushed onto Sky Atlantic... which is a premium subscription channel that you have to pay extra for.

And, you guessed it, you STILL have to watch ads too!!

Are you starting to get the picture of how this all works?

Sky rakes in as much money as it possibly can from all available sources simultaneously - hardware, ads, subscriptions, pay-per-view, charging other channels for broadcast, etc. - but then spends as little as it possibly can on the actual content.

"Taking the piss" is actually gross understatement of what's really going on there.

[pogo]

But, anyway, ignoring this entire change of subject, let's get back to the question I posed. Do you believe, if the BBC just vanished in a puff of smoke, that they'd be a mass rush to Murdoch's paywall? That all those BBC News and Guardian readers - or at least a sizeable majority of them - would just transfer wholesale over to Murdoch's offerings instead?

Not at all. A very few might, but I would think most would prefer other free news services, which would receive a greater uplift.

But it’s a pointless theoretical question. I don’t think anyone is advocating simply winding up the BBC. It will change though. Changing how it is paid for, which will happen sooner or later, will inevitably involve looking at every part of it to see if it fits under a new public service broadcasting remit.

[zip accident]

But, anyway, ignoring this entire change of subject, let's get back to the question I posed. Do you believe, if the BBC just vanished in a puff of smoke, that they'd be a mass rush to Murdoch's paywall? That all those BBC News and Guardian readers - or at least a sizeable majority of them - would just transfer wholesale over to Murdoch's offerings instead?

Not at all. A very few might, but I would think most would prefer other free news services, which would receive a greater uplift.

But it’s a pointless theoretical question. I don’t think anyone is advocating simply winding up the BBC. It will change though. Changing how it is paid for, which will happen sooner or later, will inevitably involve looking at every part of it to see if it fits under a new public service broadcasting remit.

And the Tory Party will still hate the BBC for not being a tory mouthpiece.

[gumboot]

That could be their new business model. They could charge to be a tory mouthpiece.

[zip accident]

That could be their new business model. They could charge to be a tory mouthpiece.

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20150603

I think I like it.