They still produce a huge amount of content in conjuction with the Open University, and most of that educational content you're referring to was OU content as well. The quality of it is much better than it was (trust me).

The "non-neutral-seeming news" you refer to suggests you've bought into the narrative proposed by those who don't feel served by it - both the far right and the far left, which suggests it must be doing something right - and famously the BBC has some of the most stringent and well-thought through editorial guidelines on earth. If somebody is telling you the BBC is biased, they're also probably suggesting some other news source (their own? GB News? Fox? An anti-vaxx group on FB?), is not.

The BBC could be doing a lot more to monetise through BBC Worldwide (their commercial arm), a massive, and massively popular, back catalogue to a point where the license fee could be reduced or even eliminated. The idea it becomes a generic streaming platform or relies on commercials regularly gets floated, but it's worth pointing out that the biggest supporters of that plan are owners of commercial media companies that feel they would win out and their narratives and perspectives would get to dominate.

It is a ~£13 subscription, sure, but compare it to what you get compared to say Sky TV, which also has adverts, and think about whether clipping it back to an offering similar to C4 (also public sector owned, but ad funded), would be something that actually makes you happier, and whether that editorial integrity could be maintained and all that local radio and journalism could still get paid for - they're arguably the only organisation still doing local journalism in the UK given the dog's dinner Reach is making of local papers.

I sense the future is going to a Reith-ian reset, and you'll see less investment in lower-rating, higher-cost programming (bye bye Eastenders or other soaps), sustained investment in audience favourites like Strictly, and perhaps a dial-up in drama to take on the commercial sector that they can then monetise through BBC Worldwide (including getting streamers to pay for access to it).

As to the other broadcasters, the picture is a little less confusing: the studios and production companies are doing fine, even if they're now selling to Amazon, Netflix, Apple and Disney. The channels themselves will just use their brand to shift people into those channels. Unfortunately, they're miles behind on the tech (just go and try ITV X - it's awful from a UX perspective), but they'll figure it out.

BBC is great but it is very biased. There’s no such thing as neutral news and the front page is full of pro-western and pro-british articles. You could argue it’s in the middle of the British political spectrum but that’s inherently a bias towards the status quo.

There’s nothing wrong with biased news but it’s important to recognize what their perspective really is. Thinking it’s neutral is dangerous and you’ll never know the truth if you believe that!

1. Go and read the editorial guidelines.

2. Find the same ones for your favourite news source.

3. Ask if the balance is reasonable for a British broadcaster, paid for by British people, to address stories of interest of British interest from a British perspective by applying those editorial guidelines.

4. Go and explore the times that the BBC has actively investigated and reported on exclusives critical of British foreign and domestic policy - there's more examples than you'd find at any other broadcaster in the World, I think.

If you'd like to point out examples of where the editorial guidelines are poor, or weren't applied in a particular scenario, or even an example of perceived bias that is entirely unbalanced, I'm happy to hear it. More often than not people complaining of bias are complaining that it reported something they disagreed with, but like I say, both the far left and the far right hate the BBC, anarchists hate it, authoritarians hate it - if they're annoying everyone apart from the more sensible majority that want to see all sides of a story, they're probably doing something very right.

You’re completely missing the point and I don’t think you actually know what “bias” means.

> a British broadcaster, paid for by British people, to address stories of interest of British interest from a British perspective

This is exactly my point. You’re going to get news from maybe 1% of the full ideological spectrum and nowhere near “all sides” of any story. The BBC has a strong bias towards status quo opinions (“ of British interest from a British perspective”). The news they don’t report on is equally as important as what they do publish.

this is a fantastic, well-thought-out analysis of the kind that is all too rare amongst people talking about the BBC. thank you

I'd add that while I agree that the BBC could and perhaps should be doing a lot more to make profit from BBC Worldwide, I think the concern there is that too much focus on that could start to bring in unwanted incentives, such as prioritising the demands of foreign viewers over domestic, or even advertisers

To some extent, that has already happened. Strictly is now in almost every major market under a different name (Dancing with the Stars, etc.), Attenborough nature-docs are widely revered and incredibly popular, and Top Gear got into almost every country except the US (which got its own version), until a series of controversies (first Hammond almost dying, then Clarkson punching a producer, then Chris Evans being himself, then Flintoff almost dying), pushed it into the "let's stop doing this" list - at huge cost.

For things where a format sale works (shows that need to be made locally to resonate, like Strictly), I think your concern is less of a risk. Attenborough/Top Gear style high-quality expensive content packages are more of a concern, but I think the worst we've seen there is that they end up doing weird things with the timings. You know in the UK that Attenborough docs run for 50 minutes, and there is then a 10 minutes "how we made it" bit? Foreign markets don't get that last bit - they buy the 50 minutes package, put ads around it to get it to an hour. In the UK we get a 10 minute filler DVD bonus track.

more interesting info. I'd also add Doctor Who as a really prominent example of it. the most recent series of Doctor Who is quite obviously aimed at more of an American audience, with a star known to Americans, being released on Disney, with Disney production values. whether that fully counts or is just a product of a production partnership or whether the production partnership is itself a sign of it, I do not know

It's the same with Canadian television. Pre-2000 its full of interesting, educational programming, post-2000 its a wasteland (not including Pre-Netflix Trailer Park Boys).

TV was seen as a great learning tool in the day.

The idea that you could cheaply and affordably replay lectures with video, demonstrate concepts visually, show foreign lands and peoples, all with low cost of production was captivating to many.

Computers were initially seen by educators as a path to interactive TV. Making it easy to find video info, and to index it, even rotate images (repair videos and part assemble for example).

Point is, TV was seen a more than entertainment, it was a tool that could be employed to teach. Computers more so.

Then the Internet came, and it was at first mostly educational, intellectual. Sort of the inverse of what it is now.

Once everything exploded, it became entertainment primarily. Sort of like TV. The educational aspect is there, but muted.

Obtaining information from potentially interactive websites is better in every way than via TV. It’s obsolete technology.

Therefore, the BBC needs to transition to a website that happens to send signals out via TV for legacy users, but primarily, it’s competing with TikTok/Youtube/Khan Academy/Instagram/Whatsapp/Reddit/Disney/Comcast/Netflix/Sony/WarnerBros Discovery/etc. They all compete with each other, globally.

BBC sells minutes of entertainment/education/etc, and there are a fixed number of minutes in a day.

I think yes, but no. By this I mean, never compete directly with something that you cannot defeat. The BBC will never be Youtube, TikTok and the like. Just imaging what degree of state censorship will be required. Imagine all the content that will not be acceptable for a BBC Youtube like channel.

So any open platform will almost surely be a no-win for them. (I don't see a lot of content yet from youtube, and none from tiktok which isn't submitted by endusers... even if they're streamers)

The BBC can compete with some of the rest. But if you look at the studios you list, those all make longer, non-user submitted content. The BBC surely can compete here. And it has in the past.

There's no reason it can't stream, as you say.

Note that my prior post was all about "the way it was" and why we're here now. Why traditional broadcasters from the 70s through to the early 2000s behaved as they did. What they were thinking during those times.

But outside of that, websites aren't better at some things. If they were, then we wouldn't be watching full screen video. There's something to be said for curated, created, static content in episodic format.

Maybe you meant 'streaming' instead of 'websites' too?