Jan Leeming and the bombardment of sport.
Miss Leeming claimed the public are not ‘addicted to sport’ and would prefer licence fee money to go towards high-end dramas such as Poldark.
Well, quite. My solution is to record programmes I want to watch and time shift. For commercial channels this has the added advantage of skipping the ads. We are not all sports fans, contrary to what the media assumes. Indeed, around half of men are indifferent to football – one of the most tedious games ever invented. However, my approach has meant I’ve avoided all of the world cup nonsense and will continue to do so. As for the licence fee – abolish it and let the BBC stand on its own two feet.
The Beeb’s lack of a backbone would make standing on anything a bit challenging.
A licence fee payer (me) said: “The public are not ‘addicted to Poldark’ and would prefer licence fee money to go towards high-end dramas such as the Football World Cup”.
And that makes just as much sense as what Jan Leeming said.
When was a football match postponed or cancelled to allow for Poldark?
Having endured the constant barrage of sport on television for decades – and before recording technology was available, the postponement of programmes due to some tedious bullshit kicking a ball about, I’m with Leeming all the way. Far too much sport on television. She’s right, there is this assumption from the media that we are all obsessed with it. We are not.
I wonder how the cost of the rights for Poldark compare to those for the World Cup..
@LR
Football is worse than live F1.
Even more annoying when show cancelled/shifted is due to a minority sport
eg: Bowls, Darts, London or NY Marathon, Snooker…
Olympics: BBC refuse to release a schedule of what & when. I like ice hockey, luge, bobsleigh – when is it on? BBC say “Guess”
TV license funding needs binned, make BBC & C4 compete with the rest.
Ads? Not in torrents 🙂
Tip: pirate browser 😛
“Even more annoying when show cancelled/shifted is due to a minority sport.”
Now with multiple channels available, why do they even need to do that? How difficult would it be for the Beeb to have a couple of channels reserved for sport and only show sport on those channels?
I’ve been saying this for years. A simple solution that would keep everyone happy.
I would ‘prefer the licence fee’ money to remain in my pocket, TBH, and sod Ms Leeming and all the other leeches who ‘work’ for the BBC.
Well, yes, I alluded to that. If the Beeb didn’t take my money by force and had to manage through advertising or subscription, then people like me could avoid indirectly paying for sport. And those that want to watch it can do so.
As someone who hasn’t had either a TV or a TV License in more than a decade, I was forced, LITERALLY FORCED! to go to the pub and watch the match on a big screen TV in an air-conditioned bar and drink beer.
Not only that, but rather than being subjected to only 90-minutes of this, due to what can only be described as bizarre patriarchal rules of the World Cup (probably invented to allow ITV to show more adverts), I was forced to endure such bizarre excuses for schedule overrunning such as “Extra Time” and then a “Penalty Shootout”.
It was clear by the end of the night that the other patrons patience was destroyed by the excessive time-wasting since they were muted into silence during the last few minutes and then broke into rapturous cheers when it was over and they could all finally escape the pub and go home.
There should be a law against it!
I thought BBC stood for “Bat and Ball Club”. Also, enough being silly with undeserved penalties, make these over-paid Oscar winners play FOOTBALL until a team wins!
I dunno. By the end of extra time Harry Kane was looking dead on his feet and one or two of the other guys were suffering from leg muscle cramps by the look of it.
I’m not a fan of the penalty shootout, but playing on until someone scores would just become torture with no end in sight.
Solution is for highly paid footballers to do some exercise and have the stamina of comparatively lowly paid Rugby players.
Or a TT champion. That requires two balls.
Yes, as an endurance athlete who has done 140.6 triathlons and ultra marathons I laugh when the poor darlings complain when they have to play more than two matches in a week.
Wow, impressive. Well done. How’s Jenson?
My endurance is frequent non-stop, except pee & fuel, London-Edinburgh car/bike.
Footers should be capable of 3 or 4 matches per week. Added bonus – less time for infidelity and being disfigured by needles.
You are making the age old mistake of comparing your aerobic type of sport with the anaerobic nature of a game of football. Anaerobic sport is much harder to keep up at a high level. Plus the fact that nobody is trying to kick lumps out of you when you are out on your little jog. Maybe while on one of your jogs get a few mates to suddenly start barging you about and then don’t forget you will have to burst into a top speed sprint every few minutes as well. You wouldn’t last an hour mate.
ROFL
NW 200 requires 2+ balls – similar speeds, but racing not time trial.
Not denigrating IOM TT
Fitness, strength, stamina etc: F1, TT, NW200, Rugby even Tennis much more than whiny vulgar disrespectful football oiks.
iirc NW200 2016 scientists shocked as heart was frequent >200bpm which they’d thought was impossible.
Fast ride (60 miles < 45min) is very adrenalin fuelled..
There was a time, especially before VHS, I would have agreed with you LR, but these days I am more inclined to agree with James Higham as far as the World Cup goes.
But I would welcome a scrapping of the rules that mean a government can insist on certain sporting events of being of such import that they must be shown on a public service broadcaster.
Why exactly? Are you a fan of monopolies? It’s not like the bad old days when the number of channels was limited, with digital TV we’ve got more Free-to-View TV channels than you can shake a stick at.
I’m sure FIFA/English FA would love to get rid of that rule so that only expensive options such as Sky Sports or Pay-per-View were available since they could then cream off some of that extra money just like they did with the Premiership and the original Sky deal decades ago.
Are you a fan of monopolies?
Not particularly no, I’m a fan of free, and as far as possible, deregulated markets. Would should the government be able to restrict the sale of the exclusive rights to commercial events? If SKY are prepared to pay millions or billions for those rights then what concern is it of the State, or of mine?
I suppose it depends to whom do those rights belong? At first glance I would guess these belong to the English FA, since they are the ones paying for the wages of the England Team, but given the level of subsidy that the UK taxpayer has paid towards things like the new Wembley stadium (which the English FA seems to own outright, since they have just attempted to sell it), suggests that the relationship between the English FA, the UK Government, Sport England, DFCS is a very murky pond indeed.
And why was legislation passed to prevent to monopolisation of Sports viewing rights in the first place? Because there was such a hue and cry over the “sporting crown jewels” from the general public in the first place.
F1? Especially “crown jewel Silverstone” is sold.
Gov’t should butt out of all markets. All they do adds costs and reduces choice.
I would welcome a scrapping on the licence fee, but I think you probably underestimate the popularity of sport. A channel paid for through advertising would probably need to continue showing a great deal of it in order to remain popular and keep the money coming in for rubbish like Poldark
Independent channels that do not bring in much revenue tend to be wall to wall reality TV or US sitcoms
Sometimes you’ve just got to take the rough with the smooth
But it’s also a bit chicken and egg. If you only show shit then you won’t get the audience and without the audience you don’t get the subscription / advertising revenue.
TV Licensing (a brand name of the BBC to try and prevent revenue collection from contaminating the BBC Brand) is a 1950’s solution to a 1930’s problem and should have been scrapped decades ago.
The problem is that without the license fee the BBC knows that there is no way they could collect £5 billion a year in revenue through either an advertising or subscription revenue model.
Things like Freeview and iPlayer have been specifically designed to not support a subscription revenue model (typically implemented via cards and encryption), so that they can keep the license fee for as long as possible.
The government is similarly two-faced about the TV License (since they can claim theirs on Parliamentary expenses), since they know that to repeal the TV License would require funding from other sources, most likely UK general taxation for what is essentially liberally bias propaganda.
I am not making any estimates. I merely echo Leeming’s comments that we are not all obsessed with it contrary to the belief peddled by the media.
Foxtel in Australia has 14 sports channels not including racing and club channels. The public broadcaster SBS (there are two, the other is the ABC) is showing the World Cup and it also shows the Tour de France. Sport is regularly shown on free to air channels including the Australian cricket team. I think that is a reasonable indication of the demand, accepting that Australian culture is somewhat different than the UK.
Given that everyone pays the license fee in the UK, the BBC should be aiming to achieve a balance between what the various groups of license payers want. I certainly don’t think there is a preponderance of football on the BBC, World Cup and European Cup every 4 years and MOTD.
Amen to this. Fortunately in my local the spots TV is in the public bar so the Lounge is free from footy, apart from the cheers and groans of the fans in the bar. I am not a sports fan and quite indifferent to soccer. So far the BBC drama offerings have been rather poor.
The England game on Tuesday had in the region of 24 million people watching it: the when whole thing (include the pelargonium build up) upwards of 16 million.
The opening episode of Poldark last year had 5.5 million viewers.
The evidence does not seem to be on Comrade Leemind’s side.
Out of a population of 65 million that’s a lot of people who weren’t watching. Rather makes her point.
69% of people who are watching TV were watching the match. Given there are 70 channels on Freeview literally hundreds on Sky, that’s pretty good going.
The biggest audience for any drama last year was 11.6m for Broadchurch: out of a population of 65 million that’s a lot of people who aren’t watching even popular crime dramas, let alone high-end historical dramas.
Sigh… And a lot more weren’t watching. Which means the vast majority were not watching the match. Which makes her point that we are not all obsessed with it.
But not the point that “the public” would like more money spent on the sort of thing she likes, but which don’t get as big viewing figures. It should be noted that the BARB audience figures don’t include people watching in pubs, so systematically underestimate the number of people watching big sports events.
Tom, you’re in a hole, stop digging.
I really don’t think she’s chosen the right time to make the argument that the public, either as a whole or on average, want more money spent on stuff like Poldark at the expense of Poldark in week when Poldark managed just over half as many viewers (3.95m) as a football game that didn’t even feature any of the home nations broadcast at the same time (Croatia vs Denmark, 7.6m ).
Actually that is a good point. In the middle of the world cup the nation’s interest in sport is likely to be showing something of a spike. But even during this spike, the figures that you are quoting show that only a minority are watching football.
Indeed. It does not matter how you spin the figures, the fact remains that the majority have no interest in football. Leeming’s point stands.
Well, the first half of her point may stand, but there is no evidence in viewing figures that the public want the license fee to go to high end dramas such as Poldark.
Perhaps they haven’t been asked. As one of that majority I can assure you that I would rather the licence fee be spent on drama and documentaries than football or reality TV. I think it’s a fair assessment that if people are not interested in something then they won’t want their money spent on it. She makes a perfectly reasonable point. It’s nice for once that someone has made it. Usually the media arrogantly assumes that we are all as interested as they are.
People vote with their remotes. Polls are unlikely to be reliable: would you like the license fee spent on low brow chav programmes or high brow drama? Bit like: are you stupid enough to vote for Brexit / Trump or are you an intelligent remainer / Democrat?
Bottom line is that public broadcasting is way passed its sell by date. If programmes have to be profitable, they’ll only make ones enough people want to watch.
I would like the licence fee abolished and the BBC to survive by subscription or advertising. Either way I don’t have to pay for other people’s preferences. Leeming and I would diverge on this point. However her underlying point is sound.
As an addendum, there are plenty of channels showing Sci fi, American cop shows and so on, so there’s a market for niche tastes.
Some of us remember the days when the same football match would be on BBC1 and ITV, cricket on BB2 and horse racing on Channel 4. The days long before many channels.
Yeah, I remember that, too.
I’ve seen thousands (tens of thousands? Maybe more) of happy drunken people in Southwark recently who would cheerfully tell Ms Leeming they don’t bloody care about the BBC or Poldark as they watched the sport on big screens in the pub showing the Sky version.
South of the Thames on Saturday was like being in the middle of a very good natured civil war, streets closed, supine bodies and all.
Meanwhile millions of us were ignoring the whole thing. Incidentally watching Poldark… ?
Well, all I can tell you is what I saw. Every pub and bar packed with happy raucous drinkers. It was a tiny microcosm of what was going on around London if the piles of rubbish were any guide. As for Poldark and TV in general, give me real life, it’s far more entertaining than any football game or TV drama can ever be.
I don’t doubt what you saw. However a few thousand is still a minority and the vast majority simply do not take any interest in football. We were all quietly at home doing something else. As for drama, I like the occasional escape from the real world. That’s the point of it. It’s why I write fiction.
As an aside to this, the BBC is desperately pushing women’s football. The general level of enthusiasm suggests they are wasting their time, but that doesn’t stop that idiot Mike Bushell grinning like a chimpanzee and pushing it like it’s the new big thing at every opportunity.
if you really want popularity and general participation -then show pornography