GBeebies...
Prompted by their being in trouble once again, I thought it was high time they had their own thread. So here it is.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68468218
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68468218
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Comments
As for News, well, perhaps the best that can be said is that they take A Certain Stance on political issues.
IIRC, they're also under some sort of investigation as regards a lack of impartiality, given that several well-known and respected political people appear on their programmes. Or have I confused them with another lot of Talking Heads?
From talking to others I find a lot of people don't know what they are and how misleading some of the presenters are. Not everyone is very online. So it's a real danger and probably has already claimed victims through the anti-vax presenters.
There is a price to pay for having a *free* press, but causing people to die because of it is too high.
What a pus-filled boil on the country's bum this wretched station is.
The owners were acquaintances, and we spent each evening I stayed there drinking industrial quantities of GIN; once we'd got the Brexit question out of the way (they were for it
If I see links to it on Farcebark or Google, I just scroll on past - even if the headline suggests something that might be interesting, I refuse to give them any clicks (ditto Daily Fail, Daily Excess and Torygraph).
Although this is their fundamental model; it's mostly about creating short clippable segments of video that they can post on social media (and most of the programs are centered on that concept).
In fairness, that's pretty much how a lot of news media works nowadays, isn't it?
Apart from one subreddit and semi-lurking on a quora forum, I don't do much social media myself. But when I go to google to do a search, I get a news-feed on the front page.
To an extent, but the mainstream channels are still hoping to gain viewership, GBNews is all about the clips.
Okay, thanks.
I would esimtate that the majority of time on GB News is spent on conversations.
News is much more expensive, unless everything falls onto the anchor and some archival materials and/or output from other news agencies. Just to report on current events you need a large team of reporters you can get onto the ground where something is happening, with camera operator and other technical support, and for them to say anything sensible you need them and a research team to find the people with helpful things to say to camera and find some facts to report. Investigative journalism, getting to the bottom of a story that runs for years, is even more expensive - even the BBC and other big news broadcasters have significantly cut out that sort of investigation in recent years, a programme like Panorama is a pale shadow of what it once was.
It seems to me that GB News doesn't have the resources, money and staff etc, to do much more than have people in to talk.
It's the soft option. It's easy. It's far cheaper than actually collecting real news. You don't even need to pay Mr or Mrs Random like you do when you get talking heads in.
And that way, you can spin out what R3 gets into less than five minutes into half or even three-quarters of an hour.
As for running continual news programmes, apart from giving jobs to reporters, what's the point?
Duggie can help. He has his Defeating Right-wing Extremism badge.
Ah woof.
I think the dig is at the intellectual capacity of the primary target audience, though I agree it's unfair to compare toddlers to GB News viewers. The former are curious and interested in learning about the world around them, and can generally be encouraged out of their tantrums.
Duggie has his milkshake-a-fascist badge.
Yes, I think you're right. GB News viewers (all three of them) seem to live in a permanent state of Tantrum.
I expect the tories will pass a law saying that the state of Tantrum is a perfectly safe country, of course.
Essentially a lot of it is talk-radio on TV, and other commentators have written about the particular structure that these kinds of shows often follow. Keeping viewers in a constant state of agitation keeps them engaged, and removes the need to provide any kind of more detailed/reflective content (assume Glenn Beck circa 00s is the affect they are aiming at).
Whilst this is mainly true, they do try and cover the bigger stories. Unlike the main tv channels they have been covering the recent by-elections with all night programmes, Politicians are in the studios and reporters are at the counts.
Nigel Farage takes his show out into the country at least once a month in front of a very full live audience. Sir Jacob has started to do the same
Covering a single by-election is almost the very definition of a small story, and is going to devolve into a glorified talking head show (with the occasional graph and local vox pop).
Quite. TBH they struggle to avoid the Saying The Same Thing Over And Over on General Election* night, never mind by-elections.
*As in the "Latest News - the Queen is still dead" we had for a week in 2022.
I'd say that given that a by-election is never the only story it would seem OTT to have nothing but by-election coverage from counts opening at 10pm until results 3 or 4 hours later. Yes, go back when someone interesting appears or they get an interview with one of the candidates, but cover some of the rest of the stuff going on in the world between these moments.
I'd rather they stopped seriously endangering members of my family and other innocent people by spreading anti-vax propaganda to them.
They ought to be taken off air before they kill.
I am able to watch the programmes and take the vacinations
Ah, there it is, the generalisation of personal experience as if it proved more than the square root of fuck all multiplied by diddly squat.
Do you blame GB News for all the NHS workers and care workers that have never been vacinated ?
And what would Chilli and Bandit from Bluey do?
In part, absolutely. Anyone pushing pseudo-scientific bullshit is absolutely in the frame for low take-up rates and all the ill that comes from it.
Let me tell you something. I'm needle-phobic. I went out of my way to get the necessary support so I could have the vaccine. To think that while I'm doing this utter dirt-wad fuckwits were were trying to pour shit on the idea for whatever warped reason passed for a justification in their excuse for a thought process really pisses me off. That people will have died and suffered the effects of long Covid because of their activities puts them and everyone who enabled them beyond contempt.
This argument might apply better to a bookstore that sells anti-vax tomes if customers request them, rather than a politically-oriented media outlet that presents such views with its ideological imprimatur.
I don't mind if a bookstore or Amazon sells The Turner Diaries. I'd be less sanguine about that book being serialized in The Spectator.
I am not a fan of right wing rubbish. I like to hear both sides of any discussion.
I suspect it may not be long before GBN follows TalkTV, and provides its programmes solely online.
Is Talk TV solely online or is it going on line ?
If you are on about vacinations, } have not heard anyone mention them for ages but I concede that my choice of programmes is very selective
AIUI they plan to go online only later this year.
Meanwhile, the egregious Dan Wootton is leaving GB News, and going it alone online:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/05/dan-wootton-leaves-gb-news-to-set-up-own-independent-platform
There is one side where people knowingly and deliberately kill people through their actions. And, the other side where people try to convince loved ones that they've been fed lies and they should get vaccines that will protect them from serious diseases. And, GB News has been a platform where several people have expressed those lies, and where that hasn't been challenged. They aren't alone in that, but they need to be held accountable - and more than the usual media response of publishing sensational lies on the front page or top of the hourly news, and when caught issuing an apology hidden away on page 17 or delegated to 20 seconds in the middle of the night.
Not really. Nigel just thinks that both major parties are hopeless.
You might think that but I don't
In Sir Jacob's show he interviewed a Palestinian Anglican vicar who's church is in the West Bank.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/mar/28/laurence-fox-ruled-out-london-mayor-contest-errors-nomination
Oh the poor love. My heart bleeds for him.
Not sure whether he's being paid by Islamic State, or by the communists, as Torytubbies (or whatever the swivel-eyed loon media is called these days) doesn't seem to be able to make up its collective brain cell.