Happy 90th Birthday!

Happy birthday BBC what a dull and empty world it would have been without Auntie Beeb.

One wonders what would crawl out from stones lifted in other huge corporations, still it's an easy target, but there is obvious alternative IMO.

Here's to at least another 90 years.

Well said Kevin-W.

The BBC provides a public broadcasting service that we are justly proud of and it is one of the best reasons for living in the UK.

The license fee is incredible value for money. I just hope the privatisation ideologues keep their grubby hands off and don't try to use the current difficulties to undermine the current status of this essential public asset.

Keep calm and carry on Beeb !!

+1

I couldn't have put it better myself.

I'll raise a glass tonight .... to the BBC

Worth every penny of my licence fee

Sister xx

Happy Birthday Auntie!

We all have our bad moments every now and then and the children that are supposed to be helping and lloking after you  can be very naughty at times but am sure will  you'll be ok.

KR

Tony

Happy Birthday Auntie Beeb

I have to say it is the best radio org on the planet - no question. 

OK I don't like some stuff & I am sure many don't like what I like,  but with the various national programs & the local stations its amazing they seem to satisfy most people most of the time.

I do believe they could do better with some aspects of SQ overall & especially on some stations. 

Its disappointing that they have not taken a leading position with digital broadcast & have not rejected DAB as we know it.  The BBC used to be the world leader in broadcast research & its a shame that they are only bobbing along with the disorganised digital mess & indecision in UK & the rest of the world. 

Its easy to complain but having travelled a good part of the world I can say that nothing comes close to the BBC.  The 1st big thrill to me after returning home from a trip away is to turn on the radio in the car

- ahhh civilised sanity

- next looking forward is to turning on my NAT-05 & high quality sanity. 

Well said Kevin.

The BBC provides superb entertainment, education and news. I have lived and worked in many parts of the world and as others have said, there's nothing that comes close.

Cheers

Don

Amongst many highlights have fond memories of the miniprinter on Saturdays. The original one with the flashing cursor.

Only Fools and Horses - their best sitcom?

So many great sitcoms Marky:

Only Fools

Fawlty Towers

Dads Army

Steptoe & Son

Hancock

Porridge

I'm Alan Partridge

The Office

Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads?

The Royle Family

Till Death Us Do Part

The Thick of It

Blackadder

One Foot in the Grave

Fall & Rise of Reginald Perrin

Early Doors

Granted, they've produced a few stinkers, but who else but Auntie has produced so many greats?

Don't tell them your name Pike!

What a list. For me Fawlty Towers, Steptoe & Son (Haaaarold!), Blackadder and Alan Partridge in particular on there.

Would add Red Dwarf and Open All Hours to the roll call.

And so many - even most - of them are from the olden days!

The production quality is down the drain these days for TV.

What a shame the BBC shows every sign [apart from Radio Four, or Three] of being a washed up relic that has lost its way and moral compass.

Let me wish the BBC RIP long before it achieves another 90 years. 90 days would be long enough, IMO.

ATB from George

Only Fools - 1980s-2000s

Fawlty Towers - 1970s

Dads Army - 1960s-70s

Steptoe & Son - 1960s-70s

Hancock - 1950s-60s

Porridge - 1970s

I'm Alan Partridge - 1990s-2000s

The Office - 2000s

Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads? - 1970s

The Royle Family - 1990s-2000s

Till Death Us Do Part - 1960s-70s

The Thick of It - 2000s

Blackadder - 1980s

One Foot in the Grave - 1990s-2000s

Fall & Rise of Reginald Perrin - 1970s

Early Doors - 2000s

Not so old George. I think that's a pretty good spread, with the 1950s and '80s least represented.

Here are some more BBC goodies:

Gavin & Stacey (2000s)

Not Going Out (2000s)

Outnumbered (2000s)

Yes Minister (1980s)

People Like Us (1990s)

The Day Today (1990s)

League of Gentlemen (1990s)

Marion & Geoff (2000s)

Citizen Smith (1970s)

ITV AFAIK has produced no sitcoms of note since Rising Damp in the 1970s, Sky bugger all, Channel 5 nowt and, while C4 has made some great sitcoms - Drop the Dead Donkey, Spaced, Pheonix Nights, Green Wing, Peep Show, Fairly Secret Army and The Book Group - it has not done so with the consistency of the BBC.

Apart from Auntie and C4, most of our other sitcom nourishment comes from America (Cheers, Frazier, Sienfeld, Curb, Garry Shandling, MASH).

errr ..........  ?????  ...........  90th birthday is for RADIO

Thats the steam driven wireless thingy that does not have the flickering pictures

The 90th birthday celebration (in this thread at least) was for the BBC in general. So pack it in with yer pedantic party pooping!

I didn't think you watched TV any more George, so how do you know?

Dear George,

You obviously have it in for the BBC - whatever did they do to upset you so much ?

Many of us have a natural tendency to think of the "Good Old Days" and this applies equally to TV shows as well as other things in life. As Kevin has shown, the BBC is still producing first class comedy - along with first class news and first class documentaries.

Room for improvement ? of course. Just like most things in life.

Will they please all the people all of the time ? not a chance, just like most things in life.

But overall, long live the BBC and long may it improve.

Cheers

Don

Well said Kevin. If the BBC were in existence before without radio it could hardly be call a broadcasting company, ergo it's basically the anniversary of the BBC.

Calm down chaps, tongue in cheek & all that.

Clues are included in steam driven wireless.

You'll be surprised how many of the great comedies actually started out on Radio 4 (or the Home service, in earlier times). It's always taken risks and provides an excellent proving ground for new talent.

Dear Don,

Mostly I would consider a mistake in reporting the News as forgivable if corrected as soon as possible, but the BBC's treatment of Lord McAlpine is a disgrace, though no doubt this will be rectified as the scale  and inaccuracy of the slur becomes clear. But basically one does not declare a person a "nonce" on a mainstream national news digest programme without utter conviction, because every proper research has been made and every procedure properly observed.

The consequences are that one begins to consider the BBC no better than the thankfully now gone, New Of The World  In my view you will gather from the rest of this post that I think the BBC should go the same way as the NOTW.

It should never have happened at all. This is disgraceful behaviour and grave misjudgment, but when one considers the BBC's own record over their "in-house" peadophile scandal, then one may conclude as I have that after 90 years the BBC is not only self-satisfied and unprofessional  but in a worse state than it has ever been in before. 

I remember the humour programmes from the 1970s on the BBC [at a time when I had tot reached voting age], but Sitcoms have always bored me to tears except perhaps Dad's Army, Faulty Towers, and the Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin, even as a young child.

I would not make a judgement of the quality and integrity of a broadcasting organisation, or indeed any media organisation on the basis of the so-called quality of their comedic output.

________________

As for the idea that the TV License should be a universal Tax on every UK resident! Well I have heard it all now.

The BBC - if it has a long term future - should become either pay per view, and pay per listen or payed for via a subscription for that service alone, all over the World, and not just in the UK. In the UK watching TV from non-BBC services should not require that the UK resident [who may not wish to subscribe to the BBC] has to be effectively Taxed for the benefit of the BBC, even if he or she does not wish to use its TV service.

I think this would have the great advantage that UK residents would not be subsidising those abroad who want the BBC for free. In this scheme they would subscribe and pay their own way if they desire the service of the BBC.

As it is the TV License is levied on 98% of UK households and apart from the 2% who do not want to have the right to watch any live TV, this is an entirely regressive Tax that bears most heavily on the least well off.

I oppose the TV License as much as I opposed the Thatcher Poll Tax in its day, and that ill-judged policy sealed her fate ...

_________________

So Dear Don, Yes it is true, I am not impressed with the BBC, its funding, its scandalous past, and incompetent, and if I may say so, carelessly unprofessional  present.

As it goes, I wonder what use there is for a BBC that has lost its reputation and trust?

ATB from George

George

There is one fatal error in your argument. The BBC did not actually identify Lord M. He was actually "outed" on Twitter and that there internet.  The Beeb's mistake was to talk about "a senior advisor to the Thatcher government" which allowed the rumour-mongers to go into overdrive.

But nobody declared anyone "a nonce" on the mainstream media.

Please get your facts right before posting, especially if you wish to adopt a high moral tone.

Dear Kevin,

This is precisely what I mean ... done without conviction or even an iota of professionalism  An utterly slimy method of going on.

And if the BBC is entirely innocent, then let us see how this pans out as Lord McAlpine takes his legal action. I believe the man means business, and will win ...

I believe this is quite enough to destroy the long term future of the BBC, precisely because of the methods used were slimy, vindictive, and wholly unprofessional. Given the BBC's own "in-house" peadophile scandal, it is also utterly hypocritical, and they need to remove the beam from their own eye, before looking for motes in innocent others' ...

Such behavior should not be considered acceptable in UK public life, and radical reformation is vital including not only a complete re-organisation of funding to make it voluntary for those still interested, but even a renaming, so as to distinguish a renewed organisation from its discredited present form.

ATB from George

George

McAlpine has settled with the BBC - £185,000 plus costs. Given the seriousness of the smear, Auntie probably got off lightly. I believe McAlpine is still suing ITV, Sally Bercow and various Twitter users however.

How, may I ask, do you know that "the methods used were slimy, vindictive, and wholly professional"? Because I doubt that you do, unless you happened to be in the newsroom at the time. As I've already said, if you are to adopt the high moral ground, you need to be very sure of your facts and you seem to be making assertions which may be heartfelt but which do not seem to have any basis in fact.

As a journalist with some knowledge of these things, I rather doubt that the team responsible for this farrago did anything too untoward - certainly nothing worse than the average tabloid hack gets up to in pursuit of a salacious story.

You seem to be saying that there was some sort of conspiracy against McAlpine - I suspect what happened was that, in an overreaction to the failure to run the Savile story, they rushed into running another story which was based on thin evidence from unreliable sources (or source, to be more precise)

There is only one issue here - that the story was incorrect and an innocent man was smeared. Had the hacks and editor in charge at the time checked the facts more carefully (and not relied on just one source for the story) it would never have happened. Very, very sloppy and unprofessional journalism (for which heads must roll) certainly, but not the deep moral crisis you seem to imply - and indeed be cheering for.

George, I  enjoy your posts but have to agree with Kevin. Not sure whether you are close to the detail of this story or it touches a nerve?

Whilst I am no apologist for what has gone on what I will say is that there are going to be scandals from time-to-time in any organisation of this size. Failures in governance or simply because you cannot police all the staff. The organisation can also not be held responsible for all of society's woes.

If we took the approaching to chopping down organisations anywhere there was a scandal we would have no broadcaster, government, universities, health service, armed forces or large private enterprises. Certainly no churches. No banks (we let them off the hook by bailing them out). Where would it end?

I cannot be sure what the Beeb may have done (if any of us are clear on this yet before the reports are published) is as 'bad' as what BP has certainly done through their negligence over Deepwater Horizon - yet they are still operating and worth £85bn. Do you want to close them down too?

Why such a force of feeling on the Beeb in particular?