BBC Commercial Operations - Culture, Media and Sport Committee Contents


Memorandum submitted by JC Woods

  1.  I write as a UK TV Licence fee payer at what I believe is a poor value for money service as demonstrated by the BBC World News TV channel. I watched this service for some two weeks while in Egypt and felt it had all the news information of a Mid West USA regional TV channel. The format appears to be that of total bland news reporting based on what footage it has available and I remain unsure as to who its target audience appears to be, whether UK citizen abroad or citizen of countries where news is censored. It fails on both these accounts due to content and presentation.

  2.  During the period 3 September to 16 September I noted the following stories, that Canada had called a general election, this ran for some 36 hours yet despite the claims of the BBC that reporters are where the news is happening, not once did I see or hear a BBC reporter ask any questions or discuss why this was "breaking world news" and that every one in the world had to know. I did note that this was footage over a weekend. Hurricane Ike was approaching the Haiti unfortunately it was decreasing so the BBC reporter then discusses what happened the previous week with an earlier hurricane in other words there was no story but some footage to be used and voiced over. When Lewis Hamilton was docked 25 secs, the BBC on the Sunday was reporting he had lodged an objection, this was repeated on the Monday morning on the ticker scroll along the bottom of the screen yet the reporter live clearly stated that Hamilton had yet to lodge his appeal. The appeal was not lodged I understand until the Tuesday, it appears the BBC were making it up into a story. When the Zimbabwe deal was being reported we had George Alagiah flown out from UK, he, with another reporter, where reporting live from Harare, there was no story or details released but a slot to fill so we had a duologue between the two similar to "two blokes in a pub" discussing what may happen, again no news, so fill in the slot. I felt sorry for them, no news, no story, make up something, all this being paid for by the licence fee.

  3.  The claim we "We never stop asking the questions" shows footage of Tony Blair, a spent force and yet when it came to WMD the BBC stopped asking questions and sacked the reporter. George Bush is shown; a child could ask him a hard question. Only during Hard Talk did I note any real questions. The time checks are continual yet the clock on the left of the screen never changes surely it is possible to present GMT in this position. The weather forecasts are an insult to professional presenters who are only permitted a only a 30-45 sec slot sufficient to say it is the Rainy season in India, the hurricane season in the West Indies and it is cold in the Falklands! Who is the audience for these forecasts? The UK is never mention as a separate entity despite paying to produce this service, except as part of Europe. The travel show spent a week advertising its next program, a Saturday night thriller on the joys of Stockholm! As I sat in Cairo with its population of 20 million I thought who is meant to watch an unknown Swedish actress/director talk about a 100 year old swimming pool. How many people around the world were watching this epic, how many would book their holidays to visit, how many would treasure this great learning from the BBC licence fee payers!! What was the purpose of this bland non-descript programme to any one? Regularly on screen text would pop up with telling world news! researchers had found that exercise counters the gene that makes you fat!! So do exercise to stay fit. The whole world according to the BBC had to know this. That three Russian Somo wrestlers had been found taking steroids in Tokyo was world news, the list goes on, bland non descript news reporting which totally avoids any mention of UK and merely depresses UK citizen abroad and does nothing to inform the rest of the world about Britain except of poor Mr Bill Cotton who had trouble with poachers on his river. This warranted a reporter telling the story throughout the world!!! However to the best of my knowledge at no time did this service mention the Paralympics at which Britain did extremely well, so here we have a truly world event, and at BBC World news it appears not to have even been mentioned it.

  4.  I would therefore ask you gentlemen, just why licence fee money is being spent on such a bland, non UK orientated service to inform the world about the lack of non news. The time spent on each non news story being less that the attention span of a five year old. This service needs to represent the UK in a positive way in addition to informing the world or taken off the air.

  5.  My only additional comment prompted by Mr Fox's reply (letter sent to Mr Woods from Clerk on 15 October in response to this letter, which was originally sent to the Committee independently, not prompted by the Committee's inquiry) is that if this station is claiming to be fully commercialy funded the advertisers are getting a bargain off the backs of the BBC licence payers news room service, as the number of advertisers would not cover the cost of a stand alone service and it would certainly would not survive in its present form as a commercial station.

October 2008





 
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