A couple of entertaining bits from this week’s Media Guardian.
Anthony Lilley of Magic Lantern productions bemoans the BBC’s iPlayer, and in particular the pointlessness of the limitation in how long after a programme’s aired you can still get a download. And allied to that is the expiration date on programmes. He does point out that this doesn’t really stop people going down the peer to peer route if that’s all that’s still open to them.
Obviously this was a restriction that the BBC was forced to put into place, despite the fact that I’ve always been able to record programmes onto video tape, record them to DVD, save them to my PVR or even record them direct to my PC with something like Windows Media Centre. Oh well.
A Media Guardian correspondent suggests closing down BBC Three to save some cash. Writing after reading last week’s interview with BBC 3 controller Danny Cohen, he says that the channel hasn’t shown a single programme he wants to watch and therefore should be closed down.
I’m not entirely sure about that, although Cohen’s wish to lower the average age of the channel is concerning. It seems that if you’re really young, you get a digital BBC channel – Cbeebies. If you’re a school age child, you get a channel – CBBC. If you’ve left school and are still under 35, you get a channel – BBC Three. Everyone else gets, BBC Four.
69% of the population are 35 or over, so this isn’t exactly a fair split. Yes, I’m sure that BBC1 and BBC2 superserve an older demographic to a certain extent, but let’s also consider the various amounts spent on some of these channels according to the latest BBC Annual Report:

I’m still not sure why BBC Three gets nearly twice as much as BBC Four. I won’t deny that BBC Three’s share is somewhat greater (1.30% for BBC Three in June ’07 compared with 0.41% for BBC Four), but that’s as much as anything down to programmes like Eastenders getting second runs on the service.
Here’s the most recent top 10 programmes on BBC Three and BBC Four that I have details for:

As you’ll note, just about all the programmes are transfers from BBC1 or BBC2, or spin-offs based on Neighbours, a popular BBC1 programme. Doctor Who came in at 11 and 12.
The highest BBC Four programme was at position 29, and that was a repeat of Life on Mars.
In other words, repeats of major programmes, or spin-offs of them, are still the main driver for both these channels.
I would disagree that no worthwhile programme has come from BBC Three – Bodies would be a very good case in point. But claims about launching Little Britain should be taken with a pinch of salt. Programmes like this may have made their debuts on BBC Three, but were always going to “transfer” to BBC1; to say otherwise would be pretending. I note too, that new episodes of Heroes are debuting on BBC Three.
Finally, a report in this weekend’s Observer noted that like the drink industry, the gambling industry is going to limit the appearance of their logos on football shirts to adult sizes only. This is something I’d highlighted before as being essential. The details remain to be seen, but I’d hope that they take a more mature attitude than the drink industry which has ensured that anyone currently in a deal, can go on advertising alcoholic drinks on kids’ shirts until the end of their current deal.
Seemingly, there’s concern that kids won’t want shirts devoid of sponsors’ names because they’re not the same as the ones their heroes wear. On the contrary: I’d actually pay a few quid more for a sponsor-free shirt!