Wizzard's Blog » BBC

Dispelling the UK TV Licence myth…

admin — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:30:54 +0000

Okay twitter isn’t long enough to have a debate about the TV Licence in the UK, so I’m going to do it here

As quite a few of you are aware of the furore caused over the BBC going into a deal with SKY to cover the Formula 1 Grand prix season between 2012-2018.

Many people say they’re going to cancel their TV Licence fee because of this.

Big mistake, the TV Licence isn’t there because of the BBC, it is there because of the “Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949″. Where any equipment that is capable of receiving a broadcast has to be licenced, irrespective of what channel you maybe watching.

Yes there are situations where you don’t need a licence.

For example:

The on demand services that stream programs AFTER the broadcast has taken place.

For example if I wanted to watch Top Gear on the BBC iplayer at the SAME time it is broadcast on BBC2 then you need a TV licence. That’s why you get a warning pop up before hitting the play button.

If it is true that the deal is now evolving into a delayed transmission of the race. Even though we are not watching a live as it happens race, we would still have to wait for the BBC to finish broadcasting the race, before we could watch it on the iplayer, if you didn’t have a TV licence.

Yes there are certain circumstances where you don’t need one, but not many people will meet all of the criteria for not having a TV licence.

So would you listen to the man on the street and risk a £1,000 fine or err on the side of caution and pay a fraction of that amount?

As I said in the beginning, the TV licence covers ALL channels not just the BBC. Just that the BBC takes the lion’s share of the fee as they are not allowed to carry advertisements as they are state owned.

BBC screws F1 fans

admin — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:53:52 +0000

Reblog from my tumblr blog, this title has more impact:

Thank you BBC for screwing the fans, not all of us have sky or the means to watch sky through other platforms.

It would have been far better to do a joint deal with Channel 4 or Channel 5 to save money.

Sorry to say if this deal stands this year will be the last year I’m watching Formula 1.

Formula 1 on the BBC

admin — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:24:03 +0000

Sorry I can’t fit this into 140 characters on twitter, I’m not friends with everyone on the planet on facebook and not everyone is on google+.

So I’m going to post this here.

Too many tweets going round reporting what the papers are saying. BBC may break the contract early, channel 4 are expressing an interest, channel 5 are expressing an interest.

Shall we wait for an official announcement from the BBC?

As for getting Jake Humphrey on board to keep F1 on the BBC, I’m sure deep down he would love to join the twitter campaign. However he is a professional presenter/broadcaster/writer contracted to the BBC, so he isn’t going to say anything in public that might damage his career.

I’m sure he’ll voice his concern to the bosses at the BBC that oversee the F1 production behind closed doors.

So lets stop with the headless chicken routine and enjoy F1 through to 2013.

What really annoys me…

admin — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:12:37 +0000

… is people that take what is written in a newspaper as gospel.

The amount of people who are running around screaming that the BBC are dumping their F1 coverage. Sure the contract is up for renewal in 2013, but no announcement to say they’re not going to fulfill the contract until then.

There is no need for petitions or hounding the BBC. Let them make an official announcement.

Shame on the Sunday Times and other papers that have jumped on the bandwagon stirring up people for no reason.

I’m not saying papers are not to be trusted, just don’t take what they print at face value and stop running round like headless chickens.

I think the newspapers have really made their money this past week.

Paradox BBC1 Tuesday Evenings 9pm

wizzardsblog — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:13:35 +0000

I’ve been looking forward to this series for a while now and I’m glad to ssay that it didn’t disappoint.

I’m not going to post any blurb from the BBC site. I’ll tell you what I think the story is about.

Basically this astrophysicist called Dr Christian King, whilst montoring the sun and giving whether warnings about eruptions from the sun. He starts receiving a mysterious download from one of the imaging satellites, there are several pictures. It turns out that these pictures are from 18 hours in the future. He calls in the police, DI Rebecca Flint, played by the wonderful Tamsin Outhwaite is sent to investigate.

As expected she’s skeptical about Dr King’s claims that these images are indeed from the future at first. However events start building up quite rapidly and it’s not too long that the pieces of the jigsaw alarmingly start to fall into place. The team are however too late to prevent a disaster from happening, as one of the pictures shows an explosion. I’ll let you watch the rest and make your own mind up.

I think this has got the makings of an excellent mini-series.

“Wildest Dreams”

wizzardsblog — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:01:24 +0000

Has anyone else been watching this on BBC1 about nine hopefuls wanting to join the BBC’s Natural History Unit as wildlife film-maker?

Did you watch the latest episode, with the starving hippos?

Were you like me screaming at the screen because both teams had failed to uncover the real story behind why the hippos were starving?

Good job the one team cottoned on late into the 2 days of filming.

The one team wanted a “fluffy bunny” story, despite that not being the point, the film they were supposed to making was about the failed rains in the area, so no grass was growing so the hippos were starving.

The worst thing was the one team had experience in zoo-ology!!

Posted via web from richardarblaster’s posterous

Where have I been for 3 days?

wizzardsblog — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:14:28 +0000

As the title says, where have I been? I’ve been getting caught up in the Torchwood Children of Earth machine, spending most of my time posting over at http://gallifreybase.com trying to bring some calm to the chaos and chaos to the calm.

Coupled with getting to know the folks over at the winelibrary.tv forums.

So time just flies and unfortunately (smack the back of my hand) my blog took a back seat.

Despair no longer I am back in the saddle

Top Gear

wizzardsblog — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:55:54 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Posing as 17 year olds to see if they could buy a car and insure it with a budget of £2,500 or £2,000 (please correct me in the comments) was another class challenge, as usual James May having to put up with being the butt of Richard Hammond‘s and Jeremy Clarkson‘s extremely funny pranks.

The cars on show were awesome as usual, don’t expect me to go into minute detail, I’m not a petrol head, even though I do like cars, I don’t know one end of a piston to the other. But I do know a fast car when I see one.

Good to see Stephen Fry on the show, and a nice shout out to Twitter as well.

I thought they’d done away with the “Star in a reasonably priced car” segment because they didn’t have it on last week, good to see they hadn’t.

Bring on next week’s show, I feel this series is going to fly by far too quickly.

Changes in long running shows

wizard1974uk — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:57:09 +0000

I have watched many long running shows and rarely a show survives such major change like a lead actor changing or the host is replaced for whatever reason.

Then there are the shows that do survive, but the vibe isn’t the same and it ends up putting you off a show for years that you used to love.

Have I got news for you? – This has been running on the BBC since 1990. It is a topical comedy panel show. It was originally hosted by Angus Deayton with regular team Captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton.

In 2002 Angus Deayton resigned from his job as host after his private life was splashed all over the tabloids. So this left the host’s chair vacant, so instead of hiring someone permanent to replace him, the BBC decided to go with guest hosts. At one point it was rumoured that Alexander Armstrong was going to sign a contract to become the permanent host, however nothing came out of this rumour.

I think this show has greatly improved since they have a new host every week. It is very easy to get used to a presenters style and you tend to become bored, at least with guest host it keeps it interesting.

Never Mind The Buzzcocks – Another BBC quiz show this time a music comedy panel show started in 1996. It originally started with Mark Lamarr as host and Phil Jupitus and Sean Hughes as the original team captains.

Sean Hughes left in 2002 and was replaced by Bill Bailey, I thought we were going to loose some dynamic when this happened. Bill Bailey was an absolutely brilliant replacement, so all was well again for a while.

Then Bill Bailey left in 2008 to pursue other projects,so now the guest captain dynamic has been introduced which I feel is brilliant, again it stops the show from becoming stale and boring.

Alas Mark Lamarr left in 2005 and for a single series they had guest hosts, then up pops Simon Amstell in 2006.

I have to say he is absolutely rubbish, the highlight of each show is when the contestant gives him back the stick he gives them.

I don’t watch it as much anymore because of this.

Brainiac – This time a show on Sky One, a wacky show with OTT science experiments hosted by Richard Hammond, then it was spoiled when Vic Reeves replaced him, Vic seemed to be way out of his depth and seemed very “wooden”. I haven’t been able to watch the show since he took over, another one of my favourites ruined.

So over to you list your shows where the dynamic has been changed for better or for worse.

IBM planning to build brain like computers

wizard1974uk — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:23:22 +0000

According to an article from the BBC IBM has been given a grant to develop computers that mimic a brain,they have been given a grant of $4.9m by the US Government agency DARPA.

Eventually they hope to build a system that is as complex as a cat’s brain.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Want to know more? Then check out the BBC’s article:

IBM to build brain-like computers