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| "white, middle-aged and male, standing on a hill and ‘telling you like it is’" |
The BBC no longer wants TV shows in which white, middle-aged men stand up and explain things, according to one of the corporation’s senior executives.
Old-fashioned programmes that feature individual presenters imparting their knowledge of a subject to viewers are too “static” and no longer excite audiences, Cassian Harrison, editor of BBC Four, told the Edinburgh Television Festival yesterday.
He said controllers of other channels, including BBC Two, had also taken against the outdated presenting format. “There’s a mode of programming that involves a presenter, usually white, middle-aged and male, standing on a hill and ‘telling you like it is’. We all recognise the era of that has passed.”As Iain Martin of The Times has quipped: "That's the end of David Attenborough, then." (Not middle-aged though, so might be OK).
More seriously, as Ben Cobley, author of The Tribe, has written: "As the BBC embraces the politics of diversity, its sense of purpose and role in our national life have evolved into something quite different from what they used to be. What is happening to the BBC is happening all across our institutional life as priorities shift from producing work to representation".
All of this is a great shame as I've long been looking forward to the day when Cassian himself presented something on BBC Four (hopefully while walking up a hill), and now that's not looking likely...
Instead we will have incredibly annoying graphics and actors employed to re-enact scenes from history, because apparently we don’t have any imagination. We will have presenters employed, not for their erudition, but for a whole variety of vacuous politically correct reasons. No doubt all of this will provide a great deal of employment and free travel opportunities for beboids. It will probably also cost a great deal more money. But worst of all it is insult to the intelligence of the audience. Nothing new there.
ReplyDeleteMade me think of an analogy... This is like one of those drowning scenarios where each man drowning is pushing down on another...for a time one or two of them may be able to gulp air, but gradually as more and more people go under there are fewer people to support you until eventually even the last man goes down.
ReplyDeleteI think the white middle aged men in media are like that...the ones in management are prepared to keep their own careers going by forcing down like persons in the fields of presentation first, and then production, and soon writing, and so on. They may be the last to go, but go they will.
Despite white males making up something like 40-45% of the population but it's not unusual these days for one to go through a news programme on BBC TV and not see a single one in any presentational or reporting role. This superdiversity is now gradually spreading to lifestyle programmes and drama. It's ridiculous. And of course it's diversity of a kind: Chinese, Japanese, East Europeans, Filipinos, South Americans and Americans need not apply...for some reason they don't count.
I would agree that in an age of Googlised access to information, the "wise person on the hill speaking to camera" style is painfully slow and boring. But it's nothing to do with the gender or colour of the person (Mary Beard can make even the most exciting history dull as dishwater).
With all its billions, the BBC could do a lot more with computer graphics. Drone views are spectacular. Also, they should rediscover the ability to tell an exciting tale, instead of coating everything in the drab garb of political correctness.
Thanks for the tip about Ben Cobley...not aware of him...his Twitter thread seems eminently sane and interesting also.
https://twitter.com/bencobley?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
So how come there are Youtube videos over an hour long by white men, (other colours and sexes are available), that have had more views than broadcast TV? How come Jordan Peterson can talk to packed halls for a couple of hours with no graphics and no 'music'?
ReplyDeleteThe BBC neither knows or cares about its audience. Even on non-controversial matters like background music, the stock in trade of 'POV', the answer is always the same, 'we think we got it about right'.
Here in Australia, our "national broadcaster", the publicly funded ABC, has for long been a propagandist for far-left views. Look at its website and see the grotesquely slanted opinion articles: a veritable slew of extreme feminist and (paradoxically of course) pro-Islam "essays". The BBC has not been quite so overt in its bias, but is fast catching up. I wonder whether the middle-aged men whose daddies also worked for the BBC in their turn will be traded in for less blanched or penis-free models. I wonder whether that form of nepotism will cease!
ReplyDeleteSchama and that idiot Harrison are not White males. They are Jews. They do not like Whites. Anti- Semitism is always caused by Semitism. Both of them should be booted out to Israel
ReplyDelete