The Royals

elbowloh

blazing_saddles said:

It's what the BBC do.
Look at the amount of Coronavirus coverage there has been.
Have any of the other mainstream channels been covering the daily updates, often cancelling programmes in the process?

I find the amount of time they spend fawning over US news and promoting certain agendas particularly annoying, but I don't lose any sleep over it.

No other channel has the public information remit the beeb has though. I think if the government made such official announcements and the beeb didn't cover it on bbc1 live it would not be in line with their charter.

Pross

I suspect most of those complaining about the BBC coverage at the expense of other programmes are usually bemoaning that there's nothing worth watching on the BBC. I haven't seen much coverage but equally I'm struggling to think of something I wanted to watch or listen to on BBC that I couldn't.

surrey_commuter

I never watch the BBC so could I check are they running the same program on both channels?

kingstongraham

Pross said:

I suspect most of those complaining about the BBC coverage at the expense of other programmes are usually bemoaning that there's nothing worth watching on the BBC. I haven't seen much coverage but equally I'm struggling to think of something I wanted to watch or listen to on BBC that I couldn't.

During Wimbledon and the Olympics, they get so many complaints that they make the BBC1 schedule like Olympics Olympics Olympics Bargain Hunt Olympics Olympics Olympics to keep their core audience happy.

rjsterry

Pross said:

I suspect most of those complaining about the BBC coverage at the expense of other programmes are usually bemoaning that there's nothing worth watching on the BBC. I haven't seen much coverage but equally I'm struggling to think of something I wanted to watch or listen to on BBC that I couldn't.

OMG, THEY POSTPONED MASTERCHEF!

Even in his demise, Philip continues to serve the public, keeping Greg and John off the telly for a few more days.

rjsterry

surrey_commuter said:

I never watch the BBC so could I check are they running the same program on both channels?

Pretty much sums up Rick's ongoing rant.

surrey_commuter

rjsterry said:

surrey_commuter said:

I never watch the BBC so could I check are they running the same program on both channels?

Pretty much sums up Rick's ongoing rant.

is that a yes?

ddraver

They were.

Not any more...

rjsterry

surrey_commuter said:

rjsterry said:

surrey_commuter said:

I never watch the BBC so could I check are they running the same program on both channels?

Pretty much sums up Rick's ongoing rant.

is that a yes?

For one evening, yes. I believe so.

kingstongraham

surrey_commuter said:

rjsterry said:

surrey_commuter said:

I never watch the BBC so could I check are they running the same program on both channels?

Pretty much sums up Rick's ongoing rant.

is that a yes?

Plus BBC4. They took live coverage of a women's football match off BBC4 and put it on the iplayer instead. It's what he would have wanted.

surrey_commuter

kingstongraham said:

surrey_commuter said:

rjsterry said:

surrey_commuter said:

I never watch the BBC so could I check are they running the same program on both channels?

Pretty much sums up Rick's ongoing rant.

is that a yes?

Plus BBC4. They took live coverage of a women's football match off BBC4 and put it on the iplayer instead. It's what he would have wanted.

It is weird but if I was the BBC I would be trying to keep reactionary Tory MPs quiet and I am sure they think the pinko BBC has not been mournful enough

ddraver

I think that's the only reasonable (?) explanation for it.

(Although, I can also believe that it's just never crossed their minds to update the aforementioned protocol. I actually remember Chris Moyles talking about it way back when...)

rjsterry

ddraver said:

I think that's the only reasonable (?) explanation for it.

(Although, I can also believe that it's just never crossed their minds to update the aforementioned protocol. I actually remember Chris Moyles talking about it way back when...)

I think the latter is more likely. A plan was probably made years ago - I doubt they were expected to live into their nineties - and has just sat on a shelf like a C90 audio cassette.

Pross

I think there's also a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation. If they had left normal programmes run on all bar one channel I suspect there would have been 100,000 people complaining about the lack of respect.

kingstongraham

This in another deranged anti-woke piece anchored on Prince Philip from Allison Pearson made me laugh:

I would be happy to endure a Royal casualty a week if it would keep that self-satisfied chipmunk Gregg Wallace off our screens, but there’s no accounting for taste.

rjsterry

kingstongraham said:

This in another deranged anti-woke piece anchored on Prince Philip from Allison Pearson made me laugh:

I would be happy to endure a Royal casualty a week if it would keep that self-satisfied chipmunk Gregg Wallace off our screens, but there’s no accounting for taste.

Oh, thanks. That's really helped my day. 😕

surrey_commuter

kingstongraham said:

This in another deranged anti-woke piece anchored on Prince Philip from Allison Pearson made me laugh:

I would be happy to endure a Royal casualty a week if it would keep that self-satisfied chipmunk Gregg Wallace off our screens, but there’s no accounting for taste.

no idea who Allison Pearson is but that is funny

ddraver

surrey_commuter said:

kingstongraham said:

This in another deranged anti-woke piece anchored on Prince Philip from Allison Pearson made me laugh:

I would be happy to endure a Royal casualty a week if it would keep that self-satisfied chipmunk Gregg Wallace off our screens, but there’s no accounting for taste.

no idea who Allison Pearson is but that is funny

It's been said before but it's genuinely difficult to tell if she is a real person or a collective of performance artists examining just how stupid a column they can get published in The Telegraph these days

kingstongraham

ddraver said:

surrey_commuter said:

kingstongraham said:

This in another deranged anti-woke piece anchored on Prince Philip from Allison Pearson made me laugh:

I would be happy to endure a Royal casualty a week if it would keep that self-satisfied chipmunk Gregg Wallace off our screens, but there’s no accounting for taste.

no idea who Allison Pearson is but that is funny

It's been said before but it's genuinely difficult to tell if she is a real person or a collective of performance artists examining just how stupid a column they can get published in The Telegraph these days

Agreed, but that's a good joke.

ugo.santalucia

rjsterry said:

rick_chasey said:

This gets it bang on (the article is not so one sided as the tweet or headline suggests )

https://twitter.com/georgeeaton/status/1381650406355390467?s=21

So all this and 100,000 complaints for... a day or two of lost telly* and some slightly OTT reactions from other organisations.

*assuming that the remote was broken and you couldn't just switch to C4 or any of the other free-to-air channels.

It's not the lost TV, which per se might be annoying if you pay about the same as a Netflix subscription... and of course you would complain if suddenly all you could see on Netflix were perspectives on Prince Philip.

It's more a case of that resembling what would happen in a dictatorship on the day of the passing of the leader.

The equivalent to the monarchy is the Pope in Italy... the pope is massive and there is always something about the pope on TV... that said, it wasn't as bad as this when John Paul II passed away, and one could argue that JPII was a significantly more important figure on the world scene than Prince Philip, who ultimately didn't mean anything

shirley_basso

To you, perhaps.

I feel you have an issue with sympathy / empathy or understanding others, as opposed to just projecting what you think / your experience of other countries onto what everyone else should think.

Some people adore the royal family and Philip has been in 'role' for many people's entire lifetimes. The coverage also plays nicely into the gov'ts hands as it builds nationalist sentiment. I wonder what they have managed to sign away during the last few days while everyone has been distracted.

I agree it's over the top, but so is your protesting.

rick_chasey

shirley_basso said:

To you, perhaps.

I feel you have an issue with sympathy / empathy or understanding others, as opposed to just projecting what you think / your experience of other countries onto what everyone else should think.

Some people adore the royal family and Philip has been in 'role' for many people's entire lifetimes. The coverage also plays nicely into the gov'ts hands as it builds nationalist sentiment. I wonder what they have managed to sign away during the last few days while everyone has been distracted.

I agree it's over the top, but so is your protesting.

Isn't it more that republicans pay their licence fee too, so changing the entire output for a dead consort is taking it too far? It makes you feel like like only one opinion on the matter entitled on the state broadcaster, which is why it generates a bad feeling.

No-one is saying it shouldn't get some coverage. I must say I don't feel any necessity to show more deference to a dead royal than to a dead normal person, but I also understand that's not shared.

ugo.santalucia

shirley_basso said:

To you, perhaps.

I feel you have an issue with sympathy / empathy or understanding others, as opposed to just projecting what you think / your experience of other countries onto what everyone else should think.

Some people adore the royal family and Philip has been in 'role' for many people's entire lifetimes. The coverage also plays nicely into the gov'ts hands as it builds nationalist sentiment. I wonder what they have managed to sign away during the last few days while everyone has been distracted.

I agree it's over the top, but so is your protesting.

But shouldn't the role of the BBC be that of an impartial reporter?
Surely if they did a referendum on the monarchy, it would end up being 60/40 or 50/50, certainly not 99/1, which means a lot of fee paying watchers have the right to get a choice.
For the record, I have watched the Crown and enjoyed it, but on my terms, I didn't binge on it for 24 hours non stop.
It was excessive across the board, it was ridiculous on the BBC in a democratic country and 100k people complaining, which I believe is a record, testify that. I think people would have been more understanding if it was "newsworthy", like the death of Diana was... sudden and unexpected, but it wasn't, hence people rightly complained.

surrey_commuter

ugo.santalucia said:

shirley_basso said:

To you, perhaps.

I feel you have an issue with sympathy / empathy or understanding others, as opposed to just projecting what you think / your experience of other countries onto what everyone else should think.

Some people adore the royal family and Philip has been in 'role' for many people's entire lifetimes. The coverage also plays nicely into the gov'ts hands as it builds nationalist sentiment. I wonder what they have managed to sign away during the last few days while everyone has been distracted.

I agree it's over the top, but so is your protesting.

But shouldn't the role of the BBC be that of an impartial reporter?
Surely if they did a referendum on the monarchy, it would end up being 60/40 or 50/50, certainly not 99/1, which means a lot of fee paying watchers have the right to get a choice.
For the record, I have watched the Crown and enjoyed it, but on my terms, I didn't binge on it for 24 hours non stop.
It was excessive across the board, it was ridiculous on the BBC in a democratic country and 100k people complaining, which I believe is a record, testify that. I think people would have been more understanding if it was "newsworthy", like the death of Diana was... sudden and unexpected, but it wasn't, hence people rightly complained.

I suspect the numbers are closer to 15% idolise them, 15% would abolish them and the rest aren't that bothered.

blazing_saddles

ugo.santalucia said:

shirley_basso said:

To you, perhaps.

I feel you have an issue with sympathy / empathy or understanding others, as opposed to just projecting what you think / your experience of other countries onto what everyone else should think.

Some people adore the royal family and Philip has been in 'role' for many people's entire lifetimes. The coverage also plays nicely into the gov'ts hands as it builds nationalist sentiment. I wonder what they have managed to sign away during the last few days while everyone has been distracted.

I agree it's over the top, but so is your protesting.

But shouldn't the role of the BBC be that of an impartial reporter?
Surely if they did a referendum on the monarchy, it would end up being 60/40 or 50/50, certainly not 99/1, which means a lot of fee paying watchers have the right to get a choice.
For the record, I have watched the Crown and enjoyed it, but on my terms, I didn't binge on it for 24 hours non stop.
It was excessive across the board, it was ridiculous on the BBC in a democratic country and 100k people complaining, which I believe is a record, testify that. I think people would have been more understanding if it was "newsworthy", like the death of Diana was... sudden and unexpected, but it wasn't, hence people rightly complained.

Since you seem to be hung up on the democratic side of things, it's worth remembering that 100,000 complaints is less than 0.002% of the population.

For the record, I have no love for the Royal family, but I fully expect the death of someone as senior as the DoE to receive blanket coverage.
Perhaps the BBC did overdo it, but when folks start banging on about dictatorships and republics, I find myself at odds with such rational.

ugo.santalucia

blazing_saddles said:

Since you seem to be hung up on the democratic side of things, it's worth remembering that 100,000 complaints is less than 0.002% of the population.
.

How many people would you expect to complain to make it meaningful?
That's not a million miles off the number of signatures you need to have an issue discussed in parliament, so it must be significant in a democracy.

When they announced it, I thought "there you go, not worth watching the news tonight", but I didn't expect not to be worth watching TV for the following 24 hours...

I would assume those who are interested in the monarchy gossip would know all these things already, then there is a large number of people who have watched The Crown and know these things already and finally there are those who are not interested and will continue to be not interested.

shirley_basso

Did you know the The Crown isn't, in fact, a documentary?

ugo.santalucia

shirley_basso said:

Did you know the The Crown isn't, in fact, a documentary?

Yes, but aside from the dialogues, what is actually historically inaccurate? It's all there...

rjsterry

ugo.santalucia said:

shirley_basso said:

Did you know the The Crown isn't, in fact, a documentary?

Yes, but aside from the dialogues, what is actually historically inaccurate? It's all there...

Err, you understand how dramatisation works?

shirley_basso

I am far from being royalist, only watched part of The Crown and think the coverage is OTT but there's always something new and interesting to learn about the royal family.

Philip in particular has had the most incredible life.