British Expatriate Network

8) If you could stream the BBC via the internet would you watch it and would you pay for it?

In this age of technology I do not understand why the BBC etc are not doing this. I would pay a fee to be able to watch TV from back home. I am sure that I am not the only one that feels that way lol, or maybe I am.

I do get BBC America, thats ok when they are not showing ground force etc lol.

Not really interested in watching BBC. My once per day evening BBC World news, which is shown on CBC ( Newsworld) is sufficient

Local UK programing no longer holds much of interest. I feel we get the best of BBC and other UK programing eventually.

TVO and PBS have enough UK programing for us. And if you are a Corry Street fan it's shown here on CBC at 730PM 4 evenings each week.
( Although I believe it's almost a year behind)

The only programmes I regularly watch on the BBC are Holby City, Mastermind and University Challenge. There are some good political shows as well - Question Time, Dinner with Portillo, The Politics Show. Songs of Praise is pretty good too. And Question of Sport.

I end up watching a lot of BBC repeats on Cable channels (home stuff, mostly - but I've had my fill of Changing Rooms and Ground Force from BBCA, so never those shows (plus the fact that Carol Smilie and Alan Titchmarch have been retired).

I loved watching UC and Mastermind, didnt realise they were still going :o
I wish they were shown here, I have to make do with Jeapordy to get my quiz fix here :roll:

John Humphrys (R4 Today show) has replaced Magnus Magnussen (they actually look quite alike) on Mastermind, and Jeremy Paxman is the new Bamber Gascoigne - he's very rude to the students, as you'd expect.

I think there are a number of issues involved for the BBC (or other broadcasters for that matter) in streaming in the way you suggest.

On radio, most of that stuff belongs to the BBC so they can do with it what they want or make quite simple agreements with the independent programme makers they sometimes use. But even here there are shows that are blocked, especially sports programming.

TV is way more complicated. It's copyright hell. There are U.S series, movies etc. that are only licensed to be broadcast in Britain. Ditto with a large range of sports. There are independent companies who now make a large amount of BBC programming. Would they agree to allow their shows to be broadcast all over the world?

Some believe the BBC is already on a bit of a sticky wicket with the worldwide access to the website and to radio. After all, doesn't the British licence-fee payer fund all this? If they streamed it to the world there would be a huge outcry.

The BBC would also be stepping on its commercial arm BBC Worldwide - the people who bring BBC Prime to Europe, BBC America to most of you and similar services to Canada, South Africa and Australia. Their aim is to make lots of money to top up the licence fee back home, not be undercut by the website. BBC Worldwide also want to see you DVDs, CDs etc for the same reasons.

Perhaps what you might see in the future are pay-per-view or subscription services where you can watch individual BBC produced shows. But I wouldn't hold your breath in the near future.

Pretty hard shoes to fill in either case, given how inconic those two were. Can you imagine Bamber getting a job on TV over here!

Paxman was on C-Span last night, An election special of Newsnight was on and Paxman was in Washington DC. To me it was just so different to get an english perspective on things. Paxman was his usual self, he just seems to have this laconic manner which is just so refreshing!! :wink:

Never thought I would say it, but I miss Paxman.

I've only just realised you can watch Newsnight on the Internet, That is so great!

Better than that you can watch it on C-Span 2 - along with a whole bunch of British Commons live debates, Prime Ministers Question Time, all that stuff.

Unfortunately we don't get that in Canada.