Two Minute Timelord's BBC Week, and My Guest Spot

A week or so ago, my friend Chip, of the excellent Two Minute Timelord Podcast, produced a special "BBC Week" in which he featured several guest presenters discussing the past, present and future of the BBC, celebrating the corporation and its flagship programme Doctor Who, while reflecting on the anxieties in the road ahead.  The series begins with 2MTL 165: BBC's Under Pressure; How's Doctor Who? (Chip) and continues with 2MTL 166: Perryman's Prediction: The Future of Doctor Who at the BBC (Neil Perryman), 2MTL 168: Toby Hadoke Knows His BBC (by Simon Harries) and 2MTL 169: BBC Week Finale plus Shaun Lyon of Gallifrey One (Chip);  and in the middle there, a guest spot from me: 2MTL 167: The BBC from Distant Shores, and That Big SJA Spoiler, which you can also catch here:

Is an International Version of the BBC iPlayer on the Horizon?

Over on Anglotopia, Dana discusses the exciting possibility that a global version of BBC's iPlayer could be on the horizon (Talking Tellly: BBC head says global iPlayer is coming 'within a year').  Ever since the release of the iPlayer in 2007, I have been pressing for some kind of international version (Launch of the BBC iPlayer, but not for British expats). It has always struck me as something that would be very straightforward for the BBC to organize, and the advantage -- to them -- of the extra revenue stream would be substantial.

The technology is already there.  Subscription based internet television has been with us for some time.  The model used by a company like Willow TV (Watching the cricket in America) could be followed -- enthusiasts willing to pay simply go through a portal locked down by username and password.  Why not offer international users the chance to pay the BBC Licence Fee and then to gain full access to the iPlayer?

As I see it, there are two blocks on getting this done at the moment.  The first is the rights issue.  Certain programmes could just not be shown outside the UK because of the terms that have been negotiated.  This is especially true of sporting events, where rights are negotiated on a country-by-country basis.  But this hardly needs to be a problem.  There is already a model in place that can be followed here, and that model is the iPlayer itself -- the BBC Radio iPlayer.  I can listen to some events on Five Live Sports Extra, like England home test matches, but I cannot listen to others, like foreign test matches.  That's fine.  I understand that, and I will use the means we have here to access coverage legitimately some other way.  Likewise the football.  Much of the British football coverage is locked out to me as an international user, but it is not a big problem because I can access the football through American TV channels like Fox Soccer Channel and ESPN.

The "rights" issue is a red herring.  Any international user of a future iPlayer will understand that there are certain programmes that are blocked for rights issues, and we will put up with that in order to be able to access 90 per cent of the total content that is available.

The other issue is lack of imagination.  Those discussing the issues are not immersed in the kind of expat culture that would enable them to see how these things could work.  Only a short amount of time on the blogs, in the forums and so on would give the powers and authorities a feel for the kind of hunger that there would be for such a service.

The fact is that there are many people who love the BBC and who would pay for access.  It's not just the British expats, like me, but Anglophiles of all kinds.  And many of these people already effectively pay for access by means of VPNs and specialist services that find back-doors into the BBC iPlayer.  And that money is not going to the BBC but to others.

So I welcome the news that the Global Version of the iPlayer could at last be on the way, and if any of the powers that be would like to chat about it with enthusiastic Anglophiles and British expats living in the US, we would be happy to obliged.  And we wouldn't charge a consultation fee, either.

Hitler's opinion on the new Star Trek film

I enjoyed this Youtube clip (courtesy of an anonymous commenter on The Busybody):



(Alternative rant here). I am pleased to find myself on the other side to Hitler. I have seen the film twice so far and loved it and even phoned in to the CIA Podcast for the first time to enthuse about it a couple of weeks ago (ep. 98). The film reminds me of the way that new Doctor Who manages to reboot the franchise while at the same time embracing and celebrating the past. Now our kids like Star Trek and Doctor Who, and we can enjoy them with them. Happy day! (Getting their interest in classic Trek and classic Who is not quite so easy, however).

The subtitled Hitler rant above is a good effort but it is not quite as good as the piece on the finale of Torchwood Series 2, which I blogged last year. Here is that piece again, now relocated. Warning: strong language and Torchwood spoilers:


Watch Torchwood Series 2 Finale Upsets Even Hitler in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

My favourite screensaver ever -- BBC 1980s Clock

I have been getting a ridiculous amount of pleasure out if this simple screensaver on the BBC Ashes to Ashes website.  It is a working BBC1 clock of the kind you would see between programmes back in the early 1980s.  In other words, it is a nice piece of nostalgia for those of us who were in our teens back then.  There is something about being a British expat that makes it all the more enjoyable, with distance as well as time separating us from Auntie.

Why not open up the iPlayer for International Users on Red Nose Day?

Tomorrow, Friday March 13, is Red Nose Day in the UK. Here's a thought. For British expats, the inaccessibility of the BBC TV iPlayer is something of a bête noire (I have talked about it here), so much so that many have found what are known as "other means" of accessing it. The BBC could use this occasion to earn a little extra money for Comic Relief. And so, why not, just for tomorrow, relax the restrictions on internationals accessing the iPlayer? The BBC could use it as a chance to find out what the demand would be like while at the same time benefiting charity. It could be a first step towards the kind of subscription-based service for the iPlayer for internationals.

Gavin and Stacey on BBC America

Much of the time, BBC America is a very annoying channel for British expats. Endless repeats of the same handful of programmes that we did not want to watch the first time round and badly edited versions of the ones we did. But sometimes a gem comes along. When we were back in England in April, we caught a couple of episodes of Gavin and Stacey, then towards the end of its second series, and we quite liked it. Now the first series has arrived on BBC America and we are getting the chance to catch it from the beginning. Two episodes in and we are loving it -- I had no idea it was so funny. The two biggest belly laughs so far are Alison Steadman as Gavin's mum going on the Adkin's diet and serving herself three steaks instead of steak and chips and peas, and Rob Brydon as Uncle Brian explaining the joys of route planner to Gavin:



Comedy gold.

Charlotte Green giggling on Today

This gave me a lot of pleasure today -- Charlotte Green, the quintessential Radio 4 news reader, tries to suppress giggles during the 8am news broadcast. It's worth listening to a couple of times, especially if you are a bit of a giggler yourself:

Charlotte Green gets the giggles on BBC Radio 4

That link is to The Guardian's page on it, though I heard it first via the Today programme podcast -- and it was greatly to their credit that they put it out on the feed. BBC News later added a nice page on it:

Radio 4 news hit by giggling fit

Hundreds of listeners have contacted BBC Radio 4 after newsreader Charlotte Green dissolved into giggles while reading a bulletin on Today.

She lost control after playing a clip of the oldest known recording of the human voice.

Presenter James Naughtie intervened as she struggled to tell listeners about the death of screenwriter Abby Mann.

"I'm afraid I just lost it, I was completely ambushed by the giggles," said Green . . .

Not surprisingly, it has already hit Youtube, including this version, which has adds a couple of other enjoyable clips from older Today programmes:



And while we are talking about giggling, this, of course, is the all-time classic, Brian Johsnton (still so greatly missed) and Jonathan Agnew:



(Unfortunately, the uploader mishears "Aggers" for "Angus" in his on-screen comment, but it's still a pleasure to listen to).

More Christmas BBC One Previews

More from Youtube for those of us who don't catch these things in our daily viewing, e.g. because we don't live in England anymore. First, a teaser trailer for the Doctor Who Christmas special. Only nine seconds, but still long enough to feature a spoiler:



And this forty second trailer focuses on comedy highlights. I am looking forward to Extras and Catherine Tate, both of which make appearances here:



I have heard elsewhere that this is to be the last of the Catherine Tate sketch shows for the foreseeable future, perhaps not surprising given her new life on the TARDIS.

BBC One Christmas Preview

One of the signs that Christmas is getting near is when you happen to catch the first Christmas TV preview. It's always an exciting moment; there's something about it that recaptures your childhood memories of Christmas TV. Living in the USA, there is no chance, of course, of catching it while watching other things on telly. But due to the glories of Youtube, British expats can share the anticipation too. BBC One's first Christmas preview, a minute or so long, appeared this weekend. And of course the Doctor Who Christmas special features in there, among other things of interest:

Guilty Pleasures

This year is the year to turn 50, first Mark E. Smith of The Fall on 5 March, and now Stephen Fry, last week, on 24 August. I don't think I realized quite how fond I was of Stephen Fry until I watched a handful of programmes celebrating his life last week on BBC4, Stephen Fry at 50. The documentary on his life made one realize the sheer versatility of the man, as writer, actor, comedian, intellectual. Perhaps the best of the programmes was the one that actually featured Stephen Fry himself, a simple half an hour called Guilty in which Fry discussed several of his "guilty pleasures". Some of them were, to me, incomprehensible, like watching Countdown and Darts, but that was the point of the programme -- these were things that Fry saw as guilty, self-indulgences that may be incomprehensible to others. Fry was so good at enthusing about these things that by the time he had finished, you almost wondered why you had been missing these delights all these years. His first guilty pleasure, though, was one that I very much share, a love of Abba. I've loved them all my life, and have the big Abba collection to prove it, right down to the dolls, the soap and the perfume.

Most of Stephen Fry's guilty pleasures were simply an intellectual's admissions about enjoying different aspects of popular culture. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed the programme so much. Many of the academics I have met don't appear to have any guilty pleasures, and if they do, they won't admit to them, as if participation in what the masses enjoy might sully their reputation as one of the elite. Well, the more fool them. Often, they don't know what they are missing.

No more BBC vodcasts

Where the BBC used to list a number of available vodcasts (= video podcasts, highlights of BBC programmes available for download), we now just have the following summary paragraph:

The video podcasts have been part of a year long trial, to help the BBC find out what people want from services like this and how they use them. This trial has now come to an end, which means that from the end of July the video podcasts will no longer be produced. We are now looking at how the trial went and what we can learn from it, and will decide what happens next later in the year. Thanks for your interest. (Podcasts from BBC News)

So from today, no more BBC vodcasts. And I will miss them. I was a regular downloader of the Panorama, Question Time, PMQs and and Breakfast Takeaway vodcasts and I thought they were a great success. They were especially welcome for us expats without ready access to BBC content. My message to the BBC on this one is: thank you very much for the last year of vodcasts; the trial was a great success with me; please bring them back soon -- I'm missing them!

Launch of the BBC iPlayer, but not for British expats

The BBC launched its much anticipated iPlayer yesterday, which it describes like this:

The BBC is launching a new easy-to-use service that lets you access television programmes via your PC. Initially, BBC iPlayer is offering "seven-day catch-up television" – meaning that BBC TV programmes can be downloaded for free up to a week after transmission.

The programmes will be free for UK licence fee payers, at high quality and with no advertising. Once you have downloaded a programme to your computer you have 30 days within which to start watching and seven days to finish watching it.

It's the kind of thing which I would be very excited about if I were still in the UK. Being in the USA now, however, it feels like a damp squib. It is just the kind of thing that could be very exciting for British expats like us who so miss the ready access to BBC TV we once took for granted. There appear to be no indications, though, of any plans to release the player for expats. On Ask Bruce, they explain:

Programmes will only be available to users within the UK for two reasons:

* the service is funded by UK TV licence payers
* copyright is only cleared for use within the UK for seven days after the first broadcast

I think the points are bogus. The first simply begs the question. Many British expats, including me, would happily pay our UK TV licence to get access to the player. There are many online TV streaming set-ups that work on this kind of basis, like Willow TV for the cricket, which simply lock out non-subscribers. This point also covers the copyright issue too -- you simply get the copyright coverage for British subscribers wherever they are based.

Where there has been upset about the new iPlayer, it has tended to come mainly from those who object to the fact that it only works, at this stage, for PC users. AKMA, a dedicated Mac user, for example, is furious about it and he points to an article called BBC Corrupted. I understand their points but think they are overreacting. The following, for example, misses the point:

But with this decision all these high principles are thrown away. No chance then for the millions of the worlds poorest children who are about to receive the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) computer to be able to view BBC educational programming. The OLPC runs only Free Software and Free Software is, of course, the main competitive threat to Microsoft. I don't expect we will see an iPlayer built to the principles of free software whilst this incompetent BBC governance is maintained.

The reason people can't access this content internationally is not because of some deal with Microsoft, but because the decision has been made to block all non-British IP addresses. Moreover, it is clear that the BBC are planning to release the content to Mac users and others in due course, so I wouldn't be inclined to be too concerned. Again, other online TV streaming is often limited to Windows Media Player, and with no plans to make changes.

But one of the frustrating things about the decision not to release the iPlayer to international users is that it only encourages the illicit downloading of materials, which many users would happily pay for if the BBC would give them a chance.