http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8116629.stm

I think the BBC is slowly getting worse as it is, without it having to hand over money to the truly awful ITV

"The public greatly value local and regional news. We have invited the BBC and others to suggest how it can be secured for the long term."

Seriously? Local / regional news has always struck me as being pathetic, and spends far too much of its time with really crap filler stories.

I don't think it's too bad here in NI, but If it's failing due to lack of funds from it's parent... Well, who's fault is that?

I think it was more a reflection on the fact that not enough happens in one single region to justify a regular program of the length they have. Pumping more money isn't going to fix that, it's just going to try and polish the turd.

I can see what you mean, but that's not a problem here in NI

i think its about time they got rid of the BBC licence fee
it was the means to get the TV network up and running when there was only the BBC

now its all moving over to digital on 'free' view i see no more need for a licence fee …

Cool so you mean you want all your TV to be crapo and broken up by adverts every 5 minutes?

I watch so little on the BBC these days it wouldn't be worth me paying for a licence (I live with my parents currently ), and the BBC are fond of telling us we're watching the BBC at our expense anyway

Dig out your copy of your TV license, you'll note that it makes no reference to the BBC. You are paying for a TV license not a BBC license.

I agree that ITV shouldn't get any revenue from it as they run their channels like a business, that's not what the license fee is for. However I think that money should be broken away from the BBC to fund alternative independent channels. I would gladly pay a large proportion of the fee just for Radio4, but I do believe that the BBC are expanding channels and stations too thin and diluting existing media channels is at risk.

Probably true as I've never seen ours , but it's the BBC getting the lion's share, something I'm increasingly unhappy about considering they seem to just be ITV with a bit more gumption these days

I think if the BBC started breaking up their programming with adverts, it will be a very sad day. I don’t want to see money diverted from them to iTV, which is a failing business and should be allowed to collapse if it can’t bring in the ad revenue.

I don't watch that much TV and frankly as a result the day the BBC starts carrying adverts is the day I throw the TV's in the house out.

With regard to regional news it seems to me part of the problem is they insist on treating people as having the attention span of a mosquito so stories are very brief and then one can see a problem finding enough to fill the slot (The main news bulletins are no better too). If they did some real reporting that genuinely disussed issues properly I'm sure you could easily fill an hour interestingly, let alone half an hour.

There does need to be a real shift in technology use too. We had the experience of observing a TV news team turn up to record a couple of stories with a charity here and it was rather expensive in involving a big van full of fancy equipment with driver/technician, sound man and camera man turned up separately I think with the producer/director but she may have been another car, and the reporter turned up in a third vehicle and given the time they were here hanging about they can't have done more than two stories in the day, some of which won't get shown in the end either. It does seem to me that with modern technology and stripping out some of the waste you could do some really interesting news stories with one good person with a good prosumer camera plus limited ancillary equipment to improve sound and a reporter working together intelligently out of a single van. Why do you really need more? Fine for drama and so on but a news story/simple documentary piece/etc? A lot of these stories would not necessarily be date specific so you don't need the fancy satellite link equipment and the cost of using it either for those.

Richard.

I wouldn't mind the BBC keeping all of the fee if it were forced to do some actual Public Service Broadcasting.

Things I want to see:

• Panorama more often
• More documentaries
• No more talent shows
• No "reality" shows
• Eastenders to die a death
• No soaps of any kind
• Minority sports e.g. Netball
• Women's sport
• Parliament live on normal channels
• No more Location Location Location-type programs
• Longer, enhanced local news segments
  
  [edited to add]
• The Money programme, Country File and other such factual interest programs having greater prominence

British Bloke Corporation, eh?

Didn't see this then?