ACTOR/COMEDIAN: Stephen Fry

AHA Ivana you look so happy holding that box of love

Peardrops:

AHA Ivana you look so happy holding that box of love

I know. I went to the shop with my mum and I was just TWIIIIIININGS ZIIIING.

Oh dearest me, i've forgotten my tulips

Guys, whats all this Fry defending BBC thing?

oh? I haven't heard anything about this...

I don't feel educated enough to give a view on that!

I don't really know what the BBC are doing, other than they want people to pay a certain amount of money to them every year, seperate from their TV license, so they can keep broadcasting without adverts in between programmes. But I think the newspaper guy is saying that they are starting to take sponsorship, and we should therefore stop giving them this fee, as they are doing the same as every other channel, which we don't pay for. Stephen and David Attenborough are saying that if people stop paying, this will cut huge amounts of funding that the BBC uses for good projects and research. I think.

So the real thing they should be protesting against is the BBC advertising.. although I am sure both David Attenborough and Stephen know a lot more about what they are dealing with than the rest of us, and I really don't think they'd be afraid to 'bite the hand that feeds'..

Oooh, I understand now.
I thought it wa sjust something British and beyond me. o_0

Well.. its a bit beyod me too, that's what I took it to mean, I may be wrong though.

The fee is there so that the BBC doesn't have to have advertising - but it also means that there's a certain amount of pressure on the BBC to create shows that are of a higher standard to other channels since the public is effectively paying for them. To introduce advertising as a way of paying rather than using the fee definately means there'll be less emphasis on how good the quality of the shows has to be and I reckon standards will probably take a dive.

I definately agree with Stephen. (Not that that's at all shocking)
The media student in me just got all in a fluster

And omfg Guardian, stfu with your bitchy comments

I haven't heard about that

But I don't want BBC advertising D:

No definately not.

As annoying as it is when you're 20 minutes into an hour long programme and you really need to pee, adverts shout at you and are mean and annoying and go on for too long.

Plus, I have sky plus so I could just pause a programme to go to the loo

Also, that's what makes all the tedious stuff on BBC bearable. Knowing it'll be over in half an hour instead of a whole hour with adverts.

Oooh. Well we pay for our national tv network here too and they still have advertisments. o_0

I think we pay for all of them through our ~tv license~, but we have to pay for the BBC on top of that.

You have to have a tv license if you have a television, and every telly comes with the BBC channels. The other channels are paid for by advertising so they're not included in the tv license fee. That's why you have to get like a freeview box or digital if you want more channels.

freeview \o/
actually, i only watch about 10 channels on freeview, and about half of them are BBC channels.

I have Sky Digital

I've started watching all the foreign news channels haha, the Russian one is fab.

Maybe you could catch some Croatian programmes.