Things we should get for our BBC licence money

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
  • a decent weekly/bi-weekly programme on "youth music" on BBC2. Outside of "Top of the Pops/Jools Hooland" land - ie a slight alternative view on music from dubstep to punkblues to modern jazz to grime to deathmetal and dance etc.
  • they've done the Beethoven download MP3 series and are to embark on a Bach one soon (mentioned in a sidenote in the Evening Standard yesterday) - let's have a full-on history of 20th Century classic music series as MP3 download. As full as copyright law can take us (with 50 years copyright (?) that will takes us to 1955 and I am sure some modern day composers will be happy to "donate" pieces for such a series. Similar to the stuff the Beeb sometimes do on BBC4.



    I suspect there are a few people on this list who have a bit of modern classical stuff as a tangent to an interest in electronic music (going to the roots etc) but would like to know more (I know there are experts on this matter writing here - but I assume there might be a few people like myself with just the odd Varese or Nordheim record in their collection).



    So please Auntie, let's have a 6 or 12 part series on 20th Century classic downloadable as MP3s.
 

owen

Well-known member
a few suggestions-

The JG Ballard day on BBC4 a year or so ago should become a JG Ballard channel
Columnists in stocks pelted with rotten vegetables should be shown daily
All home makeover shows should be presented by Slavoj Zizek
Top of the Pops on THURSDAY and with no interviews and compulsory miming

oh and they should buy the simpsons back...
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
Cricket back on terrestrial bloody telly. But it should only be on the BBC if they then buy over the entire Channel 4 production team as well.

Obviously I'll second the vote for 20th-C downloads. The Beeb did actually do a Webern day, like the Beethoven and Bach things, but to my knowledge this didn't come with any downloads (probably copyright, having got their wrists slapped for the Beethoven thing). Actually, more, better, 20th-century coverage. Move Hear and Now and Mixing It from out of the graveyard slots. Resurrect William Glock! (Alright, maybe not.)

Stop being so sodding scared of repeats - in the past the BBC has made some of the greatest TV ever, why consign it to the grave after one showing?

But most importantly:

GIVE US A PROPER, PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE FILM, VIDEO AND TAPE ARCHIVE OF ALL THE STUFF WE PAID FOR.
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
bring back Ski-Sunday.
it was so perfectly suited to the living-death of an early sunday evening. and the music was amazing.
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
Rambler said:
Obviously I'll second the vote for 20th-C downloads. The Beeb did actually do a Webern day, like the Beethoven and Bach things, but to my knowledge this didn't come with any downloads (probably copyright, having got their wrists slapped for the Beethoven thing).

Rambler - is there a website/book/cd-box recommended to enlighten us who have just peeked through the slit in the curtains of 20th century classical music? (well poetic that, and not very clear either, but hey)

No Webern downloads were probably due to copyright issues (I missed it), but for Beethoven it was just general opposition to "free music" was it not? The debate will reappear when Bach gets the same treatment as Beethoven.

As far as I know it's still 50 years of copyright in the UK - that would bring it to 1955 for complete works the Beeb could use. 1955 onwards they could hopefully "illustrate" using a DJ/talkover sort of style after getting the permissions.
It would be a service and ear-opener not just for us here in the UK, but for people all over the world. Not to mention modern classical music?

---

A TV-film based on Hamsun's "The Hunger" (with John Simm?)
 
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Rambler

Awanturnik
Well, copyright still exists in the Beethoven recordings (owned by the publishers, performers, etc.), and the record companies (although they had already consented to the idea) got peeved when it became hugely popular. These are the same record companies who fret that the classical recording industry is about to vanish from underneath them, so you have to wonder why they got so upset at someone opening up enormous new markets for them...

is there a website/book/cd-box recommended to enlighten us who have just peeked through the slit in the curtains of 20th century classical music?
. I'm trying to think of a catch-all recommendation, but it's a massive field, populated mostly by academics, so it's hard to think of a good primer. Alex Ross's book, when it comes out, is I think partly designed to fill this gap, although it goes right back into the late 19th-century as well.

I'll get back to you...
 

Woebot

Well-known member
simon silverdollar said:
bring back Ski-Sunday.
it was so perfectly suited to the living-death of an early sunday evening. and the music was amazing.

seconded.

though it makes me weepy just remembering that music.

we used to watch it before we got packed back to boarding school on sunday evening for another month of misery.
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
seem like the Beeb are afraid of the labels - the Bach downloads are in the balance
http://techdirt.com/articles/20051102/1339257_F.shtml

The BBC is planning to play 10 straight days of Bach's music next month on one of its stations, and it's succumbed to the record labels' whining (registration required), and won't offer complete downloads, if it offers any downloads at all. The British record-label trade group was upset that the BBC had offered the Beethoven downloads without consulting them, and it's unclear either why it's any of their business, or why they think it so damaged their business.
 

originaldrum

from start till done
for the license money you pay the BBC should actually invent the "black vans" which drive around and can tell when you've been watching telly and don't have a license, which i think is the biggest crock of shit story ever to have "it's true man" tacked on to the end of...
 

h-crimm

Well-known member
Ness Rowlah said:
As far as I know it's still 50 years of copyright in the UK

i think it's been 'harmonised' across europe. and being in the palm of industry the council of ministers decided to choose the longest period as the new default. so they went with germany's 70 or 75 years.
it's also back dated so things from the 30s and 40s which were out of copyright are back in copyright sine this decision (some time in the nineties). i think you could definitely argue that this is unlawful as an extension of the specification in the human rights charter that laws cannot be applied retroactively, it also seems logical that any works having passed into the public domain can't be taken back out. but who says logic has to apply.

extending the length of copyright seems like complete lunacy to me. copyright ought to have an exponentially decaying duration as vogues become more transient and technological advancement (perhaps) keeps speeding up. the moment just before the internet that this decision was made makes it look even more ridiculous, but sadly the BBC will not be the one to challenge it.
the BBC is flirting with the idea of a modified creative commons licence but i think it needs to be willing to be civily/commercially disobedient if its going to get out of the mess of a legal framework which is clearly unworkable for the modern (high speed internet) age.



i'd like to see the BBC follow on from the BBC micro computers from the eighties to manage a BBC linux flavour aimed at giving schools the confidence to work together in a unfied way to replace expensive crap software with specifically designed community supposed massively money saving opensource stuff......................... i think this sounds more difficult than it is (as little as hosting an english version of the spanish educational linux and making some documentaries) the BBC has the kind of profile which would be neccessary to draw together individual science teachers and LEA's disparate efforts
i dont think this should be paid for out of the licence fee tho, but from the DoE&S
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
Re UK copyright: I wrote to my MP about this recently as the UK is presently considering extending copyright in recordings to 75 years to meet European standards; the answer she got from the relevant minister (sorry, I'm being vague cos I can't find her reply any more) was basically a fudge along the lines of 'we're reviewing the situation'. So the extension hasn't come in yet, but it could do still. Those Brits who are concerned might want to write to their representatives.

Oh, to be back in the days when copyright was there to protect the artist, not the corporate rights-holder, and lasted just 14 years....
 

h-crimm

Well-known member
oh yeah,

they need to be the ones to use a distributed content delivery system, a peer to peer technology like emule or bittorrent in a 'valid' way. using it to distribute legally shared content. letting people stream episodes of nightynight or that ianoucci series is never going to scale up to cost effective internet broadcasting. they'd have to get involved in DRM tho probably to keep foriegn non licence payers out...

i also think we should offer people anywhere the opportunity to sign up for (a version of) the licence fee.
 

owen

Well-known member
off topic slightly, i think the 'show more repeats!' demand could be met by them setting up (i'm sure they've got enough room in television centre, they can turf andrew marr out his office or something) a decent public library of shows, radio programmes etc (or at least the ones they haven't wiped :mad: )- so you could just walk in and borrow wyndham lewis doing 'the childermass' on radio, or any bbc radiophonic workshop tape, or a copy of the singing detective, or, or...
 

mms

sometimes
i'd like to see bbc2 hip hop programme behind the beat again and also snub tv the indie equivalent


interested to see how they fare

also i think monk should get more money pumped into it as its good.

more time for up and coming music on the air too not just indie bands in the early morn
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
owen said:
off topic slightly, i think the 'show more repeats!' demand could be met by them setting up (i'm sure they've got enough room in television centre, they can turf andrew marr out his office or something) a decent public library of shows, radio programmes etc (or at least the ones they haven't wiped :mad: )- so you could just walk in and borrow wyndham lewis doing 'the childermass' on radio, or any bbc radiophonic workshop tape, or a copy of the singing detective, or, or...

I'd love to see that happen, but it ain't gonna. :mad:
 

Lichen

Well-known member
Wiped Out

On the subject of the BBC wiping things, Mike Leigh "mourns" his film:


"Knock for Knock, which he made in 1976 and was wiped in order to save space at the BBC. "If I found out who made that decision, I'd go and shoot them. Without batting an eyelid."

:eek:
 
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