Pink Ball wrote:Cheering for the licence fee to be abolished is pure populist bullocks without giving any thought to what it actually means.
I’m not even British, and BBC has been a huge part of my life in one way or another. It’s like that for every British person. You get what you like, someone else likes what you don’t like.
Tories aren’t doing this because BBC isn’t pumping out quality. It’s because they don’t like some of what the station reports.
Unfortunately it's a lot more political than ever. It's not just populist policy but general concern amongst many neutrals on all sides of the political divide.
I just watched an interview with an old dude who's run a Radio 4 program called "Quote... Unquote" for the past 48 years. He's doing the rounds atm because he's called it a day on the show, citing many issues but including too much BBC interference with who he can and can't have on the show.
You know, he's got to have all ethnicities, all sexualities & all physical disabilities represented every week & he's no longer allowed to quote some people because they have a naughty heritage & all that stuff.
As an auteur, this is a big straw to the camel's back & there's quite a few big names jumping ship atm.
This new order of management, irrespective of money, let alone with tighter money to spend, may consider Snooker to 'problematic' to be broadcast anyway by that point.
The BBC isn't going to die in 2027, it's just going to have to undergo structural and financial re-ordering, which may still involve some form of indirect taxation.
It's going to be difficult for Snooker to adhere to all the inclusivity brackets due to the fact that pretty much all the homegrown players are white straight males. It's not like they can force an extravagantly gay darker skinned person to suddenly become good at the game who can simultaneously also commentate and present and film the event while they themselves also play in the tournament.
AKA, in the Beeb's desperation to more than accurately reflect the idealised diversity of the nation, they are deeply annoying the actual real diversity stats demographic who are, not surprisingly, an actual and real voting demographic.
The cynic in me thinks this is some conspiracy of anti-licence fee manipulators deliberately forcing these weird rules in with the aim of annoying this old person demographic, nudging them to vote for an end to the fee. However, my knowledge of the fanaticism of the extreme left suggests that the management genuinely think what they are doing is 'ideal'.
The licence fee does need to go. The BBC has gone 'a bit nuts'. But, yes, the Beeb is still the only place certain things can get made.
The WSC, as we know it, could well be one of those things.