New BBC Special Coming....

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Lord Reith
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Re: New BBC Special Coming....

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ianbuckers wrote: Fri Jan 14, 2022 11:00 am I have started to get hooked on some of the series on our version of PBS. They have a great series on the history of Country Music. Watched their comprehensive and massive documentary series on the Vietnam War. Currently have their Civil War (American one not ours!) series downloaded ready to digest. Only problem is these series are all massive. Episodes typically 2 hours each and lots of them so big demand on time...but worth the investment if you want a more in-depth insight than you have ever seen before on these subjects.
The two flagship PBS documentary series are NOVA and American Experience. I've never seen a duff episode of AE, it is completely superb. Although they don't make new ones that often. NOVA has been running for decades and while it's taken a worriesome turn of late into trendy politically correct subject matter, there's still a backlog of hundreds of amazing documentaries. Unfortunately they recently locked most of it off behind a paywall, although there is actually a way around that... but I'm not going to discuss that!

As someone who never went to college, I get all my knowledge from television documentaries. So their integrity is extremely important to me.
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Lord Reith
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Re: New BBC Special Coming....

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Oh, did anyone else listen to the Immelda doco? I thought it was reasonably interesting but it's all here say. The Beatles said they were scared and miserable, and the people who were there say they were enjoying themselves. And there's never been any footage of anything to do with the "incident" and its aftermath. We know it ahppened, but we only have personal accounts of it which can be very iffy.
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ianbuckers
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Re: New BBC Special Coming....

Post by ianbuckers »

RunoutGroove wrote: Fri Jan 14, 2022 12:06 pm You still get the odd Beatles question on Pointless. Do you get that on ITV's The Chase?
lol

That doesn't swing it for me. Pointless is awful, I've watched it in the past (guy from down my road was on it once) but I don't now. The Chase is much better. I enjoy Eggheads which was on the BBC until recently (they dropped it and so Ch 5 picked it up) but that was actually made by ITV! Interesting fact...the new egghead added since the move to Ch 5 is a also question setter for The Chase!
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ianbuckers
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Re: New BBC Special Coming....

Post by ianbuckers »

Lord Reith wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 10:29 am
ianbuckers wrote: Fri Jan 14, 2022 11:00 am I have started to get hooked on some of the series on our version of PBS. They have a great series on the history of Country Music. Watched their comprehensive and massive documentary series on the Vietnam War. Currently have their Civil War (American one not ours!) series downloaded ready to digest. Only problem is these series are all massive. Episodes typically 2 hours each and lots of them so big demand on time...but worth the investment if you want a more in-depth insight than you have ever seen before on these subjects.
The two flagship PBS documentary series are NOVA and American Experience. I've never seen a duff episode of AE, it is completely superb. Although they don't make new ones that often. NOVA has been running for decades and while it's taken a worriesome turn of late into trendy politically correct subject matter, there's still a backlog of hundreds of amazing documentaries. Unfortunately they recently locked most of it off behind a paywall, although there is actually a way around that... but I'm not going to discuss that!

As someone who never went to college, I get all my knowledge from television documentaries. So their integrity is extremely important to me.
I think our FTA version of PBS America just takes their older programmmes and series. I don't recall ever seeing either of the series you mention on their schedule. Thinking they are current affairs programmes? Ours runs nothing like that.
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Re: New BBC Special Coming....

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ianbuckers wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 3:20 pm "They should have put out a BBC Record Label"

They did. They still use it for mainly non-music releases, like in 2019 Goons, Dr Who.

For music these days they tend to us their sub-labels...

2 Entertain
Demon Music Group Ltd.
Lookout Point Limited
MCI Music Publishing Ltd.
BBC records no longer exists. Even spoken word releases have not been on a BBC label since 2011. However, to clarify the above.

Demon Music Group is owned outright by BBC Worldwide and issues music and vinyl releases.

2 entertain is a BBC Worldwide owned video label used for non BBC releases (DVD/Bluray releases are labelled BBC).

Lookout Point - is a BBC owned production company not a label

MCI Music publishing is exactly what it says. The Music publishing arm of BBC worldwide, although they have over the years released a few audio titles. MCI stems from the original name of Demon - Music Collection International

Penguin Random House currently issue all BBC Audiobook releases.

BBC Worldwide (Formally BBC Enterprises), is the commercial arm of the BBC - so basically their sales and money making arm.

The problem that there is with any release of BBC owned sound recordings featuring musicians/bands/singers is that the contracts originally signed allow for TV and Radio broadcast only. If they wish to issue recordings from the archives, then they have to renegotiate with every person (or their estates) that perform on the recording. The Musicians union rates are paid per minute. Anyone wanting to licence the BBC recordings has to do the same, UNLESS the company/label who want to issue the recordings had the band/singer under contract at the time of the BBC Session. As you can imagine, it makes releasing the material very expensive.

An example. I have recently been negotiating to release some BBC material. I negotiated separately with the estate of the artist, but still have to pay all the musicians and when you consider a few tracks feature the BBC concert orchestra, it starts to get VERY expensive. Including BBC's fees, manufacturing, MCPS fees and MU fees it's currently looking at costing about £12000!! Very few catalogue CD releases will recoup that money these days. This one will be crowdfunded and the profits from two previous releases will help offset that, but it's still going to be expensive.

THIS is why the BBC recorded music library is not exploited as much as you would think.
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Re: New BBC Special Coming....

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I remember BBC Records. Mainly it was The Goon Show you saw but they would also issue comedy shows on vinyl, like Fawlty Towers. At the time (early 80s) I thought that was really dumb because you could videotape it so easily. Now however I wish I'd bought some of those lps as collectors items. Later on of course they ussued things like Fawlty Towers and The Young Ones on video but would always totally ruin them by editing all the episodes together. There was some weird mental block video distributors had that people would not watch tv shows on video unless they were shoehorned into a movie format.

Going even further off topic (hey, why be ashamed of what you do best?) I was always annoyed that when lots of movies and tv shows started coming out on vhs in the late 80s, you could guarrantee that your taped-off-the-tv version would be about two or three times better picture quality. It really made it insulting when they'd charge $30-40 for a single movie on vhs and not even bother to make sure it was up to scratch. In fact I think that one of the reasons dvd took off in such a big way was not just because it looked better than vhs but because vhs duplication standards were so apalling. And then when bluray came out, the difference to dvd was exagerated by them going back to original negatives instead of second or third generation prints.
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Re: New BBC Special Coming....

Post by returntopepperland »

Grabbed this from BBC site today and came to post here to find it was already posted. But here it is anyway if someone needs. Note: this is not a re-up of what Lord Reith posted, but my own capture in m4a (122MB)

Download

Info at BBC World Service page
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Re: New BBC Special Coming....

Post by thewarpedvinyljunkie »

I missed Lord Reith's posting, so thank you for the new one, R2Pepperland!
Lord Reith wrote: Wed Dec 29, 2021 8:12 am It pains me to say it, but the BBC is rubbish these days. I used to watch and listen to it all the time, now hardly ever. A pale shadow of a once great institution.
If only you were still in charge, Major the Right Honorable Lord John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith (did I get all the titles in the right order?).
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afabman
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Re: New BBC Special Coming....

Post by afabman »

Just to say this viewer does not agree with the noble Lord!
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