nytimes.com — "Critics in England have attacked plans by the BBC to sell advertising on its Web site. Now some of those critics inside the BBC are redoubling their efforts. Employees from the Web site have circulated a 10-page document condemning the proposal, which they say could lead to less serious journalism and damage the BBC?s reputation."
Oct 30, 2006 View in Crawl 4
icefitzOct 31, 2006
I don't care about the adds on the CBC site. Recently though they put an add in the middle of the frigging articles. It was so f**king ridiculous i had to use a user defined css to hide the DIV holding the add. I can tolerate adds to a certain extent but as more and more adds appear on a publicly funded organizations website and they interfere with the content it starts to get out of hand.
joehodgsonOct 31, 2006
We have to pay for a lisence just for the privelage of owning a TV, all cos the BBC want to remain independent and ad-free, its the equivelant of about $130 a year(!)If the BBC want to run online ads then they should scrap the fee we all have to pay and become a commercial channel or a subscription channel, at least that way you could choose whether to pay for the service or not rather than being threatened by countless adverts on tv, radio, internet etc.
jamboxOct 31, 2006
the licence fee works out at about £15 per month, or about $25.Please do bear in mind, it's not just the TV! You get a huge range of radio stations too (compare the breadth of content to commercial stations) and of course the very fine BBCi website - anyone not aware of it, it's really very good and very large.
rickysan65Oct 31, 2006
No ads (yet) on the BBC..
boeingOct 31, 2006
"The BBC is not permitted to carry advertising or sponsorship on its public services. This keeps them independent of commercial interests and ensures they can be run instead to serve the general public interest."Amen. From the BBC themselves: <a class="user" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/advertising.shtml">http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/advertising.shtml</a>
twistedonionOct 31, 2006
"Additionally staff in BBC News are not used to the realities of running a business"The reality is that the BBC is not a business, nor should it be. It is a public service and should be run as such.
tizz66Oct 31, 2006
I sat down to watch March of the Penguins the other day, expecting something spectacular - after all, it was a hit film! I was kind of disappointed, because as you say, we get nature programmes of that quality all the time. I guess to the rest of the world it's something different.
jga05Nov 5, 2006
As an American that has lived overseas, I greatly appreciated the BBC. Especially since it was in English. Anyways, I will say that the BBC has great programming, but the idea of having to pay per TV is foreign to me. (No pun intended). At about 180 pounds a year for our 5 TVs that would be 900 pounds for my house a year. That's an insane amount of money. That could be two computers, 3 iPods, a down payment on a car. I don't mind having to watch 3 minutes of commercials for every 10 minutes of programming. It keeps my personal costs low, allows me to be able to afford to have multiple TVs, I can get up and use the bathroom if need be, make a quick phone call, and keeps programming edgy. We also have 200 channels to choose from. I disagree that its all s**t, especially since we export shows like LOST and CSI that are megahits around the globe. Both of those shows are aired on broadcast channels completely free of charge. They are also available on ABC's and CBS's websites for free, respectively. The U.S. is just a bigger country that's much more diversified than say the U.K. We have 300 million people, naturally there will be more interests. If the BBC were to show advertisements, I'm sure that programming would not suffer. You Brits are used to a certain level of television, and I'm sure you wouldn't go down without a fight.
johnreesNov 10, 2006
I live in Spain and listen to BBC over the net frequently. Or try to.Recently I find it almost impossible to get a stable feed from anything other than World Service using Windows MediaI suspect that BBC have restricted bandwidth to overseas users. Does anybody know if that's the case. Or is it something local?It would be really helpful to know before I go chasing my local ISP to fix a problem which isn't theirs. Other sites and other streaming audio seem to work fine.Thanks in advance