The BBC: Has it gone down hill since the move to Manchester?

[takno]

A world city is one people actually want to go to - that people know about throughout the world. Whether you like it or not and however much you bang your provincial drum Manchester is NOT a world city. Ask people through out the world where Hyde Park is and where Heaton Park is and you will get your answer - Wembley against Etihad (more will know it as an airline) etc etc etc... mention Piccadilly and most will associate it with Piccadilly Circus... yes there maybe many good things come out of the city but London and many aspects of it from Scotland Yard to Buckingham Palace are known throughout the world. Apart from possibly Old Trafford don't really think you could say that about anything else in Manchester. That is the difference between a true world city and a provincial one.

Cool story. What does any of that have to do with the ability to commission quality television programmes?

 

[GusB]

A world city is one people actually want to go to - that people know about throughout the world. Whether you like it or not and however much you bang your provincial drum Manchester is NOT a world city.

Ouch. To keep this post vaguely on topic and to paraphrase from a BBC comedy sketch: MANCHESTER KNOW YOUR LIMITS.

 

[Dentonian]

A world city is one people actually want to go to - that people know about throughout the world. Whether you like it or not and however much you bang your provincial drum Manchester is NOT a world city. Ask people through out the world where Hyde Park is and where Heaton Park is and you will get your answer - Wembley against Etihad (more will know it as an airline) etc etc etc... mention Piccadilly and most will associate it with Piccadilly Circus... yes there maybe many good things come out of the city but London and many aspects of it from Scotland Yard to Buckingham Palace are known throughout the world. Apart from possibly Old Trafford don't really think you could say that about anything else in Manchester. That is the difference between a true world city and a provincial one.

If most people already know about a "world" city, why does it need the BBC (and indeed, the rest of the "national" media) to keep reminding them. Btw, I'm not sure why you use the word "provincial" to describe Manchester (and presumably the likes of Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Southampton) as England is not split into Provinces. We have counties and at a push, Regions. It is widely believed (rightly or wrongly) that Londoners use the word provinicial as an insult. FTR, there is a Hyde Park in, erm, Hyde - next to the College where iMDB founder Colin Needham was educated - and people "oop" here incrasingly call Wembley, Etihad South.

 

[Howardh]

The Dutch seem to manage not having their media based in their capital. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilversum

Can't comment as to whether Dutch TV and radio has gone "downhill" although that's quite difficult in that part of the Netherlands.

OK, I'll get my coat.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

A world city is one people actually want to go to - that people know about throughout the world. Whether you like it or not and however much you bang your provincial drum Manchester is NOT a world city. Ask people through out the world where Hyde Park is and where Heaton Park is and you will get your answer - Wembley against Etihad (more will know it as an airline) etc etc etc... mention Piccadilly and most will associate it with Piccadilly Circus... yes there maybe many good things come out of the city but London and many aspects of it from Scotland Yard to Buckingham Palace are known throughout the world. Apart from possibly Old Trafford don't really think you could say that about anything else in Manchester. That is the difference between a true world city and a provincial one.

To be fair, would your sample be any more able to name a public park in say Lyon or Dortmund or Plzeň? Manchester is certainly the English city most closely resembling a "Modern European City" which is unusual in a country so centralised on the capital as England/ the UK is.

Back on topic, I can't recall the last time I watched something other than football on the BBC, as there just isn't the interest there for me. Channel Four is better for both news and entertainment, though in the latter case you have to wade through some rubbish to find it...

I don't think this has anything to do with the move to Salford though.

 

[55z]

I thought that the BBC had moved some programmes to SALFORD not Manchester, mind you until they moved to Salford they didn't know where Salford was.

 

[muddythefish]

Can't help thinking that since it's move to "Manchester" that the BBC has gone right down the toilet.

Is it a sneaky move to facilitate potential future privatisation or do they just want to destroy public broadcasting ?

Why has it "gone downhill" ?

I think it's better because stories are less London-centric

 

[muddythefish]

Not at all - but people have said that the BBC was too London centric, moving it to Manchester has just made it Manchester centric and with all the best will in the world it is just a provincial city and not a world beater. Your national broadcaster should be based in a leading world city and London is the only one we have in this country.

It's rubbish like this why we have a north-south divide and more wealth and power concentrated in one city than any other G7 country.

More BBC units (and more govt departments) should be moved out of London ,not less.

 

[muddythefish]

A world city is one people actually want to go to - that people know about throughout the world. Whether you like it or not and however much you bang your provincial drum Manchester is NOT a world city. Ask people through out the world where Hyde Park is and where Heaton Park is and you will get your answer - Wembley against Etihad (more will know it as an airline) etc etc etc... mention Piccadilly and most will associate it with Piccadilly Circus... yes there maybe many good things come out of the city but London and many aspects of it from Scotland Yard to Buckingham Palace are known throughout the world. Apart from possibly Old Trafford don't really think you could say that about anything else in Manchester. That is the difference between a true world city and a provincial one.

Yup, let's invest everything in London and stuff the rest.

 

[dcsprior]

Is there an implication in the original post that anything not produced in London has to be inferior?

It could be read that way, but I chose not to - moving a large part of any organisation from anywhere to anywhere almost always results in a diversion of energy and a loss of experience being lost and energies being diverted.

 

[Requeststop]

I listen to BBC Radio on-line 10 hours ahead of you lot back home. So I wake up to mid evening programming from Radio 4 - what a yawn. Lunchtime is 5 live from Salford Up All Night - Dotun Adebayo is a bore. He's all me, me, me, and I, I, I. Rhod Sharpe is far better and a much better reporter and interviewer. Surprisingly, he does the Up All Night from his home in New England. The News readers on 5 live drive me crazy. Currently there is an Ulster-woman who stretches a three letter word into about ten. Evening for me is Radio 4 and Today - good for a rant at the radio. 5 live Breakfast is just awful, and unlistenable. Most of the vox pops are from within 20 miles of Manchester. The traffic reports based on the North.
It's worse on BBC World Television. All Sport is done from Salford. It shows. All pre-packaged shows and news slots. Interviews if any done down the line to London, and no personal connections that you get when the interview is across a table.
5 live was OK for a while but they moved it to Manchester. No Peter Allen anymore, such a loss of a great broadcaster. They lost Victoria Derbyshire to television. She didn't want to move to live in the North. They have the dreadful brummie chappie and his constant one tone on 5 live. And I understand, they moved Blue Peter to Salford for the hell of it.

Like someone else said, why not some programming originating from Plymouth, Norwich, Nottingham, etc. and lets have some South West voices on National Radio and TV. When I am home in the UK I get annoyed by Geordie, Ulster, Scots, Scouse and Estuary English accents announcing programmes and reading the news. "Te" instead of "To" particularly annoying, and "A-lympic" rather than "O-lympic" wanting me to throw my size 11 boots at my computer.

I don't mind some programming from Manchester/Salford, just spread the work and listening joy to the rest of the nation.

Finally, one of the joys of ITV when it was regional was a programme called About Britain. A 30 minute programme from the likes of Border, Anglia, Channel, Ulster and Grampian, as well as Westward (TSW). BBC2 also had a great programme called Look Stranger, again a programme about life in the differing parts of the UK.

 

[northwichcat]

Same goes for ITV as regards to TV at least - albeit weather forecasts are notoriously inaccurate and the graphics are not chronologically in line with what the forecaster is saying.

TV weather forecasts are more detailed than they used to be but because of that they are less accurate. You used to get a symbol (the size of Greater Manchester on the map) showing a cloud, with the sun behind it and drizzle and that was the forecast for the afternoon - you had to guess when the sunny interval would be and when the showers would be. Now the forecast tries to tell you they'll be a shower in Rochdale between 3pm and 4pm but it'll be dry in Stockport all afternoon.

Weather forecasters on all channels make geographical errors. Of note when Eno Eruotor started on North West Tonight she thought the Irish Sea was the Atlantic Ocean and when Sara Thornton provided holiday cover she thought Merseyside was the area around the River Mersey (from Stockport to Birkenhead/Liverpool)!

I have to concede though that I don't have a radio. Now, interestingly, my brother has one in his car and he used to ell me that he listened to Radio 2 not Radio Manchester, because local radio NEVER reported disruptions along Hyde Road or other parts of eastern GM. They are also misleading. Yesterday, they said that no trains wwere passing through Marple or Rose Hill due to signal problems. Yet once I could get the National Rail app working, all that was happening was minor delays.

One morning when I was staying in London I saw the morning TV regional news & travel, where the entire bulletin was about major disruption to the District Line. 15 minutes later I traveled on the District Line and while there was disruption (the gap between services was longer than expected and I had to change instead of getting a direct service) it was nothing compared to the recent Metrolink problems.