Tech: BBC service removal?

Subject: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 13 Mar 25 - 11:14 AM

Listening to the excellent 'Feedback' programme on Radio 4 the other day, I heard some worrying news, which I cannot see on BBC platforms.

It sounded to me like BBC radio is discontinuing access to all non-UK countries of all their radio services except Radio 4 and World Service? There are some exceptions for UK people travelling/holidaying abroad but all other stations will not be available from Spring this year (ie very soon).

This appears to include the NATIONAL stations for Wales and Scotland as well as all regional UK stations. As a lot of mudcat folk are avid listeners to the musical content of Radio 2, Alba etc, maybe non UK residents are in for a surprise? There is contradictory techspeak about all this & BBC content may be available somehow, but it is not clear to me. Any news, anyone, the BBC appear to be keeping a low profile here- am I totally wrong?

.

Subject: RE: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: DaveRo
Date: 13 Mar 25 - 11:57 AM

See here

Subject: RE: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 14 Mar 25 - 07:02 AM

well that link is certainly not at all clear to me, but then as a Scottish resident I am not affected, I just thought others might be.

I think most of thre stuff coming out of the BBC music-wise is pretty crap anyway & its 'impartial' politics now increasingly unreliable at best, so this is par for the course.

Subject: RE: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: DaveRo
Date: 14 Mar 25 - 09:27 AM

Jim: I've now listened to Feedback. They didn't say anything useful but promised to get someone on the programme to explain. Please let us know when they do; I'm not prepared to sit though the programme on spec.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006slnx/episodes/player

I expect that Sounds (which used to be called Radio iPlayer) will become geographically limited by IP address as the TV iPlayer always has been. The lady in North Carolina who listens to Radio 2 and the guy in Kansas who listens to Radio 6 will have to use a VPN. Nodody in the BBC is going to tell them that, though. Perhaps the BBC will come up with a subscription service.

I expect that the BBC's direct audio streams, used by other streaming boxes and clients, will also be IP-limited - apart from (some) Radio 4 and World Service.

Subject: RE: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: Nick Dow
Date: 15 Mar 25 - 12:39 PM

Subscription service I doubt on the grounds that nobody is likely to subscribe. Even less than those who are reluctantly paying their licence fee. I worked for the BBC for 34 years and there is not much I have not seen. This thread is not about how disgusted I am with their behaviour, but this latest ploy will show their devious thinking and is relevant to the OP.
Newspaper reports indicate the following:-

Sweeping changes could be on the horizon for the much-maligned BBC licence fee, with fresh proposals hinting at a merger of the £174 licence fee with regular household bills to ensure collective payment across UK homes.

Council tax in fact! This is the German system I'm told. So there you are. We still won't be given any choice. How many people will have the nerve or the energy to cross the fee off the bill. Will we get our Folk music progs back? What do you think? Just a sustained campaign of 'look how wonderful we are' adverts followed by the usual bias and arrogance.

Subject: RE: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 15 Mar 25 - 01:55 PM

This goes beyond the music though.... whatever your view of the 'four nations' nature of the United Kingdom this deliberate action is removing access to the NATIONAL radio stations of Wales and Scotland to anyone resident outside the UK as well as UK regional stations!

   What remains of this music in Scotland like the longlived 'Saturday night 'Take The Floor' programme will be seriously missed by many thousands of dewy-eyed Scottish folk living in Canada, Australia etc.

But such an act of vandalism is all too typical of BBC contempt for anything non-English- music, literature or politics. Radio 4 will cover all aspects of culture, of course, as viewed from London.

what a bunch of cultural vandals they are

Subject: RE: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: Nick Dow
Date: 15 Mar 25 - 08:33 PM

The sad thing is it was not always that way. The BBC were willing to give air time to anything that would make a good programme. One of my documentaries was entered for a Sony award. I very much doubt that I would be given a job in today's BBC. They have their own agenda that seems so far from the public service broadcasting brief that they once adopted. The interview techniques I was taught at Broadcasting house are now abandoned, and aggression and interruption is the new morality.
The news reporting is posed in such a way as to demonstrate their own agenda, so we hear details of the economy prefaced by statements such as 'Despite the strike....Despite Brexit...In the face of union threats... Provoked by far right or far left activists,,,and on it goes.
So what of our Folk Song programmes? Sorry people but in house programming is finished. The new employment rules brought in 8 years ago gave you a choice. Sign on the dotted line as an employee or bugger off. The legion of freelance musicians and enthusiasts were forced to form their own companies, and produce their own shows on their own equipment, or join the payroll and do as they are told and tow the line and dance to the corporate tune. (When did Folkies ever tow the line?) As Jim correctly points out anything outside the BBC control is ignored or axed. The future is uncertain. It's likely that the BBC will slowly slip in the ratings, and the programming will become less and less diverse. No in house dramas will be commissioned and nothing will reach our ears and eyes unless it is privately produced and dances to their tune.
The backlash will see more and more YouTube based podcasts, News services, and opinion videos, with none of the training, professional approach and production values of the past. The result will range from the boring through to the downright dangerous as we have seen. Who is to blame? Those who casually threw away the old tried and tested values of public service broadcasting, and did a runner with a suitcase full of public money. So no change there I hear you cry!

Subject: RE: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: GUEST,jim bainbrudge
Date: 17 Mar 25 - 06:31 AM

! BBC R4 feedback progranmme- 8pm last night has still not managed to clarify this situation. No official BBC spokesperson has stepped forward yet, although a request has been made.

What kind of media organisation treats its huge numbers of listeners with such cxontempt?   the BBC, that's who

Subject: RE: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: DaveRo
Date: 17 Mar 25 - 09:15 AM

What other media organisation broadcasts a programme on which its listeners are allowed to complain about it?

Huge number of listeners to BBC radio abroad?

Subject: RE: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: Nick Dow
Date: 17 Mar 25 - 04:59 PM

Bang on Dave and Jim. The BBC had a tradition of feedback within it's public service brief, however for very many years they have undermined the process. They usually have a comedic figure to read out the complaints and then pay lip service to impartiality having first taken the piss out of the listeners. This has been so obvious that other TV shows have lampooned the programmes on and off for years.
BBC 4 are not able to do the piss take ploy, so they do the next best thing. Nothing! See above.
Now I'm going to tell you about a flaming row I had with a BBC producer in Broadcasting house. He referred within a tutorial to the listeners to my show as no better than pond life! I ripped into him, and he retreated into 'your a specialist audience' defence.
I then went on a mission with with the news team tutors.
At the time Maxwell had just been found dead, and his sons were being dragged in front of an all party commons committee but remained silent. We were asked to produce a headline for a news programme.
Most people came out with something like 'The Maxwell brothers maintain silence despite etc. etc. by way of reply I wrote 'Maxwells forced into silence by all party commons committee.
It went down like a bodily function in church.
And so it goes.....

Subject: RE: Tech: BBC service removal?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 18 Mar 25 - 02:39 PM

When I lived in El Hierro the smallest of the Canary Islands, I thought myself lucky to pick up BBC World Service on radio with a big aerial but times have changed with the internet.

You'd be surprised how many people DO listen to the BBC abroad & to destroy its audience like this is unforgiveable.

Scots abroad DO listen to 'Take the Floor' and the Old Firm game & to think that Radio 4 is a substitute for this is just a demonstration of the English nationalist cabal who run BBC 2025.

ESPECIALLY when the Trump loonies have just closed down the Voice of America station!   Are they all vcrazy?