Arborbridge wrote:I quite agree, but I am not sure that shows it was the wrong thing to do. One could say there was virtue signalling going on, or that the TV channels were just all being like "Auntie". Whatever, I still think they needed to do it, and there are masses of other channels for people to watch so there's no shortage of choice.
It wasn't the issue of the BBC broadcasting something that some people might have been interested in, it was the authoritarian decision to broadcast the same stuff on all the channels that was issue.
Of course the BBC needed to show something, perhaps an hour long retrospective mid-evening on BBC 1. But to try to force-feed people hours upon hours of nothingness - no, they messed up badly there.
Arborbridge wrote:If we are a nation in such a rut that we can't stop for a moment to honour one of our best, that seems incredibly sad. Time was, that we would have the whole nation united watching such a thing with a sense of togetherness. Actually, that struck me about some of the old news footage shown recently about the monarchy - just how huge and enthusiastic crowds used to be. I wonder if this nation of cynics would bother to turn out now at all, or in more than a few hundred, to great processions for national events.
Arb.
For lots (most?) of the country the royal family are an irrelevance, and their tabloid exploits over the last few decades certainly means that a lot of people don't hold them in high regard.
Lootman wrote:AF62 wrote:Lootman wrote:A cynic might counter that if you are unhappy but do not care enough to be bothered to do anything about it, then your vote should not count either way.
I often think the same thing when I see a media report that "100,000 people marched in protest against X". I would express it as "67.5 million people did not care enough to march in protest against X".
Do you really think the BBC will pay any attention to the 100k of complaints? Of course not. When the Queen dies then exactly the same thing will happen again (although probably for longer).
I agree that the BBC will not pay any attention to the complainers. And in my view it should not since, when expressed as a percentage of viewers, 100,000 is a trivial number. For much the same reason I do not think that the government should pay much attention to protests, marches and demonstrations.
The alternative would be to give a disproportionate say to small but vociferous minorities.
So those who didn't complain because they knew it would be pointless were happy with what the BBC did?
Lootman wrote:That does beg the question of what the BBC should respond to in terms of viewer feedback. I would assume they conduct opinion polls and focus groups, which should give a better sense of what the silent majority of license payers think. Complainants and protesters are self-selecting groups, who may not be representative of the population as a whole.
The BBC will do what the BBC wants to do; nothing the public thinks will make any difference.