From: philip@mentorg.com (Philip Peake)
Subject: BBC WSTV
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 22:06:25 GMT
Organization: Mentor Graphics
Keywords: 
Followup-To: 

I listened to the WS 'phone-in, and was (pleasantly) surprised to hear
a call which was almost word for word what was proposed in this group.

The reply was predictable (as well as dissapointing).

For those who don't know, I will try to explain how the BBC
operates, so that you can better understand their problems, and
the problems faced in trying to get BBC programing into the USA.
Most of this is from memory, and so probably not 100% correct.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is an independent entity,
funded by listeners and viewers in the United Kingdom. Revenue is raised
by a TV licence fee, payable by anyone owning a TV in the UK.

You could view this as a "targeted" tax.

Towards the end of the British Empire days, the BBC extended its coverage
to basically cover the world - at this point 1/5 of the worlds' population
had the right to a British passport - and were supposed to be - and maybe
even were - interested in what the BBC had to say.

As the empire went the way of all empires (good and bad) the British
govenment decided that the BBS world service was basically a "good thing",
and decided to fund it seperately. There is a grant from the government
which now pays for the BBC world service radio.

Then, along came Maggie "Great Britain Ltd" Thatcher, who's basic philisophy
would make Ronald Regan look like a raving communist. She wanted (wants)
Britain to be run like a corporation, and if things are not profitable, then
if not indispensable for other reasons - flush them.

The BBC was faced with various propositions, including going fully commercial.
Obviously, the existing commercial TV companies were less than delighted
by this idea, and managed to tone down the idea. However, some movement
on the part of the BBC part was required. BBC Enterprises was set up, with
the task of taking old, worn out, radio shows and selling them to other parts
of the world - the idea seemed to work, and produced some income for the BBC
to offset some of the license fee increases which would have been required.
The idea was soon extended to selling old, worn out, TV programs - that worked
too.

Fairly recently, satellite TV took off, and a natural assumption was that
the BBC world service would get lots more money to extend into TV services.

Instead, the government decided to create a new, UNFUNDED, enterprise;
BBC World Service TV.

So, we now have four arms to the BBC:

	BBC (domestic)	     - funded by a targeted tax.
	BBC world service    - funded by a government grant.
	BBC enterprises      - a money making organisation.
	BBC world service tv - unfunded (one day, for profit ?) organisation.

BBC WSTV currently sells its programing.
They are not in the TV buisness themselves, they form "partenerships"
with other (local) companies who sell that programing to cable (or other)
companies for distribution.

BBC WSTV is currently News and documentary oriented, since the interesting
(read saleable) programs are picked up by BBC enterprises, and sold
individualy.

I think that it takes little imagination to realise just how thrilled existing
US companies are at the prospect of a "quality" news source being made available
in the US. Not surprisingly, BBC WSTV are finding it very difficult to find
a "partener" for US distribution - and even if they do, I wouldn't be surprised
if that partener turned out to be cable company ...

So, in short, if you are waiting to fing BBC WSTV floating around in the sky ...
just don't hold your breath ...

There seem to be two possible solutions:

	- Convince the British government that you don't make money out of
	  cultural promotion (next to impossible, whilst the current
	  governement is around).

	- Convince OPB to become the partener ...
	  OPB really isn't too far from BBC programing as it is !

I suppose that a third possibility is to learn German of French, because
they really do believe in spreading their culture around.

Philip
Newsgroups: rec.video.satellite
From: dingram@dims.demon.co.uk ("Darren P. Ingram")