BBC Parliament

Looking ahead to 2007

2007 is set to be a big year of anniversaries for BBC Parliament.

We will continue with full broadcasts of election night programming, looking back at the 1987, 1992 and Labour's victory at the 1997 elections.

The 300 year anniversary of the Act of Union with Scotland will see some dedicated coverage on the channel.

The channel will have a documentary on the Zinoviev letter scandal of 1924 which contributed to the Conservative victory in that year's general election.

The book discussion programme, BOOKtalk, will look at the literary highlights from the public sphere with Michael Dobbs, Andrew Roberts and Rosemary Ashton set for the new year.

news.bbc.co.uk

Excellent that they are going to show 1992.

Yes, I'll be looking forward to 92

1992's finally going to be shown, then! That only leaves 1959 and 2001.

And 1997 will be the first one to be reshown three times, having previously been reshown in 2002 and 2005. And I missed them both, so I'll try and catch it this time, it being the first election I actually remember (I remember meeting Ken Livingstone, him being our local MP at the time).

How about a reshowing of the Election Night Armistice with Armando Iannucci, too?

The BBC - we make it what it is, hey!


Perhaps they'll be quick to take revenge for the licence fee not rising as much as they like by finally ditching this waste of space!

The 'waste of space' being your load-of-tripe posts, then

The BBC is accountable to the general public and to the Government to provide some sort of political coverage, and one of the easiest ways to do this is to stream Commons debates live from Westminster. If C4 or ITV had a similar service, would you slate it like that?

Being a politics student, seeing election replays and watching some Commons/Lords debates might actually enhance my education - so I do believe that the TV Licence is justified in paying for BBC P!

Trouble is, students don't usually pay the license fee. It's the working population who do, and only a tiny portion them them has ever watched BBC Parliament, or have had any inclination to do so.

I'd like to know how many people watch this channel, I doubt it's very much at all. Could easily just put the interesting bits on the main channels and keep this as a web stream only

I can't wait to see the 1987 General Election again. It's the first General Election I remember as a child. I was allowed to stay up and watch the start of the programme.

Here we go again with the predictable whinging.

It's not about ratings, it's about public service and accountability.

It's a bloody good channel that deserves a higher profile for its output (above and beyond the basic coverage of proceedings in the Commons and Lords).

I'm sure there are plenty of channels nowadays that are further up the "waste of space" list than BBC Parliament. It's PSB, it's informative to some, it costs the BBC buttons to transmit (they don't even televise the live proceedings, they just take the signal) and if you really don't like it, why not turn over to one of those channels that's much more deserving of it's spectrum space?

Like those quiz channels, or bid channels, or telly-sales channels?

There must come a point were it's simply wasting bandwidth though were it could simply be put just online for those that want it. Most of the content is esoteric and of little interest to the majority of people I imagine. The additional programming should be on one of the main channels anyway, if they're actually interested in being a public service.
As for accountability, I'm not sure that can be used to justify the channels existence. There are other ways to obtain the information and video easily enough so it's not as if it's hidden to anyone.