BBC Parliament ownership discussion

Following on from the conversation commenced in the 'Vote 2001' thread, does parliament need a separate channel nowadays? Or should the BBC split it onto different services like putting shows on the BBC News Channel, BBC Red Button, Democracy Live, and other interactive services?

Another method might be to return to its roots and sell off the channel to a consortium. But would they want to take on the burden of a non-profit unit?

'The Parliamentary Channel' launched on cable in 1992 as the British version of C-SPAN by United Artists, before being bought by the BBC in 1998 and relaunched as 'BBC Parliament' in September of that year.

Here is a video from C-SPAN online of the launch of the 'The British Parliamentary Channel': http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/27220-1

What a bizarre interview. Why would anyone watching at the time in the States have any interest in 99% of what she's saying?!

That's the only piece of presentation I've seen from that channel. It's one of those channels that I can never find any footage of only.

BBC Parliament has to stay for key coverage of ministerial statements and relevant questioning, it's simple and ticks all the boxes. Democracy live is a useful overflow but only that. To add Parliamentary coverage to the News Channel would devalue the NC's already pressured time.

As for it's ownership it's key PSB in rhe true sense of the term, not the watered down excuse that Ofcom have permitted it to become. The BBC is it's natural home as it should not be exposed to commercial interests.

BBC Parliament coverage of the European Parliament is woefully inadequate considering that almost two-thirds of new laws on the UK statute book are debated and passed there.

Thanks for posting that, some interesting things being discussed there. Slightly depressing how many cable operations in 1990s Britain were being funded by foreigners!

The problem that BBC Parliament faces is similar to those facing a sports broadcaster - everything happens at the same time. However, whereas Sky Sports just told the Premier League to move it's kick off times, BBC Parliament is not really in any position to ask the European Parliament to sit in the evenings! In addition, there are often days (and, over the summer, weeks) where there's absolutely nothing happening at all.

I can't see many solutions though, to be honest. Short of turning BBC Parliament into an "interactive" service - live Commons, red button for House of Lords and European Parliament - which would be impossible on Freeview (and probably quite awkward on cable), it can only keep doing what it's doing now.

What you mean like Democracy Live? - http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/default.stm

In the words of page 29 of a nice little Parliament briefing paper I have here:

"All measurements have their problems and it is possible to justify any measure between 15% and 50% or thereabouts. To exclude EU regulations from the calculation is likely to be an under-estimation of the proportion of EU-based national laws (see table on page 20), while to include all EU regulations in the calculation is probably an over-estimation (see table above). The answer in numerical terms lies somewhere in between the two approaches"

http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/rp2010/RP10-062.pdf

Course if you want to get your figures from, iirc "Open Europe: a think tank advocating EU reform" then two thirds it is.



But lets not get taken off course...

Or, in simple terms, stop believing everything you read in the Daily Heil.

Seems to me to be the perfect thing for the BBC to do... it's public service, isn't workable as a commercial concern and is very cheap to run. Leave it as it is I reckon

The BBC make use of a lot of the BBC Parliament resources, for the News division in reports and archive footage, I see no reason why it should not continue as is.

Fine, but the BBC still doesn't dedicate anything approaching 32% of its coverage to the European Parliament.



Mi scusi? Do not lump me in with the Daily Heil, you charmless baggage.

Correct. Indeed the "democratic deficit" of the EU is exacerbated by the lack of coverage on TV which would be subject to proper neutrality rules rather than the coverage in the papers which can be as mad as they like (hence "EU bans milk jugs" and such rubbish).