Changes to BBC Parliament & Political Programming

It's not a shame at all, we look to your country and have seen what it's like when you don't have it

No, because we aren't a two-party system. Also politics isn't that tribal here



Yes, though with what I don't know. Sports events like Wimbledon or the Olympics maybe but they'd have to fall at the right time. They'd need to have a seperate EPG place for non parliamentary stuff to make it practical and mean no EPG rescans every time it's used

What is the arrangement for the BBC studio in Millbank? Do they own and staff it or rent it out?
I ask because these plans probably will reduce the use of that studio to around 5 hours a week plus Budget and Spring Statement programmes. Could the plan be for Politics Live to come from NBH - integrating into the New Channel and saving the costs of the Millbank studio/crew?

The Millbank studio is part of the BBC Westminster TV and Radio operation in No 4 Millbank.

The amount of content being made in the main studio isn't dropping hugely. Politics Live replaces The Daily Politics every day, This Week remains, and Sunday Politics came from NBH so the loss of that doesn't change things. I would expect that local election coverage will also continue to come from the studio.

The ability for studio guests on Politics Live to get to the studio from the HoC and HoL is a key reason for retaining it. NBH is significantly further away. (You can walk to No. 4 Millbank from Parliament pretty quickly)

The studio is also - as we have seen in the past - a disaster recovery location for BBC News (i.e. a backup newsroom and studio/gallery)

Well I got Owned. I just thought a channel could float given the division of the newspapers. I realize there are multiple parties but don’t they typically align with similar views. Like the DUP forming a government with the tories and the rest fell in line with the Labour Party to lead to the opposition government.

As for the bandwidth how much would it take for a holding slide with maybe using the existing audio stream transmitted? I was thinking of just using it to expand incrementally existing channels or a red button channel. However it would only be for the SD channels and apparently according to Digital Bitrate averages 3.4Mbs. Where channels that have a holding slide for part of the day like BBC 4 appear to average low for ALL is 0.5Mbps (and all the time shifted channels ALL lows are 0.9 Mbps CBBC or 0.5 Mbps CBEEBIES). I assume those lows are the holding slide. That would allow extra capacity in BBC A MUX.

I think the issue with streaming BBC Parliament is not everyone has access to broadband strong enough to handle streaming.

You'll see that the min/max/average video bitrate data for BBC Four and CBeebies is the same. Together they form one 24/7 stream sharing the same video PID. Between 0531-1857, an off-air MHEG data slate appears over BBC Four on Freeview 9. From 1858-0530, a MHEG data slate appears over CBeebies on Freeview 202. The lowest video data usage is likely to occur between around 0400 and 0530 when BBC Four has finished broadcasting and is showing a video caption saying 'BBC Four is back at 7pm'.

BBC Parliament is a very low bandwidth channel and uses the lower 544x576 SD picture resolution, compared to the other SD channels. With long periods showing mostly static talking heads, there isn't that much space used.

However we know there's going to be changes to the BBC-A/PSB1 multiplex, certainly in Scotland, where capacity will have to be found for the new BBC Scotland TV channel launching early next year. When the BBC originally proposed BBC One+1 in early 2015, it said it would appear on BBC-B/PSB3 although it may become possible to move it to BBC-A/PSB1 in 2017 following encoder improvements. Unfortunately, the documentation for the BBC One+1 proposals don't seem to be online anymore, but it did provide insight that it might be possible to configure the multiplex in the future.

However, we also know that the BBC has in the last three years looked at a phased exit from the BBC Red Button service as it aims to promote connected TV services, including the Red Button+ HbbTV service. The BBC is actively promoting HbbTV 2.0 support on digital TV plaforms where it has a stake in, so it wouldn't surprise me if the BBC Red Button linear service might reduce to covering the dormant BBC Three downtime and BBC Parliament downtime in the future, while the connected version provides all the extra streams.

An MHEG holding slide (as used for BBC 4/ Cbeebies down time) takes next to no bandwidth, and the actual AV stream could be quenched.

Believe me - it really isn't. Look at the state of the UK print media, and the US news channels, to see what happens when impartiality in news reporting isn't a requirement. I don't think many people look at the UK and go 'What we really need is Fox News to replace Sky News'...

The US argument that biased news is acceptable because of the plurality of the marketplace ignores the fact that audiences gravitate towards outlets that 'they agree with', and don't get plurality of news provision as a result.

The suggestion of a Tory and a Labour pair of channels really doesn't work in a UK where you have the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the DUP, the UUP, Sinn Fein, the Alliance, UKIP, The Green Party, the Scottish Labour and Tory parties etc. One of the reasons for impartiality is to stop the polarisation of reporting and the crowding out of minor voices in politics - at least to a degree. We aren't a strict two party system here - we're becoming more like many of the countries in mainland Europe where a mix of parties co-exist. After all we had a coalition government in recent years. (Tories + Lib Dems - who are definitely not politically on the same page)

Of course once we move to the online world - impartiality and Ofcom regulation ceases to apply, Fake News proliferates etc.

It's important not to see impartiality as censorship too - they are very different things.

It will be interesting to see how the proposed part-year BBC Parliament will work on Sky.

TV Forum readers will be aware that when BBC Three was changed to a promotional service in February and March 2016 following the linear channel's official closure, there was a 'secret schedule' of BBC Three programmes that remained on-air between 0100-0400 every night, in order to meet Sky EPG rules.

With BBC Parliament now set to be off-air for lengthy periods, will the BBC sneak out a few old recordings in the middle of the night to keep the EPG slot? Or it is now the time to make BBC Parliament a red button service, with a red button prompt on BBC News Channel when a live Parliamentary stream is active, thus getting round the Sky EPG slot issue?

I think it would be more likely that Sky would be required by Ofcom to change their rules. Politicians won't want a Red Button only service.

Interesting that you mention this, because Ofcom's Sharon White has written a piece in today's Times calling for regulation to extend to cover social media sites https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/it-s-time-to-regulate-social-media-sites-that-publish-news-pxsg9t3fv

So this thread is probably a good place to mention the former disaster recovery procedure for BBC Parliament.

In the days when the channel was still produced and played out by Millbank Studios (as it happens, an ITV company), its power supply was not the most resilient thing in the world. The playout server would fall over, or the entire office's electricity would go out - and the DTT and DSAT encoders would suddenly have no input.

So the backup plan? A domestic DVD player, in CCA, in Television Centre. Usually, but not always, loaded with a review of the previous term of Parliament. It would be patched into circuit, on the patchbay, and left on repeat until power was restored at Millbank. Sometimes bits of the player's UI would make it on screen. Occasionally people would eject the disc by mistake when trying to turn on the repeat function. I think once the disc was a year out of date.

This arrangement lasted a good few years, before someone scratched together some pennies for a slightly better solution!