Will the Hutton Inquiry Harm the BBC?

First off, Neil Green, I mean that The Weakest Link is a cheap knock-off of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I'm not begruding the BBC a quiz show, I'm just questioning why it has to be a faddish knock-off.

Second, A Major Setup, I think you touched on the crux the matter really clearly. Andrew Gilligan did not demonstrate journalistic integrity. AND, and this is important, the BBC governors did not demonstrate the necessary objectivity by quickly jumping to his total defense.

So while it's very true that Gilligan and the BBC are two different things, by BBC I mean the governors -- the core management that seems to be more willing to cover up its problems than deal with them in a constructive, honest way.

What are you talking about? Theres no similarity AT ALL between the two shows. Does that mean that Are You Being Served is the same as the Good Life, because they were both comedy shows from a certain era? What rubbish.

I'm not saying they're similar in their details (which they are not)...but the format is the same, the colour scheme is the same, the style is the same.

Too much of one thing is really boring -- as American networks are finding out after airing no less than 20 different reality shows on the last little while.

And I'm not anti-BBC gameshow...i like test the nation.

Sorry Mr Fogg, the format is not the same. Not even the colours are the same. One is a one player accumulation game, the other is a team elimination game.

The ONLY similarity is that they both use moving-head lighting, and even then Weakest Link use Martin MAC500's and Millionaire uses Vari-Lites.

Are you confused because they are both on television ?

Who cares what sort of lights they use? The point I was trying to make was that the shows had a similar style.

Not only was Millionaire watched because it was a quiz show, it was watched because of the style of its presentation (which sort of explains why nobody watches it anymore).

The fact that these shows don't endure that well suggests that they lack substance and are faddish.

I could care less about a private company broadcasting shows like this, but the BBC uses public money to follow fads and trends (blindly, I might add)...without actually doing anything that demonstrably improves the public good for the people of Britain, who the BBC is supposed to serve.

Maybe I'm a bit anal about it, but I think that publicly funded broadcasters shouldn't be allowed to participate in trendy nonsense that won't be on the air in 3 years because another trend has emerged.

TWL and WWTBAM are in no way similiar, this is not a "trend", TWL was created in the UK first and then sold on to somewhere in the line of 70-80 countries (somebody correct me!), in fact it was more of a trend setter.
WWTBAM followed a similiar line earlier on, thats the only possible link between them. In fact TWL is justified in its existence
because it has made a very good money return for the BBC. It also achieves weekday audiences of 2-3 million, it has its own cult following,
it has done and continues to do well.

If the BBC got into porn production it could make awesome returns on invested.

But the BBC wasn't founded to make blockbuster television that would generate tonnes of cash (that's ITV's job ).

I think the BBC should focus on making quality television that wouldn't be made by profit seeking companies, and leave profit seeking companies (ITV, 4, five, etc.) to make programming that's designed to generate a positive return on investment.

I'm actually making a credible argument based on economics. If the BBC makes profit-seeking programming (let's abbreviate this as PSP) then it will crowd out private investment in such programming by companies like ITV, 4 and five (because there's only so much demand for it).

And, by making PSP, the BBC is not fulfilling it's role -- which should be to provide programming that profit-seeking companies would not likely make because it is unlikely to create a large positive return on investment.

So does that mean that the BBC is doomed to make crap that appeals to niche audiences? Not necessarily, they could make lots of programming that would appeal to large audiences, but would be deemed too expensive to produce by profit-seeking companies. The BBC also has TONNES of archive and library footage (at least what wasn't wiped in the 1960s and 1970s). They could also make use of that.

My point is that the BBC was created to fill a role that capitalist markets do not provide for -- namely, producing and broadcasting programming that profit-seeking broadcasters do not have any incentive to produce.

This is what I think the BBC should do.