Les régulateurs français sont désagréables

Chie, if you genuinly believe this is a once-in-a blue-moon time you have bashed the BBC, perhaps you should take a look at some of your posts. I think you're blowing this Twitter/Facebook thing out of proportion.



Care to elaborate? Do you dismiss the claim that the BBC is cutting significant parts of its website or is it a grammar issue I'm not spotting?



Hmmm...do you think this 'interacting' or contacting TV programmes with your views is a new thing? Of course not; it's just being channelled through new media.

Is it though? It's valued very highly but it doesn't make a profit. The value is all on paper, it's yet to work out a way of monetising what it has.


I don't think it's the worst, if you've seen any of CNN US you'll see how bad it can actually be. Some BBC presenters are worse than others - Richard Bacon never fails to cease the opportunity to plug Twitter, his account and the ones of his guests. Unlike some programmes which use it as a way of communicating, he doesn't.

That is a very odd thing to do, surely what an advertiser does in it's ads is it's own business.

However I can see a case for a broadcaster here to do that with mentions of social networking sites within programmes. Now product placement it is possible but then again ITV means less to Facebook than Facebook means to ITV

Today I expressed my view on commerical service endorsements by the BBC after it emerged that our European neighbour decided to curtail such practices in the French media.

At the weekend I criticised some aspects of BBC News after being invited to do so by a BBC consultation. In response to a number of the 'how well are we doing' questions I actually replied simply with, 'very well'.

When was the last time I 'bashed' the BBC before that?

A very, very long time ago. I accept the BBC as a fact of life, it exists and I haven't got a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is selective support for particular commercial services and blatant hypocrisy/willfull ignorance with regard to extremely serious political issues.



I just think you're being incredibly melodramatic. The BBC isn't under threat by any stretch of anyone's imagination. The corporation is just weeding out the crap it puts out while saving money at the same time, and will hopefully be a much better broadcaster for it. To suggest that the BBC does nothing wrong would be ridiculous.



If contacting a TV programme was worth doing prior to the advent of Twitter, then you would have sent your thoughts via email. Now people just say anything, because it's so easy to do, and thus a large percentage of the views sent in to TV programmes via Twitter is complete drivel. Can you not see that?



Even though it doesn't make any revenue, Twitter is still a product that can be bought, sold and invested in privately. If Google bought Twitter then the creators of Twitter would become billionaires, all thanks to endorsements from the BBC and other media outlets/celebrities etc.

What makes you think the email's weren't complete drivel?

People had to open their email client, type the address, think of a subject and politely top and tail their pertinent message. You only went to all that effort if you really had something worth saying.

To describe sending messages via Twitter as 'interaction', like it has anything approximating the same level of importance as conventional methods of communication, is daft. Actually having an exchange with somebody is interaction; firing off an opinion on Twitter is just pontification.

The longwinded essays that were a hallmark of the old BBC blogs are evidence that just because it allows a larger amount of writing to be submitted doesn't improve the quality. This forum allows for a large amount of writing to be entered, doesn't stop the cretins from posting "omg any caps" does it?

I remember sending inane one line emails (with plenty outlook express stationery too) to radio 1 when I was 12. Didn't stop me being tedious either.



You can have a very long exchange on twitter quite easily.

30 years ago phoning Noel on swap shap was money in BT's pocket, so without actually saying "phone 01 811 8055 on your BT landline" the BBC were inadvertanly advertising british telecom by telling you to phone in.

saying "follow us on facebook" is the same as saying "go on our website" it's still advertising a service with which to interact with the programme whether it's phoning, faxing, emailing or posting on a social networking site.

it's just the way audience participation has evolved over the years, in 2111 we may be projecting telepathing holograms to our favourite programmes

Not to mention the revenue generating numbers (0871 etc) which return a profit for both BT and the subscriber of the line.

Despite deregulation, France Telecom is by far the largest carrier in that country, with 129 million subscribers (across Europe), so broadcasters pointing to a telephone number - even if they don't name France Telecom are ultimately endorsing a commercial service. Its state owned, but fully autonomous and run for profit.

At least facebook is free to use - telephones often aren't.

As to twitter being a good tool for communication or not - I tend not to bother reading it or updating mine, I simply prefer facebook. I wouldn't dare to suggest I know better, as plainly millions upon millions of folk love it.

So, in your opinion, you get a better view of viewer's opinions if you have a smaller number of responses from people who "really had something worth saying", than getting a larger number or responses which were quick and easy to create?

Incidentally, do SMS's count as a conventional method of communication to you?

As somebody who works in TV, believe me when I say you get an equal amount of incoherent, banal and illiterate emails as you do Tweets and Facebook messages.

I think its fair to say that, on any given subject or programme, the majority of contributions are a pile of dookie.

Nevertheless, the reason they are considered "valuable" by the broadcaster is that is takes the viewer's engagement to the next level - not merely passively viewing, but (perhaps just in their minds) taking part. Its rather like when you write to a magazine of newspaper letters page. You can be fairly certain that if you've done that then you'll make sure you don't miss the next couple of editions in the hope that you see your words in print.

For a commercial broadcaster this is a key aspect to inviting people to join in, even if the lions share of messages are sniggered at and then deleted.

The mode of communication is surely irrelevant. To ascribe a "worthiness" quotient to it just because one involves an email client or a few extra keystrokes seems specious to me.

By that reckoning, any old claptrap typed on a manual typewriter would be considered more important because of the effort in producing it.