The BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

Continuing to ask the important questions like ‘what if most of the people who die from coronavirus would have died anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ?’.

I was just thinking of how the BBC might be able to make itself a bit more popular if eg: it put BBC4 on for longer (at least say 12 noon on) showing nothing but classic old black & white British films.

I woke up to the immodest and tiresome voice of Bob Geldof on R4. He could bore a virus to death.

Xpost I think the problem with that is BBC4 shares the bandwidth with CBeebies. There’d be riots on the streets if parents couldn’t leave their kids stuck in front of Peppa Pig at this time.

showing nothing but classic old black & white British films.

We've got Talking Pictures for that - and there aren't that many good old black & white British films anyway.

:o

I've inherited my mother's dislike of the British - or English, as she called them - films of her youth tbh.

*john laurie's ghost weeps*

He's on Talking Pictures every day!

now i want to watch "bees on the boat-deck" (1939 tv drama)

"old films" good, "old Mr Cholmondley-Warner films" bad but thanks Dan for explaining why BBC4 has those weird hours

(xp) A 'TV movie' - from 1939!

i'd happily watch old movies from almost anywhere rather than rolling quota quickies tbh

Peppa fucking Pig isn’t on CBeebies! I know the whole point of this thread is to rag on the bbc but that’s going too far.

BBC plans include more educational stuff for kids during the day, given that they are all off school. There's a lot on the web as well, always has been, but a lot of it is still in flash and hard to play (but that's being worked on)

Also more box sets and stuff available for longer.

Tony was talking about it on the radio the other day.

Xpost you can tell I’m not one of CBeebies core demographic.

the educational broadcasts begin 20 April, divvied up by age group

Yes tons of stuff already on BBC Teach, Bitesize, Tiny Happy People (ugh) and more

I listened to last night’s Coronavirus Newscast (formerly Brexitcast) and I gotta say it was very good. no Laura K providing most of the basis for that granted.

(Tracer, are you BC5?)

NBH but now WFH :)

(ah, ok. Your insider sounds knowledge made me think you were in bc5 because there's a big team over there. I'm on the team that'll be transcoding the bitesize flash video into something more modern - we've done 10s of thousands of clips already, but bitesize were a low priority, before Wednesday...)

(And I think we've met a couple of times irl, at the swimmer fap before a clientele gig when fortunate hazel was over? The Lexington perhaps?)

YES! We did! That was..... wow quite some time ago. We should fix that.... at er, some point!

Funny how all this low-priority stuff like, you know, education, basic salaries, the NHS, “suddenly” becomes important

BBC WS obit of Kenny Rogers: ".. he was known for such hits as Coward of the Century"

LOL. Lots of possible nominations for that title tbh.

I don't know what Talking Pictures is, unless you mean a BBC programme that's on on Saturday afternoons sometimes.

The thread then became too technical for me.

Channel 81 on Freeview. Mostly old, terrible British movies with the occasional cracker.

Also some British TV shows from the 60s/70s like the genuinely entertaining Human Jungle with Herbert Lom.

https://talkingpicturestv.co.uk/

TV channel dedicated to old, mainly British, films and TV. Available on Freeview, Youview, Sky, Virgin etc

xpost to Tom D

Today's highlights:

Selected highlights 21-March #TPTV
10:25 THE LARGE ROPE (1953)
11:50 CARLTON BROWN OF THE F.O. (1959)
13:40 NEUTRAL PORT (1940) Premiere
15:30 THE BLACK ROSE (1950)
17:50 ABOVE US THE WAVES (1955)
19:50 TURN THE KEY SOFTLY (1953) Premiere
21:30 THE SEEKERS (1954) Premiere pic.twitter.com/l6DezV1syr

— Talking Pictures TV (@TalkingPicsTV) March 20, 2020

bees on the boat-deck conspicuous by its absence

I need to investigate some of these channels. Maybe more films are on that I realise.

(I don't have anything more advanced that Freeview or Freesat.)

... Channel 81, Freeview.

If you're into spaghetti westerns and are an early riser I noticed recently that Channel 40 seems to show (usually pretty bad) spag westerns every morning.

It's channel 81 on Freeview assuming your tuning is up to date. It's one of the half dozen channels I always check if I'm looking for something that might be watchable. The quality of the movies is wildly variable but there's a lot on there that you don't see anywhere else.

Ah sorry Tom beat me to it.

There are multiple other movie channels that show good things from time to time. You know about London Live and Film 4 obv, but there's also Sony Movies (32, modern stuff), Sony Movies Action (40, war films), Sony movies classic (50, showing African Queen and Big Heat later today). Horror Channel (70) often has decent films on too, along with a lot of terrible ones.

These elderly people would have just died anyway | me for the BBC news website pic.twitter.com/LhGNopAC4X

— Je téléphone à la police (@je_police) March 21, 2020

I complained to the BBC about that god-awful "trad wives" thing they ran on the website a month or so ago. Here's the response I got- cheers!

We’re contacting you to apologise that we were unable to reply to the complaint you made earlier this year to the BBC. We regret that we could not provide you with our usual level of service.

This happened after large numbers of complaints were submitted to the BBC at the end of last year and we were unable to reply to everyone within our normal time periods. We would like to reassure you however that we circulated your complaint to the production team and BBC management the following morning, so they were aware of yours and the other overnight feedback the next day.

Thanks for the film channel recommendations.

I note that others know channels by their numbers. I don't know the number of any channels or have a reliable spatial sense in my head of where they are in relation to each other. I imagine BBC1 as the start and then I press a button and it scrolls down (but it's hard to get the right button sometimes) in a not entirely logical way. Film4 is several pages later for some reason.

Perhaps one can find a channel just by pressing the number in somehow? I could try that but I doubt that I would remember the numbers.

You could always use the on screen guide to see what films are on if remembering numbers is difficult.

i usually just page down the guide. some numbers i remember because i watch them a lot and because paging down a dozen times to get to TalkingPictures is a ballache.

I have found that I can get Sony Movies and watched 3:10 TO YUMA (2007) again that way last night.

Just add your favourite channels to your, uh, favourites list and scroll through that instead.

Watched the original of 310 on Criterion Channel this week, so good.

Re: movies, we’ve been watching criterion from the UK - you need a vpn to sign up but it doesn’t check your region once you’re streaming

(So you only need to use the vpn once)

I don't have a favourites list. Unfamiliar with how these things work. Have never found digital TVs very easy.

Agree with Chuck Tatum -- I think that the 1957 3:10 TO YUMA is tremendous and having watched the remake again last night, I now think that the original is probably better (I was unsure before).

R4 playing culture war against "wokeness" programming (presented by Helen Lewis) during the worst UK public health crisis in a century.

It's always good to vent our irritation with Helen Lewis.