Finding the Positive

[tealin]

I'm being a good citizen and learning CG at work ... I could make any number of pithy comments on it but the emphasis here is on good citizen, so I shall present you with the positive:

As CG lacks a gestural rough pass, as one does in 2D, there is no point in the process at which I must fully employ both left and right sides of my brain simultaneously, which means I can now listen to Radio 4 all the time. The immediately apparent benefits are that every morning will start with Eddie Mair and I will never miss another show again. The bigger picture, though, is this: Radio 4 is the happy drug that got me through several mind-numbing and existentially challenging productions in the past, international and domestic turmoil, emotional upheaval, deracination and homesickness, unemployment, chores, you name it ... as long as I have my aural narcotics I need never actually cope with anything ever again! Being stuck in a computer lab with twenty-eight copies of Maya is nothing!

I love you, Radio 4.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

You often mention the BBC iPlayer (which does indeed go up to eleven).
Can you, as someone living outside the UK, access all its programming or are there some kind of limitations?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I, as someone outside the UK, can only access radio programming. Apparently you don't have to pay the license fee for the radio anymore? Growing up with NPR I can't help but feel guilty for not contributing ... I would gladly pay the license fee for access to the TV side of the iPlayer as well, and access-by-fee would also eliminate people in the UK not paying their license fee because they can get it for free online, but someone somewhere decided it would be easier to restrict access by geographic location rather than password or cookie or something. Limited iPlayer access ought to be an enormous tragedy for me, but if I had access to BBC TV, too, I might possibly never get anything done ever again, so it has its upside.

That said, if you are a spy for the Beeb, and are collecting intelligence in regards to opening up the license fee and iPlayer to the international market as a way to bring in some extra cash, I urge you to STOP! And think. While this plan would benefit me, and people like me, I can easily see it becoming a slippery slope where the BBC chases a larger and larger audience, compromising its integrity in the process ... Some of the new programming on PBS, for example, seems designed for sale to The Discovery Channel, and American public radio seems to have abandoned objective documentaries for human interest stories because that's what 'members' seem to respond to ... I fell in love with Radio 4 because it appealed to my inner elderly college professor and was everything unprofitable that American (and, to a lesser extent, Canadian) media was abandoning.

[(Anonymous)]

While the licence fee is collected by the BBC in its guise as the very aggressive* TV Licensing Authority, it is set and issued by the secretary of state for culture so you don't have to worry about any extension of charges outside the UK.


*"Dear illegal TV viewer. Our records indicate YOU DO NOT HAVE A TV LICENCE. Crack BBC stormtroopers have been dispatched to issue a written notice of non-compliance and liquidate you, your family/cohabitors."
Something like this is sent to every household irrespective of weather or not you actually have a TV.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

But I want to worry about it! My Membership Dollars Ensure That Such Quality Programming Continues! (see what NPR does to an impressionable young mind?) Seriously, though, I would pay for magical internet television if they'd let me (or if they threatened to take my radio away).

I have heard tales of the BBC stormtroopers... my sisters knows a man who only had a radio but went out and bought an old black-and-white television so he could just pay the discounted black-and-white license fee and get them to stop bothering him.