Randomness: In defence of science programming

On my daily morning trawl through my Twitter feed, I came across this:

"@ProfBrianCox: Can I ask anyone debating myself and @SarahVine not to insult anyone; It's a civilised disagreement, if adorned with colourful rhetoric"

I was bemused. Why was he debating with this vaguely familiar name? I scrolled further down. Found the beginning of their discussion. It turns out Ms Vine is a journalist for The Times (hence the vaguely familiar name) and had written an article claiming that younger, attractive presenters on science programmes were detracting from the science. Professor Cox is one of those younger, apparently attractive presenters, hence his apparent annoyance. Ms. Vine, in her article "TV science needs mad professors", writes that "[w]hen it comes to seriously brainy subjects such as physics, medicine, maths and history, I want my experts as nutty and as dishevelled as can be." She further asserted that the BBC's use of Prof. Cox as a presenter was an effort to sex up "fusty" subjects. She made several comments regarding Cox's appearance, describing him in the article as "handsome" and then on Twitter making a comment about his "dishiness". This, together with her opinion of science (and history) as fusty, suggests to me that she isn't actually all that interested in the subject if she's going to immediately write off huge chunks of academia as fusty. Hence my recent post on facebook:

Dear Sarah Vine,
If you think that having younger "dishy" presenters for science programmes is distracting you from the science, I'd suggest you probably weren't all that interested in the science in the first place. Now, go back to being beauty editor and kindly stop claiming that science programmes should have "nutty and dishevelled"... presentors. Have fun with your outdated stereotypes, darling.

Included in there is my other problem with her making such comments. She's beauty editor at The Times. By all means, she's free to write about what she wants, but what has science programming and its presenters got to do with beauty? Cox also raised an interesting point in their Twitter discussion: part of the reason kids are put off from going into science is because they perceive it as dominated by old men. If Ms. Vine finds it hard to focus past the presenter and onto the science, that's her loss. But to blame it on the broadcaster's choice of presenter is just ridiculous.

As it is, I've not yet seen Prof. Cox's latest series, it being only just showing in the UK and me being in Australia. However, I have seen his previous series and I found him an engaging presenter who explained things in a way easily accessible to those without much scientific knowledge. He also comes across as absolutely passionate about his subject. Yes, he is kinda cute but not once do I remember missing something he said because I was distracted by his "dishiness". And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sit and giggle at his latest tweets, apparently written in his "real" accent. He's from Lancashire, it's awesome.

Actually, that brings up something else I saw today - apparently presenters with regional accents are harder to understand for some people, using Cox as an example. The article, published in The Telegraph, claims "a long-awaited BBC report has found that regional accents are an equally significant factor. The findings could explain why Prof Cox, with his distinctive Lancashire accent, struggles to be understood." Another load of absolute bull. For a start, while Cox does have a distinct accent, it's not particularly strong, certainly not strong enough to make him unintelligible. Secondly, I'm from Grimsby, which given the local accent may as well be in Yorkshire (Grimbarians do not like this, we don't like the Yorkies). Anyway, my point is, I grew up around Northern English accents. However, I have not once had an issue understanding someone from Southern England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland... unless it's really strong. So to say that regional accents can present a problem for some viewers is ridiculous. Foreign viewers, I can sort of understand - there's such a range of English/British accents and I imagine most foreign viewers learn from R.P English, or a generic Southern accent like Estuary English (or American English, grr). I hope this is what the article meant, because if British folks are having trouble understanding the range of accents... dear god. Anyway, shutting up now. If you're UK-based, you should totally catch Prof. Cox's Wonders Of The Universe series. I imagine it's awesome.

Randomness: The BBC

I'm a Brit. I love the BBC. If I was living in the UK right now and had a functioning TV, I wouldn't mind paying the licence fee for good quality programming. As it is, I'm in Australia and in the UK either I'm with my parents so they pay the fee or I'm at uni where there is no functioning TV. I use BBC iPlayer online instead, which is fee-free so long as you don't watch programmes live.

This does have a point. The UK government has plans to make huge cuts to the BBC's budget via the licence fee. Currently, those cuts stand at 16% (last I heard, which was yesterday). There were fears they could be up to 26%. That's a quarter of the entire budget or equivalent to the cost of running BBC2 (so I'm told). Yes, there need to be changes in spending to sort out our money troubles, but is the BBC really considered so low on priorities that it warrants such huge cuts? Why not scrap our nuclear weapons programs, we don't need them... I'll not go into that any more. Suffice to say I strongly disagree with nuclear weapons and I'd rather the UK disarmed ours.

Anyways, back on topic, there's so many wonderful things about the BBC that're worth saving. My personal favourite is the Natural History department. Look at their output over the years - all those stunning documentaries, bringing natural history to a wider audience. Hey, I credit David Attenborough's documentaries and the Wildlife On One/Two series with my life choices - I've wanted to work with animals my whole life and conservation since I was about 11.

And then there's the drama programming. Sci-fi in the form of Doctor Who and Torchwood. Let's face it, who hasn't heard of Doctor Who? Classic show. Run by the BBC. Crime drama - Waking The Dead, New Tricks and so many more. And then there's EastEnders. Much as I hate to admit it, it's a semi-decent and obviously popular programme and one of the longest running soap operas. It's been praised for tackling often controversial issues and, OK, other broadcasters do this as well, but I'm just giving examples of what could be lost if the BBC faces too many spending cuts.

And the BBC doesn't just fund those channels with BBC in the name - some funding direct from the government also runs the Welsh channel S4C (all in Welsh, can't understand a word of it) and some funding from advertising goes towards running Channel 4. Oh, and the BBC runs BBC Alba in Scotland which I only found out about when I hit the link to it on iPlayer and the entire page translated into Gaelic. I was so confused.

You know what's also amazing about the BBC - NO ADVERTS. And you get this by paying (currently) £145.50 a year. And that means getting full hour programmes instead of 45 minute ones stretched over an hour with adverts every 15 minutes or so. That means not getting bombarded with adverts for crap you'd never buy. It does mean you have to watch a different channel in the run up to Christmas, simply because it's not Christmas until you've seen the Coca-Cola Christmas ads. And of course, there's some brilliant programmes on other channels, at least on the terrestrial ones, which you don't have to pay for because they're funded by that annoying advertising. But then we look at Sky, which is probably the BBC's biggest threat.

British Sky Broadcasting, BSkyB or just plain old Sky. A pay-TV broadcaster. So, you get adverts. And they've got most of the Premier League football games. For the privilege of this and having a whole bunch of channels you'll probably never watch, you can be paying upwards of  £19 a month. So that's £228 a year. Compare this to the current BBC licence fee: £145.50 a year. So yes, you get more channels with a provider like Sky, but what about the quality of the programming? Have a think, there's BBC1, 2, 3 and 4, CBBC and CBeebies for the kids, BBC News, Parliament, Alba, S4C, all those radio stations - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Live, 6 Music and numerous other ones that I can't remember right now. All of that programming for about 2/3 the price of a minimum Sky package. And you know what - you still have to pay the licence fee if you have Sky.

OK, so that's turned into a major babble. I love the BBC. I do not want to see it get hurt. Mm, I think that'll do before I go off on an even bigger rant. If you have a reason to love and be proud of the BBC, check out We're Proud Of The BBC and leave them your reasons.