In defence of BBC Three

By johnberesford on March 16th, 2010 6 comments

I like picking on BBC Three. Granted, I like bullying ITV and Five more, but BBC Three is a nice easy target for someone like me (aka A sniping knucklehead). However, of late, I’ve started getting weary of BBC Three criticisms. It seems a bit old hat. It seems a bit too snobby. It seems that , BBC Three is the antithesis of everything good about the world. Of course, these days, ‘everything that’s great about the world’ effectively means 6 Music.

As someone who, and pardon my language, couldn’t give a flying fuck about 6 Music and the dreary, plodding, catholic with a small ‘c’ output – in direct comparison, BBC Three seems like the most brilliantly fun and vacuous pal you could ever hope for. 6 Music is the sagely cousin who gives you a hard time about not recycling and BBC Three is the friend-of-a-friend who makes the sambuca shots erupt out of your nostrils with an unintentional moment of comedic genius.

That’s not to say that BBC Three is the best thing since sliced bread. Far from it. Most the output on the channel leaves me irritated and confused. 99% of everything BBC Three shows is shit! cry the naysayers… but that’s forgetting that 99% of absolutely everything on Earth is shit.

The fact is, BBC Three is the pop-music of television. It’s dumb and throwaway and, when the mood takes you, it can be the best thing in the world. Hooting with laughter at Snog, Marry, Avoid is a far better past-time than watching someone on BBC Four intellectually jerking off into their hand over some insanely dull painter who veneered his work in boiled up rabbit bones or something.

Steak is fine, but sometimes, you want a McDonald’s burger.

However, this doesn’t stop people from being outraged at BBC Three. Radio 4 presenter, Libby Purves, effectively said that BBC Three was watched by a ‘million idiots on phone screens the size of a dog biscuit’, adding that the BBC as a whole has had a “failure of nerve and taste.”

The funny thing is, is that Libby Purves argument is unlikely to ever be heard by this supposed BBC Three viewership because they’d be too busy laughing at the fact her surname sounds like ‘pervs’.

Of course BBC Three shows programmes that make people like Jeremy Paxman angry. Documentaries on people who have only ever eaten chips is always going to rile a man paid to be incensed. When people use J-Paxmo as an example of why they’re right about the state of television, then they should also nod in agreement that their political party of choice is run by dithering idiots. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Paxman hates all politicians too. Also, he didn’t think twice about asking Dizzee Rascal if he was going to run for prime minister – a potential BBC Three show if ever there was one.

The hurling of abuse at BBC Three from me has always been under the proviso that it’s a channel that can take it. It’s exempt from my criticisms because I’m not the target audience. An Endemol producer recently said “Just because our viewers chatter in a different class, it doesn’t make them idiots.”

And that is absolutely correct. The way I look at the cat-and-mouse game played out by TV critics and TV channels is that it’s all a sport. They wind us up on purpose and we dutifully react with bemused fury. It’s more of a camp spat than full-blooded war.

But then you get these dreary gits who think that this whole TV business is a serious one. It isn’t. One group chatters on, another group garbles about something else. The only real thing that unites us all is that the TV will chatter for longer and can do so whether we’re taking any notice or not. Canned laughter has ensured that the TV doesn’t even require us to laugh at its jokes now. We’re redundant apart from the usefulness of creating extra noise about what we’ve seen.

As such, you should ensure that the noise you’re making is at least as fun or interesting (or attempting to be) as the thing you’re slating because, if not, then you’re far more detrimental to other humans than Hotter Than My Daughter.

There’s a reason that BBC Three avoided the chop. That’s because it’s fun… and that is a far rarer commodity than we currently appreciate.

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http://www,shinymedia.com shinychris

Nice one Mof. I think BBC3 is a bit of a soft target and there is, er, some good fun stuff on there. And I do think that 6Music is very dreary and earnest, but then I’ve only started properly listening to it in the last couple of weeks so maybe all the DJs have given up and are spending their time putting their CVs together.
http://ianandrosieinreallife.blogspot.com/ Johnson

BBC3 is pretty poor…its for readers of Heat and Nuts etc….the sort of people who then end up pissed on Sky’s many “cops in streets of sick and fighting” series.
Once they are a little older they will watch GMTV and Jeremy Kyle.
Good stuff on BBC 3 ?….I will give you a couple, Gavin and Stacey, Being Human….then it gets tough to list some serious contenders.
Geoff

Well, don’t let me put you off your stride but you’ve kind of overlooked a few points there – like the fact that BBC3′s annual budget could fund 6Music AND the Asian network for an entire decade, that you can count the number of really good shows they’ve originated on the fingers of one hand (the much vaunted Little Britain and Mighty Boosh actually came from Radio 4), or, most dammingly. if I want a station full of low-rent, ‘pop’ television, well there’s dozens of commercial ones all out there who can supply me with ‘quality’ stuff like ‘Hotter Than My Daughter’. And they don’t come looking for an obligatory licence fee from me to support them.
Johnny

As you say, variety in scheduling is important.

No-one is saying that BBC3 should be shut down because people shouldn’t watch trashy tv.

BBC3 should be shut down because it’s failing its remit to produce innovative new comedy and is entirely indistinguishable from all the other trash tv channels.
Bob

This article is precisely why I’ve been trying to avoid the “Don’t scrap 6 – scrap instead!” argument. There’s little point weighing a serious music station against a, let’s face it frivolous, TV station. With the difference in budget, the comparison is meaningless.

As you say, steak is great but sometimes you want a MacDonalds. Sure, but it shouldn’t close the door to steak from then on!

To fans of 6 Music (such as myself), I recommend not redirecting your anger to another outlet, as we only end up alienating ourselves from people who might otherwise support us.
Darren

I hate myself for falling such obvious linkbaiting, but here goes…

As Geoff has pointed out (and that was a good post Geoff), the difference between 6Music and 3 (aside from the fact that they’re totally different beasts) is that 6 offers something that arguably isn’t available elsewhere. I read an article last week, in which it was noted that the only two real contenders to 6- NME radio and XFM- offer, at best, 20% comparison with 6Music’s playlist. That doesn’t take into account the other, non play listed tunes that 6 play- the producer and presenter choice tracks, and the archive material that 6 has a duty to air off- that the other two simply don’t have the freedom of choice over. A commercial station’s output is almost scientifically chosen to keep the listener involved, but to the point that it becomes sterile and pointless. Why push new music, or the odd rare track, when you can just chug out another radio friendly unit shifter?

Add to that the knowledgeable and largely likeable presenters, and you’ve got a radio station that has literally no commercial comparison. In short, the BBC are doing exactly what they’re supposed to in spending a (tiny) portion of the license fee on it.

Compare that to BBC 3 whose direct competition is to be found in ITV and Sky1, and you’ve a station that costs £115m a year, and isn’t overly tenable.

If the BBC reshuffled 3 to offer something easily accesible but still different from its commercial rivals, then I could fully understand where you’re coming from Mof, but in this instance 3 has no argument.