Jonathan Ross- hitting the nail on the head
I think Neil Davenport at Spiked hits the nail absolutely on the head regarding Wossy leaving the BBC, and the Sachs scandal.
many adults found Ross’s chatshow filth and sex obsession to be embarrassingly immature rather than edgy or funny...
What offends many of us is that the BBC really does think we’re only deserving of flaccid knob gags, the kind that Bill Hicks used as a threat rather than as a form of entertainment. On top of this, Ross’s adolescent banter was also a transparent exercise in sneering at the imagined conventions of his audience. .... As a rich entertainer, Ross and others like him are looking down their noses at the little people and their silly bourgeois conventions – always a favourite get-out clause for influential people who start to lose their moorings from wider society.
I think the problem at the BBC is that they think, almost, that offence is an aim in itself. It is not. If you're saying something profound or insightful, and in doing so happen to offend a lot of people, good luck to you. If you think that the reverse is true, that 'knob gags' as Neil so perfectly put it, are profound because they cause some people offence, then you're going wrong.
Another problem is that they are desperate to compete with the 'commercial' networks in every way and at all times. If the BBC execs see some fucking celebrity gossip show getting good ratings on 'UKSHITTV3 +1' at 11pm on a wednesday, then by golly they'll try to muscle in on that 'success'; there'll be a program called "OMG ugliest celebrity arses" on BBC3 before you know it.
Why do we all have to pay £140/year in TV license fees to enable the BBC to duplicate the same shit that already exists? I know that the Beeb does output some damn good stuff a lot of the time, but that doesn't mitigate the torrent of 'me-too' shite that makes a large proportion of its output.
Anyway, you can read the full article here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7926/
January 13th, 2010 - 00:46
I’m quite partial to a good knob gag to be honest, but they do tend to wear out their shock value quite quickly. I wouldn’t be complaining though if they were any good! Unfortunately, being intelligently creative is always harder than being shocking so you’ll get less of it.
On the plus side, intelligently creative knob gags will change the entire playing field allowing a much broader choice of material for other (possibly lesser) creative forces. Take Pete And Dud, way over the top for the era but they were *putting an effort in* and doing it well enough to be talked about today. The Simpsons was initially decried as the cancer that would kill family life, but by being good at it they opened the door for the likes of South Park to come along and finish the job off
I totally agree that the BBC is responsible for some utter shite though. BBC3 should be burned to stop the evil spreading, and the mainstream weekend schedule leaves a lot to be desired. Some time over the past decades they changed from “improving” the culture of the nature to pandering to the lowest common denominator – and I’m old enough to spot the difference and shake my head at them.