BBC IS LOSING IT

In this weeks issue of the Radio Times the American market's commercial drama output, is criticised by the fact they produce 13 or 24 part series in order to recoup their investments as a BAD thing. Yeh right! Apparantly BBC Drama doesn't make a penny of money from selling anything over-seas. How stupid is that?

Surely, with the effective large cuts from the now frozen licence fee, the BBC should be looking for more ways to fund itself, possibly through more co-production funding and a higher serial based output it can actually sell, especially overseas, in order to survive and give the public a more cultural and balanced BBC, instead of the quite frankly stuffy attitude it has over making most of it's output in-house to enforce a sense of Britishness that apparently, only the BBC can produce.

As for 13 part shows, Doctor Who or Merlin doesn't creatively suffer from this extended treatment now does it? Obviously, no-one expects a massive 24 episodes from a British series (which in most cases is overkill anyway) at the expense of other quality drama and we all know the UK's TV budgets are a lot smaller than the American market when it comes to these expensive shows but the BBC has a new marketing trick up it's sleeve to cover this one...

Take Doctor Who, which is now receiving the split season treatment. It's supposed to be a creative decision to heighten the drama but it's more likely a ploy to spread the show out over a year without actually producing any more episodes just in case the children that buy all the toys forget what Doctor Who is and stop buying endless plastic Daleks and Toothbrushes and DWA magazine. Sounds like a commercial orientated business decision now doesn't it? Or is it just an excuse to ditch Matt Smith half way through fulfilling his contract and replace him with the quite frankly much better Benedict Cumberbatch?

Ahhh but now there's another problem... Sherlock.

Stephen Moffat probably needs a good rest at the moment as he is faced with the pressure of new Sherlock and Doctor Who. Poor Sherlock, it should never have been a three part series in the first place. A foolish decision which the BBC (who blames Stephen Moffat as apparantly, It would be against his vision to produce anymore.) It is now obviously publicly regretting and a missed opportunity to instal a genuine bohemian style Doctor. How could they go wrong with Sherlock, with Stephen Moffat and Mark Gattis at the helm? The BBC should have shown more confidence and drafted in more writers to help and give us a 13 part season of this high quality drama instead of lining the likes of Graham Norton's pockets with £4 Million quid. Like it or not, in order to survive, the BBC is going to have to invest more money into shows it can sell instead of pretending the commercial market doesn't exist. If we want a cheap chat show we will watch Channel 4.

In the Radio Times there is defense of risky drama shorts that we are supposed to be watching and yet the BBC time and again serves up even more costume drama that's getting the umpteenth wasteful BBC style remake complete with smugness factor. ITV are just as good at making costume drama as the BBC and manage to do it without endlessly repeating their output. Take a leaf out of their book for a change! The BBC needs to defend itself into an impoverished creative cul-de-sac it needs more support that it won't now be getting from the licence fee and they need to introduce some canny business logic so that it can continue to produce it's niche output without turning the BBC into a visual Museum. Oh, and isn't it quite amusing how the more commercial shows like Doctor Who are always served up in the media whenever the licence fee is under threat?