Tinkering with the television
I’ve just joined a new Facebook group. It’s called ‘I Hate BBC Wales’. True, this is the organisation that brings you Doctor Who, and for that we should be grateful. Their news isn’t too bad either, even if it suffers from the tedious banter associated with all local news programmes.
But what winds me up – and considering the existence of a Facebook group, it seems to annoy others too – is the constant tinkering with the schedules on BBC Television. You sit down to watch Top Gear on a Sunday evening and they’ve replaced it with the Welsh Open snooker. Even though there’s no-one Welsh in it and eight million people watch Top Gear (presumably some of them in Wales). You try and watch the first round of University Challenge, but you can’t because in their infinite wisdom, BBC Wales have decided not to broadcast it. Are the questions too hard for Welsh people or something? I think not.
Then there’s the sport. Whenever there’s an FA Cup match on a Saturday evening, BBC Wales ignores the pre-match build-up and cuts across (mid-sentence) to what people in England are watching seconds before kick-off. For anyone wanting to know anything about the game, it’s useless.
By far the worst example of this spectrum abuse is the torrent of programmes about ‘Welshness’. Instead of University Challenge you get a biography of a Welsh bloke you’ve never heard of, in which you learn how Welsh he is. Or perhaps, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a programme in which Huw Edwards goes to London and … wait for it … tells you how Welsh it is! I kid you not, this last show was stretched over a whole series.
This would be fine if it was occasional. But with the exception of the snooker, I can’t think of a programme that BBC Wales has crammed in the schedule that wasn’t a documentary about Welshness. It seems the place is run by Plaid Cymru!
Imagine the uproar if BBC Two featured nightly programmes about the exceptionalism of the English!
10 Mar 2007 23:26
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Tags: BBC Culture Television Wales Welshness
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Gavin Henson
Is the cutting across for FA cup stuff because they’re talking about rugby beforehand? If it is then that’s fair enough because welsh people prefer rugby.
11 Mar 2007, 11:20
Mathew Mannion
You have to admit one thing about Welsh telly though – Pobol Y Cwm is fucking brilliant
12 Mar 2007, 09:51
Rex
I’ve been sick of BBC2 Wales for a long time. I’m just thankful that with Sky I’m able to watch the other BBC channels (e.g. BBC1 North West and so on) so I can watch programmes. Sucks for everyone else though. I’m not particularly fond of their love of South Wales either. Bit of a pain for people from the North who consider Chester to be a bit more local than Cardiff.
10 Apr 2007, 21:27
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