The unpredictability of BBC iPlayer

I love BBC iPlayer, it is much better that 4OD, or whatever channel 5 do, mainly because they listened and made it work for non-windows machines, and as a Mac user I like that.

So on Monday when I was out and unable to watch New Tricks I thought "never mind, I can catch it on iPlayer", except I cannot. It is "Not available".

The problem is I have watched previous episodes of New Tricks on iPlayer, so why not this one? Is this series or episode special? I do not know. I noticed a similar thing happen to Q.I., it used to be on iPlayer, but not anymore.

So I now conclude that I cannot rely on iPlayer to see programmes I have missed because the BBC may stop putting them up at any time, without any indication why. Not very "on-demand".

Alasdair

Update: The New Tricks website has a link that says "Catch up on the current series and watch the latest episode on iPlayer", only to then reveal that none of the episodes are available.

BBC don't bid for Cricket

I am not a fan of sport. I am happy admiting this. I do not like turning on the TV and finding sport on 3 out of the 4 channels (ignoring channel 5 of course), this happens all too often. So I was slightly miffed when I heard BBC were paying to get Formula 1 back, and of course I was glad to hear that the BBC were not bidding for the Cricket. I generally say there are three sports I don't understand televising:

1. Cricket
2. Snooker
3. Golf

Motor sports would be fourth (what is so interesting about watching cars or bikes drive in circles for hours?), but I think three is quite enough for this list.

So I am quite glad that the BBC deicded that paying for live Cricket was not good "value for money"[1]. As a licence payer I would prefer the BBC improve factual programming, and original comedy and drama programming that putting yet more sport on.

Today I heard Giles Clarke chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board critizing the BBC for not bidding. His statement:

"All these people interested in cricket buy TV licences and surely they should have a right to expect that the public sector broadcasters mount bids for the nation's summer sport as they do in the case of one of them for 12 other sports? [1]

is quite disengenous. If he were really interested in live cricket being on the BBC why allow Sky to tender? Why not offer it to the BBC for free, or come to an agreement on payment soley with them? The answer to these questions of course is he wants as much money as possible for the ECB. This is a fair expectation, but critizing the BBC for deciding it couldn't afford to pay for the coverage is unfair.

One suspects the reason he is upset has more to do with pushing up the amount of money Sky will pay, than it does with ensuring that the "millions of cricket fans" get to see it without having to pay for Sky Sports.

Alasdair

P.S. I don't understand why the BBC payed for Formula 1 which is something he brought up, but Formula 1 did not end up on my top 3 list.

BBC Comedy TV

I am a big fan of comedy programs. Anything that causes me to laugh is great in my book and I am generally dissapointed with the comedy output by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 recently. I don't recall ever seeing anything funny on Channel 5, ITV hasn't done a good comedy program since I was a teenager either.

As a result I rely on BBC and Channel 4, and to be honest I cannot recall the last time I saw British made comedy on Channel 4 (although the big bang theory on Channel 4 is excellent).

But this week (thanks to BBC iPlayer) I have seen Have I got news for you and Graham Norton and both were brilliantly funny. They should be on iPlayer for the next 4-5 days here and here.

Have I got news for you is one of the rare episodes where Paul Merton contributes very little, fortunatly the Michael McIntyre more than makes up for this.

With Graham Norton about 5 minutes from the end there is a brilliant put down of Dame Edna by Alanis Morrisette, watch out for it.

Alasdair