Beeb Fever

For the last couple of weeks, BBC World News have been showing programs (I'm sorry, "programmes") about Canada.  Like any Canadian, I'm fascinated with knowing how (if at all) the rest of the world regards us.  It was interesting that their view of us seems to be primarily Vancouver, Montreal, the Atlantic provinces, plus Calgary and the Tar Sands.  That seems to reflect what I've seen from other foreign journalists that are familiar with the country.  So it's more bad news for a certain Ontario metropolis that continues to have less global mindshare than they expect.

But even if I do appreciate the channel, I am aware of it's many, um, "quirks."  So what better time to critique them, than a time when they've chosen to observe us:

The Weather
Doing a planetary forecast in under two minutes is a pretty silly idea to begin with.  But it's made worse by the fact that British meteorologists have rather limited climactic experience, and may not know that, say, telling us it's going to rain in Vancouver may not be useful.

Programs
For the most part, BBC World has a simple schedule: every hour on the hour, there's a half-hour of news.  Then the second half of the hour is a more specialised program, often something business related.  But I've noticed that those news programs often have different names.  They have programs called, The Hub, Impact, Newsnight, Newsday, and GMT.  But each time, it's just someone reading the news.

Commercials
It's kind of odd that they very seldom have ads, then suddenly have really long, well-produced spots.  There are some interesting travel commercials, and occasionally ads for places you've never heard of and probably blew their budget producing.  But mostly they fall into two categories, neither of which fit with their programming:

• Fixing our image.  Big companies show ads trying to sound like the good guys.  Shell in particular does a lot of these spots about how nice they are to the environment.  Actually, I notice they do that on CNN a lot too.  I still don't understand why they're trying to spin the best-informed viewers on the dial.  Why not run those Clean Coal ads on TLC?
• Luxury ads.  Not just Mercedes ads, or products that might be used by someone you might know someday, but obscenely expensive things that really clash with their programming.  (More on the African famine after this word from the Emirate of Dubai.)  The same goes for the occasional program that's an obvious cop to their wealthier viewers.  In between in-depth reporting on the world's trouble spots, you have shows like Equestrian World.

Sports
A global sportscast is difficult just to prioritise.  Obviously you cover soccer first, but then what?  You can argue for Cricket to get next priority largely on its South-Asian popularity.  But Rugby?  I think the British might be alarmed if they did the math on how many people around the world follow it.  Oh, and slightly off topic, they might be surprised just how small a segment of humanity gives a damn about the Eurovision Song Contest.

Still, they do try to cover the whole world's sports.  Most notably in this part of the world, they've figured out that they can't just put Hockey write-ups on the Teleprompter and trust their anchors to phonetically pronounce Eastern European names.

That brings up another problem: Some sports just can't be described with an English accent.  Just try imagining the Queen saying "first and ten on the fifteen" and you get the picture

Phrases
And speaking of, well, speaking: When reporting on the U.S. they seem to be unaware that their British phrases are often entirely inappropriate.  An anarchic, bullet-riddled housing project in an American inner city gets described as a "block of flats."  A burly trucker with a Toby Keith tattoo, Dale Jr. T-shirt and a Confederate belt-buckle is described as a "lorry driver."

Infotainment
Of course, I appreciate the fact that they largely avoid the Tanning-Mom style meaningless distraction news. It's a big part of my proud pop-cultural ignorance that I spoke of earlier.  And when they do make a reference to such a story, it's usually with an antiseptic distance that's reassuring; the awkward British accents and phrases ridiculed above come in handy.

The problem is, sometimes they seem to forget who they are and plunge into a pop-cultural story with complete enthusiasm.  I don't know, maybe they delude themselves into thinking they can win the hearts of America.  But they're just so bad at entertainment news.  After watching them do a solid hour on the latest celebrity death, even the shallowest viewer is left wishing they'd go back to analysing the latest Euro bailout plan.