BBC iPlayer Advert Contempt - Strictly Come Dancing

Earlier tonight I caught a BBC iPlayer advert which made me think. I've searched the streaming sites for it to either embed or link to but can't find it, so I'll have to describe it instead. Remember the BBC are funded as a "public service broadcaster" in the UK.

We see a woman with a green beauty mask on, laying on her bed watching Strictly Come Dancing on her laptop. The judge is giving his verdict along with the banter with Bruce Forsyth, when he keeps getting distracted by her mask. Forsyth then humiliates her, and asks her to move further back from the screen etc. After doing that, she gets the "before I was rudely distracted" comment and ends up watching the show hiding behind her pillow.

First I struggle to understand what "public service" the BBC are providing by making a mainstream entertainment show like Strictly Come Dancing. It is well paid celebs on a show designed to pull audiences from other commercial networks, in effect stealing potential jobs, advertising revenue etc from them.

Since the BBC is funded by the TV licence, people can be fined £1000 for not paying a lifetime subscription to the BBC entertainment network. People can also be sent to jail for not paying for a TV licence. The TV licence office are only a little short of loan sharks in the way they hound, threaten and bully people for money. So this woman presumably is a paying subscriber to the BBC, and this is how she gets treated by it's overpaid stars? Abused, humiliated and belittled; the butt of jokes for everyone else all because she happened to double up on her free time by watching her show while wearing her face mask. I bet she's a real fan of the caring BBC now huh?

Talk about an invasion of privacy too, it's one thing to make the choice to attend a show as a member of the audience, where you may be subject to some treatment from the hosts, it's something totally different to be in the privacy of your own home and being targeted.

This brings me onto another point, I thought the iPlayer was supposed to be about "catch up TV", where it only appears on the iPlayer AFTER it's been broadcast on TV. Even allowing for the TV scams about pre-recorded "live" shows, a live show would have to see into the future, into one particular home and target that paying customer. Is the time shifting part of this advert accurate of the iPlayer service? Or is this another example of the BBC's contempt for any "truth in advertising" rules? Of course the BBC does not do "adverts", so they also tell us.

The message is about contempt for their customers:

• We will send you to jail if you don't pay us a lifetime subscription.
• We will broadcast whatever crap we want and call it "public service broadcasting" regardless of what anyone thinks.
• We will pay our staff whatever we want, and charge the licence payer accordingly.
• We will hide behind all scrutiny with some bullshit about "we know what licence payers want, and we're doing a bang up job".
• We will abuse our customers directly if they don't conform to what our fragile little darlings expect of "an audience".

For a much more detailed look at the TV licence, have a look at this site. It is a campaign site to abolish the TV licence, a campaign which I fully support. They know they can do whatever they want, after all what can you do? Refuse to pay and you go to jail. Pay and don't watch? They don't care either way.