h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's come up a bit lately in various threads. And of course it's people. But in some of their blurb they talk about the 'BBC' like its an entity. I do my self sometimes. But I got to thinking what actually is it?

It is 'the corperation'.... a large, multifaceted, multimedia production, organisation, distrubution enterty.... With all the various facets of production, organisation and distrubution as sucha large multimedia company would need, from script writing/comissioning, to technical aspects of radio and video production, plus web distrution/broadcasting, and then to the technology and human aspects as needed to distrubtion of that which is created isn't it? But, mainly, its the terrifying clowns on the testcard.

It's something a bit strange because it depends on its existence for everyone in the UK with a telly, paying for it.

It owns h2g2....but it does virtually nothing to publicise it. I mean the BBC is a simply huge, powerful organisation which is known the world over. But it seems to treat h2g2 as a very very minor backwater.,

I pay for the thing but have no way of knowing who I might write to there to make h2g2 a bigger priority, and I would do that if I knew who to contact at the BBC.

Next week I'm going to both phone and email the BBC about my concerns for h2g2, and what priority the BBC is giving it. I'll post here what happens

>>..what actually is it? <<

You're asking one of those impossible questions like when is Toledo,
why is Rasputian, where is Waldo and who are you. The very nature of
the question means there can be no satisfactory or complete answer.
But it's certainly worth exploring some possible explanations and some
personal perspectives including inevitably biased opinions.

For me it's Drop The Dead Donkey, five year old episodes of Top Gear,
the grammarless illiterate BBCWhirledNews aimed at the USA via PBS.
And h2g2. Not necessarily in that order.


~jwf~

For me, then, its BBC radio four, as I don't own, and won't own, a Television, and I can't rmeember the last time any one of the ....seven or so radios in the house was tuned to anything other than BBC radio Four...
Of course, its also a big fluffy bundle of loverlyness, but that's another matter entirely...

when I was younger, it was those people who had made Big Muzzy, then, whether or not the BBC made them, the tv series Robin´s Nest and the Ropperts.

later, the people who made documentaries about nature presented by David Attenborough. Only recently Ive heard his voice in English. I have to say that the Spaniard who took his voice imitated his style really well.

Many years passed by, I enjoyed tv series, documentaries... BBC means quality.

I found BBC homepage when I accessed to internet for first time in 1995.
gap of time, I´ve got my first computer in 1998, found BBC Learning English and many more BBC sites, like Cbeebies, I´ve spent a lot of time with my daughter sitting on my knees watching and singing and reading... that kids site. A lot of fun.
This one, h2g2, was found also through an education website of bbc, Skillwise. It was listed as one of the possibilities the BBC offers to make use of your creativity.


That´s what the BBC means for me(surely more, but It´s late and Ive got only one neuron on left at this moment)

Aside/
I´ve got a hangover of meta-h2-threads. I hope this thread focus on what´s the BBC for you or on anything else... as it usually happens in this place with so many losers that can´t focus on the right thing

The BBC is an organisation that has a unique funding mechanism. Because of that unique-ness it has stricter controls on what it can output. It's able to put out programmes that attract a lower watching figures that its competitors as long as it is sticking to its remit.
It doesn't have to advertise much because its revenue stream is fixed and it doesn't need to shout in the same way as its competitors.

BBC bought h2g2 because it saw this internet thingy growing and wanted a slice of that pie. It wanted a community that it could call its own and that pretty much wanted to look after itself without too much work or funding from the BBC.
The Guide was a nice afterthought and was a kooky way of describing the community that it had bought.

Now with the rest of the messageboards active as well as people being able to post to blogs and so on, h2g2 is just its history, old fashioned (hopefully to be addressed in the redesign), full of people who have been there a long time and think that their voice should be heard and acted upon.
It produces a couple of articles a week, most of which are accurate and some of which have real character but can't be used as BBC corporate or marketing material (because it can't ever be seen as an opinion of the BBC).It doesn't know quite what to do with us.

We *are* the slightly unfashionable spiral arm of the BBC.

Put like that, Vip, I ain't as comfortable as I was this time yesterday.

Dunno whether to welcome that or put me 'ead in the sand.

Still, chances are h2g2 (sorry, H2G2) will last me out - until I lose what's left of it...

The rebrand is the key to h2g2s survival (in my opinion).

If the BBC are really committed to getting h2g2 back on its feet, the rebrand will be lauded, it will have a relaunch, it will have some prominence on the BBC front page, and therefore will get more traffic and TLC from Auntie. It will have a future.

If the BBC are only giving it a token rebrand to stop us dragging the side down in terms of looks, h2g2 will continue to slide into decay and eventually just peter out as people lose the will to keep it going (as is already happening). The Eds will work themselves to exhaustion trying to get anything out of the Beeb, and eventually give up and let it die.

I would like to think I'm pessimistic, but I have a feeling I'm closer to the truth than I would like to admit.

I said in post 3,

>Next week I'm going to both phone and email the BBC about my concerns for h2g2, and what priority the BBC is giving it. I'll post here what happens<

Just now I set out to try to discover who I should contact at the BBC with my email about concerns for h2g2. (I think its perfectly reasonable as a Licence Fee payer to the BBC that I should be able to contact them directly, because I pay my money to them directly).

But just for now I couldn't resist posting this link,

http://faq.external.bbc.co.uk/questions/contact/1

especially number 7...

'How can I send praise to the BBC?'...

And apparently on that page at number 1, I can contact BBC Canada directly...

As for who is best for me to email about my h2g2 concerns, those help pages don't make it exactly clear...maybe I should contact the 'praise' link?

I'll keep you posted.

Option 3 - we'd be classed as a messageboard. Failing that, search for New Media, as that's the department the Eds are under.

I want to go as high up as poss. in the BBC because they have the power and it is due to my £145 a year paid to the BBC, along with millions of other people, that they have any power along with their massive salaries.

It's getting quite Kafkaesque in terms of finding a way out of the maze of finding out who I might contact.

It's the BBC, of course.

Well I've sent an email off to complain that I don't know who in authority at the BBC to contact about my concerns for the future of h2g2. I've asked for them to inform me who to contact.

I'm already getting seriously impatient.

If I get no joy using this method, I'm writing to the Director General.

Here's Mitch Benn's answer to the question of what the BBC is. Or at least the TV (and some radio bits)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3q2iZuU5WM

>> I'm writing to the Director General. <<

Be careful. It will likely come as a shock to many
in BBC management that such a thing even exists. I
fear if some of them ever read anything at h2g2 they'd
freak out completely and we'd be busted.

Aim a little lower at some of the middle-management
types. They may have no power or authority to do anything
but that might be a good thing in the long run.

~jwf~

~jwf~

You're right.

I'll let sleeping h2g2 dogs lie I think, considering the incomprehensible nature of the beast. You've got me worried about stirring up a hornets nest.

And really the DG is a bit like the wizard of oz.

...and be aware that like the CBC and other organisations under government oversight, there are people whose very job is predicated on making sure their bosses are never contacted by those they *serve*.

So...perhaps another thread about who decides what the Beeb does or shows? Who are they serving and who holds the reigns?

btw, I worked for the CBC for many years and they were alternately thought of by their employees as a faint and pale reflection of the BBC or the *Canadian Broadcorping C@ztr@ti0n*

The BBC serves the State.

As evidence I give you a state-sponsored mockumentary shown this evening about black market cigarettes. At a time when Govt is desperately trying to balance finances, we are told that official cigarettes which the Duty has been paid on are not as unhealthy as cigarettes smuggled from Europe. Apparently, (and this was said with a straight face), black market cigarettes are 30 times stronger than legal ones.

Mind you, they had a point when they said buying cigarettes was giving money directly to criminal gangs. A harsh description of the House of Commons, but eminently accurate

Just a final message to say that I received no reply to my email request to the BBC about who to contact about my concerns concerning h2g2.

Of course I'd decided to let sleeping dogs lie after ~jwf~'s wise counsel. But I find it telling that I can directly contact them to send praise to them...but they find it impossible to reply to a simple request for information about who in the organisation to contact concerning a specific matter, by a Licence Fee payer.