Word: beebe
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...want to see the future of the Beeb as media giant, click on BBC America, which runs on digital cable and the satellite service EchoStar. BBCA is now available in 37 million homes, up from 28 million only last year. The channel airs BBC hits from Britain, such as Changing Rooms and The Office; it imports popular programs that other British broadcasters run, like the talk show So Graham Norton; and it's creating American spin-offs. An import called Ground Force, on which professional gardeners fix up a bloke's backyard, also airs as an American version with...
Perhaps the best example of the Beeb's growing influence in the U.S. is NBC's version of the BBC hit Coupling, which premiered this fall. NBC hoped its knock-off would be the next Friends, lavished it with publicity and ran it on a premium Thursday-night time slot. Viewers merely shrugged, while critics savaged it. Comparing it to the British version, which airs on BBCA, the New York Times wrote, "Coupling is the Milli Vanilli of network television: the sitcom equivalent of lip-synching someone else's song." Yet BBC America is capitalizing. Thanks to the notoriety...
With a rich and varied library of shows, the BBC makes big money selling its programs abroad--everything from Teletubbies to Changing Spaces. The Beeb has deals with non-British cable and satellite operators for BBC World (a 24-hour news channel) and BBC Prime (featuring popular-entertainment shows) as well as BBC America. Already Britain's largest magazine publisher, it's launching a slew of new titles. It's also touting business for a new state-of-the-art broadcast center in London, and has started producing "branded content" for advertisers. British viewers recently saw two-minute "documentaries" that...
...media companies that are increasingly bumping up against the BBC in the marketplace, the question is, Can a publicly funded media behemoth compete fairly? And even if it can, should it? By tradition, the Beeb is supposed to produce programs in the "public interest," although exactly what that means has never been unequivocally defined. At the same time, it tries to be popular in order to justify the license fee. It's a difficult juggling act, and competitors complain that it is using public money to duplicate the cooking, gardening and home-makeover shows that other broadcasters...
...offer another choice: log on at www.bbc.co.uk, pick the episode you fancy and, at least if you're a British citizen, watch it free on your PC. That tantalizing prospect was raised by an announcement at the Edinburgh TV Festival in August by BBC director general Greg Dyke. The Beeb is planning a "digital creative" archive that will make what he calls "the best television library in the world" available online. It's a service, Dyke says, that the BBC's charter compels it to provide free to all British citizens. But BBC lovers abroad may have to reach...