I had every intention of writing a post last night about the last two semifinal shows for Britain’s Got Talent, with videos and reviews and a listing of who I would vote for if I were able to (even though it’s debatable if the votes mattered, if past history serves.) But I was unable to locate the full Friday semi until this morning, and by the time I’d seen it the finals were underway. I still haven’t seen the results show, although I was accidentally spoiled on who won.
And this leads to a rant/plea I need to make. If you’re American and don’t work for a network, feel free to skip the rest of this post (actually, stop by the end of this one before you do) and wait for my upcoming post on BGT. I know the Twitter folks are sick of hearing my bitching on this subject.
I understand why it’s important for TV networks to hang on to the rights of their TV shows for syndication and DVD sales. I know BBC has made a mint off of sending us unlucky Americans to Amazon in search of Vicar of Dibley DVD’s. And I also understand that there are concerns that if we see shows like Doctor Who live on UK feeds, we won’t watch it two weeks later (and edited) on Sci-Fi, then six months later on BBC America, and then finally pay $90 for the series DVD. BBC gets a ton of money for all of that, and they don’t want to lose value. And there’s the whole issue of how much ESPN and Fox pay for footy rights, too.
That said, there are a small but loyal bunch of us who have gone to a LOT of trouble to get live or almost-live feeds or downloads of British shows because we LOVE them. We are the ones who get our friends over here excited about shows that will eventually be shown here and become fairly decent cable hits (Robin Hood and Jekyll, in particular, have been huge performers for BBC America, and a lot of that success comes directly from buzz from expats and other fans. And who would’ve ever heard about the Kumars otherwise?) We’re vocal and many of us blog, and you can usually find a pretty cracking discussion of DW on Twitter most weekends.
But with BBCA having, um, questionable choices sometimes in programming (and being unwilling to hear negative feedback on such on their message boards) the Brit TV fans here are very cheated. I have about 200 channels on my digital box, and only one is devoted to us at all. Sci-Fi caters to the DW lovers and I get Torchwood on HDNet, some PBS affiliates play Fawlty Towers and some other older shows, and once upon a time the original Katie & Peter show was on E! (I hope that eventually they’ll pick up their new series, which is better than Living Lohan by far.) But that’s it. Some shows are too bawdy to ever have a chance on our channels (namely Two Pints and a Pack of Crisps and The Friday Night Project.) And the closest we can get to most British reality shows are the inferior American remakes.
There was a site called LiveUKTV that was shut down last weekend (it’s under debate in some places whether it was done by “licence police” or not.) Other means used are either extraordinarily expensive (I love live telly, but I don’t know if I could get $110-a-month use out of it by myself, especially without footy) or of questionable legality or very delayed, like my BGT experience. And the folks who would rather get Doctor Who for free instead of watching it being replayed in the US are already doing it. Trust me, they are. Most of the true fans are watching it three times with all three methods because we love it enough to want to keep the ratings up. We remember the days before Sci-Fi bought the rights to the first new DW series when we waited for over six months to see it at all.
So please, please consider banding together like you’re doing for Freesat in the UK and give us a chance to pay what the natives do. The BBC Trust is unhappy about how much has been spent on their Web sites. Why don’t you let us subscribe for the use of BBC iPlayer? Same goes for ITV.co.uk. You would have international publicity for your shows and let us spread the word, and you wouldn’t have to pay us for it. In fact, we’d pay you.
Also, I would have loved to have written a post before tonight’s final for I’d Do Anything, the great BBC 1 show that cast the leads for a West End production of Oliver! I was all ready to sweetly ask my British readers to call in and vote for Jodie, who ultimately won the role of Nancy. Since it was against BGT tonight, the Beeb could’ve used any fan support it could get. But I wasn’t able to write that post, because BBC has blocked American access to clips of all their shows on YouTube, and I had nothing to show my readers.
I’m very, very sad, but I’m also frankly pissed off. I can see why they block DW because it’s airing here, but BBC America is too busy showing reruns of Dancing With the Stars to buy the rights to this show. It will most likely never air here, especially without Americans who give a crap about it. So if anyone with the net reads this, you have frankly blown it. But I would like to thank the British people for giving Jodie the win and giving me the opportunity to see Cameron Mackintosh look like someone’s twisting his testicles on live TV. Because if Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber was being truthful, Mackintosh had been slagging on Jodie’s weight, and that was really wrong. I liked seeing the right person win even if she’s seen a meat pie at least once in her life.
Rant over. My review of the rest of BGT (with nice YouTube clips) will come shortly, I hope. In the meantime, I wrote a review of something American for a change for the job that pays me. If you’re not utterly sick of Sex and the City reviews, give mine a try. It’s actually somewhat positive, and I loved doing it. Please give it some click love so I might get the chance to write more.
Tags:
bbc,
britain's got talent,
british,
british television,
doctor who,
gmtv,
i'd do anything,
itv,
sex and the city 
