Stupid TV Makers both BBC and ITV

[Arthurgray50@blu]

As anyone noticed how stupid and pathetic TV companies are becoming, we have BBC axing a very good show in 'LSW' and yet spend thousands of pounds of our money on pathetic advertising with those silly hippo's, which cost £100.000 to create, and then we have ITV gone totally bonkers by axing shows like Heartbeat, The Royal and now The Bill, which are all viewing ratings winners, they claim this is due to finance, yet are paying that stupid guy, who tried to ruin Football, the The Royal Mail, and ITV are going to pay him £750.000 per year, for WHAT, no wonder satellite TV is proving such a winner, If ITV are losing money, why don't they scrap the extra ITV channels, and BBC go to adverts. Both companies are only thinking of themself, and not the viewers.

OK I'll bite.Who or what is LSW?

[Charlie_Bubble]

Lsw = ????

[BenMcr]

Took me a while. It's Last of the Summer Wine

[Charlie_Bubble]

I thought that show died about 15 - 20 years ago. Way overdue cancellation if it's actually still going. All the original stars must have died by now?

[Arthurgray50@blu]

LSW is LAST OF SUMMER WINE.

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

LSW is LAST OF SUMMER WINE.

Well it is past it sell by date Arthur.Only Cleggy is left from the original cast.It should have finished when Bill Owen died.Time to come up with a new iconic series..

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

As anyone noticed how stupid and pathetic TV companies are becoming, we have BBC axing a very good show in 'LSW' and yet spend thousands of pounds of our money on pathetic advertising with those silly hippo's, which cost £100.000 to create, <snippage>

You know you almost certainly can't make an episode of 'LSW' for £100,000? And whilst an episode of LSW can be shown on BBC1 only once, thence it's off to DVD and endless repeats on sat/cable, the hippo ident is used over and over again and will be for many years?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

As anyone noticed how stupid and pathetic TV companies are becoming, we have BBC axing a very good show in 'LSW' and yet spend thousands of pounds of our money on pathetic advertising with those silly hippo's, which cost £100.000 to create, and then we have ITV gone totally bonkers by axing shows like Heartbeat, The Royal and now The Bill, which are all viewing ratings winners, they claim this is due to finance, yet are paying that stupid guy, who tried to ruin Football, the The Royal Mail, and ITV are going to pay him £750.000 per year, for WHAT, no wonder satellite TV is proving such a winner, If ITV are losing money, why don't they scrap the extra ITV channels, and BBC go to adverts. Both companies are only thinking of themself, and not the viewers.

1) £100,000 would not even get near to making an episode of LSW. There's the cast and crew to pay for, equipment, transportation, catering. Add to that the cost of fuel for the generators (even where there is an electricity supply, due to the excessive demands of of the equipment involved in filming, films and TV shows often use their own generators rather than relying on local supplies). Also factor in the cost of site rental. To give you an idea of how much this is, The Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich (where I work) costs at least £10,000 a day (the actual cost depends on what's needed). It will usually take at least a week to film an episode of a sitcom. LSW is filmed entirely on location, so they will have all these costs. TBH, I doubt you'd see much change from £1,000,000 an episode.

2) ITV axed those shows because they are relatively expensive to produce. They've also had falling (although still high) ratings. This is the same reason that 24 has been axed in America despite still having relatively good ratings.

3) I don't think ITV should scrap the extra channels. As for paying their chief £750,000 a year. Yes, that is excessive, but if he saves the company, would it not be worth it?

4) The BBC taking ads would introduce a large supply of advertising space to a market that is already saturated. It's basic economics that introducing more supply into a market will reduce the prices. This means less money for commercial TV. The prices already reached a point a couple of years ago where ITV could not sustain themselves on the income from advertising. Introducing advertising to the BBC would reduce the price to that point or below, and could bankrupt ITV. It would certainly close some of the smaller commercial channels.

[nfs6600]

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

Both companies are only thinking of themself, and not the viewers.

Well, they are businesses afterall....

And to be fair, LotSW is waaaaaaaaay past it's sell-by date (imho).

To be honest a great many of the long running shows on all channels seem to have lost their pizazz.

[nfs6600]

Originally Posted by foreverwar

And to be fair, LotSW is waaaaaaaaay past it's sell-by date (imho).

Soon as Compo left it went

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by nfs6600

Soon as Compo left it went

Well, IIRC, the actor who played compo died while in the role, so didn't have a choice.

Also, Arthur, have you a link to anything saying Last of The Summer Wine is going to be axed? All I found was it's entry on Wikipedia, which says the BBC announced last year that another series has been commissioned for this year. Before you say that they only said one series, they did, but the BBC (in commen with most TV companies) generally renew each show for 1 or 2 years, then if the show is still successful, they renew for a further one or two years. It's extremely rare that they commit to more than one or two series.

[Lord Nikon]

The most recent information on the BBC Site regarding Last of the summer wine is This page which has no mention of it being axed.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the first of the summer whine?

And I am not going to say anything against ITV since there will be another season of Primeval, even if it won't air till 2011