BBC America Shows..

[shadowkat]

Just caught a post on my flist complaining about how BBC America drastically cut tv shows such as Being Human, Doctor Who and Ashes to Ashes. I've seen similar posts about how Syfy cut portions of Merlin (but apparently not as badly.) All to make room for commericials?

That would certainly explain a lot. Such as why I'm not as over the moon about these tv shows as everyone on my flist who has seen them either online in their uncut format or in their original uncut format on BBC in UK. In other words, we are literally watching two different tv shows. This is also true with American imports, apparently they add minutes to tv show to show abroad, because European tv stations don't have as many or any commercials?

This raises a question: if you don't have commercials, how the heck are you paying for the tv shows? Subscriptions?

Also makes me wonder if I should give up watching things on BBC America and just wait for it to appear on netflix. Granted that takes a while. Don't want to do that - netflix queue already has 400 items on it, doesn't need more. What can I say? I have diverse tastes.

Comments

[caliente-uk.livejournal.com]

We have to have a TV Licence (http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/) to watch television in the UK, which is why TV shows on the BBC don't have advertisements as they are paid for by the licence fee. It is illegal to watch TV without one.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

Even w/Buffy and Firefly we didn't get the full 43 minutes of show, at least I didn't... about 2 minutes was cut from the shows because my local Fox affiliate (where I watched BtVS two hours later than others saw it on UPN) always squeezed in an extra two minutes of local advertising.... I thought a lot of local stations did that.
I never got to see the full episode until it was out on DVD.
When BtVS S6 'Once More With Feeling' aired they cut the full 10 minutes of extra programming Joss put in that show (which I understand others got to see). It turned out to be mostly one verse of Spike's song, and a big part of the beginning when the gang was singing about what might be causing the singing....

But really, did this make me dislike the show? It only made me keener to get to see the whole uncut version on DVD.

In fact I first fell in love with Dexter when CBS ran the first season during the writers strike: they cut all the swearing, nudity and most of the blood and gore... But it was still obviously a brilliant show with interesting characters (so I got ahold of the DVDs).

[curlymynci.livejournal.com]

What calturner said. It's a great big socialist thing. Everyone pays £125 a year into the pot. That gets given to the BBC for impartial journalism and innovative public service programming, both of which they manage to do at least partially. Our commercial channels also have less advertising than you guys, although that's starting to change. I think that's probably because up until about 10 years ago most people only had 5 TV channels so the advertising space would have been more valuable.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

There still are adds, just not as many and you have to pay a fee (about 10 Euro a month) for tv in general.

Generally UK productions have far smaller budgets, which I often think is a blessing.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

We pay a tv licence in France too for our public channels (on which there's still a little advertising during the day but they never cut tv shows or movies, and there's no advertising after 20.00).
As for the private channels, they have advertising, but much less than in the US for instance, so there's usually only one short cut in movies and tv shows.

I often wonder how people can bear so many ad cuts in many other countries (I think the worst I have seen was in India!).

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

Oh, Being Human is *butchered* on BBC America. Each episode is plotted extremely tightly, and nearly a full hour, so each one, you're missing around 10 min of crucial plot/character development.