The NY Times has a story about BBC World, the 24-hour news channel, coming to U.S. cable systems. I hope DirecTV picks it up soon so we can get some of this beebish goodness at our house. American TV news has been utterly bankrupt for quite a long time now and I really miss it. (To give you a sense of how much into the news I am, I started reading the newspaper and watching local and national TV news on a nightly basis around the time I started kindergarten. I haven’t mentioned it on the blog much, but I also reported the news when I was in school and professionally for a few years after college.)
Some of the quotes in this story that highlight the rationale for BBC entering the U.S. market are pretty interesting. One consultant says that some Americans are looking for an alternative, not just to one particular source of news, but to all American news organizations — ouch. The theory is that because of its locale and its non-corporate nature, the BBC provides a useful alternative to corporate American news, which seems right to me (although the story doesn’t mention that we already have a terrific source of non-corporate news in this country — it’s NPR). I read the headlines on BBC News Online pretty much every day as a way to get a counterpoint on what’s going on and to get a break from the homogenized topics we get here. (Too much Washington, not enough Zimbabwe, in my opinion.)
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Well, BBC America has been on the various subscription lists for quite a while. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a pale version of the more robust BBC, mostly featuring more “classic” BBC programs that generally show up on PBS anyway.
I forget the channel, but there is an “international” one on DirectTV that features news casts from around the globe. That’s pretty good at getting alternate views of stuff.
RealNetworks provides BBC World and another nice news channel, Euronews, live on their European offer. You just need an European (non-British) billing address.