When Stations Impel the Off Button

There was a time that people all over the world would connect to the British Broadcasting Company (Corporation) via shortwave.

For many people it was the window the the world, the way to get facts beyond the bus crash down the road, the murder across so, and the political animosity between this local politician and that local politician.

The BBC was so important to ex-colonies that each day from 8 am to 9 am and from 8 pm to 9 pm our local commercial stations would broadcast the BBC World Service.

I don’t know exactly who or what or why the BBC changed.

First one could get it on any FM radio, which was a plus. And as it was as it was, turning on the radio on waking, turning off when leaving, turning on when returning, and turning off only if one were watching television, listening to a match, talking on the phone, or going to bed was standard.

Simply put, it was the window on the world.

The BBC has a practice which we all used when writing essays on exams.   You tell the reader what you are going to tell them, you tell them, and then you told them what you had told them.

To give an example the BBC would broadcast;  “The President of the United States said… there is fighting in Syria….There is a flood in Australia…”  then go into the details of what the President said, into details about the fighting in Syria, details about a flood in Australia, then close with a recap of what was said.

Anyone who was listening got a panorama of the World right now.

The BBC changed.  Every hour is about six minutes of rushed news, so if you miss a word, a place, a name, you are out of luck, because it isn’t prefaced, repeated or recapped, it is just quickly babbled.  Every half hour is a two minute headline quickie.

The rest of the time is boring blah blah.  Interviews about nothing 90% of the listeners are interested in,  discussions about nothing important, like sitting down six people and asking their opinion on something Donald Trump did or said.  How does the opinions of these people have any effect on reality?

I have become ‘time conscious’.  Right now the radio is off because it is 11:19.  There will be nothing at all whatsoever I am vaguely interested in until 11:30 when I will get 2 minutes of news.

Why the BBC changed from being a News Station into Blah Blah is probably part of the Dumbing Down process which has overtaken the Western World.

This is more dangerous than one can imagine.

If in China and Japan and Russia people are being educated as much as possible, then it is not going to be much of a shock that these countries can play the West.

That Russia could have played with the minds of American voters, that kids in Macedonia could create Fake News stories and have them lapped up as ice cream by the West, is ample evidence that the West is being dumbed down.

That the BBC has dumbed down leaves the world with an information gap which can be filled by anyone interested in doing so.   After all, that the BBC would leave out some news story is not suspicious as with only six minutes for a report, a lot is left out.

Any one can create a story, put it up, network it, sit back, and watch the public run with it.  The fact it isn’t on the BBC or CNN or other ‘respected’ services means nothing, because there is so little news, real news on these sites that the vacancy exists for other stories.