#2 Robert De Niro and Jeremy Kyle and UK-USA media reform

Following on from the points made earlier on my MP blog:

Perhaps media reform all the more important for UK and USA not just with its leadership of English language (54% of all internet content in English and no other language more than 6%: Chinese just 2%), but even with POTUS Trump as something of a media master whether appearing in Home Alone or with Saint and Greavsie for UK football, but especially The Apprentice hit show.

Lord Sugar producing the UK offshoot and vigorous banter between Trump and Arnie on their shows highlighting the importance of a vibrant media.

And Fox News essentially the Trump Channel albeit in a more biased cartoony fashion that wouldn't be acceptable in UK media.

The Britbox joint venture with BBC and ITV feels rather anaemic without sold support. Perhaps a further dilution with BT Sport football frnachises and weak showing of UK Football, the real World Series as a Global Britain tool.

Netflix entering the UK market with an £11BN programming budget against just £2>5BN by all UK broadcasters suggests the BBC and wider media reputation has been rusting for years.

The UK Film Industry too long a dusty cottage industry: shouldn't UK plc be insisting on say 100 UK movies each year rain or shine?

While if The Mooch in his Blue Collar President highlights the Trump promise of draining the swamp (the great dismal swamp of DC machine politics not the Carolinas) then that's amplified through heartland USA by such as Fox.

A promise that echoes beyond NYC billionaire bling bling to ordinary people feeling they are being heard and listened to.

Perhaps no more damning indictment of USA media is the rabid froth of Russian Collusion McCarthyism as untrue as Obama's Kenyan birth certificate of Hillary tapping out morse code to Putin via her homebrew email kit.

USA frenzied media would be as alien in UK as machine guns and pay as you go medical care.

But UK reforms are needed:

* advertising reform overdue in terms of the growth in gambling ads especially in sports and a further tightening up of booze advertising.

* advertising on BBC something of a non-debate against increased tax and 24 hour content/ads on commercial channels.

* inhouse advertising at BBC rather of a tax-waste given its monopoly: a review along with the excessive proliferation of newsreaders and weather presenters. Radio stations mange with a DJ presenter for c.3 hours at a time (Chris Evans' latest RAJAR figures on Virgin from Radio 2 highlighting the growth of commercial radio and celebrity).

Journalists interviewing journalists as inane as reporting on their taxi drivers view on the way to and from the airport on BBC expenses.

Perhaps only Hard Talk gets the balance right in terms of crunchy reporting: surely similar formats should be rolled out?

* if weather presenters, locally and nationally, are soaking up airtime merely repeating the same temperatures (the UK standard broadcast of: sunny spells possibly with occasional showers and average temperatures for the time of year, as informative) then an overview of news reports needed.

With Africa and Asia forecast for massive growth in this century it seems astonishing the lack of information on warzones in Libya and Syria and Yemen but also South Sudan and India and Papua New Guinea. Or lack of thematic reporting on say death penalty or Ebola Pandemics or nuclear weapons and Space exploration.

* the proliferation of panel shows and inane quiz shows reaching epidemic proportions as cheap telly with even the prize money shrinking in proportion to the expansion. And fall in viewing figures. A Who Wants to Be a Millionaire may attract audiences and brands but the chaff of weaker shows affects viewing figures.

Separately, while Latin America may be as reported on as Outer Mongolia, then there is an issue with such weak reporting on USA.

CSpan the USA Parliament channel should surely be on a UK dedicated channel for one of the richest and most powerful nations in the World. Much as BBC parliament should broadcast all Lords and Committee debates. Similarly the EU Parliament.

The Brexit mess a factor of lies about EU statements on bendy bananas and such like. And if the politics has been abysmal then the reporting has been equally turgid about meetings for meetings process and empty reports on speculative maybes.

A failure of UK media as well as politics.

Time for Change
@timg33

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