# BBC moving tennis from BBC2 to BBC1 again



## JudyB (Jan 25, 2006)

Started a new thread to avoid yet more discussion in the "No discussions" thread.



Pete77 said:


> And if anyone wants the BBC management to ever sit up and take notice and stop doing this kind of thing they will only do so if enough formal complaints are logged at https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/
> 
> Make sure to mention the fact that the recording you set on your Tivo, Sky+, V+, Freeview+ or Freesat PVR didn't happen due to this nonsense and that you were unable to then watch the program later or at all due to the BBC not paying for the rights for the Australian tennis to make it available to live stream or download for the next 7 days at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
> 
> ...


No, this isn't new and this has been discussed here before, for example http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=428689&highlight=Wimbledon from last year.

What I would like to know (if anything can tell us), is whether or not Sky+ got this right? The reason for asking is that I _think_ I heard on Friday that it would be on BBC1, but I can't remember for certain. If so it would still have been too late for Tribune, but I think that it would have been enough for Sky+ (and possibly Virgin?).


----------



## steveroe (Oct 29, 2002)

I never thought I'd say this - but I agree with Pete 

We all need to log our complaints with the BBC, I have.


----------



## gastrof (Oct 31, 2003)

My condolances.

Here in the States we have a local situation that's simiilar.

A local TV station owner has two stations. One's affiliated with a nation-wide network, one is an "independent" that gets no programming from any national source and has to schedule all its own.

When a local sports team has a big game, what do they do? Do they run it on the independent station? No.

They run it on the network affiliate. So fans of the national shows who care little about sports don't miss their programs, they shift the network programming over to the independent sister-station.

I wonder if the thought ever occurred to them to leave the network programming where it normally runs, and show the sports event on the indepedent station?

Face it- on BOTH sides of the pond, dweebish business minds fail alike.


----------



## cyril (Sep 5, 2001)

The Andy Murray final was shown on BBCHD. As there's only one BBC HD channel at least the Beeb can't switch to their other HD channel  Well not until BBC2 HD arrives 

In the meantime I'd advise using two or more TiVos or whatever other recording device you have to record BBC1 or 2 as appropriate next time a British player makes it to a grand slam final, and maybe BBC4 for good measure if you don't have BBCHD.


----------



## steveroe (Oct 29, 2002)

I've had a reply to my complaint to the bbc:



> Due to other commitments I was unable to watch the Mens final live on Sunday morning. I dutifully setup my PVR to record the tennis on BBC2, as advertised. When I returned home to watch the recording I was very disappointed to find out that the tennis was shown on BBC1.
> 
> Why was the channel changed? How many people can only receive BBC 1 and not BBC 2?





> Thanks for your e-mail regarding 'Tennis: Australian Open: Murray v Federer'.
> 
> When originally scheduling the Australian Open we couldn't have anticipated who would be in the final. As Britain's number one tennis player there is undoubtedly huge interest in Andy Murray among our audience and thus the decision was taken to show the match on the BBC's flagship channel.
> 
> ...


They have ignored the reception of BBC2 question.


----------



## mrtickle (Aug 26, 2001)

Yes. "_Thus the decision was taken_", indeed . It's not "thus" at all. This was the same cavalier attitude as every other time they've done it.

They are not "very sorry", because they said that last time and yet they've done it again. The correct response last time should have been "Oops... changing the scheduling at the last minute when it isn't necessary will always mean that some people will miss their programmes, as we can't ensure that every recording device will get the updated schedule in time. Therefore, we really are sorry, and for this reason we'll never do it again."


----------



## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

So basically, whatever they do will get complaints


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

As one with little faith in the official BBC Complaints interface (because it is run for the BBC by an outsourced commercial operator interested only in maximising profit on handling the complaints that goes by the name of Capita) I not only sent my complaint in on the official Complaints form on their website but also sent it around to all possible relevant senior BBC board members and other senior BBC executives. These people can all be found at www.bbc.co.uk/info/running/bbcstructure/index.shtml and then pressing the appropriate Bubble.

This was my email:-



> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Australian Tennis Final - Unacceptable Last Minute Channel Change from BBC2 to BBC1
> Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:00:06 +0000
> To: [email protected]
> ...


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

I then received this reply from BBC Information (aka Capita of Belfast Ltd) as follows:-



> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Tennis: Australian Open: Murray v Federer [T20100203029CS010Z7525226]
> Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 12:41:23 +0000 (GMT)
> From: [email protected]
> ...


and this was the invitation to participate in the customer survey by their Head of Communications & Complaints.



> Dear Mr ___________
> 
> Thank you for your recent email to the BBC. It is our aim to provide the highest standard of responses to emails we receive. To help us do this, I am writing to ask you to complete a customer satisfaction survey which is being conducted by the research company Ipsos MORI.
> 
> ...


I duly responded to the survey indicating my dissatisfaction with the reply sent on most fronts including the fact that my complaint did not seem to have actually registered with the executives who took the decision who seemed to be obsessed only with maximising audience ratings on BBC1 at any cost over and above all other considerations in terms of serving viewers.


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

But only five hours later that day I received the following response from Jana Bennett, Head of BBC Vision, although actually sent out on her behalf by her PA. But I have always found that emails to Jana Bennett are read and sometimes receive a personal response throughout her time at the BBC. The same is true of Radio 4 Controller, Mark Damazer.

Of course the reply is probably written by a PA and just scanned through by the director but the principal that they accept viewers have a right to try to communicate direct with senior management at the BBC is in my opinion an important one, especially as we all have to pay for the service to turn our televisions on, even if we only want to watch Sky and other commercial channels.

As you can see from the sections I have marked in Bold and Underlined in the email it adds substantially to the basic brief BBC Information response but whoever wrote it seems to only think that a PVR is a glorified video recorder and seems to have no idea about Season Passes or Wishlists. Having said that I wonder if this event was something that was even part of a Sky Series Link so perhaps only a Tivo Wishlist would have done the job. As the other PVR providers apart from Windows MCE don't yet have Wishlists (obviously Virgin will do in the not too distant future) is this possibly why they still just don't get it?:down:

However I think the fact that both these responses were sent several days later on the same day is quite significant and there must have been some kind of internal BBC meeting to review the complaint and come up with a standard corporate response before they finally got back to people.

Perhaps next time they might just do the right thing and actually put the final of a non Wimbledon Grand Slam taking place during daytime tv hours on BBC One (and not BBC Two) from the moment that it is first planned to show it.



> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: The Australian Open Final
> Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 17:39:37 -0000
> From: Jana Bennett <[email protected]>
> ...


----------



## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

And once again, there you go plastering private email contact details on a public forum where any spammer can harvest them. Well done!


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

cwaring said:


> And once again, there you go plastering private email contact details on a public forum where any spammer can harvest them. Well done!


I'm quite sure the BBC have a very effective anti spam service and there are masses of other ways that spammers can harvest email addresses apart from scraping them off websites.

Also its not like the fact that BBC email address are usually [email protected] is exactly a state secret. Obviously BBC One's Controller (one of the guilty men in the Andy Murray channel move) doesn't like hearing from the public as he has had [email protected] disabled in favour of some non guessable email address variant.:down:


----------



## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Pete77 said:


> I'm quite sure the BBC have a very effective anti spam service ...


Since you are sending out unsolicited bulk emails about this issue, you will now be classified as a spammer, and the BBC's excellent spam system should now be blocking all of your emails (if they have any sense). 

Hopefully, you will now go on a global list of known spammers, such that nobody will ever listen to you any more (just in case they ever did).


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

iankb said:


> Hopefully, you will now go on a global list of known spammers, such that nobody will ever listen to you any more (just in case they ever did).


Sorry to disappoint you but to be classified as a spammer worldwide you need to be sending out at least hundreds of thousands of identical emails trying to sell usually counterfeited, illegal or hard to obtain products and to be sending it from a server that has become known for such activities. Or possibly the content of the email alone with certain known stock spammer phrases might trigger the block.

The BBC has the capacity to block individual email addresses alone from receipt on their systems but believe it or not they are democratic enough to allow their viewers and listeners to email their senior staff direct, even they are not guaranteed to respond as its not an officially supported response route.

I'm sorry to hear that you are clearly one of those corporate creatures who believes that you are far too important to ever have to sully your hands with the mere end users and would rather be unsulated from them by an all too frequently incompetent customer service unit employing poorly trained and inadequately motivated staff on low wages.


----------



## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Pete77 said:


> I'm sorry to hear that you are clearly one of those corporate creatures who believes that you are far too important to ever have to sully your hands with the mere end users and would rather be unsulated from them by an all too frequently incompetent customer service unit employing poorly trained and inadequately motivated staff on low wages.


No. I just think that asking fourteen well-paid executives to spend time on the same issue is a total waste of my licence fee.


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

iankb said:


> No. I just think that asking fourteen well-paid executives to spend time on the same issue is a total waste of my licence fee.


So far as I can see it was only the PA of one senior executive who spent their time on the reply. And it was a much, much better reply than the one sent by the staff member working for Capita.

There can be no change on policy (and this problem clearly is something that results from policy originated at Board level) without lobbying of the right people. Very few changes of policy actually tend to result from calls to the customer service department.


----------



## RichardJH (Oct 7, 2002)

I suppose if Pete hadn't chosen to remove his own name and email address from his published email he may have a different view about publishing other peoples emails on a public forum


----------



## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

LOL! Indeed


----------

