BBC Parliament - Essential Public Service Broadcasting (BBC Parliament)

Member Name: julwhite

Product:	BBC Parliament
Date:	16/05/07 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Watch what your MPs are doing, good for democracy

Disadvantages: Web-site of channel needs more content, needs more explanation of implications of what is happening

BBC Parliament is available as a free to air digital channels, available on most platforms such as Sky, Freeview and also via the Internet. It is funded by the BBC and provides near 24 hours coverage of politics and Parliament.

The channel is not designed to appeal to the majority of the public, in the same way that Hansard (the written record of Parliament) is not designed to be a best-seller. It is one of those services which is there to make politics accessible and it means that it is available to those that want to see it.

Democracy is inevitably aided by any mechanism which allows any member of the public to watch their elected representatives speak in the chamber of the House of Commons, so in principle this is public service broadcasting at its best.

The channel, which might be better described as BBC Politics rather than BBC Parliament, has live coverage from the House of Commons, but also shows the House of Lords, select committee hearings, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Scottish Parliament.

The channel in addition has programmes which cover the day's political news, European coverage and also some coverage of US politics. It doesn't in the main have much coverage such as Newsnight on BBC 2 would offer, ie, a magazine type of television programme.

Currently, every Bank Holiday the channel shows all-day repeats of previous General Elections. The audience figures for this show a surprisingly large niche following for watching re-runs of past elections!

There are some problems, the Internet site is quite limited, although it does stream the channel for those who want to watch it. The station controller however did say on a BBC blog that they aimed to be able to put more past programmes onto the web-site.

The coverage on the channel is also sometimes very dry and inaccessible to those who don't normally follow politics. For example, there is no explanation of what is happening, so a viewer might become confused as to what is happening when say the House of Common coverage stops when MPs go to vote or the viewer may not understand the implications of what the voting means.

It would also be advantageous, although possibly expensive, to create an archive of coverage from the various Parliaments and chambers, so that they can be made available like Hansard is available on the Houses of Parliament site.

Another possibility for expanding the channel is to cover more news from local councils, although if they were to try and satsify everyone they might need to set up BBC Parliament 2!

BBC Parliament therefore in summary is an essential piece of public service broadcasting.

Summary: Essential public service broadcasting, handled very professionally.