BBC Watch

There was a time a few years ago when the BBC was considered an essential and integral component of any TV platform that sought to get established in the UK.

More recently the British Wokecasting Corporation decided to alienate much of its viewership with biased news and programming that was more about woke morality preaching than entertainment.

So now in the face of increasing unpopularity, the BBC is having to seek the help of government in forcing TV platforms to carry the BBC by law.

The BBC is calling for legislation to ban the sale of plug-in devices, such as Amazon's Fire TV Stick, that don't carry the BBC prominently on its platform. Clare Sumner, BBC director of policy, called for for urgent legislation to update the 2003 Communications Act to modernise the regulatory framework to ensure public service broadcasters (PSBs) are prominent and available on all major TV platforms.

The new law would prevent providers of TV user interfaces (for example, smart TV manufacturers or global tech providers) from releasing products in the UK without complying with these rules. TV censor Ofcom is said to support such a law change to give services like the BBC iPlayer and ITV Hub guaranteed prominence on Smart TVs.

Fawlty Towers is set to be re-aired on BBC but racial slurs made by characters such as Major Gowen will be omitted from the show mirror

The offending scene is when Major Gowan discusses the difference between 'niggers' and 'wogs'.

Last year writer and star John Cleese, who plays Basil Fawlty, branded Beeb bosses gutless for temporarily removing the episode with the Major's remarks from the UKTV streaming platform. He argued that the remarks were fine in the context of the major being shown as an old fossil:

We were not supporting his views, we were making fun of them.

A separate episode, The Anniversary , starts with the Fawlty Towers sign re-arranged into the anagram 'Flowery Twats', which is also cut.

The series is available on iPlayer from Monday.

A group of influential technology and media companies has partnered to form the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a Joint Development Foundation project established to address the supposed prevalence of disinformation, misinformation and online content fraud through developing technical standards for certifying the source and history or provenance of media content.

Founding members Adobe, Arm, BBC, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic seek to establish a standardized provenance solution with the goal of combating misleading content. C2PA member organizations will work together to develop content provenance specifications for common asset types and formats to enable publishers, creators and consumers to trace the origin and evolution of a piece of media, including images, videos, audio and documents. These technical specifications will include defining what information is associated with each type of asset, how that information is presented and stored, and how evidence of tampering can be identified.

The C2PA's open standard will give platforms a method to preserve and read provenance-based digital content. Because an open standard can be adopted by any online platform, it is critical to scaling trust across the internet. In addition to the inclusion of varied media types at scale, C2PA is driving an end-to-end provenance experience from the capturing device to the information consumer. Collaboration with chipmakers, news organizations, and software and platform companies is critical to facilitate a comprehensive provenance standard and drive broad adoption across the content ecosystem.

The BBC has slapped ludicrous trigger warnings on episodes of Blackadder and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air because of jokes which it claims could be seen as offensive.

iPlayer viewers will see:

Blackadder, first aired in 1983, uses a slur in its second episode which the BBC decided warrants a content warning

In the episode, Rowan Atkinson's character clashes with Dougal MacAngus who has just returned from the Crusades and is awarded Blackadder's land as a result of his good service. Blackadder says:

You come in here fresh from slaughtering a couple of Chocos when their backs were turned and you think you can upset the harmony of a whole kingdom.

Another episode of the sitcom also uses a derogatory term for a Spaniard.

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air's Reunion episode, filmed last year, also contains a warning at the start of the show. It is not clear what offended the BBC in this episode.