Word: bbc
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Someone, however, is doing something to counter this starchy BBC stereotype--the BBC. Through its American cable channel, BBC America, founded two years ago and now in about 12 million homes, the Beeb is recolonizing American tellies with a slate heavy on newer dramas and "Britcoms." These raw, rude, thoroughly unpolite shows open a window on a brand new England, from the gritty Bosnian-war drama Peacekeepers to the Lynchian small-town comic horrors of The League of Gentlemen...
...motivation behind the channel is not cultural rehabilitation but the chance to grab a piece of the lucrative American market. The BBC has long sold reruns to the likes of PBS and licensed programs for adaptations (All in the Family, for instance, was based on Till Death Us Do Part). "The BBC was very proud of its success on [American TV]," says Paul Lee, BBC America's chief operating officer. "But it had no equity stake." So the broadcaster--a public entity in Britain--negotiated an alliance with Discovery Communications, parent of Discovery and other channels, which helped launch...
...would have been easy to fill 24 hours with proven favorites. "People told me, 'The only things you can do are what you've already made a success of,'" Lee says. "Mysteries, classic dramas, maybe the more conservative sitcoms from PBS." Instead BBC America opted to distinguish itself with shows "closer to the new Beetle than to the Jaguar: vibrant, contemporary, different." While the network is not yet rated by Nielsen, it's the edgier programming--running in blocks called Cool Britannia and the Britcom Zone--that has inspired a dedicated audience following and critical praise. But the channel also...
...visual arts. Following a near fatal car crash in Australia last year, Hughes is back in full swing for TIME and is in the final stages of completing a six-part series on his native country that will run there as well as on PBS and the BBC. The series, he says, "is meant to get past all that Crocodile Dundee garbage and show what Australia is actually like." He is also working on a book about his car accident and ensuing battles with Australia's legal system and its press...
...Russia had initially been opposed to an arms embargo, however, and with good reason. The two countries may be facing starvation from famine, but the BBC reports that Ethiopia and Eritrea's war has cost both countries somewhere around $1 million a day for the past two years - much of it spent on weapons from Russia and its former Soviet satellites. The Russians, for example, sold Ethiopia eight Sukhoi 27 fighters 18 months ago at a cost of $150 million, and then received a similar amount from Eritrea for a batch of MiG-29 fighters and more for a handful...