Read on Twitter
The more coverage there is, the more clearly it tells us how fearful the Establishment are that The Monarchy will wither away after Philip, Elizabeth II & the Pandemic. Such energetic efforts at cultural reproduction are signs of how anxious they are at the top of the hierarchy. https://twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/1380559881825042438
If you look back at all the monarchies dislodged in decade after Spanish flu pandemic of 1919-21, you'll start to see why. Mass global pandemics, and World Wars, tend to make people more egalitarian & less indulgent of unearned privileges & power. And Charles is no Elizabeth II.
Prince Philip knew this well:
'In 1922, Philip's uncle, king of Greece, was forced to abdicate after debacle of Greco-Turkish War. Philip’s father was accused of treason & exiled. The family fled to Paris, where they would be based for the next decade...' https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/a10267489/young-prince-philip-childhood/
'In 1922, Philip's uncle, king of Greece, was forced to abdicate after debacle of Greco-Turkish War. Philip’s father was accused of treason & exiled. The family fled to Paris, where they would be based for the next decade...' https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/a10267489/young-prince-philip-childhood/
Imagine:
'It's 2028. Consumer Inflation in Britain is at 8%. Wages haven't increased since before the Pandemic. Scotland has become Independent. Ireland has been Reunified. Welsh Separatists have blown up the Severn Bridge. King Charles & Queen Camilla are deeply unpopular...'
'It's 2028. Consumer Inflation in Britain is at 8%. Wages haven't increased since before the Pandemic. Scotland has become Independent. Ireland has been Reunified. Welsh Separatists have blown up the Severn Bridge. King Charles & Queen Camilla are deeply unpopular...'
Just turned on Radio 4 in time for Max Hastings to say that everyone knows how difficult it is to be BOTH a Public Figure AND a good parent. Peak.
It’s hardly surprising that there are such nerves: a disastrous Hard Brexit; economic collapse; the Good Friday Agreement falling apart, making a trade deal with Biden unlikely; the SNP about to sweep Scotland; 1.5 million people with Long Covid... How many are unemployed now?
Is everybody watching The Crown? https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/prince-philip-death-bbc-ratings-b1829504.html
The BBC’s ‘handling of Philip’s death points to a deeper question over the ability of a national broadcaster to force the country together to mourn a single individual in an era where audiences are fragmented and less deferential.’ https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/apr/10/bbc-flooded-with-complaints-over-prince-philip-coverage
‘Executives – & royal courtiers – will be nervously studying release of television viewing figures & seeing if the decision to replace Friday night’s episode of EastEnders with tributes to Philip will expose the fact that British public’s appetite for such material is limited.’
‘When Princess Diana died in 1997 majority of UK population had only just gained access to a 5th TV channel. If BBC wanted to enforce a mood of national mourning they had power to cut off other forms of entertainment & keep dissenting voices at bay through sheer enormity of reach
‘Nowadays, although the BBC’s reach among the UK population remains enormous, the growth of Netflix and YouTube means audiences have somewhere else to turn.’
‘People working in BBC News suggested that the long-planned scale of the coverage is because the corporation still bore the scars from the death of the Queen Mother in 2002, when its output was deemed insufficiently deferential by rightwing newspapers.’
‘There is also ongoing battle bw govt & BBC over future funding. With new DG, Tim Davie, already battling Conservative MPs who accuse BBC of not being sufficiently patriotic, the BBC will have been aware of political risks of not being perceived to have struck the right tone.’
Basically, it looks like Eastenders and Masterchef edge it over The Monarchy.
A plot twist is what British Royals need, else I reckon they’ve already lost the crowd. Maybe a Palace Coup?: The Crown skips straight to Willy after Charlie has some Pope-like ‘crisis of conscience’, brought on by disillusionment with a world full of vanity, corruption & greed?
If Prince Andrew was suddenly to be extraordinarily renditioned to an FBI Black Site for questioning, that would certainly bring the audience figures back up.
“At which point Phil the Greek exploded… ‘The Times? Bloody Murdoch rag! Wouldn’t have it in the house! Dreadful self-righteous rubbish!’ I interjected to say the Guardian was the self-righteous one, to which he replied: ‘Not as bad as the bloody Times!’” https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/10/murdoch-rag-martin-rowson-recalls-prince-philips-verdict-on-the-times?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
‘Manufacturing the pretence of patriotic solidarity in a time of supposed national loss or calamity; cultivating a reverence for tradition; promoting unquestioning respect for socially constructed authority figures;... https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-04-10/media-royal-death-propaganda/
‘...reinforcing social hierarchies that normalise grossly offensive wealth disparities is exactly what establishment media is there to do.
The corporate media, from the Daily Mail to the BBC and Guardian, is there to make the patently insane – mourning an entitled man most...’
The corporate media, from the Daily Mail to the BBC and Guardian, is there to make the patently insane – mourning an entitled man most...’
‘...of us knew little about and what little we did know made us care even less for him – seem not only natural but obligatory. To refuse to submit to compulsory grieving, to state that Philip’s death from old age is less important than the deaths of tens of thousands of people..’
‘... in the UK who lost their lives early from the pandemic, is not rudeness, or heartlessness, or a lack of patriotism. It is to cling on to our humanity, to prize our ability to think & feel for ourselves, and to refuse to be swept up in a carnival of hollow emotion...’
‘...Most important, it is to sense that the wall-to-wall propaganda we are being subjected to on death of a royal may look exceptional but is in fact entirely routine. It is simply that in normal times the propaganda is better masked, wrapped in illusion of choice and variety.’
‘Like ITV, BBC simply ignored wishes of its audiences, commandeering all of its many channels to manufacture & enforce national mood of grief. That even went so far as placing banners on CBBC channel for children encouraging them to forgo cartoons & switch to other channels...’
‘...The resulting outpouring of anger was so great, BBC was forced to open a dedicated complaints form on its website, & then hurriedly had to remove it when the establishment threw a wobbly about viewers being given a chance to object to BBC’s coverage.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/death-duke-of-edinburgh-tv-coverage/#/Notification
https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/death-duke-of-edinburgh-tv-coverage/#/Notification
So, hold on, the BBC put an online complaints link up AND THEN TOOK IT DOWN AGAIN because people higher-up got spooked by the massive amount of complaints about excessive coverage of Prince Philip’s death???
Do we know how many complaints the complaint link had registered before it was hurriedly taken down again?
Can you imagine the Malcolm Tucker-esque action behind the scene?:
“You’ve done what? You’ve opened a dedicated Complaints Web-page against a dead Prince???”
@Aiannucci
Can you imagine the Malcolm Tucker-esque action behind the scene?:
“You’ve done what? You’ve opened a dedicated Complaints Web-page against a dead Prince???”
@Aiannucci
‘The UK’s major broadcasters trashed their schedules on Friday to bring audiences wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death, but the output proved to be a turn-off for Brits in key evening viewing hours.’ https://deadline.com/2021/04/prince-philip-ratings-death-turn-off-british-viewers-1234731536/
I can’t help but wonder how much crossover there is between the “Show some bloody respect for the aristocratic dead you disrespectful, ungrateful plebs” crowd with the “Gonna go get me some Prophet Mo cartoons! Anything to trigger the Mossies” gang?
‘The rightwing Defund the BBC campaign described it as “disgraceful” that BBC was making it easier to complain about its coverage, saying: “The anti-British BBC has set up a form to encourage complaints abt the volume of coverage of Prince Philip’s death.”’ https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/apr/10/bbc-flooded-with-complaints-over-prince-philip-coverage
