The BBC has (yet again) been accused of deceiving viewers by surreptitiously planting images from the first series of Planet Earth into the second current series.
The episode broadcast last Sunday night included amazing footage of an avalanche plummeting down a mountain face. Eagle-eyed viewers quickly realised that the same images had also been included in the original series, some ten years earlier.
Of course it wasn't the BBC's fault that it deceived viewers for the umpteenth time - it was merely trying to save a few quid by using recycled footage. Times are hard at the national broadcaster, don't you know?!
A BBC spokesman said: "In Natural History programming, we sometimes augment our sequences with footage which was originally shot for other productions.
"We are always conscious of the need to manage budgets on our projects carefully.
"Sharing or re-using footage is one of the ways we ensure the licence fee payer gets the best value for money, and enables us to use our budgets to maximise the amount of truly extraordinary, new animal behaviour and natural phenomena in our series."
Planet Earth faced additional criticism over the revelation that apparently "natural" footage of a golden eagle in flight had actually been staged using a trained bird kept in captivity.
Still, in the grand scheme of things trying to deceive viewers is a fairly minor BBC crime.
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"Sharing or re-using footage is one of the ways we ensure the licence fee payer gets the best value for money,.........."
ReplyDeleteRoughly translated....is one of the ways we ensure we have more money at our disposal to waste on Taxi's, Champagne BBC Pi$$ Up's, Failed IT schemes, Pay for BBC 'Talent' Etc, Etc.
You read my mind.
ReplyDelete