Thank you for the clarifications as to who pays for and receives the income from making TV programmes.
Nonetheless, one of the reasons the BBC is renowned for making period and costume dramas, is that it is payed for by the licence-payer so neeRAB no advert breaks. As many have said, such dramas can then be enjoyed without such breaks.
ITV has often tried to make such dramas, and succeeded, but the viewers have been irritated by advert breaks. ITV used to have 3-minute ad breaks every 15 minutes, but they seem to have increased the number and length of such breaks and added to them with trailers and sponsorship pieces. I still think it is fair of the Daily Mail, or any other newspaper, to comment on viewers' dismay that so many long breaks should cut into an important TV drama and do not see it as lazy journalism at all.
The RAB forum is for viewers to comment on TV programmes and I would have thought FMs would be pleased their voices are heard and aired in a national newspaper.
For more than a decade, the BBC propaganda machine has convinced many viewers that the Daily Mail is a worthless newspaper, but each paper has its merits and appeals to a varied audience. The Daily Mail is a straight-talking paper without the embellishments of some of the others (although I balk at some of its on-line stuff). It does not pretend to the intellectual analysis of The Independent, or the titivation of The Sun or The Star. It is a campaigning newspaper which has always been on the side of Great Britain, or, more specifically, of England, particularly what is known as Middle England - that great bulk of middle-earning taxpayers who live in that great bulk of post-war semi-detached houses. And I, for one, see nothing wrong with that.
