A Licence to Kill for
Okay, I’m not going to talk about the EU or feminists or immigration or the NHS or Tony Blair or all the other subjects that get the Raccoon regulars hot under the collar – bar one. I’m poised to stick my neck on the line and I’m prepared to face the anticipated shower of arrows. Why? Because I believe the licence fee is worth every bloody penny. Here goes…
Know how much it costs me a month? Eleven quid. Know how much all my other bills cost me a month? A combined total of around £200. If the rest were the same as the TV licence, I’d spend most days swanning about like a pools’ winner in Monte Carlo. I can watch as much or as little telly as I like and the price remains the same; I can’t say that about my phone/internet bill, for example. Even though I avoided paying a licence for the best part of a decade, when they finally caught up with me the ridiculously low monthly cost of it was hardly a severe dent to my income.
Some say the licence fee is an anachronism – and at a moment when many view their programmes on a variety of formats other than the humble TV set (not to mention certain broadcasters maximising their profits by fleecing their customers to the bone), I suppose it is. It harks back to the era of dog licences, wireless licences and the GPO and, dare I say it without donning my rose-tinted specs, what seems to be a less complicated age. The licence fee didn’t appear with the birth of the British Broadcasting Company; there had been a licence in place from the earliest days of radio, to permit licence-holders to receive experimental transmissions. Even when the BBC was formed in 1922, it was initially funded by the sale of radio sets and – hard to believe now – the sponsorship of certain programmes that were broadcast on the nascent network.
When the licence fee as we know it did eventually appear, the cost was 10/-, which for post-decimal kids is 50p. The average annual nominal earnings in the UK at the time were around £160, which today translates at just over £7,500, give or take the odd half-a-crown. To begin with, the licence fee was exclusively for radio, though the beginnings of the BBC Television Service in 1936 didn’t lead to a penny increase; the fact that one had to live in London and the South East to even receive any pictures from Alexandra Palace probably helped to keep the licence fee at a fixed price. Only when TV resumed after the war was it acknowledged with a separate licence, priced at £2 in 1946; by the time the funding for BBC radio was merged with funding for BBC TV at the end of the 1960s, the TV licence stood at £6, though two distinctive licences were now required depending on whether or not one’s set was monochrome or colour; the latter licence was a notably higher £11.
With ITV funded by advertising, as were the Independent Local Radio stations that spread across the country from 1973 onwards, there were occasional grumbles about the licence fee from those who rarely watched BBC TV, but the flip side was also prevalent from avid BBC devotees who wouldn’t sully their hands with that common commercial television. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, yet the licence fee seemed a fair deal in that it covered all bases; you had the option of choosing to watch or not choosing to watch whatever was on offer, but you paid the same as everyone else regardless. However, British television was about to enter a different era, one in which the profit maxim would come to be the decisive factor in determining what the licence fee entitled us to see.
When Rupert Murdoch purchased a failing pioneer satellite broadcaster, Satellite Television UK, in 1983, he renamed it Sky Television the following year; but the technology for receiving satellite or cable TV was still in its infancy in the mid-80s, a time when most British TV viewers were still getting to grips with the marvels of the home VCR. By the end of the 80s, however, with Mrs Thatcher’s Broadcasting Act set to deregulate British television and open the floodgates for a plethora of new TV channels, Murdoch seized the day and aimed for the new UK Satellite TV licence; the IBA decided to bar him from bidding. The licence was awarded to British Satellite Broadcasting, and Murdoch was forced into re-launching what was then one of his least-profitable enterprises as a multi-channel service in February 1989.
Despite the hype that surrounded the arrival of Sky and BSB, both struggled to break even as viewers were reluctant to shell out for satellite dishes or have cable installed in their homes; moreover, few were impressed with what they saw. Satellite and cable TV seemed to be a repository for programmes that wouldn’t have got a look in on terrestrial channels – cheap US imports, even cheaper home-grown concoctions (often fronted by has-been ghosts of television past or young guns who had failed the interview at the BBC), and an endless conveyor belt of ancient American series resurrected for the nostalgia factor. Viewers weren’t exactly queuing-up to subscribe, and the more money was splashed out on marketing campaigns for both Sky and BSB, the more they haemorrhaged it. Less than two years after their respective launches, the two companies merged to become British Sky Broadcasting – BSkyB to the layman; but Sky was the name that stuck in the minds of the public. However, the company continued to shed money at a rate that Murdoch was unaccustomed to. What saved Sky from television oblivion was the acquisition of the rights for broadcasting live football, providing the company with a solid foundation to build its future ambitions upon.
By the middle of the 1990s, BSkyB could boast 3.6 million subscribers, completely dominating the market in the UK, and the gradual phasing out of analogue broadcasting in favour of digital that took place in the second decade of the twenty-first century also weighed heavily in Murdoch’s favour. The expansion of his television interests on several continents eventually gave Sky a virtual monopoly on many of the world’s major sporting events, something Murdoch knew would persuade even his most ardent opponents to reluctantly cough-up for a subscription. And in comparison to the cost of the licence fee, paying to view and subscribing to Sky is a different prospect altogether.
Call me old-fashioned (‘You’re old-fashioned!’), but if I pay my licence fee, I sort-of feel I should be able to watch whatever channels are available in this country without having to fork out far more on top of the licence fee if I want to watch a particular series airing on a Sky channel or even, on the odd occasion, a live football match. But greed has been the creed of Sky, and the Digger has used it to woo more than once. The cricket and boxing authorities took the Sky money and ran with it, leaving terrestrial viewers suddenly deprived of live coverage of what had been popular television sports for decades, and there’s no question both suffered a dip in popularity via their abrupt removal from TV screens the whole population had access to.
Then I think of what I get out of what I do actually pay for – BBC4 and Radio 4; there’s also BBC2 when it feels like doing something interesting and BBC1 primarily for big live events, two of which – the General Election and the Eurovision Song Contest – have taken place in the past couple of weeks. You know what I really love about listening to or watching a BBC broadcast, though? No bloody ads interrupting the flow every seven or eight minutes; the recent Peter Kay ‘Car Share’ sitcom, peppered with unnervingly realistic spoof ads from a fictitious commercial radio station, reminded me of how a commercialised BBC, should the licence fee be abolished, would be the decree absolute for me where contemporary broadcasting is concerned.
The best things in life aren’t always necessarily free; sometimes they cost eleven quid a month. Be careful what you (and the new Tory ‘Culture Secretary’) wish for.
Petunia Winegum
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May 25, 2015 at 9:15 am -
I’m afraid you miss a very significant point Petunia.
Why should I be forced to pay for a shade of propaganda I abhor?
In addition, it is MHO that Aunty exhibits extreme bias in one particular scientific area – it’s reporting that nearly every unusual natural phenomena is related to climate change.
The market should have a free choice as to where it wants to spend its money.
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May 25, 2015 at 3:24 pm -
“Why should I be forced to pay for a shade of propaganda I abhor?”
You’re not. You can legally own a TV and not have a license, as long as you only watch catchup TV and DVDs and such like with it.
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May 25, 2015 at 6:45 pm -
but if all I want to do is watch sky tv, I must pay the bbc for that privilege. and that’s not right.
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May 25, 2015 at 9:21 pm -
There are occasionally the odd programmes on Sky I’d quite like to watch, but I can’t afford to subscribe. Why should I have to pay more on top of an extremely reasonable licence fee?
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May 25, 2015 at 11:05 pm -
why should I pay at all for something I don’t watch?
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May 26, 2015 at 12:48 am
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May 25, 2015 at 9:38 am -
“Call me old-fashioned (‘You’re old-fashioned!’), but if I pay my licence fee, I sort-of feel I should be able to watch whatever channels are available in this country without having to fork out far more on top of the licence fee if I want to watch a particular series airing on a Sky channel or even, on the odd occasion, a live football match”
Conversely, if someone pays a Sky subscription then they should be able to watch a BBC program without having to fork out more? Goose, gander?
Why do you assume that advertising would be the only alternative way of paying for the BBC drivel? Let it become a subscription service.
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May 25, 2015 at 9:54 am -
The key argument against both subscription and advertising models is the one of lowest common denominator – the perpetual pursuit of raw audience numbers dictates that such models will always chase the volume-viewer game, which means ‘chav-TV’ in all its forms.
The licence-fee BBC, despite its manifold faults and inherent leftward bias, is at least able to present much content based on quality, rather than just the quantity of its appeal to the masses. Like our barman, Petunia, I appreciate the current value equation (Radio4 alone is worth it, the rest is a bonus) and I would be concerned that any alternative funding method would give me far less than I want for far more of my dosh.
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May 25, 2015 at 10:51 am -
And what would the cost of a subscription service be? The point is, for the miniscule amount the licence fee costs in comparison to a subscription, I think it is value for money.
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May 25, 2015 at 6:50 pm -
it’s value for money only if you consider it has value. if it has no value to you – it is NOT value for money.
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May 25, 2015 at 9:41 am -
If the BBC didn’t insist on being the broadcasting and propaganda arm of the Labour party and the climate alarmists then you might have a point. It is also such a wasteful organisation. While other broadcasters send a few people to cover events worldwide the beeb sends jumbo jets full. This was noticeable yesterday when I was watching the news on BBC Scotland. They had a report on the French Open, where they will have the usual suspects doing the main coverage, but the report was by some Scotsman for BBC Scotland. No doubt BBC Wales and BBC Northern Ireland will have their own reporters there as well. Multiply that by all the world-wide coverage it adds up to a fair number of people doing the same report for the same organisation.
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May 25, 2015 at 9:55 am -
If you think the BBC is the broadcasting arm of the Labour party then you watched very little political coverage at the last election. During the past few years I’ve noticed a distinct swing to the centre right in their news and current affairs. Comedy and other entertainment is still solidly left. The BBC has factions, in effect, but is definitely not monolithically pro Labour. I can cope with that, I’m an adult.
As for complaining because you don’t like their pro AGW stance, you are effectively demanding they run counter to what IS scientific consensus. That would be mad. If you want swivel eyed lunacy, tune into Fox if you are able.Yes they are wasteful. They pay so called ‘stars’ stupid amounts of money to do things that I don’t find in the least entertaining or enlightening. They double up on journalists and smother events with often quite poor commentary.
Sort it, don’t slash it or sell it.
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May 25, 2015 at 10:16 am -
@ IlovetheBBC
“As for complaining because you don’t like their pro AGW stance, you are effectively demanding they run counter to what IS scientific consensus. ”
So why did Aunty waste £100k of licence-payers money trying to hide who spoke at, and, who attended the 28-gate affair discussions? Only for a blogger to then publish the list of attendees, sourced from the public domain?
Consensus you say? What was the consensus of who would win GE2015?
You might ‘love the BBC’, but there are many who loathe it.
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May 25, 2015 at 7:03 pm -
It is indeed interesting to see IlovetheBBC refer to a scientific “consensus” related to AGW caused climate warming, the consensus is of course amongst innumerable social “scientists” and political “scientists” the type of people who dodged math-based courses and are for the most part technologically and numeracy-illiterate. Amongst real scientists (ie those who study science) there is far less (and receding) consensus about mans contribution to warming. The fact that BBC regularly trots out the opinions of the hard-of-thinking social and political “scientists” in the face of no recorded temperature increase for 18 years surely self defines their bias.
On the basis of this one issue one must ask how much more misinformation is allowed to be broadcast to any already ill-educated population.
Such a dangerously ill-informed organization deserves no mandatory support.-
May 26, 2015 at 10:40 am -
I think you’ll find that that almost the exact opposite of the actual situation. It is those in the denialist camp who, even if they can call themselves scientists, do not work in the relevant fields.
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May 25, 2015 at 7:11 pm -
What cave have you been in these last few years: one of very few who still thinks there is scientific consensus when that myth has been ripped a new one on several occasions (or do you mean consensus among tax raising governments?)
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May 25, 2015 at 8:05 pm -
Not unlike the earlier ‘scientific consensus’ that the world was flat – it worked well for the supporters not to question the ‘science’ for generations, then the Emperor’s New Clothes finally fell apart.
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May 25, 2015 at 11:42 pm -
No, really, there is a scientific consensus. There are a disturbing number of people prepared to ignore it because of the implications. (And of course many who take the implications a bit far, but they aren’t the ones with any power, otherwise you’d be complaining about all the power cuts due to lack of electricity)
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May 25, 2015 at 10:54 am -
I also remember the Labour party in power accusing the BBC of being anti-Labour. I think whoever’s in charge decides the Beeb represents the opposition.
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May 25, 2015 at 5:45 pm -
They briefly fell out over Iraq – an issue which split the party and indeed the country. Normalcy has been restored with the BBC’s Iraq nemesis, Labour stalwart Alastair Campbell, being one of its favoured pontificators.
When guys such as Richard Littlejohn and Leo McKinstry gets as much BBC exposure as characters like Owen Jones and Laurie Penny (who write for publications with a tiny number of buyers compared to the newspapers where Littlejohn and McKinstry are columnists) then maybe I’ll concur that the BBC is shedding its institutional bias.
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May 25, 2015 at 6:05 pm -
I’ d say that the most ubiquitous talking head is my Mum’s favourite, Andrew Neil, who seems well to the cynical right. Littlejohn doesn’t doesn’t live among us plebs in the UK but in Miami. I don’t think he does much telly in the states either. Presumably he writes his pieces for the Mail message in his sleep and lives happily off the Mail shilling.
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May 25, 2015 at 7:10 pm -
The very point re Andrew Neill is that he is ALONE in being EQUALLY effective against any political hue: i.e. he is NOT bias. I iterate the point that he is the ONLY one and stands out for this reason.
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May 25, 2015 at 8:09 pm -
I agree, Andrew Neil is the only one I watch now. I have long given up on Newsnight and Q Time, never missed them at one time though I did enjoy the one during the election, if they all had an audience like that I would return. It isn’t so much the license fee I mind, its a fraction of what I choose to pay for Sky whose election coverage was far better than the BBC. It just never has room for dissent, pro EU, pro Global Warming, Anti smoking, always depressing about the country. Very few other viewpoints are allowed and ridiculed if they are, it just doesn’t reflect my views and appears to have no room for them.
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May 25, 2015 at 8:53 pm -
I agree with many of the posters here; Andrew Neil tends to use equal directness whoever he’s questioning.
For the rest it seems as they say: Church of England = Labour at prayer; BBC = Labour on air. I’m sick to death of the alleged imminent demise of the nhs, or the alleged millions only surviving because of foodbanks etc….., as reported by a corporation dedicated to influencing instead of informing. The endless examination of UKIP’s ‘more colourful’ people (no I’m not a member) & the absence of comment even of criminal behaviour involving significant numbers of mainstream politicians.
I don’t think it’s a plot, I think it’s just the self perpetuating mindset from recruiting only in it’s own image; privileged lefties & luvvies, with the usual belief in their right to salve their social consciences at other’s expense.
But back to the licence fee; let’s remember that the BBC has earnings from the sale of it’s (i.e. our) output & spin-offs. Were it a commercial enterprise we’d be pleased with it’s massive growth. But it isn’t. What we should be asking is why, given that income, we pay a licence fee at all for the service as defined by charter, or why the proceeds aren’t simply returned to the owner?
OK, I do listen to R4 & R4ex, but television is increasingly disappointing especially the presentation of what can only be described as not really science programmes.
That’s how I see it.
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May 26, 2015 at 10:46 am -
You think? I only recall ever seeing Laurie Penny on one BBC programme, whereas Littlejohn used to to crop up on Question Time fairly often.
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May 25, 2015 at 9:44 am -
BBC drivel?
Which variety of drivel do you prefer?
Whichever it is, it will cost you far more than the BBC.-
May 25, 2015 at 10:16 am -
…..but I’d have a choice of what drivel I paid for. I wouldn’t need to pay for all the drivel I never watch or listen to. Which in my case, is most of it.
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May 25, 2015 at 6:54 pm -
the point is that I should be able to CHOOSE what I pay for.
a heretical concept to some, I agree. but that is how it should be.-
May 26, 2015 at 10:49 am -
You do. You choose to have a TV, or not to have a TV. Conversely, you don’t get any choice but to fund commercial TV through advertisied products, whetehr you have a TV or not.
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May 26, 2015 at 11:12 am -
Their big new idea is the removal of that choice. Doesn’t bode well for the way they think does it.
“We’ve always said that the licence fee should be updated to reflect changing times. I welcome the Committee’s endorsement of our proposal to require people to pay the licence fee even if they only watch catch-up television. The committee has suggested another route to modernizing the licence fee – a universal household levy.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/speeches/2015/tony-hall-bbc-internet-era-
May 26, 2015 at 11:19 am -
The committee has suggested another route to modernizing the licence fee – a universal household levy.”
The Germans recently introduced that there and TBH it seems popular, das Volk seem to feel like they are getting a good deal, from what I can surmise. Mind you most of what I surmise is from reports on media funded by that very levy so…*parks articulated lorry full of salt at the end of his comment*
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May 26, 2015 at 11:25 am -
More harmonisation in Europe then. Oh goody…
http://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/274384-new-tv-license-fee-%E2%82%AC1798-a-month-from-012013/
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May 25, 2015 at 9:44 am -
Watch TV on an actual TV set? How quaint. I don’t own a TV and wouldn’t want to go back to the days of owning one, this being 2015 not 1995. Same reason I drive an automatic ,have a dishwasher and don’t travel by train. Emotionally I may still be living in the 80s but I do like the comforts that technological progression brings to the Dwarf Hovel. I pay far more a month in online download subscriptions than the licence fee ever cost me-even when I did have one.
The problem with the Licence Fee isn’t so much the Fee, or it’s amount, itself but the way it is collected. Some of the letters that the BBC send out would have The Sheriff of Nottingham reaching for the smelling salts. Even not having a TV and having informed the BBC of that fact (although I shouldn’t have had to) etc etc I still get letters written in a tone that if used towards me in a pub would result in the speaker getting a punch in the goBBC. Demands, Threats and snide ‘Warnings’.
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May 25, 2015 at 10:56 am -
Apparently, I heard the other day that if you only view programmes after they’ve aired – even on a TV using a ‘catch-up’ system – you don’t have to own a TV licence. Sounds like there’s a handy loophole there that isn’t widely acknowledged.
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May 25, 2015 at 10:59 am -
Sounds like there’s a handy loophole there that isn’t widely acknowledged.
And one the BBC is desperately trying to close. It always annoyed me that they tried to trick people who didn’t require a licence into paying because they used BBC iPlayer. The way some of the letters are worded you’d think just owning a computer required paying the licence fee.
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May 25, 2015 at 12:25 pm -
They are hoist with their own petard. The reason that the staple of output at present is composed of re-runs of ‘Only fools and horses’, ‘Dad’s Army’ and so forth is that vast amounts of the license revenue has been poured into an online presence, mainly for ‘current affairs’ (snork) which seems to be written by total idiots. They have attempted to crush the opposition. In this, they have failed.
But then they would – they are essentially an organ of a belief system which does not grasp commerce. We see this in the recent Clarkson debacle.
I pay my license – unwillingly – but the £11 a month I pay has to be offset against the savings made by not buying the Guardian, Mirror, NS, Independent and – spit – Prospect.
Not that I would anyway, so I still feel short-changed…
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May 26, 2015 at 11:05 am -
Seriously? Dad’s Army is on BBC2 once a week, sporting events permitted. Some would say that selected repeats of still-popular programmes on the main channels are both a good service, and sensible use of the BBC’s back-catalogue.
The BBC spend about £130 million on all online services, but that includes the iPlayer TV and radio catch-up services, as well as digital-only radio channels. In contrast, BBC1’s budget is over a £1 billion, and BBC2’s is around £450 million.
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May 26, 2015 at 10:53 am -
Actually, the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee recently recommended, “that as a minimum the licence fee must be amended to cover catch-up television as soon as possible,” so clearly it’s not just the BBC who think the loophole needs closing:
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May 26, 2015 at 11:07 am -
“that as a minimum the licence fee must be amended to cover catch-up television as soon as possible,”
Of course. How could they not? There are golden sovereigns and silver groats to be had. Scurvy dogs, every last Man Jack of them!
* Captain Black Dwarf, The Scourge Of The High C (code), wanders off humming ’15 men on a Dead Man’s Chest’ to himself *-
May 26, 2015 at 12:37 pm -
I doubt that extending the Licence to downloaders/iPlayer users would lead to a significant increase in income, given that year-on-year the number of licences issued continues to rise. Those who given up TV for catch-up services only may be very vocal about that choice, but I doubt they represent a large number of people.
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May 26, 2015 at 1:16 pm -
“In this digital age, the BBC enhances the lives of everyone in the UK, in more ways than ever before, and more often than ever before. What other service, company or organisation can say this about itself – that daily it wakes us up, make us laugh, makes us cry, makes us wonder, question, start conversations, come together, dance around the living room, despair at the world and celebrate great victories.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/speeches/2015/tony-hall-bbc-internet-eraIsn’t life grand on Planet BBC…
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May 25, 2015 at 7:00 pm -
it’s a well known loophole – not a secret one.
you can also listen to the radio – including the bbc – without having a licence.
but I had to almost force the licencing people to admit to that fact. it was like getting blood out of a stone to get them to admit that there are limits to their powers.-
May 25, 2015 at 9:22 pm -
I’d never heard of it till last week.
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May 25, 2015 at 11:07 pm -
it gets mentioned quite a lot on blogs that attack the bbc.
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May 25, 2015 at 9:47 am -
What I have against the BBC licence is that when I didn’t own a tv, or have an internet connection I was subjected to a rolling barrage of letters and people knocking on my door accusing me of a criminal offence. When there is enough stress in daily life, as there was at that time, with a terminally ill parent, this was the last thing I needed.
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May 25, 2015 at 10:00 am -
+1 . The thought of The Bestes But Insanest Frau In The World opening the door to a BBC Tax Collector is one of my greatest fears on those days I have to leave her on her own in the flat. Not too worried about what he, in his aggressive way, might do to her mental state…it is hard to break something that broken already but Mrs Dwarf, when the P A R A N O I A comes upon her, can go a bit Liz Borden….she might very well put the ‘ax’ in ‘Tax Collector’. Fortunately my carpet cleaner, he’s called Simon (Pet?), offers me a special rate for getting stains out of the carpets as he used to be a cleaner for the Police.
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May 25, 2015 at 10:59 am -
Was that another cryptic Ian Dury reference hidden away? ‘See my tailor/he’s called Simon’?
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May 25, 2015 at 11:03 am -
Was that another cryptic Ian Dury reference hidden away? ‘See my tailor/he’s called Simon’?
Indeed, I see you are on good form this morning…and likely to remain the undisputed champion of The Raccoon Arms Pop-Trivia Quiz Night (produced in assoc. with Jack Rabbit Slims).
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May 25, 2015 at 7:05 pm -
if you email them and state that you remove their common-law rights to cross the boundary of your property, they will not come to your door again.
if you also tell them that you never watch live tv and that they can only contact you by letter and not by any other means they will pretty much leave you completely alone.
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May 25, 2015 at 10:00 am -
What you say Petunia, would be fair of the BBC as it was in the seventies; but now, as others have pointed out above, it is the propaganda unit of a centralised State.
I wouldn’t watch TV for entertainment or relaxation, even if they paid me the TV licence. I’d only watch out of morbid curiosity, so as to guess what levels of subversion are being implemented, and towards what target.
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May 25, 2015 at 10:09 am -
Technology marches on. Back in the days when the BBC was the only show in town, the Licence Fee had it’s merits. Now, maybe not so much. Have a rummage around Youtube, and amongst the stupid stunts and cute cats are some seriously informative videos, some of them remarkably professional in their production. Want to know how to sharpen a woodworking handsaw? There are any several Youtube videos; it’s hardly a subject that would interest any television broadcaster. The days of ten million or more viewers for a block-buster drama on the telly are gone; you can choose from a huge range on Netflix.
There will always be a role for a public service broadcaster (would that the UK had one worthy of the description!) to keep us abreast of national and international news and current affairs, but does it have to be the only entertainer in town? Does it have to be by a compulsory charge on any device capable of receiving television or radio output? Maybe once it was, but no more. A much slimmer BBC consisting of one telly station, two radio stations and a website, funded by subscription and maybe a public grant to recognise it’s public service role, is all we really need. Private enterprise can do the rest; even some of the real glories of BBC production like Test Match Special and Gardener’s Question Time could go to a private subscription service.
Quite how technology will develop is almost impossible to predict for sure, but more on-demand, more fragmented and specialist services on more platforms like the internet and mobile devices seems to be the disection at the moment. It’s hard to see how the BBC could compete with all that. Consequently, the rationale for a legally-enforcable universal Licence Fee becomes harder to sustain. It’s days are numbered.
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May 25, 2015 at 10:21 am -
It’s not the cost – it is the compulsion which I object to
There are also vast numbers of expat viewers all over Europe who receive BBC through satellite dishes and yet pay nothing towards the BBC as they are not liable (although they may be liable for TV charges in their resident countries), if the BBC signals were subscription only then these free riders would not be possible, indeed the same would be true in the UK.
The reason why the BBC has always rejected moves towards encrypting its output so that only those paying the license fee can receive it, is that their reluctance to do this sustains the license fee. The same is true for the BBCiPlayer internet service, which is universally available to anyone with a UK internet service provider or non-residents with a UK based VPN.
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May 26, 2015 at 12:00 pm -
The biggest stumbling block to a subcription service is that it will render obsolete all the Freeview and Freesat set-top boxes (and many digital TVs) that were sold on the basis that they were for free-to-air services, most of which STBs cannot be easily adapted to support either an internal smartcard or an external decoder, which would be neecessary for subscriptions.
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May 26, 2015 at 12:13 pm -
Reception of BBC channels is impossible in most of Europe, as the Sky and Freesat signal footprints are tightly focussed on the British Isles. Even a 1 metre dish is not sufficient in much of Germany, for example, and you can forget about it entirely in Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc. Transmitting free-to-air in this way was, of course, a trade-off rather than – as previously – the BBC having to pay to use Sky’s subscriber management system, which in terms of unauthorised non-UK boxes was a leaky as a sieve.
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May 25, 2015 at 11:00 am -
All my other bills I can avoid if I chose . The BBC tax is compulsory and I do not wish to subsidize filthy mouthed comedians and a constant diet of pro EU lies and left wing tripe . Diversity and enrichment which the Beeb loves is leaving me feeling a foreigner in my own country . The Cenotaph service is one puke worthy charade . Not at all a happy bunny !
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May 25, 2015 at 11:07 am -
You could avoid paying your gas/electric/water/phone? They’re pretty compulsory, aren’t they?
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May 25, 2015 at 11:20 am -
You could avoid paying your gas/electric/water/phone? They’re pretty compulsory, aren’t they?
Yes they are BUT, aside from the Standing Charge (also a cheek IMO) element of the bill, you pay for what you use. Those people who never watch the BBC or only turn their TV on once a year for Womblebum, still pay the same as those of the Great Unwashed who spend all day on the couch in their boxers, swigging Buckfast, and watching the ‘opiate of the feeble minded’ or ‘Day Time TV’ as we call it.
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May 25, 2015 at 11:28 am -
It’s funny – I figured this piece would provoke a heated response, but I also thought Bank Holiday Monday/DIY/possible drive out to a stately home or theme park for those saddled with brats/sat with a brolly and sandwich box at Headingley whilst rain stops play. Bank Holidays ain’t what they used to be.
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May 26, 2015 at 12:06 am -
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition…” etc, etc.
I’m with you on this one PW, but we are clearly vastly outnumbered and by an army who have whipped themselves up into a fanatical hysteria! Alas, I fear that we find ourselves facing an outcome more akin to Isandlwana than to Rorke’s Drift! Wingnuts sir, thousands of ’em! Steady lad, don’t shoot till you see the reds of their eyes!-
May 26, 2015 at 12:16 am -
I spent most of last night barricading myself in the beer cellar, anticipating the restless natives once today’s agenda was announced. Drunk most of the bloody stock now.
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May 26, 2015 at 12:23 am -
Yes, how many ’rounds’ have we got through now? I’m down to my last Martini….. Henry!
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May 26, 2015 at 12:27 am -
I’ve lost count, but my main concern is what kind of state the bar must be in by now. Sounds like a coach-load of Millwall supporters up there.
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May 26, 2015 at 12:39 am -
Stand fast and take courage Pet. We are Yorkshire men aren’t we? They don’t stand a chance!
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May 26, 2015 at 2:06 am -
Wingnuts who understand science!
We have been called wingnuts by the so-called conservatives, similar insults from the socialists certainly won’t concern us.
Strange how when you are losing an argument our points become hysteria, but that is the standard line of the BBCphiles.
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May 26, 2015 at 7:37 am -
Oh do calm down, dears! It’s only the licence fee. It’s not like it is important…not like , say, someone wanting to redact the Shipping Forecast or dub Gardener’s Question Time into Farsi.
and Pet, you were only supposed to close the bloody Cellar Doors, Oaf!
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May 26, 2015 at 10:19 am -
Contact camp Freddy, tell him that I want him given a good going over! I don’t want him killed, just given a good going over!
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May 25, 2015 at 7:10 pm -
yes I could avoid paying for them and no, they are not compulsory. I pay for them because I value the service/produce they provide me with.
I do not value the bbc.
there is a FUNDAMENTAL difference.-
May 25, 2015 at 9:24 pm -
Presumably you draw your water from a well and your power from a generator? Otherwise, how do you not pay for your water and your electric? I’m keen to know then I’ll avoid paying them as well.
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May 25, 2015 at 11:14 pm -
I didn’t say I DIDN’T pay for them – I said I could CHOOSE not to pay for them. there is a difference.
I value the gas/water/electric/phone – so I don’t mind paying for them. the point is I COULD choose NOT to receive these services if I so decided.
if, however, I choose to only watch sky tv, I am obliged to pay the bbc tax.
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May 25, 2015 at 11:04 am -
Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. Aunty will be very selective about the information it reports about the impending In/Out referendum, having a vested interest & £m/€m in revenue at stake.
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May 25, 2015 at 11:24 am -
I agree with Petunia – not because the BBC is wonderful but the licence fee is imho the least bad/costly way of funding the BBC. I would suggest taxation but the knobheads in Parliament would surely make that into an endless boondoggle with arm twisting thrown in – so no. A pay-view box? that will be a wonderful opportunity for extra companies, regulators and advisory boards and cushty jobs for the boys and girls and most importantly cost. The licence fee is the least of the evils and gives the magistrates many happy hours of pointless fun figuring out how to avoid fining poor single mums who have no money.
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May 25, 2015 at 11:33 am -
The BBC is another government body kept alive by those in power. Nobody else gets to continue sending threatening letters without rebuke. I called plod to report them and it went all well and good, another easy white collar crime, until I mentioned the BBC then I was politely shown the door. Nobody private organisation gets support from plod to persecute the public at no cost to them and can get convictions on little or no evidence.
I don’t watch TV at all and see it as another tax. If it is so good, another envy of the world, then let it fund itself like everything else. It too could buy the footie rights if it wanted to but it can’t afford to because it is too busy paying for shows that hardly anyone watches.
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May 26, 2015 at 12:17 pm -
No, the BBC won’t pay for more football rights than they already have, because to do so would be staggeringly low value for money.
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May 26, 2015 at 12:22 pm -
Also, personally I am glad that Licence Fee money is instead spent on the sort of drama, comedy, news and documentaries that I dowatch, and don’t at all mind the trade-off against the drama, comedy, news, documentaries, and sport that I don’t watch. I find it very bizarre that people fixatre on the stuff that they don’t like, as if BBC channels have to appeal only to them personally in their entirety.
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May 25, 2015 at 11:41 am -
I was brought up on the BBC and now live in Australia which has the ABC, a public broadcaster fashioned on the BBC and which is my most loved television network closely followed by another government network, SBS which was set up in the 80’s to cater for Australia’s enormous and diverse European immigrants.
The ABC, like the BBC has produced the most superb programs and also broadcasts the very best of the BBC.
Or it did until Rupert Murdoch 2 years ago did a deal with the BBC to buy the shows usually shown on the ABC and then raided European movie studios to get the programs usually reserved for SBS (which nightly broadcast Croatian, French, Italian , Vietnamese etc etc movies) for his ghastly Foxtel cable network which is highly overpriced and basically, fucking crap.
Whilst in Oz we do not pay a license fee of course we pay for the ABC via taxes and there is not a government of any hue, be they from the Left or the Right who has not screeched that the ABC is “full of lefties” and biased towards them. (we have not yet had an internet or tabloid inference that the ABC is riddled with Satanic Pedos but who knows, it may come eventually). Very reminiscent of what we used to say about the BBC.
I do think people realise what they would lose with the BBC. And as for moaning about the license fee :you pay taxes for all sorts of bloody things you do not want or use- bombs to blast apart Iraqis or Libyans, roads you will never use and so on.
On the plus side I thing people just forget the unbievable & incredible boost the BBC – with all it’s failings – has done for culture and the arts.
Do you really in your wildest imagination think that frigging Sky or any of the privately owned networks would produce the sort of specialist art’s programs, often with much smaller audiences, that the BBC produces when a gormless reality program will fill the spot ?
And do you want no outlets that are advertising free?. Have you EVER tried to watch a US TV program on one of their networks and remained sane?
And remember while you pay a license fee you are also paying inflated prices for products – ALL products that are advertised comericially as the quite useless advertising costs that add zilch to the quality of the product, are built in.
You can hate the BBC for very good reasons but without, you would be begging for it to return.
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May 25, 2015 at 11:57 am -
May 25, 2015 at 2:57 pm -
“Do you really in your wildest imagination think that frigging Sky or any of the privately owned networks would produce the sort of specialist art’s programs, often with much smaller audiences, that the BBC produces when a gormless reality program will fill the spot ?”
Never watched Sky Arts 1 & 2?
And what about sport? Sky beat the BBC hands down in everything they do- and they do it with far fewer staff.
The BBC shows are but a poor imitation.The compulsory tax aka the Licence Fee has to go.
The BBC gets money from the EU so won’t bite the hands that feeds it
They have also invested their pension funds in “green” shares so will not broadcast anything that is likely to harm their pensions.
And yes they are biased- so much so that they are blind to it. They think their viewpoint is the norm.And which organisation has done the most to aid the decline of local newspapers? Yes- the BBC.
Time to cut it back. Time to cut it downSorry, but the self serving, self satisfied BBC are out
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May 25, 2015 at 3:38 pm -
I enjoy Petunia’s posts, often agree with them, and I learn lots from them (and get a great deal from the comments too!). I really admire the way he’s able to post so much good stuff so prolifically. It’s a pity I find myself so firmly on the other side of the fence with this topic – something our author anticipated might happen on this issue with a lot of the Raccoonist regulars.
I regard the BBC as the ENEMY, the Common Purpose of the airwaves (doubtless stuffed with actual CP drones itself). The fact that I’m forced to give my enemy my money if I watch tv – or go to jail if I refuse – is outrageous, especially in an age when 100s of subscription and many totally free channels are available (as is the world wide web).
The BBC tax is one which has survived way beyond the time when it could be defended as just and necessary. But I won’t be holding my breath until its abolition – the BEEB is far too useful a tool for the elite for them to take serious steps to diminish its influence.
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May 25, 2015 at 3:42 pm -
Well, after a few light-hearted and non-contentious posts of late, I figured it was time to let the Raccoon moggy loose amongst the pigeons. It’s one way of livening up a dreary Bank Holiday Monday, after all!
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May 25, 2015 at 8:13 pm -
It’s one way of livening up a dreary Bank Holiday Monday, after all!
80+ comments on a Sunday/Bank Holiday post is not bad. Mind you, if you’d come up with another “Word List” post you would be into telephone numbers.
Maybe a post lamenting the demise of ‘BBC English’ and the rise of the more idiotic sounding Northern accents…..? I admit to falling off my perch when that Blue Peteress spouted off in Ulster Scots or some News presenter first said something would be made “Man-date-tory”.
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May 25, 2015 at 3:41 pm -
if you train at the BBC (or the ABC in Oz) you will be snapped up by commercial networks and especially a Murdoch one.
There are no real institutes than give the experience that public broadcasters give. You are basically subsidising the commercial outlets already. If the Beeb went then subscription prices will just increase for the obvious reasons.
And I doubt the majority of viewers want or like adverts.
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May 25, 2015 at 5:18 pm -
As to ads – plenty still watch ITV despite it being advert sodden. I would still watch myself, adverts and all. I did 30 – 50 years ago. I don’t now because it’s virtually entirely broadcasting only stuff I dislike – Coronation street, Emmerdale, yahoo pandering Simon Cowell/ Ninja warrior etc – none of it makes me want to watch any more, but at least I’m not directly paying an up front fee to them so they can finance this stuff….despite my not watching. Nobody threatens me with prison for not paying for a newspaper I don’t read, or for a film I haven’t watched.
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May 26, 2015 at 12:24 pm -
Hardly a valid comparison, given that the BBC shows a selection of sports across its TV channels, while Sky has a number of channels devoted entirely to Sport.
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May 25, 2015 at 4:03 pm -
“Have you EVER tried to watch a US TV program on one of their networks and remained sane?”
I used to live in the USA and PBS & HBO were my 2 go to channels, both mainly ad free and high quality stuff. Things may have changed now as that was some time ago. I would also support Sky sports and BT sports which do Rugby in a vastly superior fashion to the Beeb imo. Cannot comment on Soccer as it doesn’t float my boat.
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May 26, 2015 at 2:57 pm -
Americans think PBS is infested with Communists. I love it.
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May 25, 2015 at 1:32 pm -
I agree with almost everyone else, bar the author!
Quite simply, the BBC is the broadcasting arm of the government. £11 a month to be very effectively brainwashed is good value if that’s what you desire.
As Hereward says,
“The BBC tax is compulsory and I do not wish to subsidize filthy mouthed comedians and a constant diet of pro EU lies and left wing tripe . Diversity and enrichment which the Beeb loves is leaving me feeling a foreigner in my own country .”
I have seen both Paxman and Andrew Neil look down their noses with total contempt at interviewees who are against same-sex “marriage”, speaking at them as if they are sub-human.
The BBC exists to propagandise. Everything else is just an add-on, but most of that is propaganda too, for example. the women now reporting on men’s football matches, because we’re not allowed to be men anymore; we have to be emasculated, like in the adverts where the men are gibbering idiots who can do nothing without their wives or daughters.
Then there are the thugs from Capita. They have no right of entry, but it doesn’t stop some of them acting criminally. Their letters which someone mentioned have been toned down recently, but you still get one every two years in case your “circumstances have changed”. Yes they have: I despise the BBC even more than last time, but I still don’t watch your £11 a month worth of filth.
Even paying a penny towards making “EastEnders” would turn my stomach.
Anyway, down with the Marxist-Leninist, ideological subverting, traitorous Corporation.
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May 25, 2015 at 2:03 pm -
Hey! Don’t coat it in sugar- tell us what you really think.
Actually, I agree. The BBC exists in a bubble of its own weaving, paid for by the coerced. Gramsci’s exhortation, to ‘march through the institutions’ has never been demonstrated more clearly.
Trouble is, they never leave.
So, PW, it’s no bloody bargain…
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May 25, 2015 at 3:55 pm -
You can read about what I really think on my blog. Glad you agree, though. The brainwashed masses tend to accuse me of sporting a tin foil hat. With these shoes?
BTW Rudi Dutschke talked of a “march through the institutions” in the 60s but it has been ongoing for many decades and by many groups. No doubt he was heavily influenced by Gramsci.
This is quite interesting: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10625650/The-Lefts-long-march-will-be-hard-to-stop.html
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May 25, 2015 at 2:56 pm -
The fact that they have regularly employed Jeremy Hardy for decades (who is described by some as a comedian, but is actually little more than a a middle class spouter of cliche left agitprop) is enough reason to want an end to the BBC as a plunderer of TV owners.
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May 25, 2015 at 3:32 pm -
I can’t be arsed getting into a lengthy debate here, but I couldn’t help but be curious as to your statement that you agree with everyone else bar the author. You say the BBC is the broadcasting arm of the government, yet almost everyone else (including you) then claims it to be a virtual nest of commie pinkos. I thought we had a Tory government at the moment, so how does that work?
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May 25, 2015 at 3:48 pm -
That works because those who lead the “Conservatives” are commie pinkos too. Labour/Tory: two sides of the same coin. That’s why the same Fabian agenda has been marching on for decades.
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May 25, 2015 at 3:54 pm -
Or, as George Galloway memorably put it: “Two cheeks of the same arse”. Q. good, I thought, although I rather doubt it was original.
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May 25, 2015 at 3:58 pm -
He was probably quoting from the Koran. LOL
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May 25, 2015 at 11:42 pm -
Yes, how sad, pathetic, laughable and intellectually vacant a person must be to quote from a book written centuries ago by a bunch of itinerant desert people who believed in the big sky pixy!
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May 25, 2015 at 4:33 pm -
It works if you believe that today the “main” parties are, in essence, just 2 heads of the same hydra ( it used to have 3 heads, but I don’t know if we should bother counting the Lib Dems these days) and that the “choice” they nominally offer is often illusory. Butskellism all over again. Thus the same policies emerge whichever head is “the government”. Bliar retains Tory “anti union” laws which Labour fulminated against in opposition; each head wants us to stay in the EU; each head slavishly supports US foreign policy; each head is an authoritarian nanny which implements the same anti tobacco idiocies, censors the internet, passes laws curtailing/criminalising free speech – each will implement measures to snoop and spy on citizens,each passes more and more criminal laws intended to boost the legal profession’s coffers and expand the prison population ( I fail to see any marked difference between “Tory” arch authoritarian Theresa May and Labour’s arch authoritarians Straw and Blunkett); each head in practice facilitates the invasion and colonisation of the British isles and subscribes to multi culturalism, destroying social cohesion and the stable nation state; each head will continue the attack on private motorists, including implement a system of road pricing, preceded by congestion charges; each head will promote the cancerous ideology of political correctness; each head will privatise more and more of the economy and our institutions (the BBC excepted!) including the NHS, or fail to reverse the other head’s privatising; each head will send more and more tax money abroad as foreign aid while cutting back help for the domestic needy; under each head the parallel state of the elite quangocracy grows and flourishes….
The same policies emerging whichever “party” is in government, suggests there is a crying need to investigate the influence of the permanent civil service in creating and promoting their favoured agendas.
The BBC represents one of the most important of the cultural/social forces which has used its power to prevent any new “Tory” government from actually being anything very different to a Labour one with another label.-
May 25, 2015 at 11:44 pm -
It sounds like you aren’t describing a democracy with left and right wing distinctions, but an oligarchy run by the ruling class which merely uses names and postures as methods for calming the masses.
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May 25, 2015 at 2:08 pm -
I’m currently contemplating jacking in the BBC tax. This being due to 1) Increased poverty 2) The fact that I rarely watch live TV, certainly nothing on BBC or ITV these days.
I watched one prog on terrestrial TV last week – it was about Julius Caesar, and that was from Channel 5. I daresay it’s already up on YouTube! At one time the BBC used to show in prime time a lot of imported US shows, as did ITV, you just need to look at their schedules from the 60s to the 80s. This has not been the case since the 1990s – American shows are now found only on ch5 and satellite/smaller Freeview channels. I once heard that the banishing of non European (ie American) shows from the big channels had something to do with the EU – not sure if that’s true, but if it is, it’s another reason to loathe that odious octopus the fat sailor conned the nation into, telling us it was simply about trade and tariffs. The BBC and ITV main channels have, for 20 years and more, been largely dominated by cheapjack soaps, reality mundanity, quizzes and “sleb” dross – none of which I can stand. I do listen to the radio, but I could easily live without 4 and 5 if I had to, the former has certainly gone down the pan compared to what it once was, and 5 gets more like an audio clone of Jeremy Kyle every day (though its importantish if you like your sport – which I don’t). I’m more classic fm than radio 3, so if the latter disappeared I wouldn’t miss it.
The point others make about a leftist political bias of the BBC is one I concur with. It is the “Guardian” of the airwaves and has been for decades. I doubt the Tories will grasp this particular nettle and turn it into a subscription only service – at least not until it has served as the cheerleader for the “hooray for the EU”/ “the out camp are reactionary loonies”/”you will all lose your jobs if we leave” propaganda in the coming referendum.
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May 25, 2015 at 2:21 pm -
“In June 1920, Marconi, with backing from the Daily Mail, made the first (private) radio broadcast in Britain. The British State, run by Britain’s ruling class, was horrified. They feared the masses, and they feared free mass communication. In America there had been an explosion of private radio stations, broadcasting whatever they liked. Within months, radio broadcasting in Britain had been banned. Scores of private companies were itching to get into radio broadcasting and repeatedly petitioned the government. In response, the British State announced in 1922 that it would control all radio broadcasting”.
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May 25, 2015 at 3:12 pm -
And who led the campaign against free/commercial radio in the 60’s – the Labour government – spearheaded by that self appointed people’s tribune, one Anthony Wedgewood Benn, as postmaster general (whatever the leftie Richard Curtis might want you to believe via “The boat that rocked”, it wasn’t huffy “Tory” Col. Blimps ). Radio, a UK BBC monopoly, was actually dying the death by the early 60s. The pirate stations saved the medium and gave it a whole new audience.
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May 25, 2015 at 2:56 pm -
Where I live it is impossible to receive terrestrial broadcast TV, because the transmitters and nearby buildings cause interference, so we subscribe to Sky. And we still have to pay.
As for adverts on TV, surely they are often better than the programmes, aren’t they? Just remember that Berocca is you on a good day, and Dave is SO Money Supermarket. Then again, guess what? DFS are having a sale!, and if you hurry, you can get a meerkat toy with your car insurance – or a model robot, or even – amazingly – watch a seagull shitting on William the Conqueror’s statue!
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May 25, 2015 at 3:04 pm -
The money supermarket ad makes me seriously contemplate suicide.
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May 25, 2015 at 3:26 pm -
I like to think that the ad. is ironic. I’m not holding my breath and when I first saw it I, wattling furiously, reached for the Port. But it’s grown on me. My second thought was: “Will that actor ever work again?”
The country is moving quietly to the right. The Beeb will be left behind…
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May 25, 2015 at 5:00 pm -
I think he kind of resembles Mr Putin. Is it a coded smearing of Vlad?
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May 25, 2015 at 9:51 pm -
The country is moving quietly to the right. The Beeb will be left behind…
I assume there is some irony in there?! -
May 25, 2015 at 11:20 pm
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May 25, 2015 at 6:18 pm -
@DaftLass, I think you may just have made my personal ‘favourite comment of the day’ short list again. Do please stop oggling Pet Lynch’s heaving bosom and get round the other side of the bar. Your comment could really have been from the Landlady’s chewed and ancient biro (that one tied with string to the till in the bar to stop Gildas purloining it).
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May 25, 2015 at 9:20 pm -
Pet Lynch! FFS!!!
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May 26, 2015 at 12:07 am -
That’s what you get for insinuating recently that I might not know “The Crying Game”.
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May 25, 2015 at 3:29 pm -
“Satellite and cable TV seemed to be a repository for programmes that wouldn’t have got a look in on terrestrial channels – cheap US imports, even cheaper home-grown concoctions (often fronted by has-been ghosts of television past or young guns who had failed the interview at the BBC)”
There was once a satellite TV comedy program called ‘Heil Honey I’m Home’ featuring Adolf Hitler who lived next door to a Jewish family. The comedy has to be excellent to pull off such a theme; needless to say, it wasn’t.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=heil+honey+i%27m+home+ -
May 25, 2015 at 3:45 pm -
Two main issues for me:
1. Politicisation – unnecessary, and has been done from within to undermine the strengths of the BBC as a broadcaster, there to ‘educate inform & entertain’. I agree there is no palpable political bias per se, but there are departments and journalists pursuing their own agendas which are detrimental to the organisation as a whole. http://retardedkingdom.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/bbc-sos.html
The problem I have with the BBC of today – post-John Birt (and don’t forget who his ‘friends’ included) – is the pandering to lowest common denominator and competing with the commercial competition (and ITV as a broadcaster has already sank lower than I ever imagined it could in my worst nightmares). It means the standards are falling, and the creation of ‘digital stations’ has, for instance, allowed the programmes traditionally the domain of BBC Two (history, music & culture) to be shunted onto BBC Four, which then gets it’s budget slashed whilst BBC Two pumps out propaganda masked as ‘current affairs’ and middle-class cookery programmes & quiz shows.
But the answer is the BBC gets a grip, not that the BBC gets reduced funding.
2. Culture. Culture as most of us know it is on its knees – those born after 1988 have no appettite for or interest in ‘high culture’, and are effectively media cabbages, useless human beings. As such, everything that doesn’t appeal to that audience is becoming more and more marginalised as time marches on. Take BBC Radio – R1 is narcisstic trash broadcasting to an ever-dwindling youth audience. Radio 2 & 6music are “popular” and therefore gives us “Presenters” in lieu of DJs. Radio 4 ever more “PC” until, ultimately, what made it great is forgotten. Radio 3 – who’s going to listen to that in 20/30 years? The ‘Angry Birds’ Generation? The BBC is endangered, and needs protecting whilst there are still those of us alive who are discerning.-
May 26, 2015 at 12:15 am -
Spot on, excellent Post. +1
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May 25, 2015 at 4:57 pm -
Maybe we could keep BBC1 (if we must) , and definitely BBC2 and Radio 4 ,however do we really need Radio 1,& 2, Five Live,which since Simon Mayo left has gone downhill rapidly. That way we could keep costs down and subscribe to the other dross! If we so wish,everyone’s a winner!
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May 25, 2015 at 5:15 pm -
I don’t like the BBC’s stance on global warming and I don’t like the stupid amounts of money paid to so called presenters.
However I don’t resent the payment of £11 per month to watch tv that doesn’t have adverts.As someone else has previously said, it only needs a small amount of fixing, a bit like the NHS. Get rid of the backhanders and the fraud and silly expenses – job done
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May 25, 2015 at 5:27 pm -
What about the stupid amounts of money paid to the army of executives? What about the stupid amounts of the pensions/payoffs?
What we are saying is we who don’t want it and don’t use it should not face criminal charges if we don’t want to pay for what we don’t use and want. Those who are happy to pay and use the service can continue to do so – maybe even pay a bit more to make up for those who need no longer support the BBC by state compulsion.
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May 25, 2015 at 6:37 pm -
As far as I am concerned that is all part and parcel .. surely you didn’t expect me to create a comprehensive list?
The point is that things can be fixed, though it does take some “clean” people and they’re in short supply in all aspects of our lives not just the BBC.
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May 25, 2015 at 7:15 pm -
” it only needs a small amount of fixing, a bit like the NHS”……………….ay yi yiiiiii.
Here is a proposal, scrap the BBC, transfer the budget to the NHS. The money is wasted anyway let’s waste it on (hopefully) our alzheimer patients being brought water by a nurse, or people not having to be attended to in shacks in the hospital car-park.
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May 25, 2015 at 6:10 pm -
I see the Beeb is tonight showing “Churchill: When Britain said no” on the subject of the Labour landslide election of 1945. Will we be told all about people not wanting to go back to the old class dominated days of Tory austerity and the promise of a new caring sharing welfare state and “public ownership” driving the masses to a wild enthusiasm for Labour? I suspect we will. My father served in the army (not as an officer) during WW2. He asserts – and he was there – that the anti Churchill landslide was more to do with the army education corps, dominated by institution marching Fabianites, telling the troops Labour would get them “demobbed much quicker” – which is what just about every serving man wanted desperately- and this message went back to wives/girlfriends too. I wonder if that factor in “explaining” the Labour victory of 1945, which saw the ejection of the man who had saved civilisation, will even be given a mention….
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May 25, 2015 at 6:47 pm -
Was that the one fiddled by postal voting?
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May 25, 2015 at 7:19 pm -
No, we weren’t so ‘culturally enriched’ back then.
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May 25, 2015 at 10:54 pm -
The outcome of that one was probably the right one, although as someone who is rarely comfortable with landslides I question whether the scale was healthy. Plent of low points in tonight’s programme, the particular low point being a historian accusing Churchill of being drunk and the majority of the population knowing he was drunk, which sits at odds with my grand-father speaking about how he had never known anyone before or since inducing as much spirit into the nation as he did, coming ahead of John Charmley claiming Churchill spent the immediate post-war era concentrating on his war memoirs. Err, what about that Iron Curtain speech John?
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May 25, 2015 at 6:21 pm -
Nice idea, but the license fee in its current form has had its day, why, because its become uncollectable. People are watching TV over the internet, over the phone, streaming from everywhere, and this is the future. “watching TV as it is broadcast” is a thing of the past.
The only way to keep the BBC is to add it as a fee onto council tax, or scrap it completely.
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May 26, 2015 at 9:15 am -
I read a piece quoting Lord Birkenhead and “adding it to the council tax” is what he proposes. I hope to have emigrated before then as fighting in the streets is more a leftie persuasion and just doesn’t fit with what is now my apparently veering to the extreme right and the notion of live, let live and then we die. Who would have thought the BBC could evoke such emotions within me. From an historical perspective the golden age of British TV was the brief flowering of Lord Grade’s Empire and all those ITC series of imagination, from Robin Hood to Danger Man to The Champions to Randall & Hopkirk. I cannot think of a single BBC entertainment show I made a special date to watch, except maybe for the first series or so of Blakes 7.
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May 25, 2015 at 7:15 pm -
I am old enough to have listened and watched the Beeb broadcasting all my life. Radio presenters were very far back in the early days. They did not speak speak broad Cheshire sprinkled with thee and thy like my dad and grandfather. In the first years of TV it was only on a short time each day. Snow storm black and white on tiny screens. Colour only as the sixties closed. The TV licence in comparison to wages and salaries was expensive for the service we were given then. It was a wonder to everyone for the novelty of tele. It would be like a punishment to those who endlessly moan about the Beeb, to be made to watch it for a week it was at any time before colour TV in early seventies. They would have good and just cause to moan about how posh toffs were running the Beeb, and how conservative and snobby it was….now I’m moaning.
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May 25, 2015 at 7:26 pm -
I don’t think many are worried about the actual VALUE; as has been mentioned various times in the comments above it is the obligation to pay. Even then it isn’t a lot of money when one considers all the stations, sport, dramas, documentaries etc. Great, all that can stay (although reduced, maybe 3 TV channels and 4 radio): production and broadcasting need to be separated BUT – most importantly – they need root and branch reform of their news gathering and presentation: it is dire; imbalance, omission and sometimes downright lies; more money won’t help because a left liberal bias is ingrained (they admit this themselves).
Anyone hoping for balance in the news can forget it, literally: the BBC does NOT give balanced news. Anything to do with the EU, Obama, Climate Change, Israel and more recently Islam, is just misreported, and/or omitted completely. If you must use the BBC be sure to watch/read/listen to something else too. On the website they often give prominence to non-stories and completely ignore or hide others. This has been going on for years and there are several sites highlighting such treasonous law-breaking (when one considers the Charter).
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May 25, 2015 at 7:28 pm -
If the licence fee were to go, I think that subscription would be the least worst alternative form of funding, but the problem is that we would lose something not just very special but essential to public life in this country; the belief that broadcasting in this country should simply be about entertaining people and making money but about enlightening people’s lives and educating them. Gone are the days when ITV made programmes like The World at War and World in Action which in the later’s case led to campaign’s which exposed miscarriges of justice and led to changes in the law; the modern ITV simply has neither the revenue nor do I think the will to make those sort of programmes any more.
The article neglects to mention that one of the more unfortunate legacies of the Broadcasting Act of 1990 was how the result of the reform of the system of awarding ITV franchises led to Thames Television, responsible for some of the finest moments in ITV’s history in the form of the previous mentioned World at War series, This Week and Minder with the Carlton franchise. It also ensures the BBC is committed to neutrality. While I do accept that the BBC news coverage does at time betray a benign centre-left bias, the fact that it’s chief political correspondent Nick Robinson was president of Oxford Conservative Association and that another current affairs presenter Andrew Neil is a former hand man to Rupert Murdoch gives the lie to claims to some of the dafter sections of the right that it deserves to be renamed the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation.
In short, though I am not uncritical of biased news, I also prefer to have news that I can trust.
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May 25, 2015 at 7:53 pm -
Quite a few comments about the BBC’s leftwards bias. True enough, it does indeed lean in that direction, and it’s stance on climate change will be a headscratcher for many in a few years time, I think, given it’s supposed impartiality. However, when the chips are down, the Great British Public seem to generally ignore the Beeb’s bias; the best-selling quality daily paper is the Telegraph, the best-selling tabloids lean a little to the right (or whichever way the wind blows in the Sun’s case), the Beeb had to admit their stance on immigration debates was until fairly recently out of step with broadly-held political opinion, and when there’s a really serious matter to decide (AV Referendum, General Election) the Great British Public makes it own mind up despite the BBC’s tacit position on the matter.
Much the same will happen in due course to the leftist idea of ‘taking over the public services’. They almost succeeded with Nationalised Industry, until it’s inability to break even forced the sell-off or shut-down of most of it. They tried with education, until falling standards forced an overhaul of the system, slowly giving control of schools back to teaching staff instead of LEAs. They are trying it with Quangos, and when somebody in government works out that it’ll be cheaper to do what Quangos do under direct Ministry control, they’ll get abolished. They are trying it with the NHS, and ultimately the cost and poor service will force major changes (like 7-day weeks for hospitals and longer opening hours for GP practices). They are trying it with charities, and when donations drop off, they’ll be tackled there, too. Ultimately, they’ll have to admit that the Silent Majority of the Great British Public aren’t really very left-leaning, and would rather have freedom of choice than the Left’s brand of control over other people’s lives.
The BBC are another symptom of what will ultimately be the Left’s failure. They won’t be defeated by government intervention, they’ll lose out to advancing technology and the Great British Public’s slow desertion to the new forms of information, education and entertainment that’s more to their own particular tastes rather than the BBC’s idea of what their taste should be. It’s happening already. The BBC will, in the end, go the way of the dinosaurs, and with it will go the Licence Fee.
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May 26, 2015 at 8:18 am -
‘Great British Public…..ignore the Beeb’s bias’.
Agreed Engineer, and that awareness or failure to accept the feed is reflected by many on here.
I know I’m biased too, but I think I recognise selective and misleading reporting & analysis.
Incidentally, the popularity of the Telegraph may be being helped by the free paper deal in Waitrose, so perhaps some entirely unintended opinion forming. It is after all an expensive paper, so if it’s given away there’s a temptation to buy the dearest.-
May 26, 2015 at 8:31 am -
binao, not bninao, of course.
As an aside;;
Regardless of my concerns re the BBC, I’m no admirer of Sky.
I signed up when my late wife’s health deteriorated.
When I didn’t need it any more, and certainly didn’t want it, I cancelled.
Sky were like superglue- extremely difficult to detach, like a determined limpet. For anybody on the same path, just cut straight across all the ‘I’d like to help you sort out the problem you’re having’. Just point blank say I’m stopping payments & do just that
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May 25, 2015 at 8:56 pm -
If the BBC is so reasonable, why won’t it publish the Balen Report?
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May 25, 2015 at 10:11 pm -
Incidentally, less I come across as being too much of a BBC partisan, I think the benign centre left bias of the BBC was in evidence tonight on a BBC2 documentary on Winston Churchill’s defeat in the General Election of 1945, painting him as a toff out of touch with the electorate and seemingly blaming him single handedly for the scale fo the defeat. To the makers of that programme, if he was so out of touch with ordinary people at the time, isn’t it funny how he significantly reduced Labour’a majority in the following election in 1950 and then won the following one, do you not think?
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May 25, 2015 at 11:14 pm -
I f you are the proverbial single-parent on benefits and you watch TV you have to pay for a TV licence.
If you are one of Cameron’s Muslims, that we should all aspire to be more like, and have made millions and bought a mansion in which three generations of the family live, each with their own TV set, then, as long as ‘granny’ is over 75, no charge is made.
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May 26, 2015 at 7:16 am -
It’s mazing how Murdoch made a TV business just on the back of having football. It is also pretty depressing how the money that brought into the game pretty much ruined it as a sport.
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May 26, 2015 at 7:31 am -
Agree 100% with all those who say that the licence fee should be scrapped and for the reasons they cite. For me it’s all about choice. The problem being that if I choose to watch Sky, I am legally obliged to pay the licence fee even if I never watch a single BBC programme but it doesn’t work the other way round, that is, I am not forced to pay Sky a subscription fee if I only watch the BBC.
For those who think the BBC is so wonderful, surely they would be more than happy to pay a subscription fee to watch it? No, what they want is for other people to subsidise their viewing. And IF the BBC is so confident that what they do is that bloody marvellous what have they got to fear from going over to a subscription service? It couldn’t be that they are worried that their £3.7 billion/year would suddenly disappear could it?
I decided to give up watching TV completely 7 years ago. This was after years of being a “TV addict”. I was an early adopter of satellite TV. I watched Sky long before any subscription was introduced. I had a 1.2m dish in the back garden and tuned in to many European channels. I think I eventually reached saturation point and my viewing bubble burst. I reached a point where I realised there were less and less things I wanted to watch and it was costing me a small fortune – so I gave it all up. I don’t miss it one little bit. Like others have pointed out if you stop paying the licence fee, let’s be honest it’s a viewing tax, you are hounded by the company who collect it on the BBC’s behalf. The thing to do is to write and tell them you are withdrawing their “implied right of access”, which means that they are not allowed onto your property. It’s also worth reminding them that so long as you do not watch ANY live broadcasts you do not require a licence – something that they are very reluctant to concede. You are perfectly entitled under current legislation to own and use a TV to watch DVD’s and use catch up services such as BBC iPlayer.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the Charter renewal and the licence fee. My bet is that the licence fee will be retained despite what quite a few MP’s have been saying, after all they ALL have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. As I’ve said before I’d love to live long enough to see the end of the BBC, but I don’t expect I will.
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May 26, 2015 at 8:44 am -
Petunia old petal, you have obviously missed the point in your statist rush to force everyone to pay for what you want to view or listen to. Nobody is trying to restrict your use of the BBC for what you feel is a reasonable cost in the licence fee, what is unconscionable is that you want to force all those you do not share your tastes to pay for them. Apparently the magistrates courts are being clogged up each week by the number of people who thought that we lived in a free country and could exercise a right to spend their money as they think fit. That is not to mention those each year who are sent to prison for failing to genuflect to the BBC and its supporters. This is simply wrong. Regarding your comments on SKY television, you seem to be suggesting that if you pay for your groceries at Tesco you can help your self at Sainburys. That is simply odd!
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May 26, 2015 at 9:45 am -
On principal I’ve haven’t paid for a TV license for years, and furthermore I’ve been fairly blatant about that fact.
Funnily enough Capita, or whatever thugs they’re using these days generally give me a very wide berth. they do occasionally send people to the house, and I politely request that they leave me alone,
I suspect that if I was a single mother living on a sink estate, I’d be in jail by now, and that’s precisely why I feel so strongly about this issue..
Despite the BBC bias, I’d happily pay 11 quid a month just for radio 4, and I’d do it in a heartbeat if a subscription model was introduced, but I won’t be coerced by thugs
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May 26, 2015 at 9:43 am -
The Beeb has been overtaken by multiple outlets that have been developed since it first was established. Even offering its own alternatives in iplayer. We can now all sit at our computers and have a go about any old thing we like. Twitter rules OK. So the Beeb gets a right going over on a frequent basis. All I know is I like watching TV without finding myself watching a guy with a big bum flouncing down the street in high heels…you are so …….bloody annoying. I don’t mind cats and budgies fraternising rather touchingly. We stopped our Sky patronage because we were sick of ever longer, more frequent and sillier adverts and demands for ever more money. That was before free view too.
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May 26, 2015 at 12:32 pm -
I think the bottom line is that “bias” is in the eye of the beholder. I think a lot of BBC output panders to the right, so if a lot of people here think it panders to the left, then in probably about right. As some have already noted, most political parties are equally convinced that the BBC exists only to do them down.
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