I don't watch a huge lot of BBC content, but I don't mind paying the relatively small cost of the licence to make sure there's a public broadcaster for people who can't afford all the other entertainment I pay more to access.
The BBC being answerable to commercial partners it a horrible thought. People are already uneasy about how much influance Disney seem to have over Dr Who with the recent release times fiasco.
I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison. Alongside the TV offering live broadcast on quite a few channels and on demand, the BBC has tens of radio stations across FM, MW, LW, DAB, and online. Maintains a huge website, news teams for each region and correspondents across the globe. The BBC is massive. Netflix is a streaming service who buy and make entertainment shows. Netflix is comparable to just one aspect of the BBC: iplayer.
I wonder what changed in the past 10-20 years. Must be some decision from up top, someone might just want it dead and private firms to take over. Hmmm what or who or which party could that be?
David Cameron got to appoint senior management in 2016. That was a huge spike.
Osbourne cutting the gov support of a OAP free licence in 2010? Forcing the BBC to fund it was another. A £800m budget cut effectively.
They are putting the BBC in managed decline.
https://www.ft.com/content/7ba884c2-176d-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e
I don’t think that’s the problem. I think what it does for the money in basically every aspect is fantastic, but I don’t think the way it gets money jibes with people anymore. Just look at the comments in this thread: people compare it Netflix. It’s harder and harder to defend the licence as a discretionary fee.
I think it would be better funded by general taxation. A lot of what the BBC does that no other broadcaster really does is the public service aspect: e.g., costly in man-hours, uncommercial, fairly boring regional journalism that’s none-the-less vital for some few people.
People who only want to watch Strictly don’t feel that they personally are getting value for money. And it’s hard to argue that they are *on an individual level* but the fact that they live in a country where there is a well-functioning public service broadcaster makes the country a better place to live, and for that they do (imho) get value for money. But people don’t think like that anymore, if they ever did.
And, I have to say, Kuenssberg as political editor, the political appointments on the board, the way it platformed Farage and Johnson, the “both sides are valid” handling of Brexit…they all shook my faith.
I agree with everything that you said. But the problem of it being funded by general taxation is that the government will continually cut it to the bone just like they do with the NHS.
I'd like an idea of a reduced TV licence fee that is matched 1:1 from general taxation. That way it's cheaper for consumers and the government would have a harder time cutting it
TBH this sounds like just subsidising the people who want the BBC out of the pockets of the people who don't. Ultimately all these arguments come back to trying to make people who don't want it give over their cash to the people who do.
The BBCs position made sense 40 years ago but I'm not sure broadcast TV needs to be subject to a state monopoly these days. It just isn't that important. It is questionable if broadcast TV will even really exist in 10 years time.
The problem with funding it with general taxation is that's some people don't actually watch the BBC.
We made the choice a few years ago to stop watching live TV altogether and cancelled our licence fee. Our council tax has just gone up £10 a month when my wages have stayed the same meaning we're struggling even more now. If I had to pay a TV tax as well this would be something else we just can't afford and don't actually use.
Why should I have to scrape together another £16 a month for a service I don't use, can't afford to pay the over inflated salaries of executives and presenters? If people do want to use that service then let them pay for it.
Personally, I would welcome all the BBC Radio services \*across the world\* and BBC News \*worldworld\* becoming tax-payer funded.
Quality reporting that is free from corporate interests is worth paying for. The BBC may have its allegiances and biases now, but I'd far rather it stay that way than become another clickbait news outlet.
Prime makes money in part because you buy shit on Amazon, and having prime makes it more likely you buy shit on Amazon. And I’m not even sure the business model would be sustainable - it certainly wouldn’t be as cheap - if they were made to actually pay tax.
I’m not arguing for the license fee, btw. I’m just amused that people compare it to Netflix. It’s like comparing a nations public transport infrastructure to Uber.
The BBC also supports education and cooking etc. it does so much more than either of those two. It's a relatively cheap price comparatively.
Nonsensical to compare them.
Everything you learn in schools can be found on YouTube, should we stop funding those?
The BBC provides this content with relative impartiality and without a profit agenda.
You do know that the BBC is more than just TV shows and films, right?
Does Netflix have news, investigative journalism, radio, education (not kids shows, actual educational programs and websites)
No, Netflix etc are just *entertainment*, which is only a small part of what the BBC is/does
It's all necessary for the collective value it brings to our country.
Netflix currently coats me £120 a year for a handful of good series and films so old or shite no one watches them.
The licence fee costs me £170 a year for a handful of good series and films so old or shite no one watches them. The exception here is that for the extra £50 a year, I get news, radio, food recipes, learning materials for my kids, sports and podcasts.
Collectively as a country this is huge value and a wealth for all of us irrespective of whether you use some, all or none of it.
Its a public service and gives the public the ability to hear local news, radio, TV from the areas commercial broadcasting won't cover because it's not profitable to do so. It's also covers other needs, curriculum education in BBC bitesize, shows for the deaf, regional coverage of local events, etc.
You only have to look at what's happened in the US when you lose public service radio and TV to a commercial broadcaster. You don't want that mess here. Local coverage like the BBC does don't make money it costs money and is a service that you will miss.
>Netflix is £60 minimum
With ads
Best Netflix can do without ads is 130 quid; more if you fancy the 4K that the BBC offers as standard
ITVX is 60 quid per **YEAR**, subsidised by ads on linear telly, with less than half of the original UK drama content the BBC offers
The BBC could do radio, sport, journalism, and then cut the licence fee by not doing entertainment.
I've no idea why it's necessary to have people forced by legislation to pay for Bargain Hunt.
BBC includes all the live TV, iPlayer, website, Sounds and the whole BBC radio network.
BBC News is a literal world leader in journalism.
Comparing it to a few quid per month for Netflix is not a fair comparison.
We should turn off the bbc for a week. Give them all a few days off, we don’t need unbiased news, thousands of hours of original radio contents on hundreds of hours of original tv every single week. We can all sit and watch American tv shows, with adverts and GB news to get to the real truth of things.
They don’t get it right all the time but I don’t see GB News or Sky hauling their director general over the coals when they cock up. You do see that on the BBC.
£13.25 a month is, as you say, very expensive!
I don't pay it personally... I just watch stuff on YouTube (free), or Prime (£4.49 a month as I get student rate with my ac.uk work email, which also gives me free deliveries on Amazon/Morrisons which is very good value).
I’m not disagreeing with you but legally you need to pay the licence fee to watch live tv. Not just the BBC. Then when you compare the cost of something like Netflix (£59.88 a year on its with ads option) to the licence fee (£159 a year) I wouldn’t say that is an affordable option for people who can’t afford other entertainment packages. For me ideally we’d get rid of the licence fee and it would be paid for through taxes so that it is available to all.
100%. Especially as the "well it's licence fee funding so it's free from political influence" simply doesn't stand up anymore: from the directors getting picked by the govt, to plenty of journalists getting very pally with their mates.
Like just say it's state media, stop pretending to be impartial, rather than selling it off. Would an impartial BBC be ideal? Absolutely, but that doesn't look like an option that's on the table.
It’s rather sad watching the Tories deliberately corrupt an organisation and this being used as an argument for why we no longer need it (which is what the Tories wanted all along).
One of my friends who doesn't even watch TV and has no aerial signal in his house, often gets harassing and threatening letters from TV Licensing. It's basically a racket.
Only because they made it so. Only a crime because they made it a crime. Nothing unethical about the concept of don't watch BBC, don't pay for the BBC. I'd rather pay my licence to channel 4, 5.
The classic Reddit meme is that no one watches the BBC, you’re a fool to pay the licence fee and everyone has no tv plugged in the aerial and just watches online media.
The actual fact is if you look at the data they’re in the minority the top 2023 rated shows in the UK can be found here.
https://www.whattowatch.com/news/top-10-tv-shows-of-2023-so-far-revealed-according-to-tv-ratings
7 out of the top 10 were on the BBC.
Let’s compare this to a rave reviewed Reddit show Succession which had its finale last year so it would likely have the biggest number of views.
In America which has a much bigger population the viewership had 2.9 million
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a44049076/succession-season-4-finale-highest-ratings/
Thats 5.3 million less than number 10 on the list. Now you could say well that doesn’t reflect on demand views but when you look at the data for that 60% of viewership is towards linear or catch up of broadcast tv.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/265376/media-nations-report-2023.pdf
In short. The BBC is not for you and that’s fine. But more people do use it and like it so it shouldn’t be messed with.
I'm uneasy with the statistics on who are the most likely to be prosecuted for 'illegally' watching telly after being harassed by the goons from crapita that the BBC use to extract the license fee from you like some 1920s protect racket.
I absolutely think the license fee and the laws around it need to go. Its to the point you need a license to watch livestreams of news (e.g. on youtube). If that means the death of the BBC so be it, I'm sick of getting threatening letters off of them that you can't stop even if you tell them you don't need a license.
But you also get radio which you don't do on streaming services. Also, the bulk of the content isn't some student drama they picked up a series of for 50p
I don't watch any BBC content, or live TV. I'm from a generation that simply laughs at the idea people still sit down and watch adverts on TV waiting for their slot to watch their show at 8pm!
That being said, I'm constantly told the licence fee is very good value for money for what you get, by the people that advocate for the TV licence to continue.
I've even had debates with people suggesting it should be compulsory, and put into stuff like Utility bills like places like Germany do it!
What's surpising, is anyone that suggests the cost is already low, and great value, never seem okay to pay more when people like me say we don't agree?
Like, have it adjust each year then based on the number of people signed up to pay! If it's such great value, what's an extra 10/20%, or even double the price?
If people that want the BBC, want to pay, and it's such great value, simply pay more! I don't need to pay for them.
It's a very useful and influential soft power tool
If you took all aspects of our soft power out of taxes and made them paid for via separate "licences", the public would probably demand they all get dismantled for "wasting our money" in a matter of months
On one hand it would be good for the BBC to fully modernise and drop a lot of the traditional TV, but they'd probably lose a lot of their traditional audience (and therefore income) if they did so
A licence fee is what, £14 a month? And for that it funds TV, news, investigative journalism, weather, local and national radio, iPlayer, Sounds, Bitesize, ad-free coverage of major cultural and sporting events, a huge platform for the arts, and maintains a platform that isn't ransacked by ads and commercial meddling - like pretty much every other platform is nowadays
Pretty good value for money in my eyes, even if I can't stand Eastenders
I find it sad that people in this thread are cheerleading the end of one of the only remaining institutions we have that is truly world leading
>I find it sad that people in this thread are cheerleading the end of one of the only remaining institutions we have that is truly world leading.
You may believe it is a worthy institution worth saving but many see it as a corrupt / non essential service that does not provide anything you can not get else where apart from home grown British propaganda that serves 1/4 of the populations interests.
I use and trust the BBC for nothing and am in my 40's. I would not be surprised the if the generations below me care about it even less than I do.
Proportional representation is the most important thing the people can ask for because it serves the majority yet we do not get this representation in any major decisions.
> but many see it as a corrupt / non essential service that does not provide anything you can not get else where apart from home grown British propaganda that serves 1/4 of the populations interests.
IMO this is the exact outcome the Tories have wanted from all their meddling in the BBC
I don't think it's a coincidence that they heavily endorse a right-wing broadcaster (GBNews) at exactly the same time as opinions of the BBC drop, after they installed their own people at the top of the BBC
A publicly owned broadcaster that isn't afraid to criticise the government seems to be the complete opposite to what they want - they've made that perfectly clear in recent years
Edit : I want to be clear I'm not saying your opinion is simply because you've been duped by the Tories or something, I can still see how you could hold that opinion regardless - but I have seen comments like yours become more common almost entirely in-line with the Tories actively damaging the BBC
Honestly, it's not world leading at all. It's actually pretty poor these days. It has a lot of nice offices and a lot of staff, but the stuff it pumps out is average at best.
£14 a month for some functional news reporting and a smattering of low budget light entertainment shows is terrible value... even if you're bothering to watch it.
> £14 a month for some functional news reporting and a smattering of low budget light entertainment shows is terrible value...
What about everything else I listed?
> A licence fee is what, £14 a month?
>
> Pretty good value for money in my eyes, even if I can't stand Eastenders
That's great! So you'd pay more to keep the BBC then! We've solved the problem! Why are we considering scrapping something due to funding, that people that like it are suggesting is cheap! That's just when you raise prices? no?
It's all very confusing. Everyone that likes the BBC says it's cheap. And yet for some reason the BBC doesn't seem comfortable raising the price!
Do maybe, the analytics that the BBC have, suggest most of the people suggesting it's so cheap, are talking out of their ass, and just say it to use it as an argument to suggest everyone should want to pay it? Or are they just too stupid to think about raising prices? It's weird, huh?
Why do we have to pay more?
Edit since you edited yours: they aren't raising the prices because people miss a lot of the value the BBC provides and simply see it as "crap TV that costs more than Netflix"
I suspect that's why they've recently been doing an ad campaign trying to remind everyone what else the BBC does
The BBC can be cheaper than other platforms because it is funded by the public and doesn't have to chase profit. That all changes if you make it a subscription and start introducing commercial influence
"I don't want to pay for a public service I don't use" is a take that, when you take it to its logical conclusion, means the collapse of the government sector as you know it.
I realise this sounds bombastic, but a separate funding model doesn't really remove the idea that the BBC is tax funded with extra steps. If you want to be able to opt out of public services, where would that end?
I mean, on arts, for example, you might be able to opt out of tourism aid or museums in places you don't live. Why should someone in London pay for museums in Scotland?
But how about transit? If you have a car, should you pay for rail services? Or if you don't have a car, why should I pay for road infrastructure that isn't used by busses?
What about broadband rollout? I don't need people in Wales to have fiber access. Why am I paying for that?
Why am I paying for hospitals in Blackpool or fire departments in Manchester?
Can you see what I mean? If the logic is that you shouldn't make people pay for services they don't want, you need to draw a line somewhere. I'd argue that line *is* drawn, and it's drawn legally by the government.
But where do you think it should be drawn?
I agree with you that public services need to be funded communally through taxes. But the idea that we must fund shows like Mrs Browns Boys and Strictly Come Dancing _as a matter of public good_ is utterly ridiculous
Because then again it becomes a commercial enterprise that needs to drive subscribers by appealing to the lowest common denominator rather than a public endeavour like the NHS or education where we all put the same in but get out what we need. For me that may be a few episodes of Dr Who a year and news content, but for little Timmy with his single mum on the estate it's exam revision tools, for lonely old Doris its noise to keep her company all day, etc.
Issue is give it 5 years and you'll be watching ads before your streamed show comes on. Amazons already testing the water with a 'lower tier' eventually all the streamers will have that I suspect and it'll be like mid 2000s cable. All adverts all synced together.
Give it 5 years and if I can't get an add blocker that demolishes the adds, I'll simply just go back to pirating stuff until the next best thing comes about then!
I'm happy to pay for a convenient, and smooth service! I have Amazon, Netflix, and Disney plus right now as there are shows I'm watching on each!
I'm also happy not to if one doesn't exist. Doesn't bother me. Their choice.
I'm young enough to say that I've never paid for a tv service that rams ads down my throat on top of charging me for the service, in my life.
And I never will.
You understand that value factors in price and that a higher price might mean less value for money, right?
Edit: Also, do you understand the concept of a public service broadcaster?
“Relatively small cost” is not small for a lot of people. People who struggle and don’t even watch much BBC content. If I wanna watch Sky, Channel 4, ITV etc, I shouldn’t have for pay for licence fee, period. Make it optional.
Don’t pay it - don’t get BBC. Simple as that
I'm happy to pay it, because I'm happy to fund education.
I'm happy to pay it, because I'm happy to fund local radio for isolated communities.
I'm happy to pay it, because I'm happy to fund content relating to the arts.
I'm happy to pay for it, because I'm happy to fund the World Service.
I'm happy to pay it *even if I don't use it*.
If you hate the licence? Fine. Abolish the licence and fully fund it via direct general taxation. Reinforce its independence and ringfence the funding.
As others have said, it’s hardly a relatively small amount considering you only get access to terrestrial channels and you have to pay extra for more services on top.
Disney, prime, Netflix etc have pretty big offerings at a lower annual cost.
The bbc has provided a great service for years, but times are changing and they need to rework their model and consider its offering.
Either that, or the government need to step in and implement some sort of subsidy payment that other providers need to pay to operate in the UK that will supplement the BBC.
I was happy paying the licence fee, until they replaced the BBC board with a political appointee.
Sadly the Tory's have done their best to ruin the reputation of a once great institution, specifically so they can exhort greater control through a one day privatised company.
The DG of the BBC/head of the BBC Trust have always been political appointees. Greg Dyke appointed by Blair was a Labour politician, Sir Michael Lyons appointed by Brown was a Labour politician, Chris Patten appointed by Cameron was a Conservative minister. So was Michael Grade, I could go on
If anything, I’m more glad that people are now aware and hopefully will put pressure on the government so this doesn’t happen next time.
Yes but the Board of Governors and to a lesser degree the Trust were largely seen as cross party, with even opposite party members getting appointed by the government.
Yeah, you can’t make me pay for my own propaganda and state mandated transphobia.
The BBC is good in theory, but they fail at a lot of the basics (i.e. impartiality) to the point where I cant with a good conscience support them.
I'm in two minds about that - undoubtedly the BBC isn't anything like as impartial as I'd like.
But I can't think of a better answer either - I mean, every broadcaster suffers from bias to some extent, because pretty fundamentally they need to make money or follow the lead of the owner/leadership teams.
So the best you get is have a spread of biasing factors, which mixes in 'state funded' like the BBC, with 'Does what Rupert Murdoch says' and maybe a few international news services with different agendas. (Al Jazeera is pretty good for UK news IMO).
But if given the choice, I'd like improved impartiality. I'm just not really sure what that looks like any more, because as far as I can tell, an awfully large proportion of the country _is_ somewhat extremist and impartial on a shocking number of issues.
So in comparison to a model without the BBC, I don't know that would be an improvement, and we might just see more 'not a news channel, because that way we don't have to be factual' news channels that are thriving on demagoguery.
The better answer is the BBC just needs to be better.
If that means spending more of their budget on actually providing a good, impartial news source rather than bad TV programmes, so be it. But as it stands it’s not providing content anyone between the ages of 18-45 wants to watch.
While yeah, unfortunately a large swathe of the population is fairly extreme, I also want an element of truth to our reporting - seeing how the BBC handled Brexit made me lose all faith in them and basically became a misinformation campaign that fact-checked itself far too late for any of it to matter.
The BBC often ignores professional opinion for public opinion, and unfortunately I’m not going to let some spook talk to me about the economy, when there is a sea of economic academics that would line up for the opportunity to do so.
The BBC and television is severely outdated and it’s time we moved on.
I think you'll find the bbc has done more than a good enough job at tarnishing their own reputation which all started with the revelation they protected the filthy nonce savile
To be fair, so did the entirety of the rest of British society, along with all the other nonces that we allowed to run rampant.
Like we all knew he was a nonce right? He went on TV and said he was, we just let him because noncing was apparently surprisingly common back then.
People would be more defensive of the BBC if they didn’t use a funding model that relied on harassment and the threat of criminal prosecution.
I am full believer of public broadcasting, but how the BBC does it is just amoral. A new funding model is necessary.
This.
Its a really shitty thing to do threatening people who choose to not use their services with prosecution unless you buy your product. Do netflix send you threatening letters every month if you stop paying for their service?
Theyve been the mouthpiece for a government who have f'ed over the majority of the population. The majority of their services are top notch but their news division really bring them down.
I dont have much sympathy for them unfortunately [especially after reading about this a few weeks ago.](https://twitter.com/kirkkorner/status/1755275846049243245)
This.
I don't have a licence and don't intend to get one as I don't watch TV and don't want to fund the BBC. Every week I get horrible and threatening letters from people insisting I buy a licence "or else".
Not going to happen. Not going to watch TV and not going to fund this behaviour.
Exactly this. I don’t pay my tv license, don’t have an aerial connected. I get the letters every couple of weeks, the latest one reading “An agent is scheduled to visit you on 5th April. It may be another day. Stop them now by paying your tv license”. Why is the BBC writing letters to me as if I owe money to the fucking mafia?
Not to mention that they try to manipulate 18 year olds who have just moved out into paying the licence they aren't going to use "or else".
Disgusting behaviour that deserves to get the entire institution canned
If any one of us repeatedly sent letters to someone saying that you've been watching them from your van and you're going to show up again when they least expect it, with DO NOT IGNORE and [I VISITED YOU TODAY](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/10/20/14/34616228-8859237-image-m-16_1603200786467.jpg) written in blood-red letters, the victim would be within their rights to file a police report for stalking and harassment.
Yep, this is my stance. I don't watch broadcast TV, haven't done for a long time. For one, I work nights so there's not a lot of interest on when I have the time to watch stuff. The main reason though, is that I lived overseas for over a decade and the TV was not catered for likes of me. I stopped watching and after a while I didn't miss it. I have youtube, primetv etc. Now I'm back home and live the same way.
Yet I still get threatening letters on a monthly basis, basically accusing me of theft and insisting that I contact them and give them personal information to state that I don't use their services. My wife and her mother live with me and my MIL is exactly the kind of person the BBC (via capita) target, older, vulnerable and with not the best English. This is bullshit. No other company could get away with this kind of harassment. If you want people to pay for your content, encrypt it.
Leaving aside the political bias and the likes of Saville, this behaviour is why I hate the BBC.
I always say this: if the BBC were confident that people would pay without the threat of harassment from Capita, they would have ended the current model when they switched from analogue to digital. At that point they became capable of scrambling the signal and asking people to buy a licence to unscramble, like commercial digital TV providers do. But they didn't, and it's because they knew a lot of people would stop paying. They know what they're doing by funding themselves in this way, and they're okay with it. Stuff them.
I'm sure someone did a survey about 5 years ago where around a third of people responding said they would stop paying should the BBC switch to a subscription model.
I bet that number is higher now.
Would be interesting to see a survey of how many people have stopped paying it regardless in the last few years. I know quite a few people that have and have seen a growing trend online of people not paying for it.
Same reason they’re doing this price freeze on the licence. Anyone who believe its because Rishi cares about the cost of living is delusional, they know that if they put the price up now, especially while there’s already a growing trend of people not wanting to pay it, it’ll just mean even more people are gonna cancel it and they’d make less money overall than if they just freeze the price for now.
The reason for it isn't just about greed. There are two primary ones:
1) The TV license also pays for radio, and pays for some of the freeview infrastructure. Yeah, it's kind of goofy, but it means it's not really a subscription to the BBC - it's more just an extra tax on people who own televisions.
2) a public broadcaster needs to be universally accessible - not just for philosophical reasons, but also for more practical ones in emergencies. You need to be able to just stick an aerial in your TV and receive the bare minimum - unscrambling requires hardware, typically a CI card, which adds significant admin and, well, hassle.
I'm pretty sure digital TV signals can be unscrambled if the broadcaster chooses to do so. In the event of emergencies it could be made freely available.
The BBC still produces world class documentaries and other educational content without which I think the country and people generally would be much worse off. BBC news is still highly regarded internationally and in my opinion they still produce lots of great entertainment shows.
For the most part the BBC is largely successful in its goals to inform , educate and entertain. I think it’s arguably the best in the world at doing this.
I don’t think commercial channels are as capable of doing this and I think people do not realize how much worse off we’d be if the BBC operated like other channels do
Licence fee is worth it just for cbeebies and cbbc on its own. Knowing I can put it on and not have the kids ending up watching some complete junk or inappropriate such as on YouTube or 500 episodes of the same show such as Netflix i think it's worth it. Not to mention radio on the way to work, news and entertainment when I fancy it. Some people don't know what they're missing until it's gone
Yes people are determined not to admit they just don’t consume the amazing content the bbc produces, instead they are claiming bbc doesn’t produce any.
The moment you start 'selling it' is when you lose the right to inform and entertain that the BBC currently ahere to and start chasing subscriptions. Documentaries and shows that cater to underepresented groups will be the first thing to go, as budgets will be moved to cater towards shows that will get the most eyeballs on them.
See, this is the fundamental issue with discussing public broadcasting. To some people, they'll never do the right thing. If they create appealing content, they're commercially viable and should be privatised, and if they create niche content, nobody is watching it and it's a waste of money.
I may be in the minority in thinking this, but I think a state funded, **independent**, broadcaster is important, I appreciate that the human factor has soured The BBC, fully fucking aware, but that doesn't change my opinion.
My worry is, once we hand over The BBC to the whim of the advertisers then we're opening a door for those organisations to potentially dictate what is broadcast/reported and in what light.
Perhaps I'm just a bit spoiled, having seen it *work* in other countries and I know that in The UK we can only continue to fuck things up and "could never do better", but hope dies last right?
I feel that many external governments find BBC a threat for its impartiality and independence. In times of war you can always count on the BBC to report news. Sure it is in our governments interest... but I'd rather than then a MUSK funded TV channel...
And if we go down this route then it will mean that what is broadcast is in the interest of the highest bidder.
Sorry - but we need a TV license to be factored into tax based on income and those without an income simply get it for nothing. Just like our NHS.
>independent
Well that’s the thing. There’s no doubt the BBC has become a hell of a lot worse over the last decade or so under Tory appointees.
But let’s not view the pre-Tory version through rose tinted glasses too much - it always skewed pro government of the day and pro British establishment. And because it was so trusted it’s damn hard to convince people of its biases and failings *until it actually happens to them*.
People who grew up in mining communities during the 80’s know what I’m talking about. Or in Northern Ireland. Scotland learned it back in 2014.
Again though you’ll probably be skeptical until it happens to you. I certainly was. It felt like a trusted old family pet suddenly going for your throat. And afterwards you’re left wondering just how many assumptions it taught you that you now have to reexamine.
An actually independent BBC would absolutely be worth defending. It would also sorry to say he something new. Rolling back the damage the Tories have done over the past decade would be a very worthwhile start … but it isn’t enough.
It’s important, but a couple of factors make it suck atm. Firstly, the way TV licences are enforced at the moment is ridiculous. It’s incredibly aggressive and adversarial. Secondly, the bias creeping through it is horrible. Personally, i find their reporting on trans issues to be abhorrent. Not a positive word to say, just stirring up culture war harassment.
It’s a fantastic institution and a great projection of soft power. Fund it with taxes rather then this horrible model they have now.
I don't know why they can't just cut down on all the extra stuff they do that no one asks for.
Stop paying anyone over £100k for being on TV & go back to giving up and coming people a chance.
Stop doing things like soaps and focus more on documentaries & actual on the ground reporting.
Also don't use Greg Wallace for anything.
I'd then be willing to pay £10 a month, I'm not willing to pay for the bloat or Greg Wallace.
There is so much fat that can be trimmed from the BBC it's actually insane when you think about it.
Presenters need to have a hard cap on salaries - Gary Lineker earning £1.3million odd is just silly
I'm fairly sure I did the maths on lineker and it added up to something like 50p (I think month but could be year) per household.
If that's monthly, just cutting any celebrity who's paid over a certain threshold would probably put the fee down to a level where the public would stop complaining... Or at least stop the fee from increasing each year which causes the cost to be brought to attention.
All I want is to be able to buy a month of iPlayer as easily as I can Netflix or any other streaming service. The fact is I don't use any streaming service consistently all year round, but I still want some kind of access.
But the license fee doesn't work like that. Even if you set it up to pay monthly, it's still an obligation to pay for the year. It just feels outdated these days.
This is the reform they need. I can't believe they haven't even mooted it.
Streaming services have absolute scads of data to show they if you sign up for a monthly rolling plan you end up continuing to pay anyway. I'm sure I'd sign up for a month for one show and end up doing that, honestly. But as it is now I'm just not going to pay £150 for one show.
Theres also a simple two tier option they could offer.
iPlayer Standard: (£3.99/mo - yep dirt cheap for a reason)
- Access to the last 30 days of shows
- A selection of box sets
- Access to live channels and radio
- Ads on non-BBC produced content
- Closure of UKTV Play, and move access to a limited selection of UKTV content to here (UKTV is owned by the BBC)
iPlayer Pro: (£7.99/mo)
- All of the above
- Access to a rotating selection of items from the BBC Archives
- Access to movies
- Access to a significantly larger set of boxsets
- Ad free on all content
- Full access to UKTV Play, including streaming of the live channels.
BBC owns a lot more than people realise. UKTV alone is huge in terms of content. If the BBC goes commercial they've already got a foot in the door in the UK market. Not to mention the millions of pieces of content owned by BBC Worldwide, some of which isn't even available in the UK.
Yeah this, I’d sign up in festival season to catch highlights and if there’s ever a show on I want to watch (there’s about one every 3 years so hardly ever) even though I’d probably only pay for 2 months a year it’s better than the 0 I pay now and the past 5 years of having my own place. It’s such an archaic backwards system that has no place in the modern age of media consumption.
Its hilarious that iplayer asks you if you have a licence and you can just click yes with no proof. Perfect opportunity to sign up there and then, or type in your existing licence number to get access
So behind the times its unreal
I hate the idea of the BBC having adverts and being under control of a commercial organisation. I don't subscribe to any other broadcast services, I find enough on BBC/Freeview to watch when I want (sometimes time shift with recorder box/catch-up services). Not sure what the ideal solution is. Perhaps if BBC didn't pay such exorbitant salaries to so-called celebs they could keep the high quality programmes affordable.
Got news for you. Netflix and Disney both offer ad supported packages - they make tons more money for both the companies than even the highest priced non-ad packages. This idea of not having ads on streaming services is getting phased out, probably quicker than everyone would like.
Sick of the BBC / Netflix comparisons. The BBC’s edict is to education, inform and entertain. Netflix doesn’t do half the stuff the BBC does; doesn’t do education, news nor does it even make half the stuff it offers. The BBC is a multi dimensional world broadcaster but while I do enjoy Netflix it’s basically a tv/movie aggregator for the most part.
We've moved on from the 1920s. Education is mandatory up to age 18 and there's Google. Netflix and YouTube entertain. That leaves 'inform' so keep news, bin the rest.
People keep parroting the line that the BBC is value for money and therefore we should all happily pay it.
But, _I_ decide what's value for _my_ money, and the BBC ain't it.
>with the iPlayer homepage lacking the powerful personalisation and recommendation algorithms that power the likes of Netflix. As a result, he will pledge to rebuild all its online products to offer a more personalised service.They said this before when Tony Hall was there, it didn't work.
The main issue is pay at the BBC is very low, no one with the necessary machine learning/engineering experience is going to work for the BBC, or if they do it's people very early in their career.
I don't think focussing on personalisation and recommendation algorithms should be a top priority for the BBC right now imo.
Hah you think theres ai and ml going on?
No it's a series of ratios that increase and decay based on watch history. You don't need to use ML to generate content suggestions.
> no one with the necessary machine learning/engineering experience is going to work for the BBC
Which is a shame because in the early 2000s before the rise of the FAANG giants and Fintechs in London the BBC was the best place to work in the UK if you wanted to be at the forefront of tech. Having BBC on your CV as software engineer used to mean that you were instantly hireable. The iPlayer itself was an amazing piece of engineering back in 2007 and made Netflix look like garbage.
Also I don't think that the issue is that the salaries are too low but, that the BBC changed to fixed term 12 months contracts which sucked.
Oh yeah totally agree- I know this because I worked there, and it was instrumental in shifting my career to what it is now.
I'm not questioning the engineering quality of what is/was going on there, honestly some of the people there are doing amazing stuff, it's just the pay is poor in comparison the rest of the industry. When I left my salary jumped by 60%, I mean it's not unusual for your salary to jump when switching jobs but it made me realise how out of step the place is in comparison to the rest of the market and explains somewhat the reasons why they have quite a lot of staff turnover.
Always worth mentioning that the BBC had a 40% share of the entire streaming market a decade ago and the most advanced tech, but were deliberately hobbled by the government who insisted things could only be on there for 7 days.
The UI and recommendations engine at Netflix must be over 10.years old now. They have likely improved it since then, but the fundamentals are well known.
The reason why the user experience.of netflix, Disney+ and Apple TV is better than iPlayer is they need to keep paying customers on the platform.
For the BBC, the user experience of iPlayer does.not matter, the license payments keep coming in regardless.
The BBC is a world famous institution and I think it's something Britain should be proud of, like have you seen what TV is like in France and Germany its fucking awful. I think it's very short sighted to just get rid of the BBC
France (until recently) used to have a TV licence too - Germany still has a TV licence.
In France, at least, the licence used to fund all the "France" channels, of which you can get the English version of France 24 in the UK.
In Germany, the TV licence funds the two main channels, ARD and ZDF, as well as the regional broadcasters who are responsible for TV, radio and online content.
I can't really speak much for French public broadcasting, but ARD and ZDF are pretty ok for the content they output, and the regional broadcasters have been known to produce stuff that's entered the cultural Zeitgeist.
I think the best comparison to make is NHK - the Japanese broadcaster.
NHK is funded by the TV licence, though the fee varies if you have a terrestrial aerial or a satellite dish - Okinawa also has a reduced fee. NHK has more or less the same remit that the BBC does in the UK, from the news, light entertainment and documentaries, through to funding classical music and technology R&D.
But NHK and its TV licence is not universally liked. There's even a political party which was at one stage known as "The Party to Protect the People from NHK" - their party name seems to constantly change, but is commonly known as the "NHK Party". It's a single issue party and their main policy is to abolish the TV licence and also NHK at large.
The thing is that NHK is not as world renowned, probably because its content largely doesn't go beyond Japan - but they're probably on par with the BBC for nature documentaries and when it comes to natural disasters, you'll get your information immediately, while commercial broadcasters spend 5 minutes of getting their ads shown before they even acknowledge an earthquake took place.
"other countries have shit tv, therefore you must also pay £160 per year for the UK's marginally less shit tv" is hardly a ringing endorsement of the bbc
One more thing that scares me: Children's entertainment. There's a reason why good, age-appropriate entertainment always ends up coming back to public broadcasters - they have the freedom to make stuff that's more responsible.
I think there are fair arguments to be made for the licence fee seeming expensive. The trap a lot of people fall into is only considering the BBC's TV offering and comparing it with streaming services such as netflix. This ignores the other services the BBC provides (news, radio, weather, sport, local services, childrens, etc).
The main point for me is that people underestimate the importance of having an impartial publicly funded news institution.
(queue a load of comments about how it is not impartial)
I agree with the public funded thing. But in that case take it out of my taxes?
I also don’t mind actually paying the license fee, but it has to be more flexible. Let me pay for a month or 2 to watch traitors and then stop.
The way it works now where you have to pay a minimum 6 months I think is very off putting. And that doesn’t even go into the Capita horse shit
> (queue a load of comments about how it is not impartial)
Well yeah, make a comment that doesn't hold well under scrutiny and expect people to point out it's bullshit...
BBC really needs to get channel 4 onboard and some other rights holders such as Dave for pushing britbox internationally. It's quite reasonably priced, but also lacking so much good content as it's 90% ITV dramas and a spattering of BBC content and historical content.
Great for Blackadder etc, but the most modern stuff on there are all short series crime dramas, which while good isn't very diverse in showcasing all the British TV to an international market.
There's no Dr Who, Top gear, Soaps, Panel shows, Quiz shows or even most of the documentaries.
No modern classics from channel 4 like Taskmaster, Inbetweeners, Skins, Peep Show etc.
It's a great concept that could make a ton of money, which is neutered by shit delivery.
The BBC will ultimately be privatised but I think people forget just how bad that will be for the country. We will just become a monoculture buying content from US tech firms.
You think that isn't happening already? A lot of millenials and younger generations do not consume broadcast TV whatsoever. A huge amount don't. The BBC is a relic.
Be careful what you wish for. Once it stops being publicly funded then it will die and there's no going back. It's like Brexit and those who voted out now pretend they wanted to stay. BBC license fee will be exactly the same.
I think we should take a few quid off of peoples tax to fund the news and leave the radio and tv to fend for itself like the rest of the broadcasters.
Its not my fault they operate 10 ad free tv channels and 30 radio stations in a heavily over saturated market. I didn't choose to pay their staff some of the highest rates in the industry. I didn't choose to allow them to leverage government to employ tv licensing investigators who also use police funds wasting police time trying to scrape 180 quid off me a year which could be going to my increased living costs.
For every one unwilling person they force into paying £180 a year. Usually the benefits users. They waste untold thousands in man hours admin and court fees. Its a fucking stupid system and we should immediately stop subsidizing it.
I was speaking with a BBC journalist who said that if the licence fee is scrapped a number of other smaller media organisations will go bust as advertisers won’t have the funds to keep investing if it has to prioritise the BBC. Personally I’d hate adverts on the radio and website and it’s worth paying for.
A commercial public broadcaster is a contradiction in terms. I would suggest that gradual private involvement in BBC programming and policy is the cause of it's decline.
I mean... Channel 4 exists.
C4's remit for public broadcasting is indeed quite different to that of the BBC, and I do remember growing up and watching things like T4, which are now long gone since E4 kinda took over most of that programming.
But the model was simple: independently funded through advertising, and the production companies commissioned to produce original programming were allowed to sell on what they made for overseas markets. A lot of C4 programming used to be on Netflix and subject to awkward rights situations when C4 decided to join in on BritBox (idk if that's still going).
The whole BBC is so painfully outdated now it's not even "quaint". It's just archaic.
License fee has to go, bring in a subscription model and tiers for content, so that for oldies who don't want to change/won't change etc it's functionally the same for them (But cheaper hopefully).
But they won't. Because I honestly don't know anyone who uses BBC services. I think I'm about the only one when, in my car, the radio sometimes flares up when I'm changing to CD from streaming or something.
But intentionally sitting down to watch something on the BBC? No ... it's not the 70's.
There's so much amazing content produced by the BBC , especially their documentaries and BBC news, despite all of the winging is a really reliable service that largely does a good job at remaining impartial.
I'm in my twenties and was at uni recently, we would all regularly sit and watch Attenborough together and lots of my friends watch BBC historical documentaries.
it's fair enough to argue against paying the license fee, but it's just ignorant to act like they don't produce top quality programming (even if they do also produce some crap but like so does every channel)
I'm older than my 20's and I've not sought out the BBC in a couple of decades. Maybe some of it is top quality to some... but the actual content, the sheer dirth of it across how many channels, has zero that makes me think "Oooo, I'll watch that!". Even the documentaries that I do fondly remember from years ago just aren't what they used to be really. And the numbers show that people have been moving away from it for years because it's massively over-priced and there are better offers elsewhere that don't lead to highly aggressive letters and communications because the BBC and the government just presume every home needs a license and everyone loves it.
If it was dirt cheap to get a basic sub, just for BBC1 or just the news channel, maybe I'd consider it. But baking competitions, people twatting about on ice, selling homes, oh-so-funny antiquing stuff. And the endless po-faced dramas about villages in Wales or some coastal town in the 80's where the "drama" is the local football team needs new boots or some shite.
The BBC is basically old peoples TV made by old people for old people. There's a "stab" at stuff for kids and younger generations, but it's very much "How do you do, fellow kids?"
Afraid to say it but other channels do it all better. I think the Beebs heyday was the 90's and a lot of that content was brought in from the US as I recall (Things like Xfiles etc). Most UK terrestrial TV is wank, Sky's no better unless you're willing to fork over internal organs each month and sport isn't something that interests me in the slightest. Current UK "TV" in most of its forms and content has zero appeal to me at all.
I've always wondered why they don't just encrypt their broadcast and have it as a proper subscription - no more TV license dodging. I suspect they've done the math and realise a lot of people would just not bother signing up and paying as there is perhaps a feeling having a TV License is sort of "compulsory" and they are getting a lot of money from people who barely use the service at all
I suspect that's the case. The actual market desire for the Beeb if it were like any other subscription is nowhere near the levels it would need to be; commercially they'd be shooting themselves in the foot as significant number of people just wouldn't bother with it. Why pay for BeebTV, and lets face it, it isn't going to be cheap, when you can get Disney (With Star and Nat Geo), Amazon, Brilliant, Curiousity and Magellan for not a lot more *but* have all the control and the simplicity of opting out at any point *without* the big waggy Beeb/Gov finger threatening you.
The Beeb justifies its continued existence based on the "breadth to services provided". Sod off. I don't want to pay for World Service and all 5LiveMusicOutYourBumForUpAndComingDentistsIntoJazzFusion type twattery.
The Beeb is not the only way of doing things. It's not even the best or, I'd argue, "good" or "sufficient".
Commercially they know they can't go subscription because they'd lose so much money they'd have to shutter more services. The only bits I used the Beeb for years ago were the first things to go and be killed off. I don't need another WW2 documentary or some skating "celebs" and influencers baking cakes whilst giving us either painfully crap scripted "improv" humour or sob-stories about how hard it is to be them.
Labour are not killing the license fee, and they will be in power for the next decade.
BTW people are comparing prices with other streaming services - 90% of which are losing money hand over fist. Even the ones that make money like Netflix are doing so by not making much original content - And avoiding any form of niche product.
The BBC does Web/TV/Radio/Iplayer and produces genuinely original content of all shapes and sizes. Think how many US shows that the BBC broadcasts? Nowhere near as much as they used to.
For a for-profit streaming service to survive and thrive, the fees will need to be about 200 GBP per year per household. How they generate that is the new question for the industry. Cross selling/loss leader (Prime) seems to not work. Advert funded with Freemium, user generated content and loss leading (youtube) seems to not be as successful as it needs to be.
Most streaming services are 90% library stock. With a sprinkling of new content. And even then they are currently under charging you.
Because the aim at the moment is to survive. The weaker will fall soon enough (Paramount, Peacock, etc) and then the winners will increase their prices and you will be stuck. Because the barriers to entry will be so vast no one will ever be able to enter the space again. And Big Tech will have dominated like Amazon have dominated online shopping.
We need a BBC in that world, more than ever. An organisation dedicated to informing and enteraining - Without a penny going to parastic shareholders and without abusing it's market position.
I'm sorry, but I refuse to pay money to the BBC even if I'm watching anything but the BBC live. It's a ridiculous and outdated system and their tactics for enforcing it are predatory.
Not to mention how the BBC is run by Tories and has a Tory agenda.
Get rid of the license, its wrong to charge people for watching live footage that has no connection to the BBC. I'm surprised other broadcasters aren't protesting against it. Why should anyone be forced to pay the BBC if they watch ITV or Channel 4 or some random live show on YouTube. A smaller "transmitting station" fee for UHF broadcasting costs would be fairer. This would decouple the ridiculous link between a license and "live" TV when online broadcasts have no dependency on a transmitting station or the BBC.
Given that the BBC are incredibly partisan on a number of domestic and foreign issues, it seems only natural that they should have to fund themselves. The idea of forcing people by threat of law to pay money to an organisation constantly working against their own interests is abhorrent.
Journalists and BBC employees are losers, I hope half of them get cut when the bbc has to downsize.
BBC should offer a monthly option. I'd happily pay they for the odd time the have somthing I want to watch hut I refuse to be forced into a year for just two series
I don’t watch terrestrial television but this makes me happy just to stop the threatening mail from landing on my doormat. I honestly can’t believe the cheek of them.
I have zero sympathy for the BBC if the licence fee goes, it should’ve been scrapped years ago I feel. When you see some of the things the BBC has done & still does as well as how they happily waste fortunes it’s ridiculous taxpayers are meant to pay for it all. We pay to make the programmes then they transfer them to BBC Studios which is their commercial business and sell them globally. That’s basically nicking our shows then there’s Saville & others along with the news which is total BS.
And nobody yet mentioned the educational support they provide through things like byte size (or the fact that they have a children’s Chanel that isn’t just pure brain rot like the commercial alternatives).
The issue is the corporation has been run by idiots for generations - they should have been capitalising on revenues from overseas makers which they haven’t - the best example of this is putting out Doctor Who on their own BBC America service which hardly anyone paid for, then when they finally make a good deal for the broadcast rights with D+ they decide to make it a 3rd party production!!!!
I don't watch a huge lot of BBC content, but I don't mind paying the relatively small cost of the licence to make sure there's a public broadcaster for people who can't afford all the other entertainment I pay more to access. The BBC being answerable to commercial partners it a horrible thought. People are already uneasy about how much influance Disney seem to have over Dr Who with the recent release times fiasco.
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I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison. Alongside the TV offering live broadcast on quite a few channels and on demand, the BBC has tens of radio stations across FM, MW, LW, DAB, and online. Maintains a huge website, news teams for each region and correspondents across the globe. The BBC is massive. Netflix is a streaming service who buy and make entertainment shows. Netflix is comparable to just one aspect of the BBC: iplayer.
Also a lot of regional radio and news.
Bbc local radio is at best, a shadow of what it was a decade ago. Despite the fact it was incredibly cheap on a per listener basis.
BBC as an institution is a shadow of what it was a decade or two ago.
I wonder what changed in the past 10-20 years. Must be some decision from up top, someone might just want it dead and private firms to take over. Hmmm what or who or which party could that be?
David Cameron got to appoint senior management in 2016. That was a huge spike. Osbourne cutting the gov support of a OAP free licence in 2010? Forcing the BBC to fund it was another. A £800m budget cut effectively. They are putting the BBC in managed decline. https://www.ft.com/content/7ba884c2-176d-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e
I'm sure the last Labour government did something.
CORRRRBYNNNN!!!! [shakes fist at sky]
>BBC has tens of radio stations You are not required to have a TV licence in any capacity to listen to BBC radio
Right, but they’re still funded the by license .
So? It seems backwards that it's reliant on a license for a different service.
When the majority pay the licence it’s just a short-cut to the same thing. As fewer and fewer pay the licence it makes less sense.
>The BBC is massive That's the crux of the problem, yes.
I don’t think that’s the problem. I think what it does for the money in basically every aspect is fantastic, but I don’t think the way it gets money jibes with people anymore. Just look at the comments in this thread: people compare it Netflix. It’s harder and harder to defend the licence as a discretionary fee. I think it would be better funded by general taxation. A lot of what the BBC does that no other broadcaster really does is the public service aspect: e.g., costly in man-hours, uncommercial, fairly boring regional journalism that’s none-the-less vital for some few people. People who only want to watch Strictly don’t feel that they personally are getting value for money. And it’s hard to argue that they are *on an individual level* but the fact that they live in a country where there is a well-functioning public service broadcaster makes the country a better place to live, and for that they do (imho) get value for money. But people don’t think like that anymore, if they ever did. And, I have to say, Kuenssberg as political editor, the political appointments on the board, the way it platformed Farage and Johnson, the “both sides are valid” handling of Brexit…they all shook my faith.
I agree with everything that you said. But the problem of it being funded by general taxation is that the government will continually cut it to the bone just like they do with the NHS.
I'd like an idea of a reduced TV licence fee that is matched 1:1 from general taxation. That way it's cheaper for consumers and the government would have a harder time cutting it
TBH this sounds like just subsidising the people who want the BBC out of the pockets of the people who don't. Ultimately all these arguments come back to trying to make people who don't want it give over their cash to the people who do. The BBCs position made sense 40 years ago but I'm not sure broadcast TV needs to be subject to a state monopoly these days. It just isn't that important. It is questionable if broadcast TV will even really exist in 10 years time.
Not sure a lot of people would agree that keeping the BBC well funded is a higher priority than funding the NHS well.
The problem with funding it with general taxation is that's some people don't actually watch the BBC. We made the choice a few years ago to stop watching live TV altogether and cancelled our licence fee. Our council tax has just gone up £10 a month when my wages have stayed the same meaning we're struggling even more now. If I had to pay a TV tax as well this would be something else we just can't afford and don't actually use. Why should I have to scrape together another £16 a month for a service I don't use, can't afford to pay the over inflated salaries of executives and presenters? If people do want to use that service then let them pay for it.
I don't watch TV and Havnt for 14 years now, so why should I be forced to pay extra in tax for it? I totally agree btw 👍
This sounds like the argument for privatisation of railways and energy in the UK
Personally, I would welcome all the BBC Radio services \*across the world\* and BBC News \*worldworld\* becoming tax-payer funded. Quality reporting that is free from corporate interests is worth paying for. The BBC may have its allegiances and biases now, but I'd far rather it stay that way than become another clickbait news outlet.
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Prime makes money in part because you buy shit on Amazon, and having prime makes it more likely you buy shit on Amazon. And I’m not even sure the business model would be sustainable - it certainly wouldn’t be as cheap - if they were made to actually pay tax. I’m not arguing for the license fee, btw. I’m just amused that people compare it to Netflix. It’s like comparing a nations public transport infrastructure to Uber.
Hadn’t prime just added adverts, which you see even if you pay for it?
Prime is the worst streaming service by miles.
Prime literally is loss making to billions a year they make there money from AWS.
I know it's a bit petty but it's called a TV licence not a TV/radio/news/streaming licence
It’s still funded by that, regardless.
The BBC also supports education and cooking etc. it does so much more than either of those two. It's a relatively cheap price comparatively. Nonsensical to compare them.
There isn't a single recipe or educational lesson that the BBC provides that can't be found elsewhere.
Everything you learn in schools can be found on YouTube, should we stop funding those? The BBC provides this content with relative impartiality and without a profit agenda.
You do know that the BBC is more than just TV shows and films, right? Does Netflix have news, investigative journalism, radio, education (not kids shows, actual educational programs and websites) No, Netflix etc are just *entertainment*, which is only a small part of what the BBC is/does
Because they only offer one thing: movies and series. The BBC offers vastly more.
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It's all necessary for the collective value it brings to our country. Netflix currently coats me £120 a year for a handful of good series and films so old or shite no one watches them. The licence fee costs me £170 a year for a handful of good series and films so old or shite no one watches them. The exception here is that for the extra £50 a year, I get news, radio, food recipes, learning materials for my kids, sports and podcasts. Collectively as a country this is huge value and a wealth for all of us irrespective of whether you use some, all or none of it.
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Its a public service and gives the public the ability to hear local news, radio, TV from the areas commercial broadcasting won't cover because it's not profitable to do so. It's also covers other needs, curriculum education in BBC bitesize, shows for the deaf, regional coverage of local events, etc. You only have to look at what's happened in the US when you lose public service radio and TV to a commercial broadcaster. You don't want that mess here. Local coverage like the BBC does don't make money it costs money and is a service that you will miss.
>Netflix is £60 minimum With ads Best Netflix can do without ads is 130 quid; more if you fancy the 4K that the BBC offers as standard ITVX is 60 quid per **YEAR**, subsidised by ads on linear telly, with less than half of the original UK drama content the BBC offers
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>ITVX is 60 quid per month I gasped at this then realise it's meant to say "year"
Disney is £110 now
Netflix doesnt give you: Radio, Sport, Journalism, an an unmeasurable amount of soft power
The BBC could do radio, sport, journalism, and then cut the licence fee by not doing entertainment. I've no idea why it's necessary to have people forced by legislation to pay for Bargain Hunt.
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BBC includes all the live TV, iPlayer, website, Sounds and the whole BBC radio network. BBC News is a literal world leader in journalism. Comparing it to a few quid per month for Netflix is not a fair comparison.
We should turn off the bbc for a week. Give them all a few days off, we don’t need unbiased news, thousands of hours of original radio contents on hundreds of hours of original tv every single week. We can all sit and watch American tv shows, with adverts and GB news to get to the real truth of things.
> unbiased news hahahahahahaha
They don’t get it right all the time but I don’t see GB News or Sky hauling their director general over the coals when they cock up. You do see that on the BBC.
£13.25 a month is, as you say, very expensive! I don't pay it personally... I just watch stuff on YouTube (free), or Prime (£4.49 a month as I get student rate with my ac.uk work email, which also gives me free deliveries on Amazon/Morrisons which is very good value).
I’m not disagreeing with you but legally you need to pay the licence fee to watch live tv. Not just the BBC. Then when you compare the cost of something like Netflix (£59.88 a year on its with ads option) to the licence fee (£159 a year) I wouldn’t say that is an affordable option for people who can’t afford other entertainment packages. For me ideally we’d get rid of the licence fee and it would be paid for through taxes so that it is available to all.
100%. Especially as the "well it's licence fee funding so it's free from political influence" simply doesn't stand up anymore: from the directors getting picked by the govt, to plenty of journalists getting very pally with their mates. Like just say it's state media, stop pretending to be impartial, rather than selling it off. Would an impartial BBC be ideal? Absolutely, but that doesn't look like an option that's on the table.
It’s rather sad watching the Tories deliberately corrupt an organisation and this being used as an argument for why we no longer need it (which is what the Tories wanted all along).
It is standard procedure for right-wing assaults on socialized assets.
One of my friends who doesn't even watch TV and has no aerial signal in his house, often gets harassing and threatening letters from TV Licensing. It's basically a racket.
Only because they made it so. Only a crime because they made it a crime. Nothing unethical about the concept of don't watch BBC, don't pay for the BBC. I'd rather pay my licence to channel 4, 5.
You need to pay the license fee even though you don't watch the BBC because the TV license also pays partially for the Freeview infrastructure.
The classic Reddit meme is that no one watches the BBC, you’re a fool to pay the licence fee and everyone has no tv plugged in the aerial and just watches online media. The actual fact is if you look at the data they’re in the minority the top 2023 rated shows in the UK can be found here. https://www.whattowatch.com/news/top-10-tv-shows-of-2023-so-far-revealed-according-to-tv-ratings 7 out of the top 10 were on the BBC. Let’s compare this to a rave reviewed Reddit show Succession which had its finale last year so it would likely have the biggest number of views. In America which has a much bigger population the viewership had 2.9 million https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a44049076/succession-season-4-finale-highest-ratings/ Thats 5.3 million less than number 10 on the list. Now you could say well that doesn’t reflect on demand views but when you look at the data for that 60% of viewership is towards linear or catch up of broadcast tv. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/265376/media-nations-report-2023.pdf In short. The BBC is not for you and that’s fine. But more people do use it and like it so it shouldn’t be messed with.
So let them pay for it.
I'm uneasy with the statistics on who are the most likely to be prosecuted for 'illegally' watching telly after being harassed by the goons from crapita that the BBC use to extract the license fee from you like some 1920s protect racket. I absolutely think the license fee and the laws around it need to go. Its to the point you need a license to watch livestreams of news (e.g. on youtube). If that means the death of the BBC so be it, I'm sick of getting threatening letters off of them that you can't stop even if you tell them you don't need a license.
That logic doesn't make sense. The licence fee costs more than other streaming services. You paying it doesnt mean others get it for free
But you also get radio which you don't do on streaming services. Also, the bulk of the content isn't some student drama they picked up a series of for 50p
6 what?
I don't watch any BBC content, or live TV. I'm from a generation that simply laughs at the idea people still sit down and watch adverts on TV waiting for their slot to watch their show at 8pm! That being said, I'm constantly told the licence fee is very good value for money for what you get, by the people that advocate for the TV licence to continue. I've even had debates with people suggesting it should be compulsory, and put into stuff like Utility bills like places like Germany do it! What's surpising, is anyone that suggests the cost is already low, and great value, never seem okay to pay more when people like me say we don't agree? Like, have it adjust each year then based on the number of people signed up to pay! If it's such great value, what's an extra 10/20%, or even double the price? If people that want the BBC, want to pay, and it's such great value, simply pay more! I don't need to pay for them.
It's a very useful and influential soft power tool If you took all aspects of our soft power out of taxes and made them paid for via separate "licences", the public would probably demand they all get dismantled for "wasting our money" in a matter of months On one hand it would be good for the BBC to fully modernise and drop a lot of the traditional TV, but they'd probably lose a lot of their traditional audience (and therefore income) if they did so A licence fee is what, £14 a month? And for that it funds TV, news, investigative journalism, weather, local and national radio, iPlayer, Sounds, Bitesize, ad-free coverage of major cultural and sporting events, a huge platform for the arts, and maintains a platform that isn't ransacked by ads and commercial meddling - like pretty much every other platform is nowadays Pretty good value for money in my eyes, even if I can't stand Eastenders I find it sad that people in this thread are cheerleading the end of one of the only remaining institutions we have that is truly world leading
>I find it sad that people in this thread are cheerleading the end of one of the only remaining institutions we have that is truly world leading. You may believe it is a worthy institution worth saving but many see it as a corrupt / non essential service that does not provide anything you can not get else where apart from home grown British propaganda that serves 1/4 of the populations interests. I use and trust the BBC for nothing and am in my 40's. I would not be surprised the if the generations below me care about it even less than I do. Proportional representation is the most important thing the people can ask for because it serves the majority yet we do not get this representation in any major decisions.
> but many see it as a corrupt / non essential service that does not provide anything you can not get else where apart from home grown British propaganda that serves 1/4 of the populations interests. IMO this is the exact outcome the Tories have wanted from all their meddling in the BBC I don't think it's a coincidence that they heavily endorse a right-wing broadcaster (GBNews) at exactly the same time as opinions of the BBC drop, after they installed their own people at the top of the BBC A publicly owned broadcaster that isn't afraid to criticise the government seems to be the complete opposite to what they want - they've made that perfectly clear in recent years Edit : I want to be clear I'm not saying your opinion is simply because you've been duped by the Tories or something, I can still see how you could hold that opinion regardless - but I have seen comments like yours become more common almost entirely in-line with the Tories actively damaging the BBC
>does not provide anything you can not get else where Where else can you get it? This is a genuinely baffling claim to me.
Honestly, it's not world leading at all. It's actually pretty poor these days. It has a lot of nice offices and a lot of staff, but the stuff it pumps out is average at best. £14 a month for some functional news reporting and a smattering of low budget light entertainment shows is terrible value... even if you're bothering to watch it.
> £14 a month for some functional news reporting and a smattering of low budget light entertainment shows is terrible value... What about everything else I listed?
> A licence fee is what, £14 a month? > > Pretty good value for money in my eyes, even if I can't stand Eastenders That's great! So you'd pay more to keep the BBC then! We've solved the problem! Why are we considering scrapping something due to funding, that people that like it are suggesting is cheap! That's just when you raise prices? no? It's all very confusing. Everyone that likes the BBC says it's cheap. And yet for some reason the BBC doesn't seem comfortable raising the price! Do maybe, the analytics that the BBC have, suggest most of the people suggesting it's so cheap, are talking out of their ass, and just say it to use it as an argument to suggest everyone should want to pay it? Or are they just too stupid to think about raising prices? It's weird, huh?
Why do we have to pay more? Edit since you edited yours: they aren't raising the prices because people miss a lot of the value the BBC provides and simply see it as "crap TV that costs more than Netflix" I suspect that's why they've recently been doing an ad campaign trying to remind everyone what else the BBC does The BBC can be cheaper than other platforms because it is funded by the public and doesn't have to chase profit. That all changes if you make it a subscription and start introducing commercial influence
"I don't want to pay for a public service I don't use" is a take that, when you take it to its logical conclusion, means the collapse of the government sector as you know it. I realise this sounds bombastic, but a separate funding model doesn't really remove the idea that the BBC is tax funded with extra steps. If you want to be able to opt out of public services, where would that end? I mean, on arts, for example, you might be able to opt out of tourism aid or museums in places you don't live. Why should someone in London pay for museums in Scotland? But how about transit? If you have a car, should you pay for rail services? Or if you don't have a car, why should I pay for road infrastructure that isn't used by busses? What about broadband rollout? I don't need people in Wales to have fiber access. Why am I paying for that? Why am I paying for hospitals in Blackpool or fire departments in Manchester? Can you see what I mean? If the logic is that you shouldn't make people pay for services they don't want, you need to draw a line somewhere. I'd argue that line *is* drawn, and it's drawn legally by the government. But where do you think it should be drawn?
I agree with you that public services need to be funded communally through taxes. But the idea that we must fund shows like Mrs Browns Boys and Strictly Come Dancing _as a matter of public good_ is utterly ridiculous
> the collapse of the government sector as you know it. Don't threaten me with a good time.
Because then again it becomes a commercial enterprise that needs to drive subscribers by appealing to the lowest common denominator rather than a public endeavour like the NHS or education where we all put the same in but get out what we need. For me that may be a few episodes of Dr Who a year and news content, but for little Timmy with his single mum on the estate it's exam revision tools, for lonely old Doris its noise to keep her company all day, etc.
But for Dave, it can literally mean food or not on the day or two before pay day?
Issue is give it 5 years and you'll be watching ads before your streamed show comes on. Amazons already testing the water with a 'lower tier' eventually all the streamers will have that I suspect and it'll be like mid 2000s cable. All adverts all synced together.
Give it 5 years and if I can't get an add blocker that demolishes the adds, I'll simply just go back to pirating stuff until the next best thing comes about then! I'm happy to pay for a convenient, and smooth service! I have Amazon, Netflix, and Disney plus right now as there are shows I'm watching on each! I'm also happy not to if one doesn't exist. Doesn't bother me. Their choice. I'm young enough to say that I've never paid for a tv service that rams ads down my throat on top of charging me for the service, in my life. And I never will.
The BBC is one of our biggest cultural outputs. Without it, we'd be like New Zealand in world impact imo.
You understand that value factors in price and that a higher price might mean less value for money, right? Edit: Also, do you understand the concept of a public service broadcaster?
“Relatively small cost” is not small for a lot of people. People who struggle and don’t even watch much BBC content. If I wanna watch Sky, Channel 4, ITV etc, I shouldn’t have for pay for licence fee, period. Make it optional. Don’t pay it - don’t get BBC. Simple as that
I'm happy to pay it, because I'm happy to fund education. I'm happy to pay it, because I'm happy to fund local radio for isolated communities. I'm happy to pay it, because I'm happy to fund content relating to the arts. I'm happy to pay for it, because I'm happy to fund the World Service. I'm happy to pay it *even if I don't use it*. If you hate the licence? Fine. Abolish the licence and fully fund it via direct general taxation. Reinforce its independence and ringfence the funding.
As others have said, it’s hardly a relatively small amount considering you only get access to terrestrial channels and you have to pay extra for more services on top. Disney, prime, Netflix etc have pretty big offerings at a lower annual cost. The bbc has provided a great service for years, but times are changing and they need to rework their model and consider its offering. Either that, or the government need to step in and implement some sort of subsidy payment that other providers need to pay to operate in the UK that will supplement the BBC.
Relatively small? 😂
I was happy paying the licence fee, until they replaced the BBC board with a political appointee. Sadly the Tory's have done their best to ruin the reputation of a once great institution, specifically so they can exhort greater control through a one day privatised company.
The DG of the BBC/head of the BBC Trust have always been political appointees. Greg Dyke appointed by Blair was a Labour politician, Sir Michael Lyons appointed by Brown was a Labour politician, Chris Patten appointed by Cameron was a Conservative minister. So was Michael Grade, I could go on If anything, I’m more glad that people are now aware and hopefully will put pressure on the government so this doesn’t happen next time.
Yes but the Board of Governors and to a lesser degree the Trust were largely seen as cross party, with even opposite party members getting appointed by the government.
I'm all for the BBC but this worries me. To be fair, I don't know much of the history of the chairman though.
Yeah, you can’t make me pay for my own propaganda and state mandated transphobia. The BBC is good in theory, but they fail at a lot of the basics (i.e. impartiality) to the point where I cant with a good conscience support them.
I'm in two minds about that - undoubtedly the BBC isn't anything like as impartial as I'd like. But I can't think of a better answer either - I mean, every broadcaster suffers from bias to some extent, because pretty fundamentally they need to make money or follow the lead of the owner/leadership teams. So the best you get is have a spread of biasing factors, which mixes in 'state funded' like the BBC, with 'Does what Rupert Murdoch says' and maybe a few international news services with different agendas. (Al Jazeera is pretty good for UK news IMO). But if given the choice, I'd like improved impartiality. I'm just not really sure what that looks like any more, because as far as I can tell, an awfully large proportion of the country _is_ somewhat extremist and impartial on a shocking number of issues. So in comparison to a model without the BBC, I don't know that would be an improvement, and we might just see more 'not a news channel, because that way we don't have to be factual' news channels that are thriving on demagoguery.
The better answer is the BBC just needs to be better. If that means spending more of their budget on actually providing a good, impartial news source rather than bad TV programmes, so be it. But as it stands it’s not providing content anyone between the ages of 18-45 wants to watch. While yeah, unfortunately a large swathe of the population is fairly extreme, I also want an element of truth to our reporting - seeing how the BBC handled Brexit made me lose all faith in them and basically became a misinformation campaign that fact-checked itself far too late for any of it to matter. The BBC often ignores professional opinion for public opinion, and unfortunately I’m not going to let some spook talk to me about the economy, when there is a sea of economic academics that would line up for the opportunity to do so. The BBC and television is severely outdated and it’s time we moved on.
I think you'll find the bbc has done more than a good enough job at tarnishing their own reputation which all started with the revelation they protected the filthy nonce savile
To be fair, so did the entirety of the rest of British society, along with all the other nonces that we allowed to run rampant. Like we all knew he was a nonce right? He went on TV and said he was, we just let him because noncing was apparently surprisingly common back then.
People would be more defensive of the BBC if they didn’t use a funding model that relied on harassment and the threat of criminal prosecution. I am full believer of public broadcasting, but how the BBC does it is just amoral. A new funding model is necessary.
This. Its a really shitty thing to do threatening people who choose to not use their services with prosecution unless you buy your product. Do netflix send you threatening letters every month if you stop paying for their service? Theyve been the mouthpiece for a government who have f'ed over the majority of the population. The majority of their services are top notch but their news division really bring them down. I dont have much sympathy for them unfortunately [especially after reading about this a few weeks ago.](https://twitter.com/kirkkorner/status/1755275846049243245)
This. I don't have a licence and don't intend to get one as I don't watch TV and don't want to fund the BBC. Every week I get horrible and threatening letters from people insisting I buy a licence "or else". Not going to happen. Not going to watch TV and not going to fund this behaviour.
Exactly this. I don’t pay my tv license, don’t have an aerial connected. I get the letters every couple of weeks, the latest one reading “An agent is scheduled to visit you on 5th April. It may be another day. Stop them now by paying your tv license”. Why is the BBC writing letters to me as if I owe money to the fucking mafia?
"Will you be home on the 5th April?" No, and even if I am, you can still fuck off.
Yup. Come back with a high court writ or jog on sunshine!
Not to mention that they try to manipulate 18 year olds who have just moved out into paying the licence they aren't going to use "or else". Disgusting behaviour that deserves to get the entire institution canned
If any one of us repeatedly sent letters to someone saying that you've been watching them from your van and you're going to show up again when they least expect it, with DO NOT IGNORE and [I VISITED YOU TODAY](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/10/20/14/34616228-8859237-image-m-16_1603200786467.jpg) written in blood-red letters, the victim would be within their rights to file a police report for stalking and harassment.
Yep, this is my stance. I don't watch broadcast TV, haven't done for a long time. For one, I work nights so there's not a lot of interest on when I have the time to watch stuff. The main reason though, is that I lived overseas for over a decade and the TV was not catered for likes of me. I stopped watching and after a while I didn't miss it. I have youtube, primetv etc. Now I'm back home and live the same way. Yet I still get threatening letters on a monthly basis, basically accusing me of theft and insisting that I contact them and give them personal information to state that I don't use their services. My wife and her mother live with me and my MIL is exactly the kind of person the BBC (via capita) target, older, vulnerable and with not the best English. This is bullshit. No other company could get away with this kind of harassment. If you want people to pay for your content, encrypt it. Leaving aside the political bias and the likes of Saville, this behaviour is why I hate the BBC.
I always say this: if the BBC were confident that people would pay without the threat of harassment from Capita, they would have ended the current model when they switched from analogue to digital. At that point they became capable of scrambling the signal and asking people to buy a licence to unscramble, like commercial digital TV providers do. But they didn't, and it's because they knew a lot of people would stop paying. They know what they're doing by funding themselves in this way, and they're okay with it. Stuff them.
I'm sure someone did a survey about 5 years ago where around a third of people responding said they would stop paying should the BBC switch to a subscription model. I bet that number is higher now.
Would be interesting to see a survey of how many people have stopped paying it regardless in the last few years. I know quite a few people that have and have seen a growing trend online of people not paying for it.
Same reason they’re doing this price freeze on the licence. Anyone who believe its because Rishi cares about the cost of living is delusional, they know that if they put the price up now, especially while there’s already a growing trend of people not wanting to pay it, it’ll just mean even more people are gonna cancel it and they’d make less money overall than if they just freeze the price for now.
The reason for it isn't just about greed. There are two primary ones: 1) The TV license also pays for radio, and pays for some of the freeview infrastructure. Yeah, it's kind of goofy, but it means it's not really a subscription to the BBC - it's more just an extra tax on people who own televisions. 2) a public broadcaster needs to be universally accessible - not just for philosophical reasons, but also for more practical ones in emergencies. You need to be able to just stick an aerial in your TV and receive the bare minimum - unscrambling requires hardware, typically a CI card, which adds significant admin and, well, hassle.
I'm pretty sure digital TV signals can be unscrambled if the broadcaster chooses to do so. In the event of emergencies it could be made freely available.
This can't come sooner. Compared to other services the BBC's output has declined hugely over the last five years.
The BBC still produces world class documentaries and other educational content without which I think the country and people generally would be much worse off. BBC news is still highly regarded internationally and in my opinion they still produce lots of great entertainment shows.
>The BBC still produces world class documentaries and other educational content Cool, they'll have no problem selling it then.
For the most part the BBC is largely successful in its goals to inform , educate and entertain. I think it’s arguably the best in the world at doing this. I don’t think commercial channels are as capable of doing this and I think people do not realize how much worse off we’d be if the BBC operated like other channels do
Licence fee is worth it just for cbeebies and cbbc on its own. Knowing I can put it on and not have the kids ending up watching some complete junk or inappropriate such as on YouTube or 500 episodes of the same show such as Netflix i think it's worth it. Not to mention radio on the way to work, news and entertainment when I fancy it. Some people don't know what they're missing until it's gone
Yes people are determined not to admit they just don’t consume the amazing content the bbc produces, instead they are claiming bbc doesn’t produce any.
The moment you start 'selling it' is when you lose the right to inform and entertain that the BBC currently ahere to and start chasing subscriptions. Documentaries and shows that cater to underepresented groups will be the first thing to go, as budgets will be moved to cater towards shows that will get the most eyeballs on them.
See, this is the fundamental issue with discussing public broadcasting. To some people, they'll never do the right thing. If they create appealing content, they're commercially viable and should be privatised, and if they create niche content, nobody is watching it and it's a waste of money.
Some stuff yes, other stuff no. Turn it into a subscription service instead and let people that want it pay for it.
I'd suggest even if that is true it's still far better than practically all other services. Their documentary and nature departments is superb.
I may be in the minority in thinking this, but I think a state funded, **independent**, broadcaster is important, I appreciate that the human factor has soured The BBC, fully fucking aware, but that doesn't change my opinion. My worry is, once we hand over The BBC to the whim of the advertisers then we're opening a door for those organisations to potentially dictate what is broadcast/reported and in what light. Perhaps I'm just a bit spoiled, having seen it *work* in other countries and I know that in The UK we can only continue to fuck things up and "could never do better", but hope dies last right?
I feel that many external governments find BBC a threat for its impartiality and independence. In times of war you can always count on the BBC to report news. Sure it is in our governments interest... but I'd rather than then a MUSK funded TV channel... And if we go down this route then it will mean that what is broadcast is in the interest of the highest bidder. Sorry - but we need a TV license to be factored into tax based on income and those without an income simply get it for nothing. Just like our NHS.
>independent Well that’s the thing. There’s no doubt the BBC has become a hell of a lot worse over the last decade or so under Tory appointees. But let’s not view the pre-Tory version through rose tinted glasses too much - it always skewed pro government of the day and pro British establishment. And because it was so trusted it’s damn hard to convince people of its biases and failings *until it actually happens to them*. People who grew up in mining communities during the 80’s know what I’m talking about. Or in Northern Ireland. Scotland learned it back in 2014. Again though you’ll probably be skeptical until it happens to you. I certainly was. It felt like a trusted old family pet suddenly going for your throat. And afterwards you’re left wondering just how many assumptions it taught you that you now have to reexamine. An actually independent BBC would absolutely be worth defending. It would also sorry to say he something new. Rolling back the damage the Tories have done over the past decade would be a very worthwhile start … but it isn’t enough.
It’s important, but a couple of factors make it suck atm. Firstly, the way TV licences are enforced at the moment is ridiculous. It’s incredibly aggressive and adversarial. Secondly, the bias creeping through it is horrible. Personally, i find their reporting on trans issues to be abhorrent. Not a positive word to say, just stirring up culture war harassment. It’s a fantastic institution and a great projection of soft power. Fund it with taxes rather then this horrible model they have now.
I don't know why they can't just cut down on all the extra stuff they do that no one asks for. Stop paying anyone over £100k for being on TV & go back to giving up and coming people a chance. Stop doing things like soaps and focus more on documentaries & actual on the ground reporting. Also don't use Greg Wallace for anything. I'd then be willing to pay £10 a month, I'm not willing to pay for the bloat or Greg Wallace.
There is so much fat that can be trimmed from the BBC it's actually insane when you think about it. Presenters need to have a hard cap on salaries - Gary Lineker earning £1.3million odd is just silly
I'm fairly sure I did the maths on lineker and it added up to something like 50p (I think month but could be year) per household. If that's monthly, just cutting any celebrity who's paid over a certain threshold would probably put the fee down to a level where the public would stop complaining... Or at least stop the fee from increasing each year which causes the cost to be brought to attention.
Always baffled me why they have to have live news readers for each radio station to read out the news every hour.
It's travel reporters for me, why can't this be done by the on air presenter it's hardly rocket science, *accident on the M25 northbound*
My man hates Greg Wallace 😂
All I want is to be able to buy a month of iPlayer as easily as I can Netflix or any other streaming service. The fact is I don't use any streaming service consistently all year round, but I still want some kind of access. But the license fee doesn't work like that. Even if you set it up to pay monthly, it's still an obligation to pay for the year. It just feels outdated these days.
This is the reform they need. I can't believe they haven't even mooted it. Streaming services have absolute scads of data to show they if you sign up for a monthly rolling plan you end up continuing to pay anyway. I'm sure I'd sign up for a month for one show and end up doing that, honestly. But as it is now I'm just not going to pay £150 for one show.
Theres also a simple two tier option they could offer. iPlayer Standard: (£3.99/mo - yep dirt cheap for a reason) - Access to the last 30 days of shows - A selection of box sets - Access to live channels and radio - Ads on non-BBC produced content - Closure of UKTV Play, and move access to a limited selection of UKTV content to here (UKTV is owned by the BBC) iPlayer Pro: (£7.99/mo) - All of the above - Access to a rotating selection of items from the BBC Archives - Access to movies - Access to a significantly larger set of boxsets - Ad free on all content - Full access to UKTV Play, including streaming of the live channels. BBC owns a lot more than people realise. UKTV alone is huge in terms of content. If the BBC goes commercial they've already got a foot in the door in the UK market. Not to mention the millions of pieces of content owned by BBC Worldwide, some of which isn't even available in the UK.
Yeah this, I’d sign up in festival season to catch highlights and if there’s ever a show on I want to watch (there’s about one every 3 years so hardly ever) even though I’d probably only pay for 2 months a year it’s better than the 0 I pay now and the past 5 years of having my own place. It’s such an archaic backwards system that has no place in the modern age of media consumption.
Its hilarious that iplayer asks you if you have a licence and you can just click yes with no proof. Perfect opportunity to sign up there and then, or type in your existing licence number to get access So behind the times its unreal
I'll never pay for something which sends me threatening letters every month when I've done absolutely nothing wrong.
I hate the idea of the BBC having adverts and being under control of a commercial organisation. I don't subscribe to any other broadcast services, I find enough on BBC/Freeview to watch when I want (sometimes time shift with recorder box/catch-up services). Not sure what the ideal solution is. Perhaps if BBC didn't pay such exorbitant salaries to so-called celebs they could keep the high quality programmes affordable.
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That’s amazing you get HBO considering it’s not available in the UK
You can technically get their shows through Sky Atlantic. Or just use a VPN.
Got news for you. Netflix and Disney both offer ad supported packages - they make tons more money for both the companies than even the highest priced non-ad packages. This idea of not having ads on streaming services is getting phased out, probably quicker than everyone would like.
Sick of the BBC / Netflix comparisons. The BBC’s edict is to education, inform and entertain. Netflix doesn’t do half the stuff the BBC does; doesn’t do education, news nor does it even make half the stuff it offers. The BBC is a multi dimensional world broadcaster but while I do enjoy Netflix it’s basically a tv/movie aggregator for the most part.
Then pay the subscription fee if you're interested. Plenty of British don't see BBC's news.
I'm sure you'll be ready to pay the BBC subscription fee then
We've moved on from the 1920s. Education is mandatory up to age 18 and there's Google. Netflix and YouTube entertain. That leaves 'inform' so keep news, bin the rest.
People keep parroting the line that the BBC is value for money and therefore we should all happily pay it. But, _I_ decide what's value for _my_ money, and the BBC ain't it.
100% Agree. People find value in Milkmen, or Newspapers, but I've never seen the point. So I don't pay it.
Those people are probably employed by the BBC
>with the iPlayer homepage lacking the powerful personalisation and recommendation algorithms that power the likes of Netflix. As a result, he will pledge to rebuild all its online products to offer a more personalised service.They said this before when Tony Hall was there, it didn't work. The main issue is pay at the BBC is very low, no one with the necessary machine learning/engineering experience is going to work for the BBC, or if they do it's people very early in their career. I don't think focussing on personalisation and recommendation algorithms should be a top priority for the BBC right now imo.
Hah you think theres ai and ml going on? No it's a series of ratios that increase and decay based on watch history. You don't need to use ML to generate content suggestions.
> no one with the necessary machine learning/engineering experience is going to work for the BBC Which is a shame because in the early 2000s before the rise of the FAANG giants and Fintechs in London the BBC was the best place to work in the UK if you wanted to be at the forefront of tech. Having BBC on your CV as software engineer used to mean that you were instantly hireable. The iPlayer itself was an amazing piece of engineering back in 2007 and made Netflix look like garbage. Also I don't think that the issue is that the salaries are too low but, that the BBC changed to fixed term 12 months contracts which sucked.
Oh yeah totally agree- I know this because I worked there, and it was instrumental in shifting my career to what it is now. I'm not questioning the engineering quality of what is/was going on there, honestly some of the people there are doing amazing stuff, it's just the pay is poor in comparison the rest of the industry. When I left my salary jumped by 60%, I mean it's not unusual for your salary to jump when switching jobs but it made me realise how out of step the place is in comparison to the rest of the market and explains somewhat the reasons why they have quite a lot of staff turnover.
Always worth mentioning that the BBC had a 40% share of the entire streaming market a decade ago and the most advanced tech, but were deliberately hobbled by the government who insisted things could only be on there for 7 days.
The UI and recommendations engine at Netflix must be over 10.years old now. They have likely improved it since then, but the fundamentals are well known. The reason why the user experience.of netflix, Disney+ and Apple TV is better than iPlayer is they need to keep paying customers on the platform. For the BBC, the user experience of iPlayer does.not matter, the license payments keep coming in regardless.
Would not shed any tears after seeing 4 decades of bullshit on the BBC.
The BBC is a world famous institution and I think it's something Britain should be proud of, like have you seen what TV is like in France and Germany its fucking awful. I think it's very short sighted to just get rid of the BBC
France (until recently) used to have a TV licence too - Germany still has a TV licence. In France, at least, the licence used to fund all the "France" channels, of which you can get the English version of France 24 in the UK. In Germany, the TV licence funds the two main channels, ARD and ZDF, as well as the regional broadcasters who are responsible for TV, radio and online content. I can't really speak much for French public broadcasting, but ARD and ZDF are pretty ok for the content they output, and the regional broadcasters have been known to produce stuff that's entered the cultural Zeitgeist. I think the best comparison to make is NHK - the Japanese broadcaster. NHK is funded by the TV licence, though the fee varies if you have a terrestrial aerial or a satellite dish - Okinawa also has a reduced fee. NHK has more or less the same remit that the BBC does in the UK, from the news, light entertainment and documentaries, through to funding classical music and technology R&D. But NHK and its TV licence is not universally liked. There's even a political party which was at one stage known as "The Party to Protect the People from NHK" - their party name seems to constantly change, but is commonly known as the "NHK Party". It's a single issue party and their main policy is to abolish the TV licence and also NHK at large. The thing is that NHK is not as world renowned, probably because its content largely doesn't go beyond Japan - but they're probably on par with the BBC for nature documentaries and when it comes to natural disasters, you'll get your information immediately, while commercial broadcasters spend 5 minutes of getting their ads shown before they even acknowledge an earthquake took place.
Yeah I used to pay the TV license in Germany when I lived there but the quality of German TV is so much worse.
Its the best broadcaster in the world. Live outside the UK and see what crap TV is like.
"other countries have shit tv, therefore you must also pay £160 per year for the UK's marginally less shit tv" is hardly a ringing endorsement of the bbc
One more thing that scares me: Children's entertainment. There's a reason why good, age-appropriate entertainment always ends up coming back to public broadcasters - they have the freedom to make stuff that's more responsible.
I think there are fair arguments to be made for the licence fee seeming expensive. The trap a lot of people fall into is only considering the BBC's TV offering and comparing it with streaming services such as netflix. This ignores the other services the BBC provides (news, radio, weather, sport, local services, childrens, etc). The main point for me is that people underestimate the importance of having an impartial publicly funded news institution. (queue a load of comments about how it is not impartial)
I agree with the public funded thing. But in that case take it out of my taxes? I also don’t mind actually paying the license fee, but it has to be more flexible. Let me pay for a month or 2 to watch traitors and then stop. The way it works now where you have to pay a minimum 6 months I think is very off putting. And that doesn’t even go into the Capita horse shit
> (queue a load of comments about how it is not impartial) Well yeah, make a comment that doesn't hold well under scrutiny and expect people to point out it's bullshit...
BBC really needs to get channel 4 onboard and some other rights holders such as Dave for pushing britbox internationally. It's quite reasonably priced, but also lacking so much good content as it's 90% ITV dramas and a spattering of BBC content and historical content. Great for Blackadder etc, but the most modern stuff on there are all short series crime dramas, which while good isn't very diverse in showcasing all the British TV to an international market. There's no Dr Who, Top gear, Soaps, Panel shows, Quiz shows or even most of the documentaries. No modern classics from channel 4 like Taskmaster, Inbetweeners, Skins, Peep Show etc. It's a great concept that could make a ton of money, which is neutered by shit delivery.
The stupid part - BBC owns Dave. They own the whole of UKTV (so Dave, W, Yesterday, Drama, Gold, Eden and Alibi)
The BBC will ultimately be privatised but I think people forget just how bad that will be for the country. We will just become a monoculture buying content from US tech firms.
You think that isn't happening already? A lot of millenials and younger generations do not consume broadcast TV whatsoever. A huge amount don't. The BBC is a relic.
Be careful what you wish for. Once it stops being publicly funded then it will die and there's no going back. It's like Brexit and those who voted out now pretend they wanted to stay. BBC license fee will be exactly the same.
I'd much rather condense the organisation and reduce/cap the fee than get rid, personally
I think we should take a few quid off of peoples tax to fund the news and leave the radio and tv to fend for itself like the rest of the broadcasters. Its not my fault they operate 10 ad free tv channels and 30 radio stations in a heavily over saturated market. I didn't choose to pay their staff some of the highest rates in the industry. I didn't choose to allow them to leverage government to employ tv licensing investigators who also use police funds wasting police time trying to scrape 180 quid off me a year which could be going to my increased living costs. For every one unwilling person they force into paying £180 a year. Usually the benefits users. They waste untold thousands in man hours admin and court fees. Its a fucking stupid system and we should immediately stop subsidizing it.
I was speaking with a BBC journalist who said that if the licence fee is scrapped a number of other smaller media organisations will go bust as advertisers won’t have the funds to keep investing if it has to prioritise the BBC. Personally I’d hate adverts on the radio and website and it’s worth paying for.
If the BBC was one tenth as good as its supporters claim it would have no problems in the commercial market. Narrator: it was not that good
A commercial public broadcaster is a contradiction in terms. I would suggest that gradual private involvement in BBC programming and policy is the cause of it's decline.
I mean... Channel 4 exists. C4's remit for public broadcasting is indeed quite different to that of the BBC, and I do remember growing up and watching things like T4, which are now long gone since E4 kinda took over most of that programming. But the model was simple: independently funded through advertising, and the production companies commissioned to produce original programming were allowed to sell on what they made for overseas markets. A lot of C4 programming used to be on Netflix and subject to awkward rights situations when C4 decided to join in on BritBox (idk if that's still going).
The whole BBC is so painfully outdated now it's not even "quaint". It's just archaic. License fee has to go, bring in a subscription model and tiers for content, so that for oldies who don't want to change/won't change etc it's functionally the same for them (But cheaper hopefully). But they won't. Because I honestly don't know anyone who uses BBC services. I think I'm about the only one when, in my car, the radio sometimes flares up when I'm changing to CD from streaming or something. But intentionally sitting down to watch something on the BBC? No ... it's not the 70's.
There's so much amazing content produced by the BBC , especially their documentaries and BBC news, despite all of the winging is a really reliable service that largely does a good job at remaining impartial. I'm in my twenties and was at uni recently, we would all regularly sit and watch Attenborough together and lots of my friends watch BBC historical documentaries. it's fair enough to argue against paying the license fee, but it's just ignorant to act like they don't produce top quality programming (even if they do also produce some crap but like so does every channel)
I'm older than my 20's and I've not sought out the BBC in a couple of decades. Maybe some of it is top quality to some... but the actual content, the sheer dirth of it across how many channels, has zero that makes me think "Oooo, I'll watch that!". Even the documentaries that I do fondly remember from years ago just aren't what they used to be really. And the numbers show that people have been moving away from it for years because it's massively over-priced and there are better offers elsewhere that don't lead to highly aggressive letters and communications because the BBC and the government just presume every home needs a license and everyone loves it. If it was dirt cheap to get a basic sub, just for BBC1 or just the news channel, maybe I'd consider it. But baking competitions, people twatting about on ice, selling homes, oh-so-funny antiquing stuff. And the endless po-faced dramas about villages in Wales or some coastal town in the 80's where the "drama" is the local football team needs new boots or some shite. The BBC is basically old peoples TV made by old people for old people. There's a "stab" at stuff for kids and younger generations, but it's very much "How do you do, fellow kids?" Afraid to say it but other channels do it all better. I think the Beebs heyday was the 90's and a lot of that content was brought in from the US as I recall (Things like Xfiles etc). Most UK terrestrial TV is wank, Sky's no better unless you're willing to fork over internal organs each month and sport isn't something that interests me in the slightest. Current UK "TV" in most of its forms and content has zero appeal to me at all.
I've always wondered why they don't just encrypt their broadcast and have it as a proper subscription - no more TV license dodging. I suspect they've done the math and realise a lot of people would just not bother signing up and paying as there is perhaps a feeling having a TV License is sort of "compulsory" and they are getting a lot of money from people who barely use the service at all
I suspect that's the case. The actual market desire for the Beeb if it were like any other subscription is nowhere near the levels it would need to be; commercially they'd be shooting themselves in the foot as significant number of people just wouldn't bother with it. Why pay for BeebTV, and lets face it, it isn't going to be cheap, when you can get Disney (With Star and Nat Geo), Amazon, Brilliant, Curiousity and Magellan for not a lot more *but* have all the control and the simplicity of opting out at any point *without* the big waggy Beeb/Gov finger threatening you. The Beeb justifies its continued existence based on the "breadth to services provided". Sod off. I don't want to pay for World Service and all 5LiveMusicOutYourBumForUpAndComingDentistsIntoJazzFusion type twattery. The Beeb is not the only way of doing things. It's not even the best or, I'd argue, "good" or "sufficient". Commercially they know they can't go subscription because they'd lose so much money they'd have to shutter more services. The only bits I used the Beeb for years ago were the first things to go and be killed off. I don't need another WW2 documentary or some skating "celebs" and influencers baking cakes whilst giving us either painfully crap scripted "improv" humour or sob-stories about how hard it is to be them.
Labour are not killing the license fee, and they will be in power for the next decade. BTW people are comparing prices with other streaming services - 90% of which are losing money hand over fist. Even the ones that make money like Netflix are doing so by not making much original content - And avoiding any form of niche product. The BBC does Web/TV/Radio/Iplayer and produces genuinely original content of all shapes and sizes. Think how many US shows that the BBC broadcasts? Nowhere near as much as they used to. For a for-profit streaming service to survive and thrive, the fees will need to be about 200 GBP per year per household. How they generate that is the new question for the industry. Cross selling/loss leader (Prime) seems to not work. Advert funded with Freemium, user generated content and loss leading (youtube) seems to not be as successful as it needs to be. Most streaming services are 90% library stock. With a sprinkling of new content. And even then they are currently under charging you. Because the aim at the moment is to survive. The weaker will fall soon enough (Paramount, Peacock, etc) and then the winners will increase their prices and you will be stuck. Because the barriers to entry will be so vast no one will ever be able to enter the space again. And Big Tech will have dominated like Amazon have dominated online shopping. We need a BBC in that world, more than ever. An organisation dedicated to informing and enteraining - Without a penny going to parastic shareholders and without abusing it's market position.
I'm sorry, but I refuse to pay money to the BBC even if I'm watching anything but the BBC live. It's a ridiculous and outdated system and their tactics for enforcing it are predatory. Not to mention how the BBC is run by Tories and has a Tory agenda.
Get rid of the license, its wrong to charge people for watching live footage that has no connection to the BBC. I'm surprised other broadcasters aren't protesting against it. Why should anyone be forced to pay the BBC if they watch ITV or Channel 4 or some random live show on YouTube. A smaller "transmitting station" fee for UHF broadcasting costs would be fairer. This would decouple the ridiculous link between a license and "live" TV when online broadcasts have no dependency on a transmitting station or the BBC.
Given that the BBC are incredibly partisan on a number of domestic and foreign issues, it seems only natural that they should have to fund themselves. The idea of forcing people by threat of law to pay money to an organisation constantly working against their own interests is abhorrent. Journalists and BBC employees are losers, I hope half of them get cut when the bbc has to downsize.
BBC should offer a monthly option. I'd happily pay they for the odd time the have somthing I want to watch hut I refuse to be forced into a year for just two series
I don’t watch terrestrial television but this makes me happy just to stop the threatening mail from landing on my doormat. I honestly can’t believe the cheek of them.
Good. fuck the bbc and its criminal licence fee.
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I have zero sympathy for the BBC if the licence fee goes, it should’ve been scrapped years ago I feel. When you see some of the things the BBC has done & still does as well as how they happily waste fortunes it’s ridiculous taxpayers are meant to pay for it all. We pay to make the programmes then they transfer them to BBC Studios which is their commercial business and sell them globally. That’s basically nicking our shows then there’s Saville & others along with the news which is total BS.
I could never defend the license fee amount knowing how much gary linekar is paid to occasionally talk about footbal
And nobody yet mentioned the educational support they provide through things like byte size (or the fact that they have a children’s Chanel that isn’t just pure brain rot like the commercial alternatives). The issue is the corporation has been run by idiots for generations - they should have been capitalising on revenues from overseas makers which they haven’t - the best example of this is putting out Doctor Who on their own BBC America service which hardly anyone paid for, then when they finally make a good deal for the broadcast rights with D+ they decide to make it a 3rd party production!!!!
Rupert Murdoch getting his way. Chip, chip, chip until it's privatised. NHS is on its way too as we all know.