#1
The UK TV license is currently £145. This is, as you all know, a legal requirement for all owners of TV receiving equipment. For this money we get in exchange a series of media consumer products such as news, drama, radio shows, etc etc. That's the science bit over with, now to the point.
When you look at the way we consume our entertainment media these days I can seriously see no reason why we should have to continue paying a TV license. It seems so irrelevant these days as to be the purest form of rip-off. Let me explain.
Virgin Media and SKY TV offer all kinds of bundles of TV entertainment packages including movie channels, documentaries, music, news, and so on. The packages vary and we can pretty much pick and choose what we want and pay (subscribe) to the entertainment products we wish to consume. We have no such choice with the BBC thanks to the license fee.
Then there's the internet, which provides various access to catch-up TV shows via 4OD and BBC iPlayer and in many ways makes a very good companion to regular TV.
So here's my theory: Given that we have such a wealth of entertainment options these days, via the web, and via a network of commercial providers, is it fair, or right at all, that we should be FORCED BY LAW to fund the BBC? Most of us have computers at work that can access iPlayer, will the TV license eventually be forced upon all PC owners too? I kid you not, many employers were seriously warned that they face the usual £1000 fine if they allowed staff to watch the World Cup on the internet at work unless they purchase a TV license. And there has been discussions about a BBC "PC License" too. What's more, more and more mobile gadgets are capable of displaying TV shows (usually via the web) so will these too trigger a license requirement?
I think the license is utterly irrelevant now and is now deeply up to its knees in "absolute bullshit rip-off" territory. The BBC should go commercial and survive on subscriptions. As a consumer product, I hate being forced to pay for a consumable item that I hardly use whether I like it or not. I enjoy the US cartoon sitcom Family Guy which shows on BBC3 (which is funded by the license fee) but I can also watch it on FOX Network or on DVD, which I pay for myself outside of the license fee. By choice!
I noticed in the news today that the BBC are publishing the names of their top earners and having some financial cut-backs. I think this is all utter folly, as the BBC is pretty much "recession proof" thanks to the ancient laws that force us all to pay for a TV license no matter what.
The UK is a laughing stock in many other countries which are not forced to own a license for TV (documentary maker Michael Moore famously hit the streets in America asking what people thought of a TV license and they all laughed when he revealed that us Brits have to buy one).
Considering the vast range of choices open to us these days, it just seems utterly out of place that one - JUST ONE - organisation can be allowed to force us all into financial submission whether we like it or not for what amounts to nothing more important than bloody TV shows. If the BBC became subscription-only then I dare say many would still follow it. I'm not sure I would personally.
We are all so used to consuming mass media these days in a huge variety of ways, and it's terrific, but thanks to the license fee, the BBC are always lurking in the background like the Big Bad Wolf ready to pounce on anyone who is breaking the licensing laws. Thanks to the license fee, we are all potential criminals for using certain websites at work!
As the media world opens up in bigger and better ways year after year, it should be time to consider abolishing the license rather than tightening it up.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
#2
couldn;'t agree more rick, until recently i was always a believer in the tv licence on the grounds of not wanting to watch commercials.
they take more money but turn out less output, they paid out huge sums of money for major sporting events that now are on sky.
there are no one off challenging dramas that we loved back in the 60s,70s, 80s,no new comedies, instead they pay inflated salaries to so called stars and pump money into digital tv and radio channels that not everybody has.
off the top of my head the only things i watch are the attenborough programmes, newsnight and what little sport they have left.
the last decent drama was "warriors" set in bosnia a decade or so back, absolutely captivating but nothing that i can think of since.
#3
Some interesting viewing (if you dare)
A pretty well informed talk about the proposed BBC "PC License" fee
TV License and your PC (from the BBC website)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5081350.stm
This propaganda video compares the BBC to the Taliban and the Nazi Party, but there is a certain ring of truth to it
The evil of the TV license
http://www.datalite.org/tv-licensing-uk-television-evil-agency.htmlGuest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
#4
This is a tricky one...a few years ago I think I was all for the abolition of the License Fee complaining that it was just an extra tax, but now Im not so sure. Since then we have had Freeview foistered upon us and you can see at a glance what televisual life would be like without structure. To quote from Pink Floyd's The Wall for a moment, dating from 1981...
" I got 114 channels of sh*t on the TV to choose from.."
This previewed what was to come. Now its here. Freeview shows what TV without the BBC would be like. Wall to wall garbage, and repeats of garbage, garbage updates, if you missed the garbage last week here's another chance etc etc.
Almost all countries have a state TV service funded sililarly to the BBC or at least through government funds. The problem with the BBC is that they try to do too much. They really need to lop of the various branches that just consume money taking it away from the central flagship BBC1. They spread their resources too thin even though they have plenty of resources to play with. They tried to cut some services last year but as ever twas met with howls of protest from the few.
If the BBC was gone and we were left to market forces, and channels as supplied by Sky and Virgin and so on, costs to the viewer would escalate madly. And those that couldnt afford it would be left watching...yes Freeview..if they were lucky. The BBC gives us some structure and keeps us on message as per government shenanigans and so on...Im not sure the independent news services are quite on the money. So my view is that the BBC holds us all together, gives us a national identity, or more accurately helps us to hold on to a national identity. But it needs to stop trying to do too much and to pour its resources into central mainstream programming.
Guest 693- Registered: 12 Nov 2009
- Posts: 1,266
#5
I support the licence fee as it stands because without it we would lose a great deal more than we may think: BBC radio owes its very existence to the licence fee and would simply not exist without it, quality would go out of the window and we'd all face more 'dumbed down' crap featuring the likes of Graham Norton, and I'd have to emigrate in that case.
What I would like to see is greater input from members of the public into BBC productions, far reduced fees to their 'big name' presenters and an independent body to oversee BBC expenditure. It is, after all, public money that is being lavishly squandered in areas it shouldn't be; if Parliament has to be micro-managed over money, then it's only right that the BBC should too.
True friends stab you in the front.
#6
The BBC want to license our PCs, Macs, and very likely our mobile gadgets too, simply because they make certain TV services available online. This is a scandal beyond rip-off, it's like being mugged by a giant corporation. The BBC should REMOVE all of it's online TV services so that it can have absolutely no claim to a PC / gadget license. It's a slippery slope that only leads to us being shafted yet again.
I also disagree with the view that the less well-off will be stuck with crap TV. There are many decent things on freeview, Channel 4 offers one of the best news services on all of the four main channels (okay that's a matter of opinion) and the fact of the matter is that many less well-off people are criminalized for the harmless act of watching TV programs without a license. The freeview argument falls flat on its face - at least it's free and available, and if we had no license fee then at least the less well-off could watch something without fear of arrest and huge fines.
The TV license collectors are forever shoving propaganda at us showing none license payers as scumbags and criminals. Most of them are simply very hard-up, harmless individuals who just want to watch the TV.
We live in a free economy where we choose what we want to pay to consume but the BBC license fee is just plain totalitarianism in its truest form and simpyl no longer has any place in the modern media landscape.
#7
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
#8
surely the fact that bbc2 and radio 4 provide quality viewing and listening make a case for the licence fee?
i would suggest 5o quid and dump all the soaps that the bbc show.
#9
£145? Just over two quid a week (which is what the Dirty Digger is trying to charge just for access to his newsprint).
Worth it for Radio 3 and the World Service alone.
I seriously need neither dumbed down nor adverts. I have never been troubled with going into a store and not knowing what to buy because I missed the advert.
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
#10
If its any consolation The Times' on-line viewing figures have dropped by 60%.
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
#11
The frightening thing is once the Aussie bastard has the technology to do 3D the Sun's webpage will pick up by much the same amount!
#12
Okay, Radio 5 and the World Service may be good, but is it SO good that we have to be forced by law to subscribe to it?
#13
On today's news, an ex-Doctor Who is is making a programme where he is cast as a drug baron, or drug sleazeball, whatever.
The BBC has decided to film the show on the Isle of Man.
Now, call me pernickety if you like, but does the Isle of Man rate high in the locations noted for drug dealing? Why is the BBC going to the huge cost and inconvenience of sending cast and crew to an island in the middle of the Irish Sea when it could make the same programme here in Dover for instance? In fact, anywhere on mainland UK is preferable to the Isle of Man.
This is an outrageous waste of public money.
Guest 693- Registered: 12 Nov 2009
- Posts: 1,266
#14
Sid
The answer to this lies, I believe (and perhaps Rick with his interest in cinema can confirm this), in the fact that the Isle of Man has invested heavily in attracting movie and TV makers to the island in providing the facilities they need and making it easy to close roads etc.
It's easy to look at what the Isle of Man is gaining from their investment with envious eyes and ask why we don't get similar here; what the heck, Dover can't even get an ASDA built here, so what chance have we got of attracting TV and film crews here en masse given the huge investment by DDC in attracting them?
True friends stab you in the front.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
#15
now now andy the ddc is my gripe,but i agree with you.
