Posted by surfhogster on Monday, 05 March 2007 16:30:17

TV Licence, another of those Great Big British Rip-offs.........

Posted by DaveGould on Monday, 05 March 2007 19:56:03

God no, for all the reasons previously discussed on this board including:
1. The BBC are compelled to provide quality education and entertainment and thereby raise the standard of all the commercial media.
2. The BBC are compelled to provide news in the interests of the people.
3. The BBC provide an invaluable amount of goodwill around the world which compensates for things like invading Iraq.

"This seems to be particularly relevant when £15 million a year of taxpayers' money is to be spent on a BBC channel solely for use in Iran (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6037832.stm) There is no justification for this"

Preventing a nuclear confrontation would be one justification.

Posted by ReverendJasonGraves on Monday, 05 March 2007 20:00:48

"
3. The BBC provide an invaluable amount of goodwill around the world which compensates for things like invading Iraq.
"


It's good to know, that everything has a value, Iraqi civilians legs, arms and lives included.

...it's amazing what Tax payer (BBC license) money will provide.


"Booooom!" & Death from the BBC with love and Compensation, is not what the original want was, of the peaceful and law-abiding middle-eastern people.

 

Comment edited by ReverendJasonGraves on Monday, 05 March 2007 20:05:39

Posted by DaveGould on Monday, 05 March 2007 21:32:27

"It's good to know, that everything has a value, Iraqi civilians legs, arms and lives included."

Of course, I didn't mean that a BBC channel in Iran would make up for our atrocities in Iraq.

Posted by kozmicstu on Monday, 05 March 2007 21:40:22

If it wasn't for the TV Licence and the BBC our television would probably be as bad as it is in America. Quality programming like Planet Earth would never be made, lowering the bar to which the other TV companies have to reach. Think about the content that the BBC has produced in the past and consider how little of it would have been made on a commercial TV station - Monty Python, for one. Have I Got News For You. CBeebies (a personal favourite, of course). Anything featuring David Attenborough....

They also, as I have said a few times, maintain and manage the broadcast system. If they didn't, this would have to be paid for some other way - either by some other form of mandatory television subscription (in which case what's the point in getting rid of the TV Licence) or through the government through taxes. I other words, life without the TV Licence would be almost as expensive, and you'd lose all the fantastic programming and intellectual content that the BBC bring to the small screen, and the knock-on effect that this has on the other TV companies as they try to compete.

Stu

P.S. I understand what you mean, DaveGould, but perhaps a bad example! :-)

Posted by DaveGould on Monday, 05 March 2007 22:18:33

"P.S. I understand what you mean, DaveGould, but perhaps a bad example! :-)"

I think it's a good example, although I put it perhaps a little ambiguously.

Just to be absolutely clear, the revenge terrorist attacks on Britain might be much worse if it wasn't for the World Service. Indeed, the BBC had a channel in Saudi Arabia, shutdown after 2 years after rows about Saudi censorship. Many of the workers joined Al-Jazeera.

I watched Al-J for the first time today. Wow there's a lot of things going on in the world we never hear about.

Posted by cambridgecameroon on Tuesday, 06 March 2007 16:41:31

“Quality programming like Planet Earth would never be made…”

I disagree. Planet Earth was one of the BBC’s most successful programmes last year in ratings terms, and therefore its production would still have been in the interests of a commercialised BBC. Similarly Have I Got News For You is a ratings banker – why would a privatised BBC drop a programme which is both successful and cheap? Advertisers would be desperate to get in on anything featuring David Attenborough. Similarly, other ‘public service’ programmes such as Question Time, This Week, and The Daily Politics do very well in their timeslots – there would be no reason to abandon such shows. Furthermore to safeguard the output of the BBC, Parliament could set strict limits on what a privatised corporation had to put out. Seeing as BBC 1 is the most watched channel in the UK, schedulers would be daft to change much.

As for maintenance of the broadcast system, what happens in other countries? US and European citizens don’t have to pay such fees do they? (I confess I do not know the answer to this.) It would obviously be in the interests of the broadcasters to look after the system themselves if customers were unwilling to pay. In addition, as everything becomes digitalised, I suspect maintenance costs etc. will become less.

On top of this there are various ways of ‘privatising’ the BBC. One option would be to have commercial breaks. Another would be to have a voluntary subscription fee, so that those who wanted to watch and pay for the BBC could take that option, while those who wished to opt out could do so. Why shouldn’t I, or anyone else, have the right to own a television and watch other channels such as ITV or Sky without being forced to subsidise a BBC that I might choose never to watch?

It is very strange to have so little freedom of choice here, in contrast to so many other aspects of our lives.

Posted by canvas on Tuesday, 06 March 2007 16:57:53

I'm all for privitising the BBC. The TV license fee is a completely outdated idea. It is no longer workable.
The TV licence is a perfect example of yet another poor mans tax. It should go!

Posted by Tizzy on Tuesday, 06 March 2007 17:03:20

The BBC is a fantastic training ground for all sorts of TV/film work, providing (mostly) quality employment prospects. The UK has one of the most respected technical workforce in the world, thanks to the BBC. I wouldn't care to attempt to find the relevant stats but I would think that the BBC provides more tax revenue, over time, than NewsCorp.

Interesting times for the BBC. I wish this gvt would butt out.

Posted by kozmicstu on Tuesday, 06 March 2007 17:06:14

You're mistaking the continuation of a programme for its inception I think, cambridgecameroon. I don't think anybody other than the BBC would have taken the expensive risk of creating a series like Planet Earth (this can be shown by the fact that no commercial channel makes documentary series of this calibre), much less giving a highly experimental programme like Monty Python a pretty much prime time slot. It's not risky to continue a successful series, and so David Attenborough would doubtless be offered a contract with a commercial company as he is as near as can be guaranteed to raise a profit. Without the BBC, though, he and others like him would never be given airtime in the first place. BBC have no financial agenda, beyond staying within their budget, and so they are able to be more 'artistic' and experimental in the way they chose new programming.

In the USA the networks pay for themselves through advertising and subscriptions. While on the surface this sounds better for the average person, the money for the advertising is only available because the adverts make you go out and buy things you don't need. The money still comes from the consumers! They also have far more intrusive advertising and it appears much more often in this country - something which I would again put down to the fact that advertisers in this country have to compete with the advert-free content on the BBC channels. Also, since my daughter is still very young I end up having kids TV on a lot, and the only channel for young kids that's worth it is CBeebies - and the reason for this is that all the other channels spend a quarter of their time specifically targetting children with advertising.

This model is also a double-edged sword - without the BBC's contribution to the broadcast system, there wouldn't be ceefax or teletext, there wouldn't be stereo sound in TVs, there wouldn't be a freeview digital system (which has been, and will continue to be for several years, a major financial burden that the BBC is bearing), we'd probably be using the massively inferior NTSC colour system... There have been many many major enhancements to the broadcast system (TV and Radio) which have come directly from the BBC, and mainly because they are non-profit - commercial interests would have no incentive to do the R&D; involved.

The reason for the TV Licence may be a historic one, but I think there's a lot better things to complain about than paying a tenner a month, in return for high quality advertising-free television, and the knock on effect that has on the other channels - particularly since that tenner a month gets you some forty-odd TV channels, seven of which come from the BBC

Posted by canvas on Tuesday, 06 March 2007 20:02:44

Kozmic: > you said> "The reason for the TV Licence may be a historic one, but I think there's a lot better things to complain about than paying a tenner a month, in return for high quality advertising-free television, and the knock on effect that has on the other channels - particularly since that tenner a month gets you some forty-odd TV channels, seven of which come from the BBC"

The point is that many people these days pay Sky or other cable companies for the channels that they choose to watch. It's about choice. Why should the BBC benefit from this? It's wrong that people are criminalised for not paying their TV licences. It's an unfair tax because it's outdated. It no longer applies to the way the world is today.

:)

Posted by DaveGould on Tuesday, 06 March 2007 22:13:48

"It's an unfair tax because it's outdated. It no longer applies to the way the world is today."

Unless you have a better idea (and no, Parliament cannot guarantee quality any more than they already do so from the commercial channels), the license fee remains the best way to fund the BBC.

Posted by IAmNoOne on Wednesday, 07 March 2007 00:17:27

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the NY Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But now the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards WORLD GOVERNMENT. The supra national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries." - David Rockefeller, to the Council on Foreign Relations, June 1991.

Remember, we live in a "global village." What goes for the USA goes for the UK too - the way that GWB leads TB around by the ears is proof enough of that. This is an admission by one of the world's richest and most powerful men that the American media is owned and controlled and is part of an agenda that the rest of us are not supposed to be a party to. You really think for one second that the British media ISN'T? The BBC is basically the "government's" propoganda ministry, paid for by the public; the outright dishonesty and deceit displayed by the BBC over matters of global import in recent times have shown quite adequately that the BBC has zero interest in truth and justice and therefore, in a REAL democracy, would have no right to exist. Note, I DID say "REAL" democracy...

Still, good comedy, if nothing else...!!! ;-)