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BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

theguardian.com

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Re: BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

#151

Post by madeofpalk »

pessimizer wrote: post #143
mschuster91 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope the BBC continues to survive, just with a more modern funding approach Difficult. There are not many ways to fund a public TV/radio program, and all of the non-per-household-license free-OTA variants have issues: - anything tax-based is just asking for trouble aka a populist government extorting the public stations after critical coverage - ad-funded... well that's just ordinary private TV, with the threat h…

> - anything tax-based is just asking for trouble aka a populist government extorting the public stations after critical coverage Why a populist government? It seems that it's consistently Tory governments that do this, or even threaten it. If Tory politicians are populist, than the word has no meaning.

I would not take the British (voting) public to be a particularly progressive population.

Re: BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

#152

Post by dazc »

nickkell wrote: post #131
dazc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad has a TV licence despite watching 100% via streaming services. No matter what I tell him, he insists he has to have a licence. This is a widely held view with people of a similar age. Maybe the BBC could do an information campaign to educate them otherwise? I won't hold my breath though.

Which streaming service are you referring to? AFAIK you do actually need a license to watch BBC iPlayer

Netflix, amazon, itv and Now (Sky) mostly. He does use iPlayer but, AFAIK, you only need a licence to watch live broadcast TV. I concede you can watch live (or pretty much nearly live) TV on iplayer but he doesn't do that.

Re: BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

#153

Post by dazc »

philk10 wrote: post #139
nickkell wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which streaming service are you referring to? AFAIK you do actually need a license to watch BBC iPlayer

iPlayer asks if you have a license and you say Yes...

Sometimes also asks if you are over 18. Just as well so many people are honest?

Re: BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

#154

Post by notahacker »

makomk wrote: post #33
iso1210 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing to do with stuff like this: Michael Fabricant, the Conservative MP for Lichfield, has said that the BBC has launched a “coup attempt” against Boris Johnson after hearing a news bulletin which criticised the PM over lockdown parties held at No. 10. Speaking yesterday, Mr Fabricant said: “BBC Radio 4 Bulletin leads this morning with a manufactured story of what some MPs have said to the BBC. This is not news re…

That's obviously pissing off the government right now, but honestly it's the least of the problems with their Covid-19 news coverage. They kept on pushing both false and misleading claims about the UK doing worse at stuff than other countries, in at least one case that I know of for a month in an article linked from the BBC news front page after they became aware it was false. (The government made a big deal about re…

I think this post says more about your own biases than the BBC.

For example the government made a big deal about "reaching" 100,000 tests in a day by counting kits mailed out to people as completed tests (it would be just easy to criticise the BBC news coverage for parroting the government's claim that they'd hit it in the headlines). The government had set that as a target with a specific date, and when it was clear they were unlikely to hit it, ministers started talking about capacity. A number of media outlets correctly pointed out this wasn't the original target, Germany had that "capacity" for a month and was now actually processing that many tests. But it's not the fault of the BBC or any other media organization that the UK didn't actually carry out 100k tests and so government ministers flipped to talking about capacity and other indicators to fudge the issue in the public's mind.

Similarly there is a school of thought that state broadcasters should only cover the upsides of government decisions (even when the downsides are so clear the government changes tack) and shouldn't give any of the government's critics any publicity, but it's a school of thought mostly associated with authoritarian states. Being criticised from all sides - regardless of what the policy is - is an occupational hazard of being a government where public debate isn't censored or controlled by them.

Re: BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

#155

Post by btdmaster »

dankboys wrote: post #138
kaashif wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Government does not get to control the national TV like it does when the one who pays is it directly. You may want to double check who's in charge of the BBC. The Director-General Tim Davie is a former deputy chairman of a local Conservative party and Conservative councillor candidate. Not that bad, perhaps. But the Chairman of the BBC, Richard Sharp, was a banker at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, advisor to Bori…

If this is the case, why did the BBC vote 5 to 1 in favour of Remain[1], despite the Conservative party being down the middle on Brexit. 75% of comedians are explicitly left wing [2] Anecdotally, the sidebar of BBC News UK edition is littered with articles attempting to argue that any inequality between sex or race of people in a unvaried analysis is indicative of system X-ism. Very rarely do people leave the BBC and…

The first paper[1] comes from authors of News-Watch[2], which from the website seems to have a clear agenda against the BBC. This is at least mildly ironic.

[1] https://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/brusselsbroadcastin...

[2] https://news-watch.co.uk

I could not find the source (and methodology) used for the second article.

Re: BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

#156

Post by brigandish »

jaymzcampbell wrote: post #12
bennysomething wrote: post #7

Good. Currently I'm forced to pay for content I dont consume.

I know there's lots of conflicting horror stories online but years ago when I moved house and had no TV at all, I submitted a declaration[1] saying I didn't need one and haven't had any hassle since. After a few months I realised I wasn't missing live TV at all and never went back. [1] https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/t...

They still might have a telly, just never watch the Beeb.

Re: BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

#157

Post by C19is20 »

cracrecry wrote: post #28

One of the great things of the Licence fee was that the Government does not get to control the national TV like it does when the one who pays is it directly. In places like Spain the national TV(and regional TV too) becomes a propaganda machine for the exclusive service of the Government(s, national and regional). It is awful to have your taxes redirected for the private interest of the Party in charge. In fact with…

I often get BBC "you're not in the UK, can't watch' messages. Fine. Can't pay, won't pay.

Re: BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

#158

Post by tobbob »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #35

I’m not sure how much cut through this has had outside of the UK, but the government are currently in serious trouble because of constant leaks about parties in Number 10 Downing Street during the pandemic - including a particularly poorly timed one the day before the Queen was photographed at her husband’s funeral alone. The leaks are ongoing, so we know that this particular plan is part of “Operation Red Meat”, whi…

Yes, the current government is in complete shambles, but the arguments against funding the BBC with a TV License have been made for many years. It's not just hot air from Number 10 trying to prevent bad headlines. Netflix has proven that the subscription model is perfectly viable, meaning there's little justification to make someone a criminal for watching late night shopping channels without first having paid the BBC.

Re: BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

#159

Post by iso1210 »

youngtaff wrote: post #142
iso1210 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most journalists have degrees and are aged between 20 and 50. That demographic is certainly "left leaning". The tory base is * Old people who don't work * People with little education, who aren't skilled enough to work as a journalist https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/12/how-britain-voted-and-... You (or whoever is downvoting) might not like that, but the fact is that in the UK context the country is left leaning, b…

When papers like the Sun and Mail are the most popular in the UK I think it's hard to agree that Britain overall is left leaning As for the BBC it's firmly establishment leaning rather than left leaning in my view, and they also carry a lot of the blame for promoting Farage's poltics e.g. more appearances on question time than anyone else

> When papers like the Sun and Mail are the most popular in the UK I think it's hard to agree that Britain overall is left leaning

"Left leaning" is of course relative. Some claim that Tony Blair is right wing, and Corbyn is the "middle ground". If you claim that then sure Britian is overall right-of-corbyn.

But if you take the standard "Lab/Lib/SNP/Green" is left leaning, and "Tory/UKIP/BNP" is right leaning, then as the left have have a majority every election it's quite reasonable to believe what the facts say.

Take one look at the election results and you can see there is a constant majority that's "left"

A lot of the complaints stems from a perceived view that UKIP were overrepresented on Question Time in the run up to 2015. That's no defence for the claim the BBC is "pro establishment", as Farage and indeed Brexit was quite clearly anti establishment.

Re: BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

#160

Post by brigandish »

LatteLazy wrote: post #130
bennysomething wrote: post #7

Good. Currently I'm forced to pay for content I dont consume.

You don't pay because you watch it. You pay so other people have some access to actual information so that we can have a functioning democracy and society. If you don't want those things, move to a failed state somewhere. If you do, pay up and get over yourself.

If the BBC is the only thing stopping the UK from becoming a failed state then God help us. Or, we could simply carry on without it and not really notice.

I'm going with the latter.

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