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TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

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Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#301

Post by pydry »

saberdancer wrote: post #267
mhh__ wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is to make it harder to fiddle with the BBC budget

I'm sure that is part of it, but I would love to see the breakdown of the costs. When it was first introduced it made sense to have a fee, not many people had a TV so by collecting the fee, you didn't tax the people without it. But today everyone has it, so this no longer applies. Independence argument has some merit, but I would expect that there can be different methods that would provide the same level of independ…

Independence went with the Hutton enquiry when Parliament set up the BBC trust to replace the BBC board of governors.

It gradually shifted from being an independent well staffed news organization that routinely held the government to account to an understaffed RT-like propaganda outfit and huffpost-like reprinter of press releases.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#302

Post by hashmush »

philwelch wrote: post #153
sleavey wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Germany, the situation changed a few years ago, every household has to pay now, even if they don't own a television or radio. This was literally the first piece of mail I got when I moved to Germany: a letter demanding I pay for the TV networks I don't watch. I didn't even own a TV by that point, nor would have understood much of what was being said! A German explained to me once that the forced payment by non-w…

At that point, why don’t they just have the government fund the television networks from tax revenue rather than effectively levying a poll tax earmarked for broadcasters?

Sweden made the switch in 2019 I believe. It was the availability of computers and streaming that forced them to change things. Since people with computers could now watch the programming everything became more complicated.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#303

Post by realityking »

hef19898 wrote: post #276
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're contradicting yourself. You say it's good that the TV tax is levied by the government like social insurance fees but instead of it going directly to the government like social insurance fees, it goes to an "independent" organization and that's the "feature"? LOL, what?! Do you really think that money is no strings attached? Ideally it would be and I guess that's the idea on paper but in practice, the public br…

That money has no strings attached, unless the amunt is about to be changed. An changes to the fee have to be agreed upon by both chambers, Bundestag and Bundesrat. The Bundesat, representing the individual states, means state parliaments have to agree first. That's the reason why the last fee increase fell through after one state feared backlash from the AfD leaning members of the CDU (Merkals party) and voted again…

Nitpicking but this is a common misconception:

> An changes to the fee have to be agreed upon by both chambers, Bundestag and Bundesrat.

The federal government, and thus Bundestag and Bundesrat, have no say in the funding or operation of Germany's public broadcasters. The exception being Deutsche Welle which is not available in Germany and has an "external" audience.

The funding on operation of public broadcasters is instead determined by a compact between the 16 states.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#304

Post by Engineering-MD »

4ggr0 wrote: post #93

A bit off-topic maybe, sorry. I am not from the UK, but quite a large chunk of things I watch on YouTube are british panel shows. I'm just in love with them. Which seems funny to me, because as a non-uk twenty year old, I don't think that I'm the target demographic for these shows. "8 out of 9 cats does countdown", "Would I lie to you?" and of course my favourite, "Taskmaster". Thanks for all of these great shows. "B…

Don’t forget radio content as well. Radio 4 on bbc iPlayer often has some great shows like the unbelievable truth, just a minute, among others

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#305

Post by hyperdunc »

WolfRazu wrote: post #285
andybak wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sometimes seems like each side of the UK political spectrum is convinced that the BBC is irrevocably biased in favour of their opponents. The Tory right want to hamstring the BBC ("Bunch of Bloody Communists" used to be the witty cry) and jump on it at any opportunity.

I agree with this sentiment considerably. The BBC seems to get equal bashing from both sides of the political spectrum. I think therefore it's likely it's doing quite well in terms of impartiality.

It's partial to the status quo.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#306

Post by M2Ys4U »

jannes wrote: post #223
jonathanstrange wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BBC is awesome, their news is very good and they produce some of the best series in the world. It's a shame that they have split up BBC UK and BBC International so strictly and do everything they can to lock all BBC UK offerings to citizens of the UK. It infuriates me that I'm redirected from bbc.co.uk to bbc.com and are being displayed something else than people in the UK. If I go to bbc.co.uk, I do that to find out…

Apparently there is a subscription service called BritBox - created by BBC and ITV, but it's only available in Australia, USA and Canada. https://www.britbox.com/

I expect that will be slowly expanded; the BBC's new Director-General wants to increase commercial revenue (and immediately before being appointed as DG he was the CEO of BBC Studios, the BBC's commercial subsidiary).

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#307

Post by rsynnott »

haspok wrote: post #91
lqet wrote: post #38

> The United Kingdom is somewhat unique in the world for requiring those households which view broadcast television to purchase a licence for the privilege. I know at least three countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) which do the same (edit: according the Wikipedia [0], such a fee exists in basically every European country, Japan, Israel, South Korea and Namibia). In Germany, the situation changed a few years…

At least in the UK there is content on TV worthy of watching (I got addicted to snooker while there, also some quite interesting shows like "Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole"), also, when I moved overseas they paid back the licence fee for the remaining part of the year, no questions asked. Now I'm in Austria and the "content" on TV channels is just ridiculous. Targeted at 70+ pensioners, but why should I pay for t…

> Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole

This is by notorious awful tv station Channel 5, and is not paid for by the license fee. (In fairness, it's not amongst their most terrible content; about half of their programming amounts to "Look! Poor people! Haha!", and despite the name this isn't really an example of that.)

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#308

Post by aqsalose »

captainbland wrote: post #287
andybak wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sometimes seems like each side of the UK political spectrum is convinced that the BBC is irrevocably biased in favour of their opponents. The Tory right want to hamstring the BBC ("Bunch of Bloody Communists" used to be the witty cry) and jump on it at any opportunity.

It seems impossible to imagine the BBC being truly unbiased when the government occassionally likes to show it has power over the organisation by sabre-rattling over continuing to allow the TV license fee. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/09/boris-johns... Honestly I think it has a general pro-government-of-the-day-bias - as you say, 'used to be the witty cry', indeed! Under New Labour it was still broad…

I agree with your general thesis. However, this line got me thinking:

>It seems impossible to imagine the BBC being truly unbiased

Thought example. If there was a truly objective, unbiased source of information about political and physical reality, wouldn't it be far too valuable to put in charge of a news desk. They should be running the government in place of the parliament and politicians!

Of course, if you find the idea somehow troubling, this is to demonstrate that unbiasedness is actually more difficult concept than is sometimes given credit for.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#309

Post by cjrp »

mrsuprawsm wrote: post #234
jonathanstrange wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BBC is awesome, their news is very good and they produce some of the best series in the world. It's a shame that they have split up BBC UK and BBC International so strictly and do everything they can to lock all BBC UK offerings to citizens of the UK. It infuriates me that I'm redirected from bbc.co.uk to bbc.com and are being displayed something else than people in the UK. If I go to bbc.co.uk, I do that to find out…

Unfortunately BBC news really isn't that good any more. It's been on a long slow decline since about 2005 or so, and now the majority of their news programming (with a few small but notable exceptions) are primarily cheering on the Tory government + ministers of the day.

Their programmes quite often suffer from both-sidesism. They'll have a senior scientist on debating a conspiracy-theory-believing anti-vaxxer, as if they're both on the same level.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#310

Post by wackro »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #297
boffinism wrote: post #128

The BBC is currently dedicating hours of airtime a day to educational content to match our primary and secondary curricula because the schools are shut and lots of kids can't access online provisions. And still people complain about the licence fee in terms of whether or not they enjoy BBC gameshows...

I mean I wasn't against the licence fee until they invaded my privacy detecting the purchase of a new TV and started sending me threatening letters under the guise of "TV Licencing" which is a sub-brand they use to harass people to protect the image of the BBC. I'll never pay it again.

They might feel personal but I'm fairly sure those letters are sent out blanket style. I've had 4 or 5 in the past and none have been addressed to me personally.
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