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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

#371

Post by account42 »

audunw wrote: post #289
gyulai wrote: post #165

Many people here are commenting on the fact that public broadcasters tend to do documentaries and educational programming which wouldn't be able to survive at that level of quality under a free market system, which seems to be a cause that almost everyone can get behind and an argument frequently being used for defending this system. What riles me up personally: the ludicrous sums of money that these broadcasters pay…

> I really don't understand why I should be forced to give money to corrupt organizations like FIFA and the IOC to hold sports events that I don't watch and otherwise don't have a stake in, State media has to broadcast some content that's actually popular, that most people want to watch, otherwise they'd soon lose political support. I hate it too, but fact is that these events are extremely popular, especially among…

That's just admitting that the majority does not want the "independent" content of that state media.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#372

Post by tomxor »

saberdancer wrote: post #255
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...

What is the point of this license fee in this day and age? Everyone has a TV, so everyone pays the license fee. Wouldn't it be simpler to just use a part of the taxes already collected to go to BBC. My problem with this type of license fee collection is that it bring forward a number of costs associated with it that could be removed if it went directly from taxes and that today everyone has TV so it doesn't really "t…

I don't have a TV... But that's not the point, it's no longer relevant today as made apparent by their threatening letters that make it sound as though it's impossible to avoid paying them. What is relevant: I don't watch BBC, period. And yet every 2 years or every time I move I am threatened again for the offense of not wanting to watch the BBC.

I recognize that in the UK at one point this licensing model made sense due to combination of funding broadcast equipment, and the BBC has given a huge amount of value over the years - but I honestly think the quality of their content has decreased significantly since then, especially the documentaries. The licensing model no longer makes sense in a world where they are just one of multiple payed on demand services usually delivered over the internet for which we are already directly funding. It should be opt-in not opt-out.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#373

Post by callamdelaney »

sdunwoody wrote: post #341

Not read the article, but as a political aside, the licence fee is a big subject of debate here at the moment. It was designed so that the BBC essentially had independence from the government, and as such, they could more easily be politically neutral (if they were funded directly by the government, there would be more pressure for them to cover the government favourably in news programs etc.). Problem is that these…

The solution is to let people who want to watch and consume bbc content pay for it, and let everybody else not pay for it. It's very simple.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#374

Post by johannes1234321 »

stkdump wrote: post #177
CodesInChaos wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they can pretend their state TV is independent from the state.

How does the state exert power over the broadcasters if their income doesn't come from the government? Edit: When I say 'how' I don't mean 'why', I mean 'by what means'.

The lines are blurry, but we can see different cases.

A notable case in 2009 was the contract as Editor in Chief of Nikolaus Beendet, which wasn't extended since Roland Koch didn't want to and went up to the Constitutional Court, which ruled that there was too much political influence at ZDF, leading to changed oversight, which still is close.

TlRecent case is the "coalition crisis" in Saxony-Anhalt, where the parliament blocked the new rates.

But it's complicated as bodies need some form of democratic legitimation and with the "Sozialwahl" we have one failing experiment of doing extra elections, aside from parliament elections ... where nobody knows who the candidates are and what they do ...

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#375

Post by visarga »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #216
haspok wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

BBC also sat on their 10 million hour archive of media while the internet, social networks, Wikipedia and blogs went ahead commenting, sharing, indexing, discussing and remixing other sources of content. They cared so much for their copyrights that their media became unconnected and unused.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#376

Post by arethuza »

overscore wrote: post #342
mrsuprawsm wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

BBC News has always been the de facto propaganda arm of the British government. It may only be apparent to you now, but their reporting has always been overly biased. Examples are any reporting on the Troubles (especially British crimes there), the Iraq war (especially the lead up and the Camp Stephen killings), and anything about Brexit.

Slightly odd then that one of the names for the BBC used by Brexit supporters was the "Brussels Broadcasting Company" because they thought it was far too pro-EU.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#377

Post by nwellnhof »

audunw wrote: post #286
philwelch wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not good for the government to have too much direct control over state media. They executive branch should not be able to change the budget from year to year on their own, since they can "punish" state media if they don't say things the government likes. Using tax revenue would generally give the executive branch power to set or at least propose the budget. When Norway recently moved to tax funding state media,…

In Germany, the budget for public broadcasting is decided by a somewhat independent commission. Sounds good in theory, but after a few decades, public broadcasters now have a budget of more than 8 billion € per year. This is more than the revenue of all private TV stations combined.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#378

Post by arethuza »

hyperdunc wrote: post #305
WolfRazu wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm a huge fan of the BBC but I couldn't help notice that during the last Scottish Independence Referendum there was definitely a bias - which I did conclude was simply a bias towards the current state of things.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#379

Post by api »

flower-giraffe wrote: post #211

I think the funding and governance (by Royal Charter) of the BBC have historically provided a huge benefit to society in the UK. Advertising free children’s TV (and radio) may have delayed the onset or rampant consumerism fuelled by commercial TV elsewhere. The BBC microcomputer project is arguably the origin of ARM CPU’s. Initially the license fee was for radios, I can’t find a reference but I remember being told as…

On advertising and consumerism: we may be seeing that come back around. My kids have only watched Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. and have barely ever seen an ad. We've banned YouTube for multiple reasons.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#380

Post by nebolo »

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…

Austria has FM4, which is an amazing radio station and well worth license fee. ORF Sport is also pretty good.
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