Should we pay BBC licence fee

I hate the BBC too cos uncle Rupert told me to

I'll stick to unbiased GB news and fox News thank you

The BBC is increasingly being left behind as the UK audience increasingly splits into two camps. On the one hand you have those who are adverse to change (generally the elderly) and those who can’t afford change (those on low income) vs a more affluent and/or younger group who have embraced and can afford streaming. The BBC has found itself stuck catering for the first, diminishing group and unable to afford quality programmes to rival the streaming services and peak the interest of the second group. They are stuck churning out the same old tired programmes and running repeats. The majority of the good uk writing talent moves to America where the money is and where there is also willingness to take risks, which the BBC can’t afford to do. It either needs to strip back to a free purely public service like PBS in America or go to a pay as you go subscription model where you can subscribe for certain content like sporting events.

apparantly they want it mixed in with council tax which is absurd

I stopped paying after the Hamas kid fiasco.
I cannot support an organisation that supports terrorists.

This.

No, the licence fee needs to stop in its present form. If the BBC's output was/is good enough, it should be able to survive as a subscription service and/or attract advertising.

This said, when - because I think it's inevitable - it is switched to a subscription service, they need to ensure that a considerable amount of their archive is free - most of us have already paid for this once.

Oh, and I'd remove it entirely from London. One of the main issues I have with the BBC presently is its cursory and mostly reluctant engagement with anywhere beyond London/SE.

The last good drama BBC put out was Happy Valley. Nowadays it’s all poorly through out plots with bits and pieces stolen from other works, or with massive plot holes and conflicting plot points that don’t work with one another.

And when I say stolen I don’t mean inspired, outright stolen. I was watching The Jetty and could have sworn it was a book I read. The Japanese Knotweed driving the older dad crazy subplot was almost directly stolen from a book I’d read years ago, as was the “Mum is a medium and predicted something pertinent” part of it.

it’s just piss poor writing now. I would hedge my bets that some of the scrips are ChatGPT for the most part.

I very rarely watch anything on the BBC and it is infuriating that we have to pay a licence fee when so much of their output is low quality and repeats. If I had the option I would not pay a "subscription" to watch it.

Well David Cameron stuffed it to the gills with his mates so its had political pressure for quite some time, if not before.

The output is awful now apart from the odd event. Wimbledon tends to be excellent and Glastonbury has been (although not so much last time). However the quality drama of old they were so good at has gone. Best thing about the BBC in my view is the radio! Which is ironically free.

I very very rarely watch TV and would be happy with not having one but my father lives with us and he has dementia but still appears to understand and definitely enjoys sports so whilst he is here and watching live sport (although paid for with a Now TV Sports additional subscription) we will continue to pay, reluctantly, the licence fee.

I think that's the most galling- you have to pay for it despite actually not watching BBC. Yet, listen to BBC radio (which can be good), and you don't have to. Crazy!

The only thing I watch is BBC Alba, I pay my licence fee to support that, otherwise I’d happily do away with my payments. Any English TV is Amazon, Netflix -even the ITV police dramas are better than anything the BBC produces.

I don't agree that they are balanced in their reporting. They have always been politically biased. But if you are using their services then you should pay. If you have an issue with the BBC and don't want to pay then you should stop using their services.

I disagree. The output is shit and politically biased. I don't want anything to do with it so I don't pay. In my opinion a subscription model would be a more appropriate way of funding the BBC but considering you can opt out of paying, that's the way it is going anyway.