How long until the License Fee is dropped?

There’s still good documentaries on other streaming platforms.

Actually it was in the BBCs founding charter to educate, inform and entertain. I loathe the fact that we live in an ever dumber, less well informed society where experts are derided and passed over in favour of 'personalities' or random person on the street view of x. Anything that reduces access to high level content is not a good thing in my view.

But TV isn't meant to be there to educate adults in what is 'good' for them to know.

Yes, The Sun sells the most; but the Guardian is still very much there for the (much smaller number of) readers who want it. The Guardian costs considerably more than The Sun to buy, but that's always going to be the way with economies of scale with anything that has a mass audience in contrast to a limited one. And, like the BBC, just because something is vaunted as intellectual, wise or academically pure, it can still have its own biases and agendas and go way off track. As for encouraging people to think critically, that doesn't seem to have happened with the left-wing 'intellectual' media and the 'no debate' insistence that people can effectively become the opposite sex, or none at all (albeit deliberately blurred via the whole 'gender' schtick).

It's not like the BBC only shows BBC4 science documentaries either; they have a load of populist stuff that would appeal to the Love Island demographic too. Can you imagine the government bringing in a mandatory tax because they were desperate to protect Mrs Brown's Boys as a jewel in the crown of the nation?! And meanwhile, the likes of ITV are forced to manage their own budgets and rely on adverts to pay their way because the likes of the powerful, essential Mr Bates Vs the Post Office series is supposedly nothing more than frivolous, throwaway, mindless junk?

Meant to quote the post above that one, sorry.

But define 'good'. If by good you mean popular, then Love Island is good and a BBC 4 documentary is not. The Sun is still, I believe, the most widely consumed newspaper in the UK with its reading age of 9. And we wonder why our population is becoming less and less able to think critically, debate thoughtfully and consider current events in the context of past ones. Leaving aside the personnel issues and just looking at the actual content they make, I would always defend it.

It's a bit like a privileged trust fund kid who discovers that the investments have tanked and they'll actually have to go out and work for a living... and they assume that nobody could possibly survive or get by doing that!

Can't believe anyone is defending the BBC given what we're learning about it just this week

Yep why does the BBC get so worried people won’t watch it, if the content is good people will by choice.

It's probably more realistic to compare it to the likes of ITV, Channel 4 and Sky - even Channel 5 is starting to get its act together more now as a 'serious' broadcaster.

They all make and show a large range of content, similar to the BBC. All of them have found a way of funding their operations - and indeed making a very healthy profit - without the need for a licence fee.

And before anybody says "Ah, but you actually pay more for ITV when you look at all your spending on products that are advertised"... nobody has ever received a letter accusing them of crime and threatening them with prosecution for not having bought any McCain's chips or Heinz beans, not indeed demanding that they confirm and promise that they haven't bought any and making them justify having bought Tesco own-brand ones or indeed no oven chips or beans at all if they don't want or like them.

We all know that the days of traditional broadcast TV are numbered... so if the BBC can't work out for themselves how to find a modern way of funding without sending threatening letters out to pensioners and single mums, they coukd always watch what ITV and Sky do to adapt to the modern times and follow them. ITV has never benefited from the licence fee and still isn't going anywhere; so why all the catastrophising about the BBC disappearing forever?

While I appreciate some people are happy to pay the licence fee, there are increasing numbers of us who don't want any BBC products or services. The licence fee model is so outdated, and surely the only fair option is to move to a Netflix type monthly subscription, then those who want it can pay. However I'm sure the BBC will resist any change as long as they possibly can, and the government will go along with it.

Thank you. I shall watch that with interest.

This article is really interesting on how trusted BBC News is and how that differs by political persuasion. 400 million people a week across the world use the BBC News.

When you see how many people trust BBC News you can see why people with their own agenda might want it gone.

In a world where so much of the media is owned by billionaires with a schtick I hope the BBC remains and I don't mind paying for it.

reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-scrutiny-heres-what-research-tells-about-its-role-uk

This sounds like it deserves the attention of a separate thread.

Not sure I even want to know the answer to this - but what do YOU think should happen to Pride in Surrey now we know that the ex BBC presenter who ran it is a paedophile who used Pride to get into schools and set up a phoneline for confused children to call, in which the number was .. his personal phone number?

And he didn't even do this alone.

I just did a quick Google search on this.
The first article that comes up is from the BBC.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx28yj34zgpo

Here are some other articles from the BBC covering this story.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2kkrxdpndo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3d5jkkp5zyo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgdq9znqw0o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07dre35eylo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czjvdym7y8ko

Agreed. I listen to a lot of BBC sounds podcasts and watch a lot of bbc4. I worry that the smaller, niche stuff that doesn't attract large viewing figures and therefore advertisers just won't get made. Its another nail in the coffin of general appreciation of being interested in history, art, politics, culture just because. Of watching a long documentary series just because you want to know about Vietnam or Edward III or Mozart. Unless its a competition with people being voted off, or 5 minute soundbites, it wont get made.

Keir Starmer in PM. A key part of his role is outward facing.
Nigel Farage is MP for Clacton. What percentage of his role (well, him MP role, not the other jobs he does) involves international travel?

So Pride is bad because people working for it have abused children? I suspect every single large organisation would be thought to be bad if this is your criteria.

Why single out Pride?

It's available now: Three Dads And A Baby

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002thqx

we all know one of the main issues has been...

No we don’t. You’re obsessed. What’s this programme? I’d quite like to watch it.

Many others were talking about the left wing bias at the BBC.

And when they say that we all know one of the main issues has been...

The BBC's obsession with telling us that men can get pregnant.

Would you believe it - there's a documentary on the BBC TONIGHT about...

A 'man' who got pregnant and now lives in a 'throuple'.

Methinks, finally, you're starting to get this..

There have been five senior Pride people arrested, charged or convicted of paedophilia offences in the UK in just the last 12 months.

Yes I do think that's a bad thing.

Plus the three main Pride events, London, Brighton and Manchester, have all become embroiled in financial scandals.

And yes I think that's a bad thing as well.

“Many people” stated nothing of the sort. You said The obsession with left wing diversity and especially transgenderism at the expense of quality programming has killed it but the licence fee is a nonsense irrespective of this. The trans issue hadn’t been mentioned until then. So, I ask again, why did you introduce it?

And that makes Pride bad? Cos someone used it as a cover to abuse children. Do you feel the same way about Scouts, the church, etc?

It's a thread about the BBC and many people stated that they stopped liking the BBC when it started lying that men could become women.

The only derailment was then others said you're not allowed to say this because...

It's transphobic.