TO SAY I LIKE THE BBC....but the near £300 license fee needs questioning..Lets question

[ScousyFogarty]

BBC and COMPULSORY LICENSE FEE...(Paid by rich and poor alike.)

It has been suggested that the Beebs automatic cash-flow from rich and poor, should be looked at as the fee gets closer to £300 a year.

Victoria Derbyshire mentions this on her TWITTER site. (Dont know if she has ever done it on her programme.?)

You will notice that when a big name has a book out; they get interviewed on many BBC TV and radion shows. (They are usually rich and could be charged a fee for the free book plug.)

There will be many other ideas as to how the license could be REDUCED or the money RAISED by other means.

Do you have any ideas. ? Or are we going to sit back and watch the license fee go to £300 a year? (Its food for thought.

Victoria Derbyshire and Gabby Logan may well have ideas on this . Ask them if you feel like doing so.

The bbc social conscience is much more obvious than much of the press. (and a fair pereentage of mumsnet posters (there has been some good stuff on this thread

Bestb411pm, I find the radio much better for those things.

when cAPEELO GOES HE MAY END UP AS A newsreader at the bbc...

But it's part of being British!!!
Without the BBC we'll go to Hell in a handcart with Murdoch written on the side
I can't bear it.

The license fee is cheap for what we get.

I love the BBC, it's brilliant.

Cbeebies?
A channel with NO ADS for children?
Albeit they do flog all the plastic crud in the shops from the programmes but still
it's the BBC! I love it!
When I've been in the US, I've missed the British media so much.
I think it's cheap

Hear hear NF!

Good value for money IMO.

Noel ooh that nice Mr Murdoch has come to collect me already :D

helin nice one, I bow to you, very good.

GillyBean2
a month!

It must be areas then because most people i know how Sky TV.

whether you watch lots of BBC or none is irrelevant, you HAVE to pay for the license.

And Ann Robinsons wages. The poor pay that. I like her. But its wrong

MoaningLisa so to compare like for like that's £41.20 for sky a month and £12.13 a month for tv licence. Sure looks like a bargain to me.

I wonder what would we loose if the BBC had to rely on adverts/ratings for it's income and how many great comedies and dramas wouldn't have got past the first series...?

I totally agree about the star pay packets, the BBC have been really stupid in that respect.
But I have had dealings with their contract people in the past and they would not have been a match for the kind of brutal negotiators that showbiz agents have.
No excuse now. I think working for the bbc is a kind of privilege and as it's paid for by the public it can't justify monster wages at all imho.

If people want to leave to earn more, then they should go, good luck finding a better place to work! And that goes for all of them, Paxo etc. Ciao!

Remember the Beeb is also a sort of broadcasting university, in that it trains many people who trot off and work for independent broadcasters and film companies and so on, so the private sector gets the benefit of that training effectively for free.

And many people who were there take a pay cut in order to do so. The headline salaries of a few top stars and managers are about as representative of the larger BBC as Tony Blair's multimillion book deals are representative of many politicians.

bUFFINMUM YOU MAKE EXCUSE IT IS PUBLIC MONEY AND All salaries BBC are scared of what the press will say. Buffin,the press know already it is only thelicense payers who dont. Please speak up and less excuses. thanks

Did anyone make any sense of that last post?

BTW there ain't much private money in broadcasting - if a company is a PLC it's using its shareholders' money, and by extension that of pension and investment funds and so on, as they are usually hold huge amounts of such shares - does that make excessive reward acceptable? Especially if any dividend is on the low side and shareholder value is somewhat limited ... people are naive to think that there is a strict public/private divide in finance any longer.

Look BOFFIN you ether agree with secret salaries at the BBC or you disagree with public money being hidden. ARE YOU FROM THE BIG BUSINNESSWORLD? If so admit it.

Poor and rich people have to pay the BBC license fee at £3 a week. (That is a lot of money to a poor person. Do something about it BOFFIN....(And dont play dumb with me. You know precisely what is being said on this site.

Step up to the plate...or do the decent thing. And let poor people be protected by those who think they should be.

I dont agree with the licence at all, or should I call it a tax. I dont watch the BBC or listen to their radio. Let's get rid of it now!

secret salaries?

out of interest, what do you think would be a reasonable salary for an archivist or a production assistant at the bbc?

No, you're the one being naive. Show me any workplace whatsoever in the whole world, public or private, that publicly declares everyone's salaries. No, you can't, thought not. Do you know what the receptionist at your GP's surgery earns? Nope. In fact, do you actually know what your GP earns? Nope. Do you know what all the civil servants in the country earn? Nope. Do you know what your tax inspector earns? Nope again. So why should the BBC be any different, given that (bar some publicly acclaimed, high earning self-employed entertainers that can name their price on BBC or ITV or whatever), the remaining salaries paid to its staff are generally recognised in the broadcasting industry as being somewhat BELOW what is the normal going rate for the job. And on the matter of those entertainers, do you really think they would come for free suddenly in a completely privatised market? No, the indirect cost would just be added onto any subscription you had, so you would no better off.

But why let facts, or indeed logic, get in the way of a good argument, eh? Which is why you claimed in a rather inflammatory way that the BBC Licence Fee is nearly £300, rather than £145.50 for colour, or £49 for a black and white licence if you want to save money and have a simple caravan-style TV or whatever. It's also free for older pensioners and blind people, and for students in college running battery operated devices. The BBC are very transparent about what they spend it on, as you can see here.

I don't see other companies being as inclusive or as transparent - basically if you haven't got £30+ a month for a subcription (as opposed to £12.13 for a BBC licence for all the TVs in your house, your PC and any handheld TV-related devices you might have), then you're out of the market. So stop being so bloody ungrateful and start seeing it for the bargain it is, otherwise it will disappear and there will be a very big whole in your pocket as companies respond to the lowest charging provider being removed from the market by increasing their prices dramatically - why do you think they are so keen to kill off the Beeb?

BTW a common misconception is that the highly paid entertainers receive all the money personally that is quoted in the headlines. It is not their money in that way. They usually have prodiction companies who make the actual programmes, so they pick up all the staffing, equipment, production and editing costs and run small businesses to produce the programmes in the manner required, selling them back to the BBC as a form of outsourcing. So if someone is paid £6,000,000 for a series, for example, this covers the cost of making 8 programmes or whatever at about £25,000 a minute in production costs, something like that. Some of this will be the entertainer's fee, but most of it will not be. it will be costs of putting the whole thing on air.