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.

'We go down to the job centre and find somebody who fancies having a crack and hosting a light entertainment show. Why did nobody think of that before?'

I think you have bought into their overestimation of their worth. Nobody thought of it because they are supported by a large tax on poor citizens, so salary reductions were not their first priority.

i think we should have adverts (they annoy me to mind you lol) but i listened on the radio a while back and basically they get more money from the fee than they would adverts so its a no brainer really ,they are the best radio station/ tv channel IMO in the world but i am on a very low income so id prefer if we had adverts as long as like sky they dont put them on during films. then theres their wages and bonus's that are OTT and wasteage drives me nuts like when they send so may presenters for the same thing and when they send the weather lady here there and everywhere with a crew staying in hotels ect when they can do that from a bloody studio and then theres things like sending umpteen presenters and pay for them to be in the bloomin members enclosure at Ascot for eg its just not on.

claig - but forcing talent elsewhere will just enable all the shows that people want to watch being bought by Sky so people are forced to pay 25quid a month instead. Is this better?

It's already happening with Sky Atlantic as it did before with the sport.

Anything is worth what 2 people will pay for it. Are tv presenters et al supposed to work for less out ofthe kindness of their hearts. Would you?

Claig? I would agree with your 40k ceiling.

The BBC, a good organisation in some ways, should bite the bullet and nip the greedy stars in the bud.

The BBC are totally secretive about the enormous salaries the stars get.
Uproar would ensue if the figures were published.

An intelligent guess is in order. It was pretty well established that Jonathan Ross had had a £7million deal over 3 years. (hes ok. but that was a rediculous salary)

Wogan was on about 700 thou for his old radio 2 breakfast shoiw. (My little letters were on his show regularly) I like him, but not too the tune of 700k for just talking zanily)

Ann Rbinson who I like ,made no secret of the fact. "I am the highest paid woman in the BBC" she said regularly.

Gabby Logan has said nothjing. But its big bucks for radio. And an enormous increase for TV (She has done both. And has pulled out of 5-live because she preferred Richmond Hill in London...to Salford near Manchester.
(daily mail info)

Its not only the weather that is warming up .This BBC debate is going well.

We are getting down to a bit of nitty-gritty. Derbyshire may do it on Monday. (Victorias up for anything,.)

I love the BBC and think £145 per year is good value. I love the impartiality and quality of the news programmes. They are recognised for this internationally.

With no advertisers to placate I love the way they fulfil the public service remit in much better way than other channels. Lots of good quality documentaries and drama (especially on BBC 2 and BBC 4) as well as the v popular stuff mostly on BBC 1 but also BBC 3. Lots of new comedy starts on the BBC too (they don't have to stick with try and tested names to make sure the money comes in but can do innovative stuff too).

I love the children's programmes and the fact that there are no toy advert on CBeebies and CBBC. I love Radio 4 especially news and comedy. Also Radio 2. OK radio doesn't require payment of the license fee but the whole organisation needs funding to maintain this level of quality.

Some of the presenters and other famous names are probably overpaid and the Beeb should try and negotiate better value contracts with them in future. But overall am very, very pleased with the service.

They should advertise to generate their revenue. Shows like teh Apprentice are great and get huge audiences, they could make advertisers pay instead of pensioners and people working tirelessly on mimimum wage in care homes.

Then they would be run like a business, and would have to rein in their huge salaries. ITV doesn't charge anyone to watch them. The BBC could do the same. If they have such good programmes, then they would stull attract millions of viewers and could earn money from advertising.

I would dispute that the BBC is impartial. No organisation dependent on the government for finance can operate as if that fact didn't exist. Everything has a bias, because people are biased.

MUMwitha dragon. Some stars PROBABLY overpaid. do get rid of the probably. ( The BBC dare not publish the figures all hell would break out)

I once heard a regional; BBC TV girl say shewas on 94k a year. (But that is puny compared to what some are on, )

The stars have a policy of not mentioning figures. Would it be a sacking offence if they did. (Ask the BBC, ask Gabby ask Victoria, ask Paxman)

Jeremy paxman is thought to be on a £1million contract. Hes ok, but also overpaid......pull your knickers up a notch Mum, and give it some welly

Actually, I do like that children are not bombarded with constant toy adverts if they are watching the BBC, but they do spend too much time advertising themselves, which is irritating. There is also an assumption in the BBC that everyone watches the apprentice. I don't give a flying fuck about which particular cretin gets a job with Alan Sugar.

Agree with karmabeliever about impartiality. They say they are impartial now, but the Director General admitted that they were "massively" biased to the left in the past. Do we take their word for it that they are impartial now?

Claig I'm afraid I don't agree. I think being beholden to the advertisers like the commercial channels are would ruin the ethos of the BBC. You'd get lowest common denominator TV and Radio like you do on ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky. This country would be a lot poorer culturally with a commercial BBC as they wouldn't be able to explore anything that wasn't mainstream in the way they do at the moment (I have given a few examples earlier).

The only thing I watch on the BBC is The Apprentice. I never watch their news channel or listen to any BBC Radio. I like the idea of the channels being scrambled. I wouldn't mind paying if ITV or Ch4 and 5 got a share. I hate adverts but think they should go that way. They take up about 4 mins advertising their crap programmes between programmes anyway so they might as well

what people forget is the extreme reach of the BBC... the licence fee doesn't just pay for a few telly programmes you may not watch. It pays for 7 highly regarded radio stations, 24 hour rolling news, world news channels and the most read website in the world.

There is no way even a presenter in the regions earns £94k, utter bollocks

all these people who say they don't watch BBC tv or listen to the radio channels... can I ask why? Some of them are brilliant. Have you never thought to yourself thank God for cbeebies (brilliant children's tv without fricking Lelli Kelly shit being shoved in their faces every five minutes)? 6music is a fantastic radio station, none of that commercial crap you hear on Crapital et al.

Granted karma, but you only have to look at Faux News to realise how very very hard the BBc tries to be not biased.

Think we are already getting the lowest common denominator a lot of the time. Think the BBC should steer clear of reality shows (everyone else has got that covered and there is no need for the BBC to do it too) and should concentrate on the sort of programmes which don't generate huge amounts of money but are interesting to people whose needs are not met by commercial television.

I'll give you that slug. To be fair though Faux news makes no effort at all to not be biased

I will get off my soapbox in a minute (I LOVE the BBC so just to warn you :o) but if the BBC has to raise funds through advertising many minority programming will go. Now you may not care about Songs of Praise, coverage of Eid, Snooker, Antiques Roadshow, darts, Naturewatch etc but there are plenty of people who do. Advertisers do not like those programmes because they don't bring in the big audiences so you can say goodbye to all of them.

But is the 'ethos of the BBC' worth the price of jailing our fellow citizens and forcing them to pay teh tax? Are we living in teh Soviet Union? where the state broadcaster imprisons people who won't pay their tithes?

www.independent.co.uk/news/courts-jail-845-for-not-paying-tv-licence-fines-1428836.html

Maybe they should change some of their 'ethos' and stop paying their newscasters exorbitant salaries, paid for out of the pockets of citizens - some of whom end up in jail.

I agree with claig - the BBC is not impartial. It's pretty much impossible for any news service to be completely impartial.

They could save some money by not sending out so many annoying harassing letters. We don't pay a license fee because we don't watch live broadcasts - just DVDs. We've received about 6 letters in the last three months. Multiply that a couple of thousand times for postage, paper, ink, employing someone to write the letters etc. and that's thousands of pounds wasted. They were funny though. So earnest "we have now PASSED YOUR NAME onto the REGIONAL HEAD and he said we could VISIT AT ANY TIME". Meh.

I tend to listen to Real Radipay as i prefer their music and they also ahve more female DJs.

I don't watch all that much TV anymore. For every HIGNFY there is Snog, Marry or Avoid. The BBC just doesn't have as much quality as it likes to make out is does.

My huge bugbear with the BBC is that it does not have enough female presenters past the age of 35. I actually consider it to be institutionally sexist and considering it doesn't have to make a profit or keep advertisers happy it doesn't really have any excuses to hide behind.

thecrackfox but that's the whole point of the BBC, it's broad reach. You may not like Snog Marry Avoid but obviously plenty of people do.

I do agree re: female presenters though... it's not institutionally sexist, but it's a hard industry for women to work in and they don't make enough concessions for women particularly those with children. But then I think that's the same everywhere..

On impartiality I think that the BBC is remarkably impartial. Just because they are publicly funded doesn't mean that they cow tow to the government. You only have to hear their reporter eg on Newsnight or the Today Programme laying into government ministers (of all political colours) to realise that they put the questions that need to be put without fear or favour. I think the fact that the BBC has possibly a more liberal (with a small "l") stance than almost all the written press in this country just shows how far to the right and populist most newspapers are. I would say the BBC are impartial whereas the written press are clearly not.

Why should it be a hard industry for women? Bollocks. It has nothing to do with women having children and everything to do with the whole culture of the BBC thinking men are better than women. The BBC has no problem taking money from older women but then likes to pretend they are invisible.