To think the BBC license fee should be scrapped

[Flashbangandgone]

Don't get me wrong, I love the BBC, and would pay a subscription if required, but I can't see any justification in continuing with a licence fee in the age of satellite and youtube. It's a stealth tax that needs to go.

It would be a bit like British Gas charging everyone a flat fee for using gas irrespective of how much gas they used or whether they used oil, coal or electric to hear their homes. It's bat-shit crazy anachronism and must surely go.

At the very least it could be pared down drastically from its current excesses.

If it wasn't for the BBC, I would only watch Al Jazeera news. They are the only other news outlet that is any good.

I take the point about nature documentaries. Remind me again how often these are produced now of such high quality or shown on TV?
If it has educational content, why are we prosecuting for example those who cannot afford the licence, can barely afford food or a roof over their head but allow their children to watch it? I think it's horrible, like a mafia heist on the nation sorry. Also I don't really think the argument stands up to scrutiny that it produces high quality material these days.

Why would you want to block ITV? They don't send the boys round if you don't watch their channel.
If you watch TV via the internet you could block ITV's IP addresses on your router. Or just avoid that button on your remote.

I don't think you can reliably encrypt radio at the moment. You could scramble stuff that's streamed via the internet, freeview and satellite but couldn't do much about people with an actual radio. There probably aren't many of them left though.

leghoul - I regularly watch documentaries and nature programmes that are made by the BBC. Just a few days ago there was live coverage on the BBC of Beluga Whales which had come together to mate.
I watched a documentary tonight about the Great Wall of China that was fascinating, and I listened to a news discussion on Radio 4 yesterday.

I know some people just want to watch crappy programmes, but the existence of the BBC means that people like myself can watch quality programmes.

I agree; in addition to the well documented problems the BBC has with misogynism and age discrimination, and the paedophile activities of some of its former presenters, I'm also deeply uncomfortable at paying for some of its most vaunted output. All those crime series about violent child killings, women being abducted, raped and dismembered - its as if they know they can't get audiences through the quality of the drama or writing alone, so have to go for increasing shock value, or alternatively a Victorian view of the world where women could only get on by marrying well. I hated the Jeremy Clarkson carry on and thought it was handled badly without considering viewers properly.

Theres nothing on the BBC that I would actually pay to watch - I would rather watch C4 and ITV plus the other pay per view channels. I hate the BBC news because it tends to be partial, like its General Election coverage. I hate being compelled to pay for what I see as an unacceptable vision of the world.

I'm sure its possible to design a programme where you can opt out online from all BBC programming and suspect it hasn't been introduced because the BBC would simply fail without consumption. I would like to see it go the way of providing programmes for other channels and not having channels of its own, in order to continue with a state funded broadcaster but in a very scaled down version.

I'd like to believe the documentaries were abundant. But if they are, why are poor people not allowed to see them? The fee may be nothing at all to some people but when you're counting pennies and searching around under cushions and in pockets to try and buy half a pint of milk, it can be an impossible expense. I think the post-war fee should not exist today.

It's not just programmes - as a public Broadcaster, the BBC provides innovations in infrastructure as well.
l

Well I suppose there was the Digital Media Initiative - a project so ground breaking in the field of advanced accountancy it utterly failed and cost almost £100m in the process of going tits up.

That's £100m of your money pissed up the wall. How many Monty Pythons or Strictlys can you get for that? Or, as I prefer to think of it, how many people do you have to drag through the court system to replace that lost revenue?
I think the country would be a lot better off if they left innovation to those better qualified to define and manage it.

The BBC provides nothing that justifies its 'unique' right to demand money for a service some people don't want to use. It's perfectly possible to stop those people freeloading by encrypting the service and charging the vast majority(?) for what they do want to watch/listen to. The other broadcasters pay rent for using transmitters/relays so no sponging there either. I think it's the only fair option.
People will pay for it - a 30 second Google will show plenty of websites where you can watch Sky for free, yet Murdoch is still raking it in because people will pay. But I find it utterly ridiculous that, in the 21st century, I need a licence to watch tv.

Yabu

It isn't a stealth tax - you know full well what it is for.
Maybe it should be rebranded. But not scrapped.

And the BBC is miles better than any other channel with adverts. For that alone, 40p a day is a bargain not to watch shit interspersed by ads every 10 mins CITV, ITV I'm looking at you

I was on the fence re the licence fee until i learnt the bbc will no longer be using the met office for weather forecasts. It come to the point that the this tax is silly. It needs scrapping now!

The met office de-coupling is a sign that the BBC is being influenced by the government's threat to completely re-structure it. I took it to mean that it was trying to show that it was value for money. Expect lots more of this under the current regime.

What Queeltie said!

Having lived in the USA for a while the BBC (esp Radio 4) was the thing I missed the most. If we stop having a public service broadcaster that's the model you may well end up with. Ads every 5 mins so impossible to keep up with a plot. Programmes only ever catering to mass audiences.

I pay my licence fee gladly and would be happy to pay more despite rarely watching BBC TV. The BBC also provides varied radio channels too.

I do think it needs to sort itself out though. It was always accepted that the BBC paid less than commercial channels. That should return. When so called big names jumped ship there were always excellent new faces waiting in the wings. No one presenter should be 'bigger than the programme' or too big to lose.

There's this absurd logic that 'the BBC is amazing', therefore 'everyone under 75, regardless of income or means, should pay a flat rate fee to pay for a range of broadcasting services'.... as the only other alternative is 'Murdoch and the like ruling the airwaves with their advert fuelled, right-wing biased agenda'.

This is the logic of the madhouse! It's as though, out of obsequious deference to beloved 'Auntie', we feel obliged to slavishly parrot this dogma.

I also love the BBC. I think there is a strong argument for having a broadcasting institution with a charter that guarantees its independence, and that there needs to be some form of public funding for this. I absolutely do not see however that this means we should have this licence fee 'poll tax', payable by the poorest and richest alike for all manner of highly non essential services alongside the arguably more essential ones.

It isn't a stealth tax - you know full well what it is for.

Then let's call is the 'BBC tax' then! Otherwise why not retitle Council Tax as a 'local services licence' and make it a flat rate while we're at it! While we're at it let's rename income tax as the 'national services licence' and make everyone pay a fixed fee for that, say £5k. I just don't get why people equate living and valuing the BBC with agreeing that it should be funded by this hugely regressive blanket fee.

'Loving and valuing' not ' living and valuing' - sorry

There are lots of excellent BBC documentaries, films, history programmes and news programmes. The BBC nature programmes are of world class excellence, and nature programmes of that quality are rarely made by anyone else.

But that is a matter of opinion. I can't think of any BBC documentary, history programme, nature programme or film that I have watched and enjoyed in the last year. I occasionally put BBC news on but only as background noise and I would happily live without it if it meant saving myself £145 per year.

There's obviously a demand for them - nature documentaries are one of the Beeb's highest revenue spinners (after Top Gear, Strictly and Doctor Who, I think)

Whilst those programmes might be the beebs highest revenue spinners they are not programmes that I watch. I would rather stick pins in my eyes than watch top gear. I hate reality TV programmes such as strictly (and its other ones, the voice and bake off etc). I have a teen who does watch doctor who on the TV in his bedroom but I certainly wouldn't choose to pay £145 per year to give him the privilege of watching Dr who.

If the demand for those programmes is high enough then there should be enough people willing to pay for a BBC subsriiption to make it viable. Those of us who can happily live without the BBC and don't consider the programmes produced by it to be worthy of our annual £145 should be able to opt out.

And the BBC is miles better than any other channel with adverts. For that alone, 40p a day is a bargain not to watch shit interspersed by ads every 10 mins CITV, ITV I'm looking at you

Totally agree that it's a price I would be glad to pay for this too! However, it does not follow that the current flat-rate licence fee payable by rich and poor alike irrespective of whether they use the services on offer is reasonable.

There's obviously a demand for them - nature documentaries are one of the Beeb's highest revenue spinners (after Top Gear, Strictly and Doctor Who, I think)

It comes to something when an argument for making a single parent struggling in benefits pay £145 per year to watch TV is so it can fund programmes such as Top Gear, which in turn makes the BBC loads of money!

Define a public service? Some things the BBC does for entertainment and for revenue (Bake Off is a good example of that), but how do you decide what's the public service bit? Only the bits you think are good for people? If people are enjoying it, it doesn't count as a public service?

By this logic Alton Towers, Madame Tussaud's, Odeon Cinemas, Frankie & Benny's etc all provide a public service.... Do we say these should be funded by some kind of entertainment licence fee too? Yes, there may be 'public service' components to the BBC's work that should be publicly funded..... Much as I like it, Bake Off isn't one of them!

And how much does it cost our legal system (Taxpayers) to prosecute all the people who are taken to court each year for non payment of the TV licence? The fines dished out by the courts just add a further burden to people, some who wouldn't have had a TV licence because they simply couldn't afford one. Then if the fines are not paid we spend further public money sending these people to jail.
Those prosecuted then have a criminal record and the result of that is that they are more likely to struggle to gain employment to improve their finances.
It's bloody ludicrous.

I agree.... It's more than ludicrous... the licence fee and it's enforcement is a national scandal. It all undermines an institution that I very much love.

In no other area of life are we charged a licence fee for something we don't want and could easily choose to never use.

It may not be called a licence fee, but the reality is that in many, many areas of life we are charged for things we don't want or need. That is the nature of taxation. In fact, in many countries the public service broadcaster is paid for by tax and maybe that would be the simplest solution here.

This member of the public doesn't want to use it and certainly doesn't want to pay for it

I don't want to use commercial TV or to pay for it, but the reality is that I do because the costs of advertising are added on to the goods I pay for. In fact, we pay far more for the commercial channels than we do for the BBC, despite the fact that the BBC pulls in far more viewers and listeners. And it's idle to suggest that I can choose to boycott those goods, because I'm not going to spend my life sitting through advert breaks to find out what they are.

But it's impartiality isn't all that great to start with

Every government moans about the BBC's impartiality. Which kind of suggests that it is probably getting it right.