To stick two fingers up at the bbc

[ginandjuice]

Finally ditched our Virgin box after we realised we only use it to watching corrie. Which means no more to licence and no more funding the bbc. Good old Xbox

I'd rather fund Chris Moyles than bloody Nick Grimshaw.

Thank God for Radio X.

Don't forget the BBC is not just tv- some of their radio programmes would be greatly missed if there was no BBC.

Remember also that we would be at the mercy of foreign owned newspapers and tv, if there was no BBC. Or the Daily Mail, the paper that supported the Blackshirts.

Forall - if it's such an excellent service (not arguing this one way or another) why would it go if it was changed to either a subscription style or advert-supported model? Surely people would continue to pay for it so it's not licence fee or no BBC? The only threat would presumably be if even the people paying for it think it's so worthless that they wouldn't fund it if they didn't have to?

Am I in the minority for loving the Beeb?!!? Quality programmes, excellent websites, good radio - well worth the license fee.

I'd argue services like BT maintaining phone lines

Yeah, then when you have the world's slowest broadband you can do nothing about it. Grrrrrr!

Surely people should be allowed to choose to pay for what they watch? Nobody forces people to pay for Sky, so why should people be forced to pay for the BBC? And surely if people think the programmes, radio etc are excellent quality, they will be happy to pay more via subscription, rather than expect others who don't watch or like BBC programmes to subsidise them? Judging by the comments here there are enough people who absolutely love the BBC to be able to fund it by paying a bit more via subscription and give other people the choice not to pay?

Is that you Rupert? okay not everyone has to love the BBC. Although I personally think it's ace but imagine a company like sky investing in all those educational resources and making them available free and without an agenda.

I like R2 and a lot of the history programmes. But I would be a lot happier about paying my licence fee if it returned to true impartiality.

It is a propaganda machine. I watched a programme a while ago about Somalian pirates who used to do horrendous things, kidnapping, killing and torturing people. They had been stopped by a crackdown. The BBC reported it like it was some kind of social enterprise designed to benefit the poor of Somalia which had been closed down by the evil west. They were handwringing and described the crackdown as having made them 'unemployed' like it was a legitimate job. The bias is blatant and appalling. Hopefully the current government will do something about that though, as they are the last to benefit.

wasonthelist who says I'm watching the BBC live confused???

No-one, not even evil old me. I didn't accuse you of anything - but don't let that get in the way of an emoticon.

I pay £70 for Virgin which includes all but the movie and Sky sports channels, phone line and calls and super fast broadband.

Clearly you were on an unbelievably shit tariff.

Clearly, but who cares now lol. All sorted
No more funding the most notorious paedophile ring in britains- suits me

What a stupid thing to say.

So you're not funding the BBC but you're watching it, albeit at a different time? So you think you're boycotting a 'paedophile ring' but watching programmes made by those people?

Fair point, well I will never watch another bbc item again, try and ease my conscience a bit.

Welcome to the club.

Just don't start arguing any time about tax avoiders, will you?

Seeyou, if we didn't have BBC Worldwide we'd either have to pay more license fee or the BBC would reduce what they did. Your outrage about it is a bit odd.

I think you need a licence if you have an appliance in your home which you can use to watch the BBC whether or not you use it? We didn't have a TV 20 years ago and had the patrolman knocking on our door to check our computer couldn't receive TV.

In any case if you listen to BBC radio or use the BBC iPlayer I think you should contribute, so YABU.

I think you need a licence if you have an appliance in your home which you can use to watch the BBC whether or not you use it?

That isn't correct. You need a licence to watch live broadcast TV (including via the internet) on any device - and that includes all the channels - SKY, Dave etc if you watch as they are broadcast or use a device to record stuff as it is broadcast.

You don't need a licence if (like me) you only use your TV to play games, watch DVDs and use internet (non-live) streaming services.

wasonthelist is right. If you go to the TV licensing website you can declare that you don't need a license (which means they leave you alone for two years). You then need to pick the reason why you don't need a license - not having a TV or any equipment capable of showing live TV is one of them but they have others including having a TV but only using it for streaming services, games consoles or for watching DVDs.

How times change. Good job I am not in charge as I would change that

When we were in the US I mainly watched pbs. The licence fee is well worth it to avoid the weekend long fundraisers they have imo.

Take a program like Mister Maker. We pay the BBC, they make it, they sell it to 100 countries around the world, we get no profit, no reduction in fee, nothing.

But if they didn't sell programmes like this, the TV licence would have to be higher. So we do get the benefit of it.

We pay the license which is supposedly used to fund the BBC and produce programs. These programs re sold to other countries who the show them. They haven't paid for production of the program, we have, they bought a product. They then show the program to people who haven't paid for the programs production, we have.

But the money we get back from sales more than pays for the cost of production, and makes a profit. That's what selling is. If, for instance, you went into the bakery business, would you complain because the people who've paid for one loaf of bread haven't paid for all your costs of production? And, going back one step in the process, if you went into the business of selling bakery ovens, would you complain because bakers buy them and then use them to bake bread to sell to people who also haven't paid your costs of production?

The TV licence is the best value for money of any bill I pay. Happy to pay such a low price to be able to fund such high quality services. The sooner they find some way to scramble on demand services so that they're only available to licence fee payers the better. Then I bet you loads of BBC refuseniks will be back!

What always amazes me about these threads is the number of people who complain about the licence fee yet don't complain at all about the fact that they pay much, much more for commercial channels even if they've never owned a TV in their life. You do realise, don't you, that the extremely heavy costs of all that advertising are added to the price of the goods you buy?

So far as I am concerned, 40p per day for my entire family to be able to watch and listen to everything the BBC produces without constant interruptions for adverts is a total bargain.

Also, the burden of proof is on them to prove that you've been watching live TV without a license. That would mean catching you in the act or you admitting it. They could potentially also figure out who you are if you are watching iPlayer live without a license by getting details from your ISP. At the moment they'd probably need a court order and therefore have a reasonable suspicion that a particular IP address that had accessed live iPlayer was one belonging to someone without a license but the law could easily change so that ISPs had to hand over the details of anyone using live iPlayer and there is no reason why that couldn't include data from before the law was changed.