To think it's a terrible idea to scrap the BBC licence fee?

[dellacucina]

Inspired by this article: www.google.com/amp/s/www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1242927/BBC-News-Boris-Johnson-license-fee-subscription-British-Broadcasting-Corporation/amp

I'm recently naturalised and I think that the BBC is part of what makes Britain special. It makes me very sad indeed to imagine it being cut down.

@adaline you are not engaging with the substance of my message - the benefits of public funding which I have outlined. Fine if you don't want to but I have been clear that I don't think it's just entertainment.

Della,

What proportion of the BBC’s output is ‘public service’? I would wager it is tiny.

I might, myself, choose to pay for a far slimmer, far less self absorbed and far more regionally diverse (even though I live in London) public service broadcaster.

It won’t happen, though.

you are not engaging with the substance of my message - the benefits of public funding which I have outlined. Fine if you don't want to but I have been clear that I don't think it's just entertainment.

I am, I just totally disagree with you. I don't believe there are many benefits to the BBC as it stands. The output is, in my opinion, no better than the output available on other channels (either Freeview or pay channels).

You think publicly funded entertainment is a good thing. I don't see the benefits of it. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm "not engaging"

yes, these are two separate issues but almost all of the arguments against seem go to the basic point that many people don't value publicly funded broadcasting so this is the direction the conversation seems to have gone.

A lot of people perceive public (state) funded news as inherently suspect. It doesn't make them thick or uncultured, which seems to be the basis of the abundant (and unbecoming) sneering on this thread.

I haven't observed any superior critical thinking facilities on the part of the BBC loyalists on this thread, which seems to underpin their entire premise - that they are better informed, more reasoned, more cultured, and therefore morally superior to the BBC sceptics.

@adaline do you not see any marketing value to the UK of maintaining its place in the world culturally as a producer of uniquely British content?

@adaline do you not see any marketing value to the UK of maintaining its place in the world culturally as a producer of uniquely British content?

Arguably the most shining exemplar of British culture to spring from the television in years is The Crown.

@dellacucina yes we very much disagree as I find plenty of good investigative journalism from the US, and it's not particularly niche. I have had a quick Google and Meet the Press gets more than 3m viewers per episode vs Newsnight which is around 500k.

It's also interesting to see that Netflix has spent a lot of money on original documentaries including several that have won Oscars - American Factory, Icarus to name a few.

There is a place for public broadcasting and it should be funded through taxes as a public good. But not at 150 pounds per household per year. It should either be part of income tax so that the wealthier pay more, or it should be split and the entertainment portion is subscriber-based.

@adaline do you not see any marketing value to the UK of maintaining its place in the world culturally as a producer of uniquely British content?

Why is it only the BBC that can provide that? There are plenty of British broadcasters and programmes that have nothing to do with the BBC.

@EntropyRising interesting point, but I strongly believe that the commercial market won't always fill the void. This may just be a fundamental philosophical difference, but I think it's bonkers to rely on market forces to provide for all needs

I have sky and netflix and still watch BBC more than any other channels. Sky is mainly full of crap and repeated crap at that.

I absolutely loathe ads. Yes I record them and fast forward through them but it is still so bloody annoying. You get 10 mins of a programme then a break which seems to last forever then another 10 mins then another ad. I can never really get into any programme.

Look at Dancing on Ice - 1 dance then ad, 1 dance then ad. The programme lasts 2 hours and yet I bet half of it is ads.

I would actually pay more to keep the BBC ad free and think £12 a month is a bargain. All those complaining they can't afford it, do you have sky? That's a rip off and we only keep it for the F1 channel

I think it should become a subscription service. It is ridiculous that people have to pay for it whilst never watching it, bit having a TV for other channels/ Netflix etc.

I would not pay a sub as I think it's output is generally of poor quality (not bias, just mostly not very good). I would pay for a news/ politics only, portion of BBC output, should that become available.

The BBC has been able to rest on its laurels too long as it had guaranteed income, and took its eye off the ball re quality.

Not RTFT but in the first couple of pages alone there are so many misconceptions about when a TV license is required. I suggest anyone unsure looks at the proper website to make sure you are not paying out for something you don’t need!

@lynsey91 I'm not sure who broadcasts Dancing on Ice but most have a premium commercial-free service that you can pay for.

Why don't you cancel your Sky subscription? I don't understand it - it seems like a terrifically over-engineered solution. I have Now TV which I believe carries most Sky content and it's something like £8/mo.

I would actually pay more to keep the BBC ad free and think £12 a month is a bargain. All those complaining they can't afford it, do you have sky? That's a rip off and we only keep it for the F1 channel

I don't think people are necessarily saying they can't afford it. They're saying they object to paying £150 a year for a service they don't use. I wouldn't use SKY so I don't pay for it. We have Freeview and pay for Netlflix and NowTV instead. Only costs about £15 a month for all three as every time you go to leave NowTV they offer you a discount deal for the next few months I've never paid full price for it.

You are choosing to pay for SKY for the F1 channel. That's your choice. You wouldn't want to be forced to pay that cost each month when nobody in your family ever watched it, would you?

@EntropyRising ITV broadcast Dancing on Ice. Honestly the ads drive me mad. Forever fast forwarding. It makes me feel like just not bothering with the programme.

We have Sky because we are both big F1 fans. We don't pay for the full sports package just the F1 channel. No other broadcaster shows every F1 race plus all the practice days, qualifying etc.

@adaline we pay for the basic sky package but we only want F1. So we are really being forced to pay a sum each month for all the channels we don't want or watch. As I said, I think sky is pretty crap and if it weren't for F1 we would have got rid years ago.

There's an ITV hub with no commercials for £4

www.itv.com/hub/plus

Sounds like Sky has you firmly in its grip - sorry! Maybe tweet them and ask why they don't have a more granular service offering?

@lynsey91but you're not being forced to, are you?

You're choosing to pay for SKY in order to get that channel. If it wasn't important to you, you wouldn't pay for it.

As an aside, have you looked into getting SkySports on NowTV instead? You can just pay for a 24h/weekly/weekend pass. Probably much cheaper than paying for the full sky package.

I think ideally if there was a technical solution with TV tuners etc, it would be good if there were two tiers:

i) basic license fee for watching broadcast live tv. The BBC use this element to fund 'public service' i.e. news (national and regional), historical/cultural documentaries, basic kids tv, radio stations offering the same. So this would be like one TV channel + CBBC/Cbeebies, This would be like £4 a month or something

ii) premium license fee which allows you to access use of iplayer etc and to access the other BBC channels that would house the expensive entertainment (strictly, dramas, sport expensive attenborough series etc)

Without technical solution to restrict access to channels then the alternative is to just make the premium services ad supported and offer iplayer as a paid for online service (or incorporate fully into BritBox or similar service)

@adaline I did look at watching F1 on Now tv a year or so ago. I can't remember exactly why it wasn't any good for us.

It could be that a "weekend" pass would obviously not be showing practice which takes place on a Friday and we like to watch that too.

If it showed all practices, qualifying and the race then we definitely would have cancelled Sky.

I guess we could get a weekly pass but we would need 2 or 3 a month depending how many races in that month so not sure how much that would work out to.

We are lucky in that we don't pay for the sports package on Sky. We just get the F1 channel. It's not been possible to get that channel on its own for a number of years now. We got it as part of a special deal and don't want to lose it.

If only we liked football it would be much simpler!

It also pissed me off that the first letter my DS received when moving into uni halls was a threat about what would happen if he didn't get a TV licence. I don't think he has watched actual TV or BBC content since he was a toddler and doesn't have a TV. We also rarely do as we are sick of the bias that we are paying not to have.

@lynsey91they have changed things recently so it might be worth looking again just in case it's worth changing over :)

I know our NowTV subscriptions (movies and TV) only come to around £10 a month - it's far cheaper than getting it through SKY. We can also watch about 24 Sky TV and Movie channels live with those packages too.

Every time my contract is up for renewal I opt to cancel it, and they ALWAYS offer for me to stay at half the price for the next three months or so. Rinse and repeat every few months and you never have to pay the full price

@adaline thanks for that info. I will have a look. £10 a month is a lot cheaper than we are paying for sky.

We do occasionally watch other channels on sky than F1 but really would not miss any of them

The problem with the BBC including advertising is that it will compete with ITV, Sky et al. So everyone would share a piece of the advertising pie with knock on effects for all of them. It would be hard to know how David Attenborough's programmes would be financed.

If we follow the US model there are many instances there where pressure from advertisers has caused programme cancellations or sackings. Margaret Thatcher had a review of the BBC funding and her free marketeer chosen investigator came to the conclusion it was not the way to go.

The loss of local radio stations I think would have a huge impact in terms of loss of local/regional content. Most local indie stations outside the larger cities are music based and not interested in news. Local papers mostly don't have the staff to cover local council/county council meetings which the BBC were trying to redress with shared reporters. And when your wifi goes down and you can't access critical local information to what media do you turn?

If you look at the proposals it looks as if R3 and R4 would be safe along with the World Service which is no longer funded by the government but its worldwide sales branch and various other streams. Do you want all your news to be national or unjournalistic radio stations?

Margaret Thatcher had a review of the BBC funding and her free marketeer chosen investigator came to the conclusion it was not the way to go.

How many decades ago was that? Before netflix, amazon prime, sky etc. Completely different world today.

The problem with the BBC including advertising is that it will compete with ITV, Sky et al. So everyone would share a piece of the advertising pie with knock on effects for all of them. It would be hard to know how David Attenborough's programmes would be financed.

It's not a planned economy, that's not how it works.

I feel like I'm repeating myself (over and over and over again) but life outside of public broadcasting is not just the Real Housewives. Business can and will support risky, high-brow, high-quality, big-budget programming.

If we follow the US model there are many instances there where pressure from advertisers has caused programme cancellations or sackings. Margaret Thatcher had a review of the BBC funding and her free marketeer chosen investigator came to the conclusion it was not the way to go.

I think if anything you'd run afoul of advertisers if you breached the kind of political correctness that no doubt BBC supporters entirely agree with, like questioning global warming, or homophobic or racist content. Do you have an example in mind?