To think they should reduce the size of the BBC and cut the license fee?

[jobhunter7]

To think they should reduce the size of the BBC and cut the license fee?

What a load of crap, I've worked at the BBC in Corporate Finance many years ago and peoples perspective are clearly driven by things they don't understand.

Yes paying £150 a year just to watch eastenders is ridiculous. Cant stand bbc radio and everything else is repeated on a sky channel so its pointless

Any examples @MullinerSpec?

Of course - I mean, this country has one of the most respected public broadcasters in the world, that represents the UK to a large global audience. It’s news services are regularly polled as being the most trustworthy.

But yes, let’s fuck it up, let’s chuck it all away and sit at home mindlessly scrolling the Netflix home page for an hour every night as we look for yet another slice of mediocre US output (having exhausted the good stuff until the next big drop).

Honestly I swear there are people in this country who won’t be satisfied until we’ve torn apart everything good we’ve ever achieved together.

It’s like a raging self hatred. Keep voting for politicians who fuck over your living standards effectively leaving you thousands of pounds poorer every year, whilst screaming that the BBC should be scrapped so you can save yourself £157.50. We are in a headlong race to the bottom.

It’s the overpuffed BBC that’s in a race to the bottom though. It reflects wider currents to be sure - I don’t watch Netflix either, but no one expects me to pay for that if I don’t want it. I never watch the bbc now, it’s either trashy or patronising. Can’t think of one presenter or programme I’d miss if the bbc went in an puff of smoke tomorrow. And their political bias is breathtaking and completely unaccountable. Keep world news if you must, fair nuff!

No licence fee. Perfect. Never watch it.

BTW, I’m quite a traditional person in many ways and it saddens me the bbc has gone down this path.

How about cutting the license fee and introducing product placement? There's plenty of opportunity for it in Eastenders and cookery shows, I'm sure there's more.

I have a love-hate relationship with the BBC. As has already been said, it's bloated and woke and does carry a lot of propaganda of various kinds.

However, it's also amazingly good. Many of the TV and radio programmes, as well as a lot of its web presence, are head and shoulders above much of the world's output. There's also a lot of complete rubbish, of course - but one person's essential is another's absolute crap and vice versa.

I'm not interested in the soaps, sport, cookery, sewing, dancing etc.; but I'm not calling for them to be scrapped because the BBC is a public broadcaster, and I'm aware that a lot of my must-sees would be considered 'minority interest' and worthless by a lot of the fans of the abovementioned.

Most non-Asians are probably not interested/bothered about the Asian network and the various 'Desi' output from time to time. People without children (or whose kids are grown up) won't care about the children's channels. Sports-haters couldn't care less about Match Of The Day, Wimbledon or golf. But a lot of people do want that sort of content - and they pay their licence fees too.

Whenever somebody suggests simply scrapping any channels or content that they personally don't find interesting or relevant to them, I imagine them suggesting having a ruthless sort through their joint wardrobe with their partner and (assuming opposite sex) finding that 50% of the clothes can instantly be got rid of!

Jeez, if you don’t like it don’t watch it and don’t pay the licence. It entirely possible to do it now. I think it’s one of the increasingly few things that’s good about being British. The quality and range of productions is excellent and it’s one of the few services that still makes British shows featuring British people. If all you want to watch is American shows featuring Americans then fill your boots with Netflix. Streaming services like that are a much greater threat to our culture than the EU or Muslims who are usually blamed for diluting it.

I wrote a 3000 word essay on the benefits of public broadcasting for my media law module in 1999....might be a bit much to cut and paste it here

Summary: YABU

One of the problems the BBC is facing is that the UK is drifting rapidly towards the same sort of hyper-partisan political environment that we are more used to seeing in the US.

The Conservative party moved to the right, as have right wing media like the Mail and Telegraph. They want to therefore redraw the political map of the UK, pulling what used to be considered Centrist further towards them.

In flirting with Corbyn, Labour pulled Left, with many supporters berating the BBC for not going with them (and therefore being tools or stooges the right wing government).

As people are increasingly pulled to those extremes they get angrier at the BBC, saying it doesn’t represent them.

Anything broadcast by the BBC which accords with their political views isn’t really noticed, it just looks like “common sense at last”. On the other hand, anything broadcast by the BBC which appears to run counter to their political views acts like a red rag to a bull - each instance is noted and remembered.

Add to that the fact that so much discourse happens over social media, where people always become inclined to act more angrily in order to be noticed, and you have an incredibly febrile environment, full of people ready to take offence and kick out.

To operate as an impartial public service broadcaster in this situation must be incredibly difficult. If we lose it though we are condemned to a future that looks very much like Fox News or OANN.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

Mmm! WHich parts would go?

The World Service and all of that stuff you never listen to?

Channels you never watch?

Education services you don't access?

And again...stop charging people who dont watch BBC just for owning a TV and harassing anyone who doesn't pay. It's a disgusting business practise. the fee is not for watching BBC... honest!!!!

The World service is listened to by 279 million people globally ... why should it be cut?

I stopped listening to BBC news during EU referendum. It was so unashamedly, even aggressively biased towards Remain and contemptuous of any other view. It was ignorance and arrogance personified. I never listened to another BBC news programme thereafter.

The same with Woman’s Hour, in a different way.

Disagree with previous poster. I think broadly speaking it is the the left that went “mad” and the smaller right became the centre, a place you gravitated to mostly for any modicum of common sense and critical thinking. The bbc became infected with this student-politics type insanity too.

The World service is listened to by 279 million people globally ... why should it be cut? I have no idea and would be outraged if it was!

I agree though it is difficult, almost impossible even, to remain politically “impartial” - but the BBC doesn’t even bother to try now!

@MaxedMinataours

I agree though it is difficult, almost impossible even, to remain politically “impartial” - but the BBC doesn’t even bother to try now!

Yes! Rather than axing big bits of it there needs to be something of a root and branch revolution!

You get a YABU because the license fee shouldn't be cut, it should be eliminated and the BBC funded from general taxation. And then we can have the conversation about what programming should and shouldn't be taxpayer funded.

But Capita have the billion pound contract to administer the fee and send all the threatening letters. I can't see the Conservatives stopping that.

NPR is nothing like as good as BBC radio, I know this because I listen to it.
It also actually uses quite a lot of BBC content that it buys.
Leaving aside the annoying pledge drives they have several weeks a year to try and raise money they also repeat programming much more than the BBC.
There is also a much narrower focus on news and comedy.
Radio 4 is a much more varied, international and wide ranging supplier of content.

It is easy not to value something that you are used to having.

Almost everyone has a tv. It is a household based charge. Why not just have it as a council tax precept, have a process for not being charged if no tv in the house, and then the whole infrastructure of collection is saved, decriminalised (or replaced by the process for non-payment of council tax)?

Interesting to say that the BBC isn’t even bothering to be impartial when that is one of its central tenets and a key part of the editorial guidelines that its staff have to abide by. To compare its output to truly partisan organisations like Fox is complete hyperbole.

With regards to Brexit, half the country voted against it and their views needed to be represented. Claims about the benefits also needed to be subject to scrutiny. I’ve seen people claim vociferously that the BBC actually helped make Brexit happen by giving such an inordinate amount of airtime to Nigel Farage and his ilk, and by letting Brexiteer pundits assume the same credibility on panels as e.g. experts in trade and international relations.

It seems impartiality is often in the eye of the beholder, and is very susceptible to confirmation bias (if you assume there is bias then bias is all you will ever see).

It’s like those right wing pundits who constantly appear on all the networks, write long newspaper articles and fill their Twitter feeds with claims that right wing voices like theirs are being silenced!

Independent local radio? few pockets of really good ones, but most are music only or franchised chit chat. Very few provide real local news with their own or regional reporters, or much opportunity for interreaction as BBC stations do including on the spot reports for TV when there's a breaking story. World Service is excellent and does a lot of useful work. Some R4 stuff is boring but some of the comedy, afternoon plays and news is reliably good - as is R4X and BBC Sounds for plays, detective stories, podcasts.

Im quite happy to pay for channels that dont show 6 minutes of ads every 15

YANBU. Make it subscription to view and those who don't watch the BBC no longer have to subsidise those that do.

Everything @Bluegrass said! Thank you for articulating it so well!