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?

This is an interesting piece about the fee from Reuters.

reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/bbc-under-scrutiny-heres-what-research-tells-about-its-role-uk

They can block foreign TV broadcasts too easily. China has censored foreign broadcasts such as BBC World before in the past. But they coudn't / can't block the radio! Or they can't as easily

I used to live in China, China used to jam various foreign radios en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_jamming_in_China

All forms can be blocked, so I don't think it's a "younger generation don't know how powerful it is" its other solutions are commonly more used now and harder to trace, tiny usbs in hermit states like North Korea are smuggled in or vpns in other countries.

I'll have a read and will update my thinking there then!

Pay it or don't pay it. It is a choice. However threatening people into paying for a licence makes them bullies and bullies are indefencible.

@Sarahandduck18

If it’s that essential it should be part of general taxation.

It’s gone unchecked for too long. Too many overpaid fat cats who dont live in the real world.

Do you work there? Like who? (Who are the fat cats, I mean)

00:34singingstones

Did you know the BBC pay a whole department to surf social media for bad publicity and pretend to be members of the public and counter any bad comments with praise for the organisation. Maybe that department could go!

😂🤪

I worked for a company who was sub-contracted to oversea an area of the BBC. The department was discussed in several meetings by PR bosses back when the BBC got it's last arse kicking in the media when decriminalising it was being looked at and the whole TV licence resistance movement took off on social media.

We only steam stuff online now, and never live. Our tv is hooked up to the xbox and is the living room television is the only one we have.
We cancelled our tv license as it was a wasted expense every month. It took 2 days for a man to come to the door to "have a look round". I was actually as impressive as it was ridiculous.

@PeekyBlinders

00:34singingstones

Did you know the BBC pay a whole department to surf social media for bad publicity and pretend to be members of the public and counter any bad comments with praise for the organisation. Maybe that department could go!

😂🤪

I worked for a company who was sub-contracted to oversea an area of the BBC. The department was discussed in several meetings by PR bosses back when the BBC got it's last arse kicking in the media when decriminalising it was being looked at and the whole TV licence resistance movement took off on social media.

Like all big organisations, the BBC has a press office, with lots of (though fewer than there used to be) press officers and media managers. They also use some freelancers and external PR companies. Production companies, including BBC Studios, also have their own press/PR people. There is not a department of people checking social media and saying positive things about the BBC while pretending to be members of the public.

@contrmary

Which parts of the BBC would go then? Asian Network, 1Xtra, local radio - all served by commercial stations. Popular shows should be sold off to commercial broadcasters (Strictly Cunt Dancing, Mrs Brown's Fucking Boys, Mastershit) - anything that can stand on it's own two legs should be sold off.

The BBC should make shit that commercial broadcasters can't, or won't. Not chase ratings with the same shit that's on other channels.

Obviously it should continue to broadcast a 24 hour news channel and BBC Parliament, because no fucker would broadcast the latter and you can't have too many news channels (watch them all, take the average opinion, and you might be somewhere near the truth).

And for as long as the licence fee exists, it should permit users full access to the BBC's archive of programmes. Britbox is bullshit - we've already paid for the BBC shows - so as part of our subscription, we should be allowed to watch them when we want.

Agree 100%

The rebuilding of the eastenders set really shouldn't have been agreed on the scale it is.

The BBC provided 3 months of education stuff through Bitesize in the last lockdown. This time stuff will be broadcast on 3 channels specifically to help those who struggled to access online school and Bitesize.
How easily would that have been done without the BBC?

I was always on the fence re license and BBC but can now really see the benefit to having a national broadcaster.

I think that there is a strong lobby attempting to do this, or to defund the BBC altogether.
I believe that , yes, the BBC is the jewel in our cultural crown. Yes, it regularly annoys me with it's persistent Wokeness and general unfunniness of its comedy. I never watch its wonderful nature programs because they generally turn into a lecture on Climate Change. But we would be much poorer without it. And, let's face it, it hardly costs us anything.
Most importantly, because of the decline of local print press, it plays a valuable part in reporting local news.
I think before we all jump on the bandwagon to defund it, we should look where these movements probably originate from.

We don’t pay the licence. Don’t have any way of watching live tv unless on Iplayer and frankly that make nothing I want to watch.

Loved getting the are you sure letters in the post, yes I’m sure thank you. I just have Netflix and prime and prime I only watch a couple of shows on that are not on live tv anyway.

It may only be £10/£12 a month but to have to pay but it’s principle. I don’t have to pay for sky channels unless I want them or virgin channels I shouldn’t have to pay for bbc channels/radio I don’t use or want either.

The threatening letters are awful. The iplayer content didn’t change for months on the end. The radio player content has become heavily unscripted poor quality podcast based and hard to navigate. The journalism standards have massively slipped and are not as trustworthy. I resent the licence fee going up as we see the huge salaries being paid and that they sell the tv programs off around the world. Plus we have so much choice in other providers and homemade YouTube content, tick tok, internet on demand etc.

The whole thing seems bloated. You can’t help think that so much of it could be consolidated and put online or on demand rather than all these separate channels and stations.

It’s great that the world service has 200m+ worldwide listeners - maybe they can suffer through 40 seconds of adverts every now and then to pay for it?

The radio player content has become heavily unscripted poor quality podcast based

What do you mean here, @ChakaDakotaRegina?

Good grief please don't let the bbc be like pbs. PBS is grim - dull, way more woke than the BBC, and totally lacking in bite. That's what running on a shoestring and being scared stiff you'll lose your charitable funding does.

I remember bbc radio as being quality shows with journalists, editors and researchers and scripted drama and well made comedies. I tried a few of the newer shows and it seemed like the host had just read something off Wikipedia, grabbed two random celebrities to laugh a bit and padded that into 30minutes then gone to the pub. Lazy and superficial.

Sounds like you are just talking about Radio 4, is that right @ChakaDakotaRegina?

Do you have any examples of shows that are heavily unscripted compared to what you would prefer? Do you mean journalism or documentary/feature or entertainment or drama?

I would cut all the endless repetitious programming masquerading as content worth paying for.

@PrincessPain

We only steam stuff online now, and never live. Our tv is hooked up to the xbox and is the living room television is the only one we have. We cancelled our tv license as it was a wasted expense every month. It took 2 days for a man to come to the door to "have a look round". I was actually as impressive as it was ridiculous.

This highlights yet again the bullies they employ. You might have been impressed at the ridiculousness of it, however they had no right to search your home. They don’t have powers to do this without a court warrant.

When these bullies knock on the door you don’t even need to talk to them never mind letting them in.

I’m still waiting for them to get a warrant to come in and search. It’s only been about 3 years 😂 He fucked off after I told him I was calling police about the man trying to force his way in

You don’t even have to let them know you no longer need a license. They now have no details for me and the threatening letters are addressed to the property.

I stopped mine after buying a new tv and threatening letters started. I was thinking of only using streaming services and that letter gave me that push.

Bbc offer such excellent quality I haven’t missed it. But then I’m not a fan of east Enders and property shows.
And let’s face it. Attenborough didn’t really need them. And there’s so much nature stuff online

Apparently BBC iplayer received 5.3 billion view requests during the first 11 months 2020, which seems a lot for a total population of fewer than 67 million. That’s just tv, so imagine all the people listening to the radio, using the website and other services the licence fee pays for.

Seems at least some people out there are making good use of what’s on offer.

I just wanted to add that as an overseas Brit I'd happily pay the license fee to have access to Iplayer but I'm not able to do this.

Agree with you, longdarkwinter. I'm based overseas but travel regularly back to the UK. I actually bought a TV license a couple of years ago - though there are too many overpaid BBC managers IMO, I still think it's fantastic value for money and one of the increasingly few areas of being British that I feel proud of - and really wish that I could access I-Player now that I am back in the US.

What about the work arounds using a vpn or something?

I would ditch all of it apart from News. All entertainment culled.

We need impartial news. Our digital age demands this.

I don’t think the BBC are impartial at the moment, but I suspect that’s because they are operating as an ‘entertainer’ and new source.

Ditch entertainment completely (we can get that anywhere and everywhere) and the project is clear - impartial, independent, thoroughly researched news