BBC Licence fee to be abolished in 2027

[knark]

Fucking Tories. Why do people vote for them? Why isn't there a viable opposition?

I would protest against this decision, but, oh, they've abolished that too.

@ParsleySageRosemary

Local radio will go.

Good. Ours is just dreadful. No information at all during the latest local strikes or severe weather.

I've heard newsreaders etc give the Labour Party MPs a grilling more than once! In fact , I think they give them a rough time of it more so than the average conservative MPs.

@knark

Fucking Tories. Why do people vote for them? Why isn't there a viable opposition?

I would protest against this decision, but, oh, they've abolished that too.

Really??? This is amazing if so!!

Ours was very good over flooding. And there’s little beyond the BBC. People were already saying that there is a democratic deficit due to the lack of regional newspapers. Now the last bastion guaranteeing regional anything is going.

I thought some of the license fee did go to other broadcasters? Have I got that wrong?

I'm happy to pay for the radio and podcasts alone. The BBC provides much more than just national TV & and radio. There's the website, the global output, the local level radio stuff that wouldn't happen commercially. I'd rather keep the license than not have the BBC.

@knark

Fucking Tories. Why do people vote for them? Why isn't there a viable opposition?

I would protest against this decision, but, oh, they've abolished that too.

Fake news - this unfortunately isn't true.

I was wrong to call it the British Empire. Welcome to the new London Empire. Are we taking this up north??

Replacing the license fee won’t mean that the bbc will no longer exist. It’s just means they’ll be using a funding system that’s fit for purpose.

@ParsleySageRosemary

Ours was very good over flooding. And there’s little beyond the BBC. People were already saying that there is a democratic deficit due to the lack of regional newspapers. Now the last bastion guaranteeing regional anything is going.

I'm glad yours is good Parsley, at least someone is justifying the money. Ours is a local joke. We actually have a good local independent radio station, so that's fortunate.

The children's content is worth far more than I pay every year on the licence fee in my opinion. Cbeebies and CBBC are the main channels my kids watch and the vast majority of the content is excellent (and I'd take any of the CBeebies programmes over Peppa or Gabbys Dollhouse which they watch when I let them on Netflix 🙄).

Not to mention the daily home learning shows they put on during homeschool and the ridiculous amount of videos and content on the bitsize websites.

The BBC produces crap like Mrs brown's boys and is increasingly playing twenty year old repeats, my family anyone?
It also advertises it's own products. There are a few things I like radio 4 mostly, but it's not worth the licence fee, for music I'd rather use a streaming service no annoying DJs or adverts.

I do agree actually that BBC children's programming is much better than anything commercially produced

Good, the sooner they are gone the better. Their business model just doesn’t stand up any more, too many commercial stations making much better content for less money.

My kids hate CBeebies and refuse to watch and to be quite honest I would happily never watch Justin fletcher again since most of the shows seem to involve him somehow. If you want it pay for it.

Good. I resent paying the BBC just because I want to watch the decent output and news provided by Channel 4. I was hounded as a student by the TV license people and put under severe stress for months because their IT systems had allocated my TV license to another address. I had letters, court threats, visits etc. for something I had already paid for. Their harassment only stopped when I took legal advice myself and threatened I would attend court with my paper license and make them look really stupid.

If Netflix think I haven't paid, my access gets cut off; they don't threaten to put me in prison for it. Funnily enough, as a for-profit company they're efficient and have never made a mistake with my account.

Great. I haven't had a license for years due to the poor value that BBC provides, I simply don't use it. Occasionally see it at friends houses.

Netflix is much better value at 6.99 a month. Having said that, between working full time and looking after the kids, I hardly watch any TV to make anything good value!

How people can pay so much for sky just baffles me though , but then I've never had any of those channels.
I suppose they will just go into business with Netflix or someone similar and it'll all just be online etc.

This is really sad. I rarely watch TV but listen to R4 and BBC Sounds every day.

For any news story, I check out the BBC for the facts. I happily pay the licence fee for quality journalism and social cohesion.

All public institutions just trashed.

The tories are the nasty party. They claim to love this country but destroy anything that is good about it.

@Flammkuchen

This is really sad. I rarely watch TV but listen to R4 and BBC Sounds every day.

For any news story, I check out the BBC for the facts. I happily pay the licence fee for quality journalism and social cohesion.

All public institutions just trashed.

The tories are the nasty party. They claim to love this country but destroy anything that is good about it.

Why on Earth are people confusing reforming how public service broadcasting is funded with getting rid of it altogether?

The really weird thing with the licence fee is that its existence means you have to try to make content to please everyone - across the whole sort of slate. So it’s not surprising that a lot of people think eg BBC3 is crap or the radio station locally is crap - the BBC will be making those to appeal to their main audience in those areas which may not be you. Just because they’re the national broadcaster doesn’t mean everything has to appeal to you personally! They’d be doing a crap job if this were the case as you personally aren’t going to represent people of other ages/sex/location/interests etc

@Ionlydomassiveones

Are the Director General? Your post certainly sums up the attitude of the ‘neutral’ BBC and why people now resent the licence fee. I will mourn the loss of the BBC but their blanket biased coverage of Brexit, overblown salaries to dummies like Tess Daly and Gary Linekar and London-centric wokeness which is so out of step of the rest of the country has done them no favours.

Yup, sounds about right!

Hyperbole and catastrophising help no one.

All public institutions just trashed.

Yes. And only fools don’t realise what that means. You cannot run a democracy without a public sector, you cannot run a democracy without information. We have lived in an empire before, remember?

I don’t mind paying the license. I use the BBC all the time for educational purposes, both Bitesize and BBC Teach and BBC school radio.
I think people forget that the BBC is more than just tv and I think with less funding many of the parts I use will be scrapped.

They maintain the only professional full-time choir in the UK, and their orchestras employ a lot of fantastic musicians. It means they can have live music easily e.g. Friday is Music Night, the Proms, Young Musician/School Choir/Choir of the Year.

That's the sort of thing I doubt independent radio stations could do.