AIBU cancelling my TV Licence direct debit?

[Heliosdeep]

In the wake of the Gary Lineker saga and the weakness of the BBC I cancelled my direct debit. Currently at £159 for a yearly licence I thought this was a waste of money. The only thing I would have missed would gave been the Great British Bake Off but now that Alison Hammond is fronting it I would have struggled to get past her incredibly irritating voice.

I've not watched it once since cancelling and haven't missed it. Has anyone else done the same and AIBU cancelling?

Correct, because you would be giving away license payers money for free to a commercial broadcaster. Please do try to think for yourself.

Not true - as anyone listening to me might have realised, if you take away the BBC you end up with a skills gap - what is left would be a commercialised brown zone of companies attempting to make money from a fragmented audience - so quality flies out of the window, services disappear and training no longer exists. It's literally as if you took away the NHS and expected there to still be the same number of medical professionals.

Right, ok - I'll bite. I've worked for BBC, Sky, ITV, Warner Bros and many production companies - I have 2 Baftas and will have made many of the things you will know about, even if you don't watch them. I know the industry, and I am involved with it at a high level. These are not opinions, these are facts. You use the term institutionalised because you lack the insight to present a comprehensive rebuttal. If you can tell me how commercial services can be made to serve the public in a meaningful way, whilst preserving jobs and standards - please set out your agenda. "I don't watch it so I wont pay" is the most self-centred and ill-thought through strategy, and not an argument. You might as well say "I'll never get cancer so fuck those cancer wards". I cannot tell you how important this is to our way of life, and if you choose to blather on and worry about how many chips little Johnny is eating whilst being happy you saved a few quid, then there is nothing I can say to you. I wish we'd never got down from the trees.

To be fair @MrCadburysParrot the Americans make cracking TV without using the threat of incarceration to force the public to pay for it

In the age of streaming apps, BBC is no longer what it was, either in the UK or worldwide.

The average age of the BBC viewer is 61, and it’s still failing to attract younger audiences.

They aren't though - they are making increasingly expensive narrative dramas becuase they travel - they are not making shows which enrich their culture, hold power to account or reflect the views of small audiences - and I mean, for example, there is no way without the BBC that Welsh language shows would be viable - the BBC now looks after S4C. Try telling a Welsh person that they have to watch dubbed GOT. America chases money - the BBC (and all terrestrials mainly) chase viewers, and empathy. Its a bit difference.

Why should preserving jobs within the BBC even be a consideration? If those jobs wouldn't exist without the license fee, then there's no reason for them to exist in the first place. Why should people, most of whom earn far less than the average BBC employee, pay an onerous fee in order to support an industry that is unable to support itself?

Ok - I'm going to say this really slowly once again. The training the BBC provides enriches the whole industry, and is the reason why foreign shows are made here - because we have the best trained production staff in the world. But its not just production - its all the other things - catering, tourism, building, carpentry, taxis, sparks, everything. You take those BBC jobs away, you wont get GOT filming in NI and keeping 2 hotels afloat whilst they are at it. Thats not a made up thing - I know it to be true because I take over those hotels (or did) when GOT was out of town. It impacts the entire economy.

True Detective, The Wire, Oz..come back to me when the BBC makes anything approaching the ambition of those show.

I don’t speak Welsh. It’s the equivalent of asking me to pay monthly, on the pain of imprisonment, to subsidise programming in French.

Do you agree with incarcerating people for not paying their TV licence?

We stopped paying about 3 years ago and haven't looked back. We hardly watched any TV anyway. Probably less than 10 hours a year, so cutting that out wasn't a hardship. We have Amazon Prime. Ironically the straw that broke the camel's back was something that irritated me on BBC Radio 4. I know you don't need the TV licence to listen to BBC Radio, but I had always thought of them as the combined benefit of paying the licence fee - doing my bit as it were. I had listened to it in the morning my whole life and it had become so depressing it was making me ill. I decided I wasn't willing to fund it anymore, so that was that.

Jeesus christ on a cracker - I don't quite know where to start. Who else makes wildlife shows like us, Line of Duty, The Cleaner, This Country, Strictly, 24 hour news, Python, Inside Number 9, CBeebis and CBBC, Mr Maker, Doctor Who, Sherlock, Merlin, Luther, Top Gear, Death In Paradise, People Just Do Nothing...I could write this list all night. You focus on not paying the licence fee - but if I don't pay a speeding fine, the same thing happens. Don't come the victim - it tells of someone who has no argument, but wishes to moan and point. It's not clever.

I have never watched any of that. For my generation, the BBC is just not relevant anymore.

Well - I can't help you if you can't see how wrong that is. You don't get it.
By the way, Doctor Who makes more money for the UK than British Steel - and we all made that happen, and the profits go to all of us. But sure, you do you and we'll muddle through with kid shows full of product placement and increasingly imbecilic output. Mind you, maybe you'd like that. Who knows. I can't tell you any more than the truth of the situation.

Out of that list Line of Duty is the only good watch.

People are effectively being sent to debtors prison for sOfT pOwEr

BBC news could do with some proper competition mind

Also - debtors prison aint a thing...so

So because I question whether the licence fee is worth it you accuse me of being the product of incest? I’m gonna cancel my direct debit tomorrow.

agree there - Sky do a capable job though. Trouble is, news is very very expensive to make.

yeah thats what I said checks notes - oh no, I accused you of being so astoundingly dumb that you had no argument with which to come back to me with. Go ahead - cancel whatever you want. Literally like telling me you are going to spit in your bath. You do you.

I don’t think any broadcaster that programme like Not Going Out, Eastenders, Mrs Brown’s Boys etc should be talking about imbecilic output.

Thanks for the pop at my intelligence but you really have no idea who you’re talking to.

What a state to get yourself into because you can't grasp the simple fact people who have no interest in the BBC do not feel inclined to fund it.

Dearie me.

You can thump your chest all you want, but in five years time I would be surprised if there was a licence fee

Wow, and thismis how the winner of 2 Baftas talks? 😂 Pull the other one, love. Back to your admin job.