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I joined the Guardian some time ago as a member https://membership.theguardian.com/ https://membership.theguardian.com/ It's £5 a month, and whilst you do get
by flurdy 10y ago
I joined the Guardian some time ago as a member https://membership.theguardian.com/ https://membership.theguardian.com/
It's £5 a month, and whilst you do get some extras it is mostly just to support their journalism.
You can pay more as partner and patron if you choose.
- Markoff 10y ago5 pounds per month for maybe 5-10 interesting articles is quite steep price compared to offering of Netflix for instance or BBC
- CalRobert 10y agoI like to think of it as buying a journalist a pint once a month. Also, when I had Netflix I found it to have a pretty terrible selection after I'd finished the two or three series I liked. Maybe that's just me though. Finally, at £145 a year, the BBC costs quite a bit more.
- dazc 10y ago"...at £145 a year, the BBC costs quite a bit more" Because anyone in the world can have free access
- cja 10y agoThe BBC website and radio is free, although ad-supported outside the UK. Only BBC television costs £145 a year.
- runeb 10y agoI've never seeds ads on BBC website or radio outside of the UK. Do you have more info on this?
- confounded 10y agoIt's a thing, at least in the US. Perhaps try a few countries with a VPN.
- dazc 10y agobbc.com has ads, not bbc.co.uk.
- dazc 10y agoBBC iplayer is free to access throughout the world. That's pretty much all of the TV output.
- Fuzzwah 10y agoAlas, no. > BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. > Sorry, it’s due to rights issues.
- dazc 10y ago"BBC iPlayer only works in the UK" Yes, of course??
- weavie 10y agoTheoretically you are obliged to buy a TV license if you watch iPlayer.
- CalRobert 10y agoiplayer radio is free around the world. TV is not.
- dazc 10y agoYes it is.
- collyw 10y agoLast time I tried it (from Spain) it told me I need to be in the UK.
- dazc 10y agoSorry, since this is Hacker News, I assumed people would have a basic understanding of how the iplayer knows your location and how trivial a matter it is to circumvent? Since I spend 9 months of the year in Spain I use a vpn by default and I access iplayer just the same way I would back home. The not free aspect amounts to a tick box to say you have a licence. To most people on the internet today this does mean it is free. The point was to explain why the bbc is expensive compared to netflix since it is a lot less convenient to get content for nothing. Yes, I do have a licence and subscribe to netflix as well as prime. The point was theoretical.
- GunlogAlm 10y agoYou pay for BBC's TV programmes; you don't pay for the BBC's online news.
- CalRobert 10y agoFull disclosure: I pay nothing for the BBC (I don't live in the UK). However, the BBC news I use does appear to be funded by licence-fee payers, among other sources. "The World Service is funded by the United Kingdom's television licence fee, limited advertising[6] and the profits of BBC Worldwide Ltd.[7] The service also gets £289 million each year (agreed up to 2020) from the UK government.[8]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_World_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_World_Service
- Markoff 10y agodo they have additional expenses to produce news for foreign readers compared to British paying for this service? they would need to produce those news anyway, so no need to feel guilty about reading something paid by others, anyway these news agencies cooperate and I guess almost anyone in Europe pay for their national TV/radio/news agency which is sharing their news with other countries
- CalRobert 10y agoSure, more users and more languages will definitely mean more expenses. The BBC World Service's origins are visible in its original name as the Empire Service. I'm not sure they would still form the world service if the BBC were created today. It is, in my view at least, a great form of soft power for the UK and in some cases one of the only decent reporting options.
- Markoff 10y agoeveryone i know read English site, so no need to produce anything additional for these users, it cost them just little bit if bandwidth and processing time, but zero human resources
- jamieap 10y agoThe Guardian is free whether you contribute towards it or not. Unlike Netflix and, in theory, BBC.
- jbreckmckye 10y agoWell, if no-one contributes, the Guardian will probably close down in about three years' time. I can assert this because I used to work there.
- _delirium 10y agoThere was a lot of fanfare a few years ago when they sold Auto Trader for almost $1 billion, which was justified as a sale that would put so much money into the Scott Trust endowment fund that the paper's finances were now "secure for generations to come" [1]. I guess that was optimistic? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/guardian-media-group-announces-completion-of-gbp-619-million-trader-media-disposal https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/guardian-media-...
- pmyteh 10y agoThe online advertisement market has got much less lucrative per impression since then. It's resulted in most online news sources trying other things to keep the lights on (donations, as with the Graun; paywalls, as at the NY Times; native advertising as at the Huffington Post; lots of other things...)
- jdietrich 10y agoThe Guardian Media Group has been haemorrhaging money for years. Their operating loss was £69m last year and is forecast to be around £90m this year. Even with the best part of a billion quid in the bank, they're a long way from financial sustainability. http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-tells-staff-to-expect-90m-losses-by-year-end-but-plan-to-turn-finances-around-ahead-of-schedule/ http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-tells-staff-to-expect...
- otalp 10y agoThey also have a top-notch sporting section with live coverage(if you're not American- they mostly cover soccer, tennis and F1), their mobile/ipad app is one of the best out there and their long reads essentially make them a nice weekend reading magazine. Plus they have a few nice podcasts too. They are probably worth the 5 pounds.
- Markoff 10y agoI read zero sport news per month, they could be all behind paywall, for long reads you can just check dDigg or Longform, there is anyway so much content I have no chance to read everything I am interested for free why would now I pay for it if there is so much free content I can't ever read?