4 ms·

How about getting rid of the license fee completely and just offer subscriptions for those people who want to see the programmes?

by steve1977 7y ago

toni 7y ago
This article is an April fools' joke. BBC has not responded to DCMS' recent consultation.
- stoobs 7y ago
  Incorrect: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/bbc-consultation-response-decriminalising-licence-fee.pdf http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/bbc-c... Point 203 on page 37.
  - toni 7y ago
    Thanks, I stand corrected.
n4r9 7y ago
I sympathise with this position but on balance I'm against the idea. At-the-time popularity is very different to quality, and I think moving to a subscription service would favour the former. There's been a decent number of extremely good low key indie productions on the BBC that I don't think would see the light of day otherwise, e.g. fleabag, people just do nothing, and the detectorists. Then of course there's the World Service, which is something we can be hugely proud of as a nation. The BBC also spends a lot more time and money making its services accessible to people with disabilities than it would be able to otherwise. I actually stopped my licence after the most recent election because I'm sickened by how sycophantic it is towards the ruling party. But I don't think a subscription model is the way to go.
gambiting 7y ago
That's pretty much how it works already. We don't watch any live TV so we just don't pay the fee. It takes 2 minutes to register as not needing a TV licence. So in a way it's already a "subscription" - you only pay if you're actually using the "service".
acallaghan 7y ago
The BBC isn't like Netflix - the license fee pays for TV infrastructure, public alerting, World Service, school revision programmes etc. - you just can't treat a public broadcaster like an opt-in service, it would cease to exist. If COVID-19 has shown us anything in the UK, it should be that the BBC is still trusted and used heavily by the govt to get their message out clearly and loudly
- thu2111 7y ago
  TV infrastructure these days is mostly satellite and cable based, sticks-on-hills broadcasting isn't that expensive and could simply be run by the government directly as it winds down over time. Public alerting? Government can (and should) just serve videos itself, it can already SMS the entire nation. World Service - was historically funded directly by the government, not the license fee. Should it even still exist? School revision programmes can easily be handled by the private sector. COVID-19 has revealed nothing about the BBC, which is now untrusted by >50% of the British population for the first time. All broadcasters have access to government broadcast updates. Anything else?
  - untog 7y ago
    > the BBC, which is now untrusted by >50% of the British population for the first time. Got a citation for that?
    - thu2111 7y ago
      https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/16/do-britons-trust-press https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/1... YouGov figures show British trust in the press to tell the truth has fallen, with less than half believing BBC news journalists are honest and impartial Seems a lot of people can't really handle criticism of the BBC, judging that my list of facts is now at -3. I used to love the BBC. Globally respected, good programmes, a voice I trusted to be neutral and fair. They helped me study, they introduced me to new music, made cool documentaries. I bought into it all. I guess like many Brits I'm not quite sure if it's the BBC that changed or myself. It just doesn't seem the same anymore. I think it used to benefit from a 'false aura' of trustworthyness because radio and TV news has very little space, so in any given day there were only a handful of stories the BBC could break. Of those it'd usually be obvious what they should be, so the journalists and editors had quite limited leeway to pick and choose. Now there's BBC News Online and that's how I get their news output. I don't watch TV news anymore. Online there's infinite space and so they can write endlessly about whatever topics they like, including using it as their own personal blogging space. Combined with Twitter it's painfully revealed their biases and desire to shape the audience, desires that were probably always there but limited by available airtime. Nowadays I don't see it as any higher quality than other outlets. Just yesterday their economics editor tweeted this: https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1245380143071342598 https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1245380143071342598 Throw in the millions of tests too, & I’m taken back to quote from developing nation’s diplomat in my book on financial crisis, saying he looked to Germany and Google as examples for how to run his country “both run by engineers, whereas US and UK run by journalists and lawyers” This is just nonsense. Angela Merkel was never an engineer, she was an academic with a chemistry background but went into politics when the wall fell. She's been a professional politician for 30 years, so this tweet is just hopelessly misleading. I doubt Mr Islam is doing it deliberately, he just has low standards and doesn't bother to fact check even his own tweets, so what about the much harder job of checking stories? When I go to BBC News Online and see endless articles with grotesque errors, distortions, biases and personal opinions I just can't care about them anymore. They should have stuck to TV. The internet is killing them, by revealing their true selves.

How about getting rid of the license fee completely and just offer subscriptions for those people who want to see the programmes?

toni 7y ago

This article is an April fools' joke. BBC has not responded to DCMS' recent consultation.

stoobs 7y ago
Incorrect: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/bbc-consultation-response-decriminalising-licence-fee.pdf http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/bbc-c... Point 203 on page 37.
- toni 7y ago
  Thanks, I stand corrected.

n4r9 7y ago

I sympathise with this position but on balance I'm against the idea. At-the-time popularity is very different to quality, and I think moving to a subscription service would favour the former. There's been a decent number of extremely good low key indie productions on the BBC that I don't think would see the light of day otherwise, e.g. fleabag, people just do nothing, and the detectorists. Then of course there's the World Service, which is something we can be hugely proud of as a nation. The BBC also spends a lot more time and money making its services accessible to people with disabilities than it would be able to otherwise. I actually stopped my licence after the most recent election because I'm sickened by how sycophantic it is towards the ruling party. But I don't think a subscription model is the way to go.

gambiting 7y ago

That's pretty much how it works already. We don't watch any live TV so we just don't pay the fee. It takes 2 minutes to register as not needing a TV licence. So in a way it's already a "subscription" - you only pay if you're actually using the "service".

acallaghan 7y ago

The BBC isn't like Netflix - the license fee pays for TV infrastructure, public alerting, World Service, school revision programmes etc. - you just can't treat a public broadcaster like an opt-in service, it would cease to exist. If COVID-19 has shown us anything in the UK, it should be that the BBC is still trusted and used heavily by the govt to get their message out clearly and loudly

thu2111 7y ago
TV infrastructure these days is mostly satellite and cable based, sticks-on-hills broadcasting isn't that expensive and could simply be run by the government directly as it winds down over time. Public alerting? Government can (and should) just serve videos itself, it can already SMS the entire nation. World Service - was historically funded directly by the government, not the license fee. Should it even still exist? School revision programmes can easily be handled by the private sector. COVID-19 has revealed nothing about the BBC, which is now untrusted by >50% of the British population for the first time. All broadcasters have access to government broadcast updates. Anything else?
- untog 7y ago
  > the BBC, which is now untrusted by >50% of the British population for the first time. Got a citation for that?
  - thu2111 7y ago
    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/16/do-britons-trust-press https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/1... YouGov figures show British trust in the press to tell the truth has fallen, with less than half believing BBC news journalists are honest and impartial Seems a lot of people can't really handle criticism of the BBC, judging that my list of facts is now at -3. I used to love the BBC. Globally respected, good programmes, a voice I trusted to be neutral and fair. They helped me study, they introduced me to new music, made cool documentaries. I bought into it all. I guess like many Brits I'm not quite sure if it's the BBC that changed or myself. It just doesn't seem the same anymore. I think it used to benefit from a 'false aura' of trustworthyness because radio and TV news has very little space, so in any given day there were only a handful of stories the BBC could break. Of those it'd usually be obvious what they should be, so the journalists and editors had quite limited leeway to pick and choose. Now there's BBC News Online and that's how I get their news output. I don't watch TV news anymore. Online there's infinite space and so they can write endlessly about whatever topics they like, including using it as their own personal blogging space. Combined with Twitter it's painfully revealed their biases and desire to shape the audience, desires that were probably always there but limited by available airtime. Nowadays I don't see it as any higher quality than other outlets. Just yesterday their economics editor tweeted this: https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1245380143071342598 https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1245380143071342598 Throw in the millions of tests too, & I’m taken back to quote from developing nation’s diplomat in my book on financial crisis, saying he looked to Germany and Google as examples for how to run his country “both run by engineers, whereas US and UK run by journalists and lawyers” This is just nonsense. Angela Merkel was never an engineer, she was an academic with a chemistry background but went into politics when the wall fell. She's been a professional politician for 30 years, so this tweet is just hopelessly misleading. I doubt Mr Islam is doing it deliberately, he just has low standards and doesn't bother to fact check even his own tweets, so what about the much harder job of checking stories? When I go to BBC News Online and see endless articles with grotesque errors, distortions, biases and personal opinions I just can't care about them anymore. They should have stuck to TV. The internet is killing them, by revealing their true selves.