News - BBC plans to charge for watching archived iPlayer content

[mark22]

Until you multiply it by 24,963,799, then it looks a lot, again.

3.6 billion and still last episode of Sherlock right now!!!

I guess the news costs a lot.

[BurningFeetMan]

If a part of the problem is paying for the bandwidth can they not just make iplayer into a torrent program of sorts. I realise many don't like using their upload but perhaps archive content would use a torrent system while live and recent programs use BBC servers.

[Biscuit]

Everything costs a lot.... every single element of what any television channel/company does is expensive.
I love everyone saying how much they hate the license fee and how they want it scrapped like we have it so hard over here. The BBC creates some of the best documentaries, dramas and comedies in the world and definitely sets the precedent that other UK channels have to live up to. We have a channel, which is in the most part, free of advertising and generally impartial. Would you prefer UK TV to end up like the US, completely funded by adverts and large companies?
Im not saying the BBC is perfect, its not by a long shot but we have it much better over here with regards to Media and News than most other places around the world.
The BBC has a massive amount of wasted money and that needs to be addressed... but its a different topic.
Those claiming 'the storage is already there why should we pay for it'. Interesting lack of understanding in how internet streaming works. Why dont you set up streaming from your home and then allow all your mates to non-stop stream from it, see how that fares with your hardware and your ISP?
Im not sure we should pay for it, certainly not for limited access. The way i see it though, if your paying then you are paying to have it, just like a DVD.

[aidanjt]

If a part of the problem is paying for the bandwidth can they not just make iplayer into a torrent program of sorts. I realise many don't like using their upload but perhaps archive content would use a torrent system while live and recent programs use BBC servers.

Online services represent a tiny portion of BBC expenditure.

[aidanjt]

Those claiming 'the storage is already there why should we pay for it'. Interesting lack of understanding in how internet streaming works.

Youtube manages to serve the entire planet with many orders of magnitudes more streaming video and viewers without having the government to coerce money out of everyone's pockets. It's not that difficult when you're not incompetent and pissing away tax payers money.

Why dont you set up streaming from your home and then allow all your mates to non-stop stream from it, see how that fares with your hardware and your ISP?

Big iron, SANs, and dedicated lines to carriers is hardly equivalent to whatever old desktop machine you have laying around, an old 7,200rpm IDE disk, and massively asymmetric broadband running through a £20 router provided by a stingy, lazy, dictatorial ISP.

[The Hand]

They should just have an advert at the beginning of the show on iPlayer, rather than elaborate charging systems.
I remember when the BBC had a strike and all the overpaid egocentric newsreaders disappeared for a day or two.. that was refreshing! It made me realise the public, doesn't need any of them..

[aidanjt]

They should just have an advert at the beginning of the show on iPlayer, rather than elaborate charging systems.
I remember when the BBC had a strike and all the overpaid egocentric newsreaders disappeared for a day or two.. that was refreshing! It made me release the public, doesn't need any of them..

I never watch news anymore. There's plenty of websites peddling opinions on current events these days, I don't need a vocal narrative to go with it, and there's often embedded video if you prefer that kind of thing. TV news made sense pre-internet, it really doesn't make any now, it should go away along with the newspaper. Actually we should just start phasing out broadcast programming entirely, those are old models for very old technology which has been long depreciated.

[petercook7]

Until you multiply it by 24,963,799, then it looks a lot, again.

then add in the billions it gets from the government.

[crossy]

I remember when the BBC had a strike and all the overpaid egocentric newsreaders disappeared for a day or two.. that was refreshing! It made me realise the public, doesn't need any of them..

Here's a tip for you - switch to one of the US news channels (especially Fox), or failing that Sky News, for a week then try the Beeb again. I guarantee that any half intelligent person will be left wondering how there can be so many morons in the world who respect Fox, Sky, etc. Seriously, the Beeb should be proud of their news gathering/presenting efforts!

Its a silly outdated method IMO, im getting less and less value for money from it as i find the majority of the shows im interested are getting cancelled (Spooks was a great one...!) yet all the soaps continue running, this is the problem with the system as its a generic approach so more niche interests are ignored as they dont get the 'viewings' required to pass the finance agreement so all the cash cows like EastEnders will continue running forever and hog all the finance from other shows so its a bit meh to me.

Witness the furore over BBC4 officially being "dumbed down" and cuts being imposed on Radio 3. Personally I've found lots of good BBC4 content so I'm very displeased that it's being moronised in the name of "budgets".

It depends on what they plan to do with this tbh. I for one would be happy to pay a yearly fee or a subscription of some sort in order to see old BBC content. I do mean old content tho, not the stuff thats been shown this year or last. eg : Kids TV was sooo much better when I was a kid, this is a FACT! kids TV today is rubbish, nothing to do with the fact im older or anything, but wouldnt it be great to treat your kids to Glen Michaels Cavalcade (might be scotland only) or Rolf Harris Cartoon Time or Jossy's Giants or Round The Twist. (or Muffin the Mule or Bill and Ben if yer really old )

If it really was all BBC content, then great, if its a select stuff that you can see on other channels or was on recently, not interested. It would also have to be competitively priced, If I can get Netflix or Lovefilm for a fiver a month, I dont expect to pay more than £2 for old BBC content.

Hmm, I'd agree there - although Cavalcade was STV, so unlikely to appear on iPlayer! Having had a thought about this, I'm coming to the opinion that iPlayer itself is a bit of a waste of money - like Dareos says, why not make this a subscription only service including the 7 days catchup. £60 per year seems like a reasonable top end amount to pay for this, and I'm sure it'd be easy to arrange for folks on pensions to get free subscriptions. I can't see a phasing out of the license fee being practical - the whole point of the BBC being supposedly that you can just get a receiver and tune in, no need for tokens/credentials/etc. iPlayer on the other hand, could easily be retrofitted with this kind of "access control". Just as long as they remember that they don't restrict it to the "blessed" options of PC, Mac, iWhatever and possibly Android.

I agree, very unfair organisation with unreal bias lately. I don't want to pay to be treated as if I'm a... well I won't go into their seeming view of typical British person but you get the point.As for the above comment of the current government hatred of the beeb, do you watch it? Listen to the radio stations? Even old newsreaders admit how stupid it is, it's not right is it?

Don't necessarily agree that there's obvious "bias" in there - certainly not "anti Conservative" one that's been claimed by some of the Tory backbench expense claimers. And yes, I'll agree that there's been a worrying dumbing down, (and what is it with all these adverts for other programmes - it's worse than ITV), but that's blamed on "commercial pressures" (reason or excuse - I'll leave others to decide). I listen/watch to the BBC a lot - tv, radio and online - and while there's been some major boneheaded decisions (like paying Wossie!) on the whole I'm content to pay my license fee. In fact, in our house it's the ITV stations that get ignored, mainly because they've stopped showing anything that appeals. As to the current government's anti-BBC bias, try looking up what's been said about "commercialising" and "balance" - always pretty combatative statements. My inclusion of the original "govt hates BBC" comment was to point out that perhaps these moves aren't of the BBC's makings, and perhaps part of the accursed "commercialisation" that the government has as dogma. Apologies that the last bit was off-topic

[Biscuit]

Youtube manages to serve the entire planet with many orders of magnitudes more streaming video and viewers without having the government to coerce money out of everyone's pockets. It's not that difficult when you're not incompetent and pissing away tax payers money.

Your comparing youtube... to the BBC... seriously?
Aside from the obvious difference that Youtube is simply a host for other peoples material and doesnt actually produce any of its own content, its funded by ads anyway. Youtube also doesnt have anywhere near the same kind of standards to live up to that the BBC does, standards which ensure the programming is of decent quality and reaches the maximum audience possible. Youtube is full of Rick Rolls and stupid morphed images of horror films halfway through a puppy video.
Also take into account how selective iPlayer is, it has a lot less content which is in general much longer viewing time and i would suspect that the popular items have a much higher number of simultaneous viewers than that of most youtube videos.

Big iron, SANs, and dedicated lines to carriers is hardly equivalent to whatever old desktop machine you have laying around, an old 7,200rpm IDE disk, and massively asymmetric broadband running through a £20 router provided by a stingy, lazy, dictatorial ISP.

Take into account the quantity of people who are using it though, its a decent scaled down comparison. To be able to afford to stream to a select bunch of mates at decent speeds would be expensive, scale that up to the entire country and you can see how expensive it is to provide content in the volume that the BBC do!
Besides its not even tax payer money, you pay (under £15 a month, which i personally think is more than reasonable) out of choice. If you remove the ariel connection from your house you no longer need to pay for your licence. Its your choice.

How can you say 'phase out traditional broadcasting' really? Just because the members of this forum understand the ability new technology has to improve our media consumption doesn't mean everyone does, infact most people i know don't really know much better. Admittedly some would learn however others would struggle, especially the older folk.

I will agree that there are better options for the news on the internet but even then i will go to the Beeb. Yes there is alternative non-biased options however their main prerogative seems to be proving how biased traditional news reporters are.

[Smudger]

I think a BBC without licence fee would be abhorrent. Content driven by advertisers? No thanks. Every channel will become a facsimile of Sky1. Don't get me wrong, some of the stuff on Sky 1 is good, but the majority is there to please advertisers.
And radio? Playing the same songs, because that's the audience the main advertisers want to reach? No thanks. Absolute radio seemed to try to buck this trend, but they've just ended up with what the advertisers want, not what the listening public want.

[ajones]

Hang on... We've paid for the creation of the content once. We've also paid for the digital storage of that content somewhere, unless the Beeb still stores everything on mag tape. I'm also paying for my broadband connection in order to retrieve this material.

It was the Beebs decision to unleash iPlayer, so for license payers it should be free. It's for them to manage the costs at their for the storage and delivery of it, not us.

Personally I'm not too bothered though.. I hardly use the service, but there's a principal somewhere, I'm sure of it

[mikerr]

TBH I use iplayer far more than I watch any BBC channel.

As far as I'm concerned I'm happy my licence fee goes towards making quality programmes (without them having to have an eye on the commerciial aspect)
and it is quite bizarre that iplayer doesn't even technically require a TV licence...
http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.u...rogs/tvlicence

[The Hand]

Here's a tip for you - switch to one of the US news channels (especially Fox), or failing that Sky News, for a week then try the Beeb again. I guarantee that any half intelligent person will be left wondering how there can be so many morons in the world who respect Fox, Sky, etc. Seriously, the Beeb should be proud of their news gathering/presenting efforts!

Thanks for the tip, but I've already seen Fox and Sky and for the reasons you mentioned, I don't watch them. When the BBC strike was on, there were fresh-faced people happy to cover for the likes of Huw Edwards for a fraction of the cost doing the same job if not better.

[Dareos]

. Youtube is full of Rick Rolls and stupid morphed images of horror films halfway through a puppy video.

You have to admit, this would make BBC news a bit more interesting

"And now over to our Italian Correspondent in Rome to hear the latest from Sylvio Berlusconi and his intention to resign as president of the country....

NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP, NEVER GONNA LET YOU DOWN........"

[aidanjt]

Your comparing youtube... to the BBC... seriously?
Aside from the obvious difference that Youtube is simply a host for other peoples material and doesnt actually produce any of its own content,

iPlayer doesn't produce content either, it delivers produced-for-broadcast TV after broadcasting.. And I think the fact that if even the simpletons who use Youtube can figure out how to upload a video, I'm pretty sure 'professional' admins can handle it as well.

its funded by ads anyway.

That's actually very recent. For the longest time they were merely operating with the investment capital they had, and other such deals.

Youtube also doesnt have anywhere near the same kind of standards to live up to that the BBC does, standards which ensure the programming is of decent quality and reaches the maximum audience possible.

Pretty easy when you have stacks of made-for-TV content ready to upload.

Youtube is full of Rick Rolls and stupid morphed images of horror films halfway through a puppy video.

That's a bit harsh now isn't it? The range of quality of video is as vast as the quantity of video on it.

Also take into account how selective iPlayer is, it has a lot less content which is in general much longer viewing time and i would suspect that the popular items have a much higher number of simultaneous viewers than that of most youtube videos.

All true. However Youtube still pumps much more video to much more people. That's raw data which has to be handled by machines, which you say is a challenge for iPlayer, my pointing out that Youtube does much more for much more nullifies the hardware complexity angle of streaming video.

Take into account the quantity of people who are using it though, its a decent scaled down comparison. [...], scale that up to the entire country and you can see how expensive it is to provide content in the volume that the BBC do!

And scaling it up to an entire planet is impossible, right?

To be able to afford to stream to a select bunch of mates at decent speeds would be expensive

The problem with streaming to a bunch of mates is crap broadband service, not technological.

Besides its not even tax payer money, you pay (under £15 a month, which i personally think is more than reasonable) out of choice. If you remove the ariel connection from your house you no longer need to pay for your licence. Its your choice.

It just has to have a working tuner, connected or otherwise. It's a tax.

How can you say 'phase out traditional broadcasting' really?

Quite easily. It's a content delivery model for 100 year old technology.

Just because the members of this forum understand the ability new technology has to improve our media consumption doesn't mean everyone does, infact most people i know don't really know much better. Admittedly some would learn however others would struggle, especially the older folk.

Not if it's packaged right. New doesn't have to mean complex. People's heads didn't explode with the transition to DVB-T, did they? BT Vision already offers a service of this nature.

I will agree that there are better options for the news on the internet but even then i will go to the Beeb.

As I often do as well. bbc.co.uk/news makes BBC News (the channel) redundant.