QOTW: Should the TV licence fee be abolished?

[cheesemp]

Gosh no. I don't want to think about how bad TV would be without the BBC. Cbeebees is excellent -when I consider what relatives pay to shove adverts down their kids throats with sky (and don't get me started on the Americanism's they pick up from from trash like doc mcstuffins). I think the BBC are doing an excellent job when you consider how much there hands are being held behind their back by the Tory's... They do need to close the iPlayer loop hole though.

[Zimano]

I heard a year or 2 back they were scrapping the license fee and introducing a 'media license' which would cover any device capable of watching a live feed.

Not heard anything since then however.

What you describe is the TV Licence as it is now and has been this way for years.

[Corky34]

After recent actions, abolish it and show adverts.

Yes. Move to subscription based services for all BBC channels.

The problem with both of these is that there's only a finite amount of money to go around, if they show adverts then that means less advertising money being spent on other less popular channels and if they moved to a subscription based service there would be less money being spent on other subscription based services.

[Wozza63]

Yes. Pay for fewer services by general taxation.

On the condition that I might be completely misunderstanding the need for any of these; there could be some legit reasons to keep them that I can't think of:

- Dispose of BBC3
- Wind down all/most local BBC radio stations (22.8% of total radio expenditure). Sell, or rent out, the buildings. Or convert them to apartments and rent them out ("BBC Housing Service"?) - more housing is always good.
- BBC Alba? I have no idea how popular this is; maybe lots of people might want it.
- Keep all national BBC radio stations.
- All national radio stations should play the exact same news, travel report and national weather report. One newsreader/meteorologist, not one per station. The schedules will need tweaking to accommodate the standard length of them.
- Do we really need BBC radio in other countries? These are, however, probably useful for espionage & SIGINT purposes.
- Stop buying TV rights for all major sports & events. No Eurovision, no World Cup, no Tennis, no F1. I know the BBC does it better, but other broadcasters suffice.
- Does anyone use the "red button+" services? Make them online only, if so. Red Button cost £41.8 million in 2012/13. Ow.
- Disband the license fee collection service. This apparently costs £111 million per year.
- £29.2 million is spent on orchestras & peforming groups. Chances are that the current .gov would want to keep the orchestra though. Crazy, IMO, but whatever. Other groups are.... Big Band, Concert Orchestra, National Chorus of Wales, National Orchestra of Wales, Philharmonic, Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Singers, Symphony Chorus, Symphony Orchestra.
- BBC Four also seems to get very low viewership: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B...ch_2011-12.png
- BBC Parliament should be kept; the public needs to at least have the chance to see politics in action if they can be even slightly bothered.
- Dispose of Radio 1Xtra & possibly also 5 Extra, 4 Xtra & Asian Network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B...ch_2011-12.png
- Apparently 10% of all court cases involve license fee evasion. This would, I guess, save a YUUUJ amount of money in costs.
- Perhaps consider making more channels go off-air overnight? They could perhaps just duplicate Radio 4.

- More scientific shows/series, education, natural history, etc. Maybe even broadcast University lectures.

I would be the least popular BBC DG ever.

I would pay for TV license under these circumstances.
Dividing these values by 25 million (number of TV licenses in UK) and you can see the minimum that would be saved. These don't include the items that you haven't given a value for.
Local Radio - £5.76
BBC3 - £4.44
Red Button - £1.65
Fee Collection - £4.37
Orchestras - £1.15
Specified Radio Closures - £1.27

This adds up to: £18.64 just for those that have costs easily available
Eastenders alone is over £50million per year. Can't imagine the costs of some other entertainment shows.
Sports broadcasting rights is probably a few hundred million

And all the other things you've mentioned would probably cut the BBC by at least half and make it essential only rather than forced entertainment that I don't want.

[directhex]

Go look at the flagship channel for Sky, Sky One, and count the number of repeats on any day of the week you choose. Realize that all television will slowly become that if the BBC is not there to maintain a level of quality.

Fox (Sky) News in the States feels that it's perfectly acceptable to lie. Jon Stewart and The Daily Show even released a vine with 50 lies that Fox News has told:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_6758614.html.

Fox even lies about us here in the UK, remember that Birmingham is a no-go area for non-muslims ?:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/201...or-non-muslims


Fox is also reportedly the most trusted news source in the US, according to a poll:-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ot-that-close/.


That's what UK television will become, 20+ hours a day of repeats with made up news and no channel wanting to annoy advertisers for fear of losing their money.

It's worse than that.

Imagine what would happen to the documentaries. Once upon a time there was a commercial channel with nothing but history documentaries. In the name of profit, it became back-to-back Pawn Stars.

That's where a pure profit motive gets you. Pawn Stars and Ice Road Truckers.

[Myss_tree]

Essentially the BBC is doomed ... or at least the current model is.
They are faced with less income and bigger expenditure so cuts are inevitable (using their current model).
BBC 3 supposedly cost 30 million pounds a year, a huge chunk of that could have been save by cutting the wages/expenses of the top 121 backroom staff who are on a minimum of £150,000 a year, thats an £18,150,000 minimum wage bill/expenses. Factor in some of the wages paid to presenters/reporters/stars/celebs/etc then the outlay is huge.
I do not buy into the "you have to pay the money to get the best" scenario as there is not an endless call for those positions and there is always someone new and fresh on the way up who will initially work for less.
The BBC needs to change.
Allow product placement. Would it really influence folk that much if Stella Artois was being sold in the Queen Vic or Coca Cola in the cafe in Last of the Summer Wine?
As a public (allegedly) service then no one should be paid more than the Prime Minister (in fact no one in public office should earn more than the PM).
Go subscription streaming based, pay to watch what you want to when you want to.
The BBC mission is/was to educate, inform and entertain, i would say they now attempt to mainly do the latter, entertain ... they are trying to compete with the other braodcasters mainly at the expense of educating and to a lesser extent information.
Rather than compete with others in the entertainment section of which there is now an amply generous serving they should aim for the education and information market of which there is a severe lack of and is ever diminishing.
I hardly ever watch any of the Freeview channels down the listings as they all run the adverts at more or less the same time and 3 times every hour, its around 15 minutes adverts in every hour. If there is anything worth watching its best to record or watch on one of the catch up services later so you can skip the ads.
My main viewing for entertainment is now Amazon Fire TV and Now TV (the cut down Sky service). They both provide what i want, when i want and its ad free. Admittedly there is not everything i would like to see but it is streets ahead of the terrestrial channels.

[spacein_vader]

Yes. Pay for fewer services by general taxation.

On the condition that I might be completely misunderstanding the need for any of these; there could be some legit reasons to keep them that I can't think of:

- Dispose of BBC3
- Wind down all/most local BBC radio stations (22.8% of total radio expenditure). Sell, or rent out, the buildings. Or convert them to apartments and rent them out ("BBC Housing Service"?) - more housing is always good.
- BBC Alba? I have no idea how popular this is; maybe lots of people might want it.
- Keep all national BBC radio stations.
- All national radio stations should play the exact same news, travel report and national weather report. One newsreader/meteorologist, not one per station. The schedules will need tweaking to accommodate the standard length of them.
- Do we really need BBC radio in other countries? These are, however, probably useful for espionage & SIGINT purposes.
- Stop buying TV rights for all major sports & events. No Eurovision, no World Cup, no Tennis, no F1. I know the BBC does it better, but other broadcasters suffice.
- Does anyone use the "red button+" services? Make them online only, if so. Red Button cost £41.8 million in 2012/13. Ow.
- Disband the license fee collection service. This apparently costs £111 million per year.
- £29.2 million is spent on orchestras & peforming groups. Chances are that the current .gov would want to keep the orchestra though. Crazy, IMO, but whatever. Other groups are.... Big Band, Concert Orchestra, National Chorus of Wales, National Orchestra of Wales, Philharmonic, Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Singers, Symphony Chorus, Symphony Orchestra.
- BBC Four also seems to get very low viewership: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B...ch_2011-12.png
- BBC Parliament should be kept; the public needs to at least have the chance to see politics in action if they can be even slightly bothered.
- Dispose of Radio 1Xtra & possibly also 5 Extra, 4 Xtra & Asian Network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B...ch_2011-12.png
- Apparently 10% of all court cases involve license fee evasion. This would, I guess, save a YUUUJ amount of money in costs.
- Perhaps consider making more channels go off-air overnight? They could perhaps just duplicate Radio 4.

- More scientific shows/series, education, natural history, etc. Maybe even broadcast University lectures.

I would be the least popular BBC DG ever.

See I would go virtually the opposite route. The BBC's remit is to provide content that commercial rivals can't (usually due to small audiences,) or won't (usually due to politics.) With that in mind I would:

- Keep BBC local radio, some areas do not have a commercial alternative for news etc and a lot of areas that do are only syndicated (e.g Heart FM.)
- Keep Radio 3 (or merge it with Classic FM), Radio 4 & 4 Extra, 5 Live, Asian Network and possibly 6 music and 1Extra (I don't know how well catered those musical areas are in commercial stations,) but close Radio 1, 2 & 5 Live Sports Extra as commercial alternatives exist.
- Keep BBC Parliament, News Channel, Cbeebies & CBBC. The former are useful tools and the latter are a godsend for parents who don't want children bombarded by toy ads or American programming.
- Agree on the syndicated news to all national radio channels.
- Don't bid on any sports rights (except to brief news bulletin scorelines etc,) that are covered by commercial channels. If they want to show under-represented sports that commercial rivals won't (e.g. the Womens World Cup,) that's fine.
- BBC 1 & 2 could probably be merged by the time you remove soaps, reality shows etc. Documentaries, consumer rights programmes, educational series etc to be promoted.

All that said, the TV licence as as stands is becoming unworkable. I'm not a fan of the idea of general taxation as then it really will be government biased but a new solution needs to be found.

As a public (allegedly) service then no one should be paid more than the Prime Minister (in fact no one in public office should earn more than the PM).

I agree, the post of Prime Minister is criminally underpaid. Shall we say £2 million a year?

[Fabula]

Move abroad.

See the quality of channels available, and the OTT product placement on the "ad-free" channels.

I used to whinge about the license fee, but having lived in Spain, I would gladly pay double the current fee just to maintain the remaining quality stuff. And it´s probably worth it for Radio 4 alone.


The license fee is a bad system. But it is considerably better than the alternatives.

[EndlessWaves]

It seems bizarre to me that people can complain about the BBC doing a bad job.

What else does £12 a month get you? Certainly not Sky. They charge far more to even provide you with their stripped down basic service and their amount of original content is tiny compared with the BBC.

You could get Amazon Prime or Netflix but they're even worse in that department. I think the upcoming Not Top Gear series may be the first bit of UK TV Amazon have made.

Catchup TV? Without the licence fee that'll soon evaporate, and the loophole that lets you get it free will get closed whatever happens.

There's youtube of course, but it's hardly in the same league.

And of course some of that £12 goes towards infrastructure. The Digital TV and Broadband rollouts would have been slower or taken money from elsewhere if they weren't paid for by the people who use them (and the likes of iPlayer have been a big driver of broadband adoption).

The licence fee provides excellent value for money and scrapping the BBC at this point would be like the burning down of the aircraft industry in the white heat of technology, something later generations will regret.

If they want to rename it then that's fine though, make it like the line rental situation with phone lines in that you can pay it to your TV provider and they pass it on rather than paying it directly.

[Myss_tree]

I agree, the post of Prime Minister is criminally underpaid. Shall we say £2 million a year?

Current salary for the PM is £142,500 a year (plus extras), thats ample payment for anyone. The current Director General of the BBC is paid £532,000, thats grossly excessive.
If the DG was paid the same as the PM would the quality of the BBC diminsh further than it has?

[Wozza63]

It seems bizarre to me that people can complain about the BBC doing a bad job.

What else does £12 a month get you? Certainly not Sky. They charge far more to even provide you with their stripped down basic service and their amount of original content is tiny compared with the BBC.

You could get Amazon Prime or Netflix but they're even worse in that department. I think the upcoming Not Top Gear series may be the first bit of UK TV Amazon have made.

Catchup TV? Without the licence fee that'll soon evaporate, and the loophole that lets you get it free will get closed whatever happens.

There's youtube of course, but it's hardly in the same league.

And of course some of that £12 goes towards infrastructure. The Digital TV and Broadband rollouts would have been slower or taken money from elsewhere if they weren't paid for by the people who use them (and the likes of iPlayer have been a big driver of broadband adoption).

The licence fee provides excellent value for money and scrapping the BBC at this point would be like the burning down of the aircraft industry in the white heat of technology, something later generations will regret.

If they want to rename it then that's fine though, make it like the line rental situation with phone lines in that you can pay it to your TV provider and they pass it on rather than paying it directly.

I don't think its that they are doing a bad job, it's more that we are forced to pay for this stuff even if we want completely different live TV. For that reason it should be the bare essentials and not entertainment shows.

Amazon Prime and Netflix are great. Cheap, convenient and also ad-free. Plus neither requires me to pay £145 to another company whose services I don't want.

The quality of YouTube is improving big time. Think it can eventually be a decent alternative. And I don't really think iPlayer was the biggest cause for broadband growth. I think YouTube would have had a far bigger effect.

It may be excellent value for money that takes advantage of their services but why should I have to pay the BBC £145 every year just to watch Sky Sports?

[spacein_vader]

Current salary for the PM is £142,500 a year (plus extras), thats ample payment for anyone. The current Director General of the BBC is paid £532,000, thats grossly excessive.
If the DG was paid the same as the PM would the quality of the BBC diminsh further than it has?

Do you honestly believe that the most important job in the country is only worth 145k? No wonder we get no marks for politicians if the best & brightest know they'll earn more as a banker, stockbroker, solicitor or similar. £2 million might attract them though.

As for the DG, I can't comment if that's grossly excessive without knowing what the equivalent posts at ITV, Sky or Channel 4 are paid.

[aidanjt]

No wonder we get no marks for politicians if the best & brightest know they'll earn more as a banker, stockbroker, solicitor or similar.

You're working under the assumption that the best and brightest are attracted to absurd quantities of money rather than the challenge a job presents, moreover, if you can't accumulate wealth and live comfortably on £145k and a lavish expense account, then you're not terribly bright, either. Any greedy incompetent oaf can be and are attracted to outlandish amounts of money.

[Luke7]

The BBC would not be able to survive as a private business. Investors would not be interested in a place where managers are given ridiculously high wages. Same with the NHS which is incredibly inefficient and not cost effective compared to private healthcare because when it's nationalised they don't really care as it is not their money.

Looks like you've bought everything the right wing media wants you to believe, hook, line and sinker. Private healthcare is there solely to make money, which means as little funding as possible is allocated to healthcare and the maximum amount to shareholders and CEO's.

The NHS, where its efficiency dips, is due to cuts. It is reasonably well understood that rightwing policy makers cut funding to the NHS for precisely this reason. To make it look bad in the public eye, making the transition to the private sector less "rocky".

When it comes to the NHS in the international space, it is frequently ranked exceptionally highly and jealously looked upon by other nations.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/17/nhs-health
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/topics/nhs-reform/mythbusters/nhs-performance
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uks-healthcare-ranked-the-best-out-of-11-western-countries-with-us-coming-last-9542833.html

[Luke7]

Ha, being a politician should be low/no wage, like it used to be. Because of the money, it currently only attracts people that are greedy which is precisely why politics is in the state its in. MP our servants to the people and should be paid as such. Besides its not like they actually do any work anyway, thats what their armies of civil servants are for.

[spacein_vader]

Ha, being a politician should be low/no wage, like it used to be. Because of the money, it currently only attracts people that are greedy which is precisely why politics is in the state its in. MP our servants to the people and should be paid as such. Besides its not like they actually do any work anyway, thats what their armies of civil servants are for.

I understand your point, but if you make it unpaid you limit being an MP purely to those who have enough family wealth they don't need paying. Do we really want to go back to a parliament full of titled aristocrats?