BBC puts forward levy on broadband bills idea

[turnipatour]

How would a broadband tax potentially work? Fixed line broadband is easy, but where is the line drawn for mobile broadband vs a mobile data plan, what about multiple mobile broadband/mobile data users in the same household? I guess you could end up in a situation where all broadband/mobile data has a levy on it, then it's up to the users to prove they are a single household to get the levy removed from additional plans.

Sweden as of last year moved to an income based tax for the TV license. It basically works out as the same as the previous TV license fee for a 2 adult household on a reasonable income (it's capped at that). On a lower income you pay less, more adults in one household with a sufficient income end up paying more.

[ik9000]

How about a tax on sky TV and Amazon prime. Particularly the latter given that lack of corporation tax etc.

[gagaga]

Sweden as of last year moved to an income based tax for the TV license. It basically works out as the same as the previous TV license fee for a 2 adult household on a reasonable income (it's capped at that). On a lower income you pay less, more adults in one household with a sufficient income end up paying more.

Just no. This is based on the assumption that the BBC has a right to exist, and people should be *forced* to pay whether they use it or not.

Sweden is different to the UK. It has a much smaller population and a unique language. There is good reason for them to have a state funded broadcaster. We are neither small nor have a unique language (hence output can be easily sold abroad to help fund it).

[ik9000]

? you're kidding right? No reason to have a non-commercial broadcaster who has the ability to not simply prioritise ratings and popularity? What possible benefit could that bring right>?

Edit and you're looking at the UK as if only one language were spoken here. Blinkered London-centric specs on there maybe gagaga?

[turnipatour]

Sweden as of last year moved to an income based tax for the TV license. It basically works out as the same as the previous TV license fee for a 2 adult household on a reasonable income (it's capped at that). On a lower income you pay less, more adults in one household with a sufficient income end up paying more.

Just no. This is based on the assumption that the BBC has a right to exist, and people should be *forced* to pay whether they use it or not.

Sweden is different to the UK. It has a much smaller population and a unique language. There is good reason for them to have a state funded broadcaster. We are neither small nor have a unique language (hence output can be easily sold abroad to help fund it).

Swedish isn't so unique, it's very very similar to Norwegian and Danish, and isn't the only official language in Sweden anyway.

And when did language define the ability to sell abroad... The Bridge?

[gagaga]

? you're kidding right? No reason to have a non-commercial broadcaster who has the ability to not simply prioritise ratings and popularity? What possible benefit could that bring right>?

The BBC chases rating exactly the same as any commercial broadcasters. It puts programmes up against equilalents on the commercial channels. It pays stay presenters millions of pounds a year. 25 years ago you could argue the BBC served a different purpose, now it is just ITV with the BBC worldview slathered on thick.

Swedish isn't so unique, it's very very similar to Norwegian and Danish, and isn't the only official language in Sweden anyway.

And when did language define the ability to sell abroad... The Bridge?

Hmm. One example from 2011, that somewhat comfirms my point?

[spacein_vader]

The BBC chases rating exactly the same as any commercial broadcasters. It puts programmes up against equilalents on the commercial channels. It pays stay presenters millions of pounds a year. 25 years ago you could argue the BBC served a different purpose, now it is just ITV with the BBC worldview slathered on thick.

Primetime BBC1 does and I'd be with you in binning that stuff. Do BBC Alba (Scots gaelic language,) S4C (Welsh language,) BBC Parliament and to a lesser extent Cbeebies and CBBC do that? Or Radio Scotland, the Asian Network, Radio Foyle, Radio Cymru or Radio Nan Gaidheal? Plus arguably all the county stations now that all nearly all commercial local radio is either regionally or nationally syndicated?

For me I'd be happy for the BBC to be drastically slimmed down of all the commercial stuff (perhaps keep producing it to sell to the commercial stations as a money maker,) and keep the stuff like the above examples that fill niches commercial stations don't.

[3dcandy]

Primetime BBC1 does and I'd be with you in binning that stuff. Do BBC Alba (Scots gaelic language,) S4C (Welsh language,) BBC Parliament and to a lesser extent Cbeebies and CBBC do that? Or Radio Scotland, the Asian Network, Radio Foyle, Radio Cymru or Radio Nan Gaidheal? Plus arguably all the county stations now that all nearly all commercial local radio is either regionally or nationally syndicated?

For me I'd be happy for the BBC to be drastically slimmed down of all the commercial stuff (perhaps keep producing it to sell to the commercial stations as a money maker,) and keep the stuff like the above examples that fill niches commercial stations don't.

Which begs the question how would they fund it?

Oh wait....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

People might want to ask who benefits most if there is no BBC...its people such as Rupert Murdoch and a number of US centric corporations who are good mates of certain politicians,so they have been drip feeding negative stuff via their mouthpieces for a longtime. The BBC is not only a competitor locally for these huge corporations,but more importantly internationally.

Cat's on the money - this a political move.

Finally the other penny drops.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...-station-in-uk

Rival efforts are under way to launch a Fox News-style opinionated current affairs TV station in Britain to counter the BBC.

One group is promising a news channel “distinctly different from the out-of-touch incumbents” and has already been awarded a licence to broadcast by the media regulator, Ofcom, under the name “GB News”. Its founder has said the BBC is a “disgrace” that “is bad for Britain on so many levels” and “needs to be broken up”.

A rival project is being devised in the headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire by the former Fox News executive David Rhodes, although it is unclear whether it will result in a traditional TV channel or be online-only.

Both are pitching to a perceived gap in the market for opinionated video output fuelled by growing distrust of the BBC among some parts of its audience, especially on the political right over culture war issues such as Brexit and whether Rule, Britannia! should be sung at the Last Night of the Proms.

The prize is twofold: the political influence that would come with breaking the BBC and Sky’s control of British rolling news, along with the potential profits if it is possible to replicate some of the enormous audiences that tune in to watch opinionated talkshow hosts in the US, where Fox News is hugely profitable.

GB News is the work of a company called All Perspectives, controlled by two British-American executives who are associated with the US billionaire John Malone. Known as the “cable cowboy”, Malone chairs Liberty Global, the owner of Virgin Media, as well as the parent company of the Discovery television network.

Andrew Cole, one of the co-founders of GB News, also sits on the board of Liberty Global. He told the Guardian he hoped to be able to discuss the project in September, but he has previously made clear his views on the broadcasting landscape.

He told his LinkedIn followers that the BBC was “possibly the most biased propaganda machine in the world” and to “watch out for announcements of famous presenters and the launch of a completely new TV news channel for the UK – one that will be distinctly different from the out-of-touch incumbents”. He added: “The people need and want this new perspective.”

Sources with knowledge of the project suggested GB News was in discussions with Discovery about a tie-up, with the potential for an announcement in September. It has a licence in place and while this does not guarantee the channel will make it to air – or that it will be called GB News – it means Ofcom has been provided with the outline business case, distribution plans and intended audience. Discovery declined to comment.

The challenge both projects face is the UK’s strict broadcast rules on due impartiality, enforced by the media regulator. One possible route around them is to follow the lead of the radio station LBC, which has achieved record audiences by realising that the rules can be interpreted to allow strongly opinionated presenters, so long as they are balanced out elsewhere in the schedule with alternative viewpoints.

A similar model has been followed by Piers Morgan’s outbursts on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, which regularly become talking points online and drive substantial traffic to tabloid newspapers. News UK’s TalkRadio has pushed this tactic further, with regular debates on culture war hot topics rapidly turned into clips shared on social media.

Rhodes, who was hired by News UK in the spring and most recently served as president of CBS News, is said by sources at the company to have the backing of Lachlan Murdoch, the heir apparent to the business empire. He has been seen taking an interest in the TalkRadio model. A News UK spokesperson declined to comment on the suggestion that a fully fledged news channel was in the works but confirmed he was continuing to work on “video projects”.

One of the great unknowns of any such project is the role of Nigel Farage. The former Ukip leader left LBC amid staff anger over his comments on migrants crossing the Channel, but he has the potential to deliver a ready-made anti-BBC, pro-Brexit audience. He has recently appeared on the Sun’s YouTube channel and TalkRadio, both owned by News UK.

The proms outrage promoted by the Daily Mail,ignored the fact that due to social distancing,it was hard to run a worded version of the song,so an instrumental version was played. Its all like all the other outrage,anything UK owned(and public owned) is generally criticised to the end until it is privatised. Examples include Royal Mail,etc.

So all the fake outrage is,so Fox and Murdoch can get even more control in the UK. Virgin Media is US owned and News GB is going to be lead by Sir Robbie Gibb who was a former no10 advisor under May.

We will have foreign owned media now increasingly dominating the country. This is on top of companies such as Google,Apple,MS,Facebook,Twitter which are doing the same on the internet.

[spacein_vader]

I've never heard of "culture war topics" before. Are we in a culture war, if so with who?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I've never heard of "culture war topics" before. Are we in a culture war, if so with who?

What you see in the US,and increasingly what you see on US owned media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook. Conservatives vs liberals rubbish(basically religious vs non-religious people in the US). I see people increasingly using that terminology here,and for the most part we are quite a liberal country which is not exceedingly religious,so not sure why these terminologies are being used here. The other is snowflake,which again is a culture war reference used in the US,which is so dumb,when you stop and think about its usage.

So promote extreme versions of each point being discussed,and destroy the centre/moderate aspects. Basically how every political argument seems to go nowadays. Divide and conquer. In fact the Daily Mail is the most famous for doing this in the UK - they revel in it(although everyone is slowly doing the same).

[gagaga]

Finally the other penny drops.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...-station-in-uk



The proms outrage promoted by the Daily Mail,ignored the fact that due to social distancing,it was hard to run a worded version of the song,so an instrumental version was played. Its all like all the other outrage,anything UK owned(and public owned) is generally criticised to the end until it is privatised. Examples include Royal Mail,etc.

So all the fake outrage is,so Fox and Murdoch can get even more control in the UK. Virgin Media is US owned and News GB is going to be lead by Sir Robbie Gibb who was a former no10 advisor under May.

We will have foreign owned media now increasingly dominating the country. This is on top of companies such as Google,Apple,MS,Facebook,Twitter which are doing the same on the internet.

So what you're saying use the right sort of bias is okay?

The left's obsession with Murdoch is just pathetic; for a start he doesn't currently own/run any TV station here, he sold them to Comcast. Sky has gone full woke since the sale - full-on obsession with the American Marxist BLM movement, anti government, bias via omission reports (as well as via opinion). The BBC is the same - just watch the BBC news (especially Jon Soper from the US) and try to claim there is no bias there. They are an embarrassment.

The BBC has gone from representing a neutral facts based stance to full on metro left woke. It does not provide all facts, those it does provide are biased, spun and reported with opinion not neutrality.

Quoting the Guardian/Independent as some kind of moral compass just shows utter hollowness. For a start, the Guardian's finger-wagging pro BLM tax-the-rich morality is a little hollow, given they were founded on money from the slave trade and now exist due to a trust fund from that kept in secretive offshore tax haven - how they think they can lecture the rich in the UK to pay more tax is ridiculous. Their a list writers kept drawing their six figure salaries whilst the pleb workers were first furloughed and supsequently sacked.

The BBC has, like most of the quangos and charities in this country, been infiltrated from top to toe by the same Blairite internationalist anti-British (specifically anti-English) mob. It lectures and castigates any diversity of opinion (whilst banging on about those with a different skin colour as long as they toe the line/ can be dismissed as thick plebs). They've lost all right to force the populace to pay.

The government has 2 trillion to pay off - selling the BBC for the 10 or 20 billion it would bring would be a good start, but before that the license fee must end (or become optional with zero obligation to pay).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I read the news on the DM website,but if I quoted the DM people would laugh here. The Guardian picked up on it,before the others. Blair and various Tory governments sold off more and more of our public owned utilities so just wind it in. Labour hasn't been in power for a while,so evoking them is clutching at straws. They are all the same,so trying to make this a Labour vs Tory war,won't work as in the end the same outcomes happened.

Lord Rothermere started the Metro and DM,so played both sides and he was a conservative. The Mirror recently bought both,so they can both counter each other with outrage at each other and sell papers and ad revenue to both sides.

The Sun and The Times is owned by Murdoch. The Independent and London Evening Standard are owned by Russian brothers(who are against Putin),and is not really left wing. Its UK liberal centrist with a free market stance.The FT is owned by Nikkei, Inc. and they are Japanese conservative. The Guardian come out of the UK liberal movement and is a trust.

Sky was owned by Murdoch an Australian-American,Comcast is American....all foreign. Twitter,Facebook and Google are all US owned. People must spend too much time on Twitter and Facebook if they think Comcast is left wing. Fox is owned by the Murdoch group and the patriach turfed out his own son,as he questioned some of his dad's practices,so sounds more like a bit of nepotism going on there. Virgin Media group is owned by a pro-republican business person.

Comcast is owned by pro-democrat business people. Facebook,Twitter and Google are all US centric organisations. The US is not a left wing country - the Democrats are not left wing,they are more right wing than the Tories are. So much of the media we consume is controlled by foreign companies.

For all its faults the BBC is the one British owned(and one which is owned by us) media organisation left which has global reach. Everything else with any global reach is owned by foreigners. The French government owns AFP which is a huge media organisation. They also own France24 which has global reach. France and German put billions of Euro into state support news organisations. Japan has NHK which is also publically funded. Many of these are taxpayer funded,which the BBC should be. Instead they have to be forced to go after people to pay for a license fee,and make "commercially viable" entertainment which needs to "sell".

People get influenced by reading foreign owned media pieces,and as a result get into thinking anything BRITISH owned,and PUBLIC owned is useless and should get sold off. Have you noticed how nothing good is said,and is usually buried on purpose? Where do you read all this ultra negative news then?? Oh,the mouthpieces of organisations which have their own vested interests to attack a stated funded competitor.

English is the language of this country and it was this country which spread English throughout the world. So why is the English language narrative being controlled by other countries,and foreign dialects of English being allowed to make centre stage in the world? Instead of Britishisms spreading through the world,Americanisms are slowly replacing the dialects of English spoken in the country which formulated it.

So why shouldn't we have a UK owned global media group,which is centred in the UK and owned by UK interests?? Especially as we are meant to be a "global Britain". More and more of the larger countries are investing into their public broadcasters - we are doing the opposite. So what is the UK going to do,rent a few US or European owned broadcasters in the coming decades?

France has it,Germany has it,Russia has it,China has it,Japan has it,etc.Why because instead of the self-hating we have in this country,those countries feels its their need,to push their own languages and narratives throughout the world.

Have SOME people become so apathetic,that they beg for EVERYTHING to be owned by foreign interests.

Everything which is public owned gets the same sort of negative media spun around it,followed by slow defunding,until people want it to be privatised,and those same people who spin all the rubbish profit from it.


This is why every bloody thing is foreign owned in this country as people like them have no pride in anything British owned and wish for foreigners to own everything due to some weird complex. Even the DM's previous owner for decades,lived in France,and it always revelled in utter negativity about everything in the UK.

Yet,look at the US and so many European countries. Their major companies and entities are propped up the government and taxpayer funds. Examples include how the US government uses its $700 bilion defence budget to strategically prop up its aerospace firms in a non-compete award of contracts. How foreign firms have to have US partners for any major contract. Samsung,Fujitsu,etc all deeply involved with their respective governments,and how they use nationalistic interests to defend them at all costs. Many of them practice a form of corporate socialism,to keep their major companies and public utilities controlled by their own countries. Here we just sell off everything important,or just run down everything. The free market doesn't exist in reality.

After all we are the only country in the world to shut down a successful space programme,because "it was cheaper to buy from abroad". Not a single person cared. Yet France,etc all found a way to do have space programmes,and make money out of them.

Everything is short termism,everything is about making a quick buck.

This piecemeal running down and selling off,of everything we do here would make the our ancestors spin in their graves.

Those countries would NEVER put up with the amount of foreign control of important interests this country "allows". We are increasingly not masters of our own destiny here.

PS:

There are 40 different dialects of English many of which are structurally different and 14 different langauges in this country. Be proud of the diversity of your country when other countries do what they can do promote and protect it. Scots and Welsh are spoken by nearly 3 million people alone. There is Angloromani,Gaelic and Cornish which are smaller languages too.

[Phage]

.

Can you free some space in your inbox ?

[Phage]

Also - don't feed the troll

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Also - don't feed the troll

I said my piece. If people want to take it onboard fine,if they don't then see as history repeats itself like clockwork. The rest of the world from Japan to Turkey is investing more into state backed media groups,to spread their countries messages,we are going the other way and slowly destroying one of the largest,and most global reaching media groups in the world,because someone on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/some competing media organisation said they were crap repeatedly. A bit like with the Royal Mail too.