Article & Poll: Should we keep the BBC Licence Fee?

What do you think about the licence fee

  • The Licence Fee the most appropriate way for the BBC to be funded

    Votes: 109 19.4%
  • The BBC has to change its funding approach to remain relevant

    Votes: 133 23.6%
  • The BBC should become commercial and the licence fee scrapped

    Votes: 309 54.9%
  • Other, please answer in the thread below...

    Votes: 12 2.1%

  • Total voters
    563
I'd pay double if they'd scrap Eastenders.
 
A licence fee for the BBC has only one valid reason for existing: It creates content of value to the nation that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

The BBC news is more trustworthy than any other sources, so I see value there.

But on the flipside, my belief in the licence fee was reduced long ago when Eastenders was launched. This was set up to compete directly with similar existing offerings from commercial operations, therefore making it harder for others to operate here. That is the total opposite of what the BBC should be.
 
I think the licence is great value for money, for all the entertainment it provides, News, Radio etc.

I do think though that the money should be collected another way and not via advertising.

I moved house fairly recently and decided to cut the cord. I don't have my TV's tuned to any stations or connected to any aerials and I removed BBC iPlayer from them. Blurays, Netflix and Amazon Prime for me, for now, although I do miss the news.
 
And I really must quibble with this notion of having to "pay twice" for BritBox, as if that were somehow a rip-off. I don't think people have any idea of how complicated and expensive it is to release an archived programme for additional viewing.

Some might find it instructive to have a look at the Doctor Who Restoration Team website and see some of the processes involved in restoring an old show. For example:

- "Doctor Who" was often shot using a mixture of video and 16mm film. In some cases the original film stock survives as well as the video tape of the entire episode; here, the film is scanned and digitised, which gives a significant boost to picture quality for the filmed scenes. (And the serial "Spearhead from Space" was actually remastered into HD and released on blu ray).

- Old TV shows were sometimes archived by being transferred to film - often simply by pointing a film camera at a monitor during broadcast. This results in what was originally a 50Hz interlaced video image being compressed down to a 25FPS progressive one. The team created a technique (”VidFIRE") which reverses that process.

- Some "Doctor Who" episodes were converted from PAL to NTSC (badly) and the original PAL versions lost. The team developed a technique for back-converting to PAL which significantly improves the picture.

- In cases where a colour episode was preserved only on black and white film, what was originally an unwanted side effect of the chroma information in the signal appearing as high frequency dark and white dots can be used to partially reconstruct the original colour from the black and white image. In one story, three episodes are re-colourised using this technique, and the fourth is colourised almost by hand (one frame in four is done manually, the other by a computer extrapolating).

- For some stories where there is both a black and white film and a colour NTSC conversion available (but no original PAL) they were able to combine luminance information from the film with chroma information from the back-converted video. (Not an easy task, given that film can shrink or stretch unevenly over time, while a video image doesn't).

- There's a lot of general clean-up of scratches, drop-outs, etc.

- For some stories there are optional CGI effects that can replace or enhance some of the original effects shots.

- In cases where an episode is entirely missing except for an audio track, the BBC commissioned brand new animated versions to replace them.

And that's just the technical side. On top of that, there are all of the financial and legal costs:

Actors who appear in a show need to be paid additional royalties if the episode is released on DVD or a streaming service.

Any music needs to have additional fees paid to the copyright holder. (On the DVD release of "Hamish Macbeth" there's an episode missing. The reason is that the plot revolves around an amateur production of "West Side Story" and the cast sing a couple of songs from the show. The cost of licensing those songs on a DVD was so vast that the BBC had no choice but to simply omit it from the DVD entirely.)

And there are a whole host of other creative and legal expenses involved.

And yet people genuinely believe that this entire process should be provided free of charge to anyone who wants to view the show! It boggles the mind.
 
The BBC has two sides like pretty much everything. It produces wonderful programs but not all of their programs are wonderful.

First of all they should cut down the salaries of its employees, including the presenters that earn a fortune and are nothing but parasites. The debate about competition has been used over and over to justify those salaries. They do not have to compete about funding, that is the sole reason of the license.

Another myth is impartiality, there is not a single TV Channel,newspaper or similar that is impartial. All of them have some bias and an editor who decides what will make it into the light or ends contract to journalists who do not want to compromise. For example, the Jeremy Thorpe scandal was shown decades later. The BBC might be one of the less partial but not totally impartial.

The BBC still has a place in British society but needs to modernise and probably changing its funding strategy, including going commercial. Of course that its "impartiality" would be more compromised. The right balance between impartiality and funding might be a tough nut to crack.
 
I'd pay double if they'd scrap Eastenders.
I would not go as far as paying double but entirely agree there, the should scrap it along with all strictly shows, talent shows, cooking programs and most importantly none of these programs should make it into news.
 
Just because the BBC claims it's unbiased, or that they must give equal time to both sides of an issue (usually left-wing/right-wing) does not mean that this is the case. It has been proven time after time that the BBC can be biased in their approach to news reporting.
It's time to stop thinking of the Beeb as a bastion of objectivity, it's time to stop seeing it as a vital public service.
 
Not sure what to say other than it seems VERY wrong that, you can be legally punished, and people went to prison for watching content NOT provided by the BBC, simply because if you wish to watch content from anyone live, even from another company who you have paid a subscription to, that you legally have to pay money to the BBC who you are not watching.
Being punished for tax-evasion isn't that controversial, surely?

BBC = Biased Broadcasting Corporation
Absolutely everybody seems to think the BBC is biased against them. Left-wingers think it has a right-wing bias, right-wingers think it has a left-wing bias, supporters of Scottish independence think it is biased in favour of maintaining the Union, and those in favour of the status quo think it's biased in favour of Scottish Nationalism. If everyone thinks it's biased against them, that suggests that it is in fact perfectly balanced and doing exactly what it should.

Watching TV isn't anywhere as essential as the HNS hence why people don't begrudge paying for that.
That's how you see it. If you were out in the African wilderness, or living somewhere with extremely heavy state-censorship, and your only reliable source of news was the BBC World Service on a solar-powered radio, you might feel differently.

But I think you missed my point. It's not about how essential a service is, it's about public services being provided to all who want them, and paid for by all who can afford them.

Essential or not, the BBC is a service, not a commercial product. Whether you (or any one else) personally finds the service valuable or not is something that shouldn't even be part of the discussion. You don't contribute tax money to obtain services for yourself; everyone contributes tax money to obtain services for everybody. Whether any one specific person wants or needs a service is almost irrelevant when it comes to deciding whether they should be taxed to pay for it.

I don't listen to the BBC World Service - but I'm completely comfortable with my licence fee money supporting it for the benefit of the people who do listen to it and depend on it. People need to stop thinking in terms of "What do I get out of paying my licence fee?" and start thinking in terms of "What does everyone else get out of me paying my licence fee?"
 
Not sure what to say other than it seems VERY wrong that, you can be legally punished, and people went to prison for watching content NOT provided by the BBC, simply because if you wish to watch content from anyone live, even from another company who you have paid a subscription to, that you legally have to pay money to the BBC who you are not watching.

Can't see that being right in any context, and if someone came along today and proposed such a concept they would be looked upon as utterly crazy.


You are paying for the infrastructure to broadcast the signal - I don't have any problem with that at all (if you are watching live itv /ch4 etc....if you are watching those channels online that's possibly less of an argument but potentially still plausible)

I do have a problem with the amount of content BBC has in its archives that isn't on iplayer (and never has been), I probably watch a dozen or so "live" BBC / ITV etc shows a year...and that's probably stretching it. Think I may save some money and go to Britbox and scrap the tv licence (and forgo the live programs etc completely) - I certainly wont be paying twice from now on, that's imo taking liberties , after all Ive already paid for that content in years past licence fees...now they want me to pay for it again...may scrap it altogether.

And I really must quibble with this notion of having to "pay twice" for BritBox, as if that were somehow a rip-off. I don't think people have any idea of how complicated and expensive it is to release an archived programme for additional viewing.

And yet people genuinely believe that this entire process should be provided free of charge to anyone who wants to view the show! It boggles the mind.

You have missed two major points

1) There is huge amounts of content that don't require any updating at all - last 30 + years probably requires very little if anything to be done, at least some of that could potentially compensate for what would be a huge amount of work from the 60/70s Dr Who's etc that you mentioned. Even if the more costly stuff to release was on BritBox at least iplayer should get a huge influx of content that doesn't require any update at all.

2) Not expecting them to do it free of charge.....we are already paying a licence fee which is a considerable amount of money for the minimal online service currently (after all very few people have the time to actually watch live anymore as many votes have proven over the years)
 
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No licence here - no need for one. Netflix, Amazon, film rental, Spotify provide more than enough content and more conveniently available. Also really dislike the whole licence fee collection - sending 'scary' letters, threatening visits, claiming they have rights that they don't, forcing you to continually re-declare you don't need one on pain of an investigation etc.
 
Expecting someone on next weeks podcast to state .... 'Masterchef' - worth the licence fee just for that ;-)

I think it still is the best way of funding the BBC for now at least.
Maybe freezing it for 5 years alongside this BritBox rollout?
 
No licence here - no need for one. Netflix, Amazon, film rental, Spotify provide more than enough content and more conveniently available. Also really dislike the whole licence fee collection - sending 'scary' letters, threatening visits, claiming they have rights that they don't, forcing you to continually re-declare you don't need one on pain of an investigation etc.


Somewhat harsh that never happens you get an email every 2 years which you tick a few boxes online and that's it. Never had threatening letters,emails or visits to the house NEVER. If you are watching TV and not paying the license well i suppose the above will happen but you deserve it. Like my neighbor who refuses to pay but watches TV and gets visits which he refuses to let them in. So the TV detector vans are not a myth.
 
you get an email every 2 years which you tick a few boxes online and that's it. Never had threatening letters,emails

You try not responding to that email, which you have no legal obligation to do by the way, and see what happens.

My brother doesn't have or need a licence, he had two goons come to visit to check, they bullied their way in and then tried to get him to admit he does watch TV - before giving up they tried to 'change the subject' to football to trick him into saying he watched a recent game. All this from private citizens. Yep they can do one.
 
The detector vans are a myth. Without physically going into your property they don't know what or how your consuming content

Unless they can see through the window :)
 
finally the BBC has given up any semblance of non-bias on practically every subject, made ever so clear when the BBC decided to ask members of the public what they thought of the BBC's Brexit coverage and overwhelmingly the answer was that the BBC re[porting had been predominately negative.

The negative reporting is intentional and plays a big part in the propaganda they engage in, predominately negative narratives that run throughout their programming giving the constant impression things can never get better. The thin veil does fall during time of political unrest, Iraq, Indy ref and of course the current shambles of Brexit.

Living in Scotland the BBC facade of being fair and impartial falls off so regularly now they barely bother to conceal it anymore. They were recently caught inviting a known UKIP sectarian bigot on their question time show 5 times as an 'ordinary member of the public' who managed to get his question asked each time (if they followed their own audience vetting rules the chances of this happening are astronomical). They then tried to play it down but the bigot has actually come forward to confirm he was indeed invited each time and was even photographed talking to the right leaning panelists before the show.

But being fair and impartial in news is a nonsense anyway, without taking a side or angle all the news just becomes is two sides churning out empty platitudes that mostly will go unchallenged or not challenged enough in the name of 'balanced' reporting. That is not helpful to any side of the debate.

So the problem with most news outlets and particularly the BBC is that they don't clearly state where their bias lies, in fairness to the BBC they can't do that because of the charter but once you look into who the people are running it, who the editors and presenters are where they've been and what their political leanings are it can become pretty obvious why some narratives are being pushed and why some are being ignored.

The BBC bias is neither left or right it is an establishment bias, it's purpose is to help protect the UK state at the behest of the sitting government - who could pull the plug on the license if it sees fit. The UK secret service vetted employees for decades to prevent potential dissenting voices (BBC confirms this happened they have their own article on it).

It should also be noted for a public service they are allowed to be opaque and regularly decline FOI requests.

The simple reason people believe the BBC is a bastion of truth is because the BBC has told us that all our lives. All it takes is to scratch just slightly below the surface and it becomes clear that it is a massive propaganda machine of quite subtle cunning (but it does lose it's sh*t quite often now) that puts all other propaganda outlets in the shade, it has taken the advent of the internet to finally shine a light on what a disservice it truly is and it is a good thing more and more people are dropping the license.

Of course because they make a few decent TV series we should forgive them and hold their loss as equatable to losing health services... :suicide:
 
You try not responding to that email, which you have no legal obligation to do by the way, and see what happens.

My brother doesn't have or need a licence, he had two goons come to visit to check, they bullied their way in and then tried to get him to admit he does watch TV - before giving up they tried to 'change the subject' to football to trick him into saying he watched a recent game. All this from private citizens. Yep they can do one.

Why would you not respond to a simple email?

Don't get me wrong nobody needs to pay a TV license now a days i have persuaded lots of people to drop it.
 
Why would you not respond to a simple email?

Well for one thing why should I? Do you respond to every single mail you get? If you send someone a mail and they don't respond do you start sending increasingly hostile emails, with added red all over, and with false claims about inspector visits being imminent, and making it sound like you really should have a licence - i.e. basically trying to intimidate the recipient into getting one?

They broadcast all this content over the airwaves, then you have to regularly attest you don't use it - it's all a bit backwards really :)
 
Currently the license fee is a very hard pill to swallow, Tommy Robinsons recent expose’ of panorama was quite frankly shocking. Working in conjunction with far left activists such as hope not hate is far from balanced reporting! It should become a subscription service in my opinion along with a lot of the mainstream media. They cherry pick what to show and in some cases cover over or refuse to mention certain facts. Recently a producer of some of the bbc’s live debates regarding brexit admitted to stacking the audience 70/30 in favour of remain!
While in America last year i found the balance of fox and cnn somewhat refreshing, here you are force fed left wing bias...with no other terrestrial option.
 
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You have missed two major points

1) There is huge amounts of content that don't require any updating at all - last 30 + years probably requires very little if anything to be done, at least some of that could potentially compensate for what would be a huge amount of work from the 60/70s Dr Who's etc that you mentioned. Even if the more costly stuff to release was on BritBox at least iplayer should get a huge influx of content that doesn't require any update at all.

2) Not expecting them to do it free of charge.....we are already paying a licence fee which is a considerable amount of money for the minimal online service currently (after all very few people have the time to actually watch live anymore as many votes have proven over the years)
I missed neither of those points.

It's not just the technical costs you have to think about, it's all of the creative and legal costs too - all the money that has to be paid to actors, script-writers, directors, holders of music copyright, etc. That's likely to be more expensive than the cost of the restoration, and that applies regardless of the age of the material.

You don't (for example) pay an actor just once to perform in front of the camera - he gets paid again each and every time the programme is broadcast; and in the case where a programme is released on DVD or made available for streaming, he has to be paid a substantial sum up front in lieu of all of the royalties he might otherwise be getting from repeat broadcasts that there will now be less demand for. The same applies to many other people.

And the cost of licensing things like music is prohibitive, too. I mentioned the episode of Hamish Macbeth that is missing from the DVD for that reason. Another show what was affected by that was "Takin' Over the Asylum": each episode of that is named after, and uses as a theme, a piece of music that plays during the episode. In the original broadcast, an original recording of each piece plays; for the DVD, they had to have the show's musical director record a cover version of each of the songs himself and substitute that, because otherwise it would have been impossible to release the disk at all without incurring a huge financial loss.

All of this is hugely expensive, and someone has to pay for it. The licence fee this year pays for programmes to be made and broadcast this year; if you use the licence fee to cover the enormous cost of re-releasing archive material then the BBC simply won't be able to afford to re-release anything any more. (That or it will have to drastically reduce the number of new programmes being made).
 
Currently the license fee is, Tommy Robinsons recent expose’ of panorama was quite frankly shocking. Working in conjunction with far left activists such as hope not hate is far from balanced reporting! It should become a subscription service in my opinion along with a lot of the mainstream media. They cherry pick what to show and in some cases cover over or refuse to mention certain facts.
Recently in America if found the balance of fox and cnn somewhat refreshing, here you are force fed left wing bias...
I watched his Panodrama, exposing the lengths they go to, in order to discredit people. You don't have to like Tommy Robinson, but there is no denying the under hand tactics they used was wrong, and how many other times has stuff like this happened?
 
The way they charge the TV licence fee should be changed to only affect those who watch or listen to it.

TV content plays an insignificant part in my life so I hate paying for something I don’t use. But I watch Footie on Sky and BT and am forced to pay the licence fee as well. It’s not a lot but why am I paying for something I don’t use ?

As for propaganda, it’s never been as strong in use in history IMO. A very few are totally manipulating the sleeping majority. Social media reporting will combat this eventually, may be, but legislation needs to get to grip with social media to prevent the same power players doing the same here.
 
for what I watch its not worth it, the Attenborough documentaries every few years and a bit of the news. not worth the 150 quid a year.
 
Somewhat harsh that never happens you get an email every 2 years which you tick a few boxes online and that's it. Never had threatening letters,emails or visits to the house NEVER. If you are watching TV and not paying the license well i suppose the above will happen but you deserve it. Like my neighbor who refuses to pay but watches TV and gets visits which he refuses to let them in. So the TV detector vans are not a myth.


Perhaps you should stop relying on the word of a corrupt organisation.

This is from only 2 days ago "Bullying BBC’ sends 11 TV licence letters to millennial who doesn’t even watch telly"

'Bullying BBC' sends 11 letters to millennial who doesn't watch telly | Metro News

It's been happening for years, in fact back in 2014 the BBC admitted it had paid out £100,000 to their victims.

"BBC pays £100,000 compensation to viewers harassed by licence fee officers"

BBC pays £100,000 compensation to viewers harassed by licence fee officers



They're not averse to simply falsifying video evidence in order to get a conviction either.

"Michael Shakespeare, from Grays, made sure all his equipment at home could not receive a live TV signal and watched catch up TV through the internet, which you do not need a TV licence for.

Mr Shakespeare wrote to the authority to inform it what he had done, inviting it to send someone round to check it out.

An inspector was sent round to check the equipment and Mr Shakespeare filmed it.

He heard nothing more until five months later, when a summons for court arrived in the post for non-payment of his TV licence.

TV Licensing obtained a copy of Mr Shakespeare’s video, which was uploaded on to YouTube, and said it showed a frozen image on a TV screen of The One Show, proving Mr Shakespeare was receiving live TV.

But Mr Shakespeare said the image was not present in his original video."

Man wins TV licence battle


As for detector vans being a myth ? Never has evidence from a detector van been presented in a court case, you might ask yourself why.
 

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