Re: BBC licence fee
 

No its hundred of channels trying to make money and attract advertisers. They don't care about educating or informing.

Will commercial broadcasters be interested in making programmes that aren't profitable, take risks and aren't made by others ? No they won't. We'd get a lot more imports/crap tv.

Re: BBC licence fee
 

It's a happy by-product. The quality and diversity of documentaries on Sky, Netflix & Prime far and away outstrip what the BBC produce.

Well you obviously either do not subscribe to Prime, Netflix etc, or you have never used the search fucntion.

Re: BBC licence fee
 

Succinctly put Mr P, when that argument fails they'll wheel out what terrific value for money it is, ignoring that if you don't watch it or rarely watch it then it's not so terrific value at all

Re: TV licence fee
 

It all depends on your personal definition of 'entertainment' as to whether the BBC, Netflix, Amazon etc are worth paying for.

Personally I'm of the opinion that 95% of it is all garbage, but we still have a TV license and Netflix subscription because the women of the house can't do without their soaps, Ant & Dec, the odd (literally) series fresh from american TV, and '4 in a bed Masked singers Dancing on ice taking part in celebrity quiz shows' . . . and funnily enough they know (and have no interest in) bugger all else that's happening worldwide.

Re: TV licence fee
 

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/curren...fee-abolished/

The government seems more determined to abolish the licence fee now. Hopefully, they will opt for the subscription model so that we only pay if we actually watch BBC television.

Radio is more of a problem because it will continue to broadcast from transmitters for the foreseeable future. Expect to see advertisements on BBC radio stations before long.

Re: TV licence fee
 

I’ve said it n-million times before, but if they don’t see a need to force any other public service broadcaster behind a paywall, they won’t do it to the BBC either.“licence fee = subscription” is just loose thinking. It won’t happen.

Thanks to the white paper link you put in the other thread, we can now see that going forward the government plans to radically reduce the costs associated with being a PSB by allowing the obligations to be fulfilled via online content rather than during scheduled broadcasts. In other words, a BBC sans licence fee should still be able to produce a comparable amount of free-to-air content, supported by advertising, as it does now, because the regulations defining what they have to do (and therefore pushing up the costs of doing it) are being slackened.

There are still enormous risks of course. If the licence fee goes, the BBC will compete for advertising spend against ITV, Five and a newly-privatised Channel 4. Whenever supply of something increases, its cost goes down. In this case the supply of advertising time would go up, by a lot. Great news for the likes of Kelloggs and Persil, but not so good for broadcasters whose business models rely on ads sold at the present rate.

Re: TV licence fee
 

Indeed. You can be sure that none of the commercial broadcasters want the BBC to start taking ads.

As well as the reasons that Chris has highlighted, I think that the BBC would be very successful at attracting advertisers, one reason being that they may well be able to target those who only or mainly watch the BBC who hitherto haven't been exposed to TV advertising.

Re: TV licence fee
 

I won't miss the BBC.


Only stuff like QI, Have I got a bit more news fore you and Mock the week MTW is so good now that the woke brigade got Frankie Boyle removed.

Re: TV licence fee
 

I’m sure the BBC is going nowhere. It is mainly the method by which it is funded that is being debated here.

I am inclined to think that in the end, BBC television will be the BBC I-Player or a streaming successor, which will be viewable with a subscription, but with an AVOD option. I see no reason at all why that won’t work.

Of course, we would need to have universal broadband, which could become free of charge up to a set limit, before that could be implemented.

Re: TV licence fee
 

Re: TV licence fee
 

Re: TV licence fee
 

Put BBC behind a optional paywall and see how many choose to use it . Instead of making everyone go behind a " paywall"

Re: TV licence fee
 

that is exactly what we need and what I have been arguing for for donkeys years

Re: TV licence fee
 

Erm, he left because he was bored with it, and it wasn’t the "woke brigade" that objected about his jokes about the Queen…

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebri...it-mock-794978

Re: TV licence fee