Thread: Funding of the BBC
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Old 20-12-2018, 10:39   #108
OLD BOY
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Re: Funding of the BBC
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris View Post
But we aren’t subsidising the BBC. We are actually paying for it. The corporation’s revenue is something like £4bn a year and (from memory) only around 10% of that comes from commercial activity (though £400m revenue from mostly international activities is no small beer). Only the big US media corporations have more money to play with. The UK marketplace isn’t big enough to generate that much commercial revenue for any media business. The BBC simply isn’t going to get bigger or better operating on commercial terms because its domestic market can’t sustain it.
I think you are playing with words. The BBC is benefiting from receiving income from people who might otherwise choose not to pay it. This is why ITV, Sky and others think it is so unfair.

You seem to believe that if the UK population was seemlessly transferred to a subscription instead of paying the licence fee, hordes of people would choose to then ditch that subscription. I disagree profoundly - the vast majority would go for the status quo and would continue to pay. Any shortfall of income by this method could be made up and even exceeded through maximisation of revenues through a beefed up BBC i-Player made available worldwide by subscription and perhaps even with advertising options, and by being able to involve itself in other commercial activities which the government scale back under the present system. Your 10% figure is what the Beeb is earning now, even with the restrictions placed upon it. There is ample scope to grow that figure with the freedoms that a subscription model would provide.

I think you are under-valuing the BBC's potential massively, and I say again, it is unreasonable to foist the payment of non-essential services on people who do not want them.
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