Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
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.
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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.