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
Why not just go online and declare you don't need a TV license? Tens of thousands of people are doing it a year
I have itv, channel 4 and channel 5 which i watch the tv auto tunes the bbc which i choose not to watch so therefore i have to pay the tv license. :(
 
I have itv, channel 4 and channel 5 which i watch the tv auto tunes the bbc which i choose not to watch so therefore i have to pay the tv license. :(

Currently it doesn't matter, if you are watching any form of live TV.. Sky Sports, Itv, Bt Sport, Amazon Prime coverage of the live Tennis championship, then the BBC is "entitled" to you needing a TV licence.

Now in return, if you could say watch whatever you currently watch now via itv or 5od catchup and avoid live TV transmission all together (even digitally) then yes you would indeed not need a tv license.

For us for example it's simply down to the football. My partner does like watching Strictly come Dancing but I could pick that up as a digital purchase. Everything bar the football we genuinely ALWAYS watch via catchup, now tv on demand, iTunes or netflix and Amazon. However because we watch Football via Sky Sports and BT Sport then we have no choice but to pay a fee to the BBC.
 
Channel 4 news comes from ITV news. Try SKY. I'm sure that it isn't biased in any way LOL

Channel 4 News is made by ITN who also make the news for ITV.

Its a Independent company that has been producing news for 60+ years and is award winning and world class in what it does. Its also made docs for the BBC.
 
Dumb question: If I watch ITV or Channel 4 (TV and App) should I pay TV license as I am reading otherwise

If you watch or record any live broadcast channel, whether it's by satellite, cable or Freeview, you need a TV license. And it's the broadcast live bit that matters. You still need a license if it's a re-run of a 30 year old show. If you are reading otherwise, you are being mislead. It also applies if you watch BBC I-player, but no other catch up channels, yet.
 
Dumb question: If I watch ITV or Channel 4 (TV and App) should I pay TV license as I am reading otherwise

If you never use iplayer, and you only watch non live on demand, or catch up, No.
 
yes the licence fee should be scrapped it really annoys me that i have to pay them over £150 a year when i dont watch or listen to hardly any of their content. if it was a subscription service i would have cancelled it by now but i cant i have no choice
 
Channel 4 News is made by ITN who also make the news for ITV.

Its a Independent company that has been producing news for 60+ years and is award winning and world class in what it does. Its also made docs for the BBC.

Yeah, thanks. That's what I meant to post :)


Still a sub division of ITV though and as such a commercial operation or are you suggesting that it is funded by charity or for free?
 
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I have itv, channel 4 and channel 5 which i watch the tv auto tunes the bbc which i choose not to watch so therefore i have to pay the tv license. :(
FTFY
 
If it makes it easier, think of a less life-or-death example: emptying bins, say, or having potholes in the road mended. Would you refuse to pay tax to have the roads fixed merely because you usually travel everywhere on foot, or do you recognise that you have a duty to contribute to road repair for other people's benefit as well as for your own?

That feels rather weak as an argument when only local government provides those services.

If it was still the 1950's and the BBC was the only service providing news and entertainment then that might stand up - but the public are given those services for free by ITV, Channel 4, 5 and to a lesser extend the rest of the freeview service.

They may also choose to extend that the service with Virgin/Sky/Amazon/Netflix etc
 
yes the licence fee should be scrapped it really annoys me that i have to pay them over £150 a year when i dont watch or listen to hardly any of their content. if it was a subscription service i would have cancelled it by now but i cant i have no choice

The license fee goes toward funding a public service for all and isn't a subscription dependant upon how often you watch the BBC. It was raised earlier in relation to services such as the NHS or are you also refusing to pay your taxes just because you may not have needed a doctor, a hospital or any medical provision? Yes, the BBC isn't a service of the same importance, but it is a srvice of some importance to many even if you aren't one of those people. Are you suggesting no one uses or watches the BBC?
 
Yeah, thanksanks. THat's what I meant to post :)


Still a sub division of ITV though and as such a commercial operation or are you suggesting that it is funded by charity or for free?


It's not a sub division of ITV is an independent company that produces news or news related programming for any broadcaster that commissions it in the same way the BBC can commission ITVStudios to make a drama for it.
 
It's not a sub division of ITV is an independent company that produces new or news related programming for any broadcaster that commissions it in the same way the BBC can commission ITVStudios to make a drama for it.

So ITN news broadcasts are dramatisations? Interesting.

Both ITV and ITN are commercial operations. You've just stated this for yourself. The BBC isn't.
 
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There are many things that we pay tax both nationally and locally which are vital to the nation state.
The NHS to keep us well. The Police to protect us. Schools and Colleges to educate our young. An armed service to defend our nation. Infrastructure and transport to allow the country to function. We may or may not use all these services but realise they are vital for a functioning state. We can argue on the amount of tax these areas should receive, but on the whole understand why we pay for them.
The idea that we should be forced to pay for what is fundementally an entertainment service is ridiculous. It is even more absurd when as each year passes less and less people are using the service. The very idea that Strictly, Eastenders or endless hours of masterchef is a vital need for our tax is ludicrous. What about dramas you say, well for every bodyguard ( not a bbc programme btw) there are dozens of duds. Or documentaries, well for everty life on earth there are dreadful pseudo lucy wordsley sub o level history programmes that are aimed at who? Certainly not adults who have even a rudimentary knowledge of the subject. Younger people ( and i am a parent to one) never watch the service, or so i am told. The average age of the beeb viewer is over 60.
The News service is also losing it's grip. Over the years it has moved from a eye wateringly bland and unpartisan service which just gave us the facts into a channel with a strong socially liberal theme to it's news coverage. Which is fine if you are sky or itv ( up to a point) but not for the unbised voice of the nation. If i wanted to know what the guardian thought about a news story i'd buy the guardian. Newsnight has lost hundreds of thousands of viewers because of this biased editorial output.

So no, after decades supporting the beeb, allow the public to option not to pay for the service. It isn't vital and it's no longer the voice of the nation.
 
The license fee goes toward funding a public service for all and isn't a subscription dependant upon how often you watch the BBC. It was raised earlier in relation to services such as the NHS or are you also refusing to pay your taxes just because you may not have needed a doctor, a hospital or any medical provision? Yes, the BBC isn't a service of the same importance, but it is a srvice of some importance to many even if you aren't one of those people. Are you suggesting no one uses or watches the BBC?

i think tv services should be compared to other tv services not other taxes and no im not suggesting no one watches BBC im saying if someone doesnt want to watch the bbc then they should have the option of not paying for it.
 
So ITN news broadcasts are dramatisations? Interesting.

Both ITV and ITN are commercial operations. You've just stated this for yourself. The BBC isn't.

Yes they are commercial operations.

When making news for any broadcaster they have to abide by the same standards of impartiality and quality as the BBC does with its news broadcasts.

Indeed ITV, C5(and even more so in the case of C4) have many public service broadcasting requirements as part of their licence to broadcast.
 
i think tv services should be compared to other tv services not other taxes and no im not suggesting no one watches BBC im saying if someone doesnt want to watch the bbc then they should have the option of not paying for it.

The issue is that the BBC's intended purpose isn't the same as that of commercial TV operators. It doesn't technically even have an obligation to entertain you. It is a public broadcast service. Services you get via the BBC are not provided via the commercial stations.
 
Royalties and licensing are complicated things. In particular, the cost of licensing something for an individual repeat or two is a lot lower than the cost of licensing it for a DVD release. The reason for that is that an actor (for example) gets paid a royalty fee every time a programme he is in is broadcast. If it's released on DVD then that means countless people are going to watch it lots of times with no additional royalties when they do, so you need a much bigger sum of money up-front to compensate.
This is nonsense most decent TV gets a disc release.
I already mentioned "Hamish Macbeth" as an example of how things can go screwy. The last time the series was repeated on broadcast TV, the run included season 1 episode 4 ("West Coast Story"); but that episode is missing from the DVD boxed set. The reason for that is that the plot involves an amateur production of "West Side Story" and the cast single a couple of songs from the show. The cost of licensing the performing rights to those songs for an individual TV repeat is not prohibitive; but the cost of licensing them for a DVD release is so high that they had no choice but to leave the episode off the disk completely, otherwise it would have had to sell for such a high price no one would have bought it.
Also nonsense, they were just being cheap.
I don't know for sure, but it seems highly likely that making a show available for streaming (particularly one that hasn't been available for a while) will be closer in cost to a DVD release than it will be to a single repeat. (This is, I think, the reason why episodes appear on iPlayer for only a fixed period of time - to keep it up there for longer would mean they would have to pay all the performers/crew/copyright-holders more money up-front).
Complete nonsense there are plenty of shows available for streaming via netflix/amazon etc and this isn't an issue for them. Presumably they just buy the rights for a period of time and that is that.
So, basically, what they budget for repeats will be nowhere near enough to cover the cost of making it streamable indefinitely - even if you cancel all the repeats (which is impossible, because then how do you fill up the time?).
As they are about to do it for £5.99 a month this is also clearly nonsense.
Another thing worth mentioning is that there are some surprisingly tight legal restrictions on the ways that the BBC is actually allowed to earn money - if some of those were lifted, it might become less dependent on the licence fee.
Can't be that tight as they sell content on discs, sell it to other providers in the UK to air, rake in money on telephone polls, rake in money from competitions, have in the past sold it direct. In fact I can't think of anything other than advertising that restricts them - especially as now they are about to charge us for watching the content we paid them to make.
 
The BBC should have to justify its own existence by paying for itself however it chooses to to that.
 
Page 3 of OFCOM's 2018 report on the BBC

"The BBC is a unique institution with a broad remit from Parliament to inform, educate and entertain the public"

That explains Eastenders then :) (or does it? :confused:)


I'm sure even you understand what I'm attempting to convey when I say the BBC's purpose or reason for being isn't the same as that of the commercial stations. Do the commercial stations offer Welsh language variants or a Scottish service? Do they cater to areas of the community that wouldn't result in their viewing figures and advertising revenue increasing? THe BBC is obligated to such endeavours and isn't bothered whether such endeavours appeal to outside funding streams.
 
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