Is the licence fee worth it? Poll discussion

webwiz

The BBC does produce a few good programmes and these are always quoted by its defenders. But most of these don't actually cost very much and the BBC could produce most of its quality ouput on a license fee of £20. Most of its money goes on management, and most of the money actually spent on programming goes on the likes of East Enders and the obscene amount paid to the obscene J Ross.

My main objection to a tax funded broadcaster is that it is completely and institutionally biased on a whole range of issues. If I want to own a TV set I am forced to subsidise an institution whose views are diametrically opposed to mine. Is this fair?

lochaber

The problem with this thread is most people are confused!

The licence fee is a government tax to allow you to use a TV and is nothing to do with the BBC. It is a TV licence to allow you to receive ALL TV programmes including cable and satellite.

The government choose to make a payment to the BBC.
Just because you pay road tax and fuel tax doesn't mean the government spend it all on roads, it's just another tax!

How many people calculate what it costs for TV per day (~37p) and that is for a household and not per person. Compare that to the cost of a newspaper. It must be good value for money.

Have you ever wondered how much you pay to fund advertising on TV channels? I can assure you it is very much more than 37p/day by a very large factor but most people don't see that.

confused1

The BBC is nothing but a platform for party political broadcasts of the present day government. The fact that their budget is dictated by the government means that they have to be their poodles.
Apart from that, their choices and judgement in celebratising hosts and their progs suck, esp when they are paid mega £ to churn out lavatorial progs.
I can think of better ways of my hard saved £135.50 being utilised. But overpaying the fat cats of BBC for their pathetic incompetence is definitely not one of them.

JV90

I'm a fan of classical music so I listen to Radio 3 a lot. Worth the licence fee alone etc. Everyone with a telly subsidises me to some extent as not many people listen to Radio 3. If we got rid of it there would still be Classic FM but they use quite a small playlist of tracks to keep the listener figures higher (a few hundred repeated a lot really) and I'd tire of that very quickly. If I bought CDs of all the music R3 plays it would cost me thousands of pounds every year and there's no way I could afford that.

I'd be happy to pay a subscription but to be honest, there wouldn't be enough subscribers so should it just die out?

Isn't it worth subsidising things that are less/only sometimes popular? After all, our taxes pay for libraries, operas, orchestras, art galleries, museums. Should we close all of those down as well and replace them with amusement rides?

Defiant_3

lochaber wrote: »

The problem with this thread is most people are confused!

The licence fee is a government tax to allow you to use a TV and is nothing to do with the BBC. It is a TV licence to allow you to receive ALL TV programmes including cable and satellite.

No the problem with this thread is the pro TV Licence people will say some of the most outrageous things to backup the Licence non of which can be backed up (check the thread and see for yourself).


The BBC TV Licence was started to replace the Radio licence as a way of funding the BBC when we didn't have anything else much on offer.

lochaber wrote: »

How many people calculate what it costs for TV per day (~37p) and that is for a household and not per person. Compare that to the cost of a newspaper. It must be good value for money.

My cable TV & phoneline works out at ~25p a day you see I've done this before I've heard all the BBC pitche's and they all consist of rubbish because their isn't any real arguments for forcing the whole country to pay your employer

lochaber wrote: »

Have you ever wondered how much you pay to fund advertising on TV channels? I can assure you it is very much more than 37p/day by a very large factor but most people don't see that.

Yes if you bothered to read the whole thread you'd know they end up selling more and so can buy in bulk and pass on the savings to the customer. The extra profits mean the cost of the adverts disapear too but hey as I've said we all know why you can't give any real arguments for them

Defiant_3

JV90 wrote: »

I'd be happy to pay a subscription but to be honest, there wouldn't be enough subscribers so should it just die out?

I respect your honesty you'd be surprised how many people wont admit this which is why they just keep making things up to try and defend it.

JV90 wrote: »

Isn't it worth subsidising things that are less/only sometimes popular? After all, our taxes pay for libraries, operas, orchestras, art galleries, museums. Should we close all of those down as well and replace them with amusement rides?

Apart from Opera (a toffs thing) have the others got a commercial alternative ?

Anyway lets play your game and pretend everyone stopped paying for Sky and cable does this mean the sad minority who want the BBC forced fed should subidise them ? I'd be for it if we are forced to pay for what you and the rest of the minority want

avantra

harvey1947 wrote: »

It would be interesting to know what percentage of the BBC budget is dedicated to sporting events. It appears that any minor event means a full outside broadcast team are shipped out, often for only 2 minutes of highlights on the news, some of these events have practically no spectators attending so why does the BBC consider it is going to be of interest to the nation in general. Often more than 20 hours on a weekend of sporting events over the chanels. Why oh why does the Beeb consider it is acceptable to disrupt all other porgrams in order that a group of bores can carry out a post mortem on whatever the latest sporting event is. Whatever happened to good Drama, Comedy, Music etc etc.

I can't start tell yo how correct you are on this issue, it is boiling my blood when at the only free days I have every week everything is : sport this and sport that
This is happen with C4 as well , but than I don't pay £140 for C4.

By the way you can find many TV sets on the high street (even 25" analog boxes) for less than £140, last count on the Comet site I was able to buy 3 small portable TV with free delivery for £140!!!:rotfl:

MissPiggy_3

I sometimes wonder about the truthfulness of people when they say they "never" watch the BBC or watch it very rarely:

(from http://www.barb.co.uk/index1.cfm?flag=home)

WEEK ENDING: 22 July 2007HOURS OF VIEWING, SHARE OF AUDIENCE AND REACH: Including TimeshiftChannelAverage Daily ReachWeekly ReachAverage Weekly ViewingShare 000s%000s%Hrs:Mins per person%ALL/ANY TV39,970 71.0 51,609 91.7 23:46 100.0 BBC 1 (incl. Brkfast News)26,495 47.1 45,119 80.1 5:00 21.0 BBC 214,913 26.5 36,862 65.5 2:09 9.0 TOTAL BBC1/BBC229,836 53.0 47,136 83.7 7:09 30.0 ITV (incl. GMTV)22,065 39.2 41,974 74.5 4:29 18.9 CHANNEL 4/S4C15,152 26.9 36,316 64.5 1:59 8.3 five9,154 16.3 26,315 46.7 1:14 5.2 TOTAL/ANY COMM. TERR. TV29,461 52.3 47,275 84.0 7:43 32.5 Other Viewing25,087 44.6 39,189 69.6 8:55 37.5

With a 30% audience share (and that's just for BBC1 and BBC2) someone must watch it!!!!

Defiant_3

Oh I like this one yes lets forget the BBC has the privileged spots of Channels 1 & 2 and lets also forget that the whole country is forced to pay for the BBC.

Now just to make the whole thing better lets also forget that BARB wont tell anyone the percentage of what their 5100 households use ie analogue,cable, sky or freeview so the figures could be absolute rubbish Have you not wondered why Sky use viewing figures from their own stbs !

This again smacks of desperation because their is no solid defence for the BBC TV Licence

squirreltufty

Defiant, do you watch no BBC at all?