
BBC Suggests Broadband ISP Levy to Replace UK TV Licence Fee - GordonS
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/04/bbc-suggests-broadband-isp-levy-to-replace-uk-tv-licence-fee.html
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untog
As someone who grew up in the UK then moved to the US where there is no
functional equivalent I have little time for Brits that complain about the
BBC. The value for money you get in return for the license fee is simply
staggering. And while a genuinely strong public broadcaster has its downsides
you’re much better off with than without.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
No sorry the BBC we have today is not the BBC you grew up with and the fact
that when I buy a TV off Amazon they're informed and start to send me
threatening letters straight away demanding their license fee would be
considered dystopian and a huge breach of privacy if it were in the US.

I love a lot of the BBC programming from the 70s-00s but I have zero interest
in funding anything they're making today. They're not even making anything for
me anymore. Just too concerned with trying to compete with the big kids not
serving the niches that was supposed to be the advantage of a public
broadcaster.

~~~
DanBC
> and the fact that when I buy a TV off Amazon they're informed

That stopped happening in 2013 when the law changed.

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whywhywhywhy
Happened for the TV I bought in 2017. Lived in a flat for 5 years, buy a TV
and then the threatening letters started to arrive the same month.

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LandR
I don't currently have a TV licence as I don't watch TV. My TV isn't hooked up
to the aerial and I don't have an iPlayer account.

I can't possibly be expected to pay a licence fee on top of my broadband,
surely.

~~~
justinclift
Same for me, when I lived in the UK. Haven't owned or even wanted a tv in
decades. ;)

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wdb
Why not just make it part of income tax?

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steve1977
How about getting rid of the license fee completely and just offer
subscriptions for those people who want to see the programmes?

~~~
acallaghan
The BBC isn't like Netflix - the license fee pays for TV infrastructure,
public alerting, World Service, school revision programmes etc. - you just
can't treat a public broadcaster like an opt-in service, it would cease to
exist.

If COVID-19 has shown us anything in the UK, it should be that the BBC is
still trusted and used heavily by the govt to get their message out clearly
and loudly

~~~
thu2111
TV infrastructure these days is mostly satellite and cable based, sticks-on-
hills broadcasting isn't that expensive and could simply be run by the
government directly as it winds down over time.

Public alerting? Government can (and should) just serve videos itself, it can
already SMS the entire nation.

World Service - was historically funded directly by the government, not the
license fee. Should it even still exist?

School revision programmes can easily be handled by the private sector.

COVID-19 has revealed nothing about the BBC, which is now untrusted by >50% of
the British population for the first time. All broadcasters have access to
government broadcast updates.

Anything else?

~~~
untog
> the BBC, which is now untrusted by >50% of the British population for the
> first time.

Got a citation for that?

~~~
thu2111
[https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-
reports/2019/1...](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-
reports/2019/12/16/do-britons-trust-press)

 _YouGov figures show British trust in the press to tell the truth has fallen,
with less than half believing BBC news journalists are honest and impartial_

Seems a lot of people can't really handle criticism of the BBC, judging that
my list of facts is now at -3.

I used to love the BBC. Globally respected, good programmes, a voice I trusted
to be neutral and fair. They helped me study, they introduced me to new music,
made cool documentaries. I bought into it all.

I guess like many Brits I'm not quite sure if it's the BBC that changed or
myself. It just doesn't seem the same anymore.

I think it used to benefit from a 'false aura' of trustworthyness because
radio and TV news has very little space, so in any given day there were only a
handful of stories the BBC could break. Of those it'd usually be obvious what
they should be, so the journalists and editors had quite limited leeway to
pick and choose.

Now there's BBC News Online and that's how I get their news output. I don't
watch TV news anymore. Online there's infinite space and so they can write
endlessly about whatever topics they like, including using it as their own
personal blogging space. Combined with Twitter it's painfully revealed their
biases and desire to shape the audience, desires that were probably always
there but limited by available airtime.

Nowadays I don't see it as any higher quality than other outlets. Just
yesterday their economics editor tweeted this:
[https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1245380143071342598](https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1245380143071342598)

 _Throw in the millions of tests too, & I’m taken back to quote from
developing nation’s diplomat in my book on financial crisis, saying he looked
to Germany and Google as examples for how to run his country “both run by
engineers, whereas US and UK run by journalists and lawyers”_

This is just nonsense. Angela Merkel was never an engineer, she was an
academic with a chemistry background but went into politics when the wall
fell. She's been a professional politician for 30 years, so this tweet is just
hopelessly misleading. I doubt Mr Islam is doing it deliberately, he just has
low standards and doesn't bother to fact check even his own tweets, so what
about the much harder job of checking stories?

When I go to BBC News Online and see endless articles with grotesque errors,
distortions, biases and personal opinions I just can't care about them
anymore. They should have stuck to TV. The internet is killing them, by
revealing their true selves.

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untog
You’re conflating “the BBC” with “BBC News”. Given the sheer size and scope of
the BBC that’s a mistake. The BBC as a broad organisation is trusted by the
public. It's the same mistake you see often when people complain about the
license fee then exclusively talk about news coverage. It's really not the
same.

I’m not sure why a tweet by a reporter would be particularly noteworthy here.
By their nature tweets are off the cuff, and I’m not even sure that one is all
that inaccurate. “Run by” does not start and stop with the Prime Minister of a
country, it’s a reflection of who is responding to a medical crisis from top
to bottom.

~~~
thu2111
What does trust even mean for most of their output? For music radio it's
irrelevant. For comedy it's irrelevant. Trust enters the equation when things
get serious and there's an aspect of teaching or communication of information
involved.

The BBC's news output is symptomatic of a deeper set of political biases, it
invades everything they do. Anyone can make a music radio station, many
documentaries and dramas are produced by the private sector and then simply
bought. There's nothing the BBC does that isn't already done just as well by
other organisations, which is why they so often fall back on vague assertions
of superior levels of trustedness or quality.

