TV licensing...

[mumbojumbo]

You are not subsidising me.Also you presumably fund a very small part of the NHS,but in any given year you may not benefit from its services.It is about helping people other than yourself,and when you are poor and sick,they help you.

[Mick F]

Why should anyone help the BBC?
If it can't stand on its own, why should the public support it by taxation?

BBC?
(shrugs shoulders)
If you want it ........ you pay for it.
I don't want to.

[botty]

Also you presumably fund a very small part of the NHS,but in any given year you may not benefit from its services.It is about helping people other than yourself,

I WORK for the NHS so feel I am helping out all I need to. However there are many things I am happy for my taxes to go towards paying. The BBC isn't one of them as no-one will come to harm by not watching Eastenders.

[Oldjohnw]

Why should anyone help the BBC?
If it can't stand on its own, why should the public support it by taxation?

BBC?
(shrugs shoulders)
If you want it ........ you pay for it.
I don't want to.

If it can't stand on its own? I'm sure you will agree it needs money which it has to get from somewhere. You don't want the BBC. I believe you don't pay for it.

[botty]

I'm sure you will agree it needs money which it has to get from somewhere

As any business it needs money from somewhere to survive. That needs to come from people who are willing to pay for the service it provides. It is not an 'essential' service that needs to be paid for from taxation. People wont be harmed if it disappears tomorrow.

[Oldjohnw]

I'm sure you will agree it needs money which it has to get from somewhere

As any business it needs money from somewhere to survive. That needs to come from people who are willing to pay for the service it provides. It is not an 'essential' service that needs to be paid for from taxation. People wont be harmed if it disappears tomorrow.

It isn't paid for by general taxation, of course.

[[XAP]Bob]

I'm sure you will agree it needs money which it has to get from somewhere

As any business it needs money from somewhere to survive. That needs to come from people who are willing to pay for the service it provides. It is not an 'essential' service that needs to be paid for from taxation. People wont be harmed if it disappears tomorrow.

And that’s why it’s licensed - not taxed.

One of the oft quoted benefits of the BBC is keeping the quantity of adverts from the other broadcasters in check... though I am pretty sure that even fifteen years ago the level of cross channel advertising on the BBC has reached nearly the same level as commercial channels.

Given that many people now tend to watch streamed content, without adverts, or recorded content (and fast forward, or autoskip) the adverts... I can’t justify the license fee.

There are a couple of good programs they make, and which make them a lot of money through worldwide distribution, and the requirement to have a license if you watch anyone’s live broadcast (does that include a YouTube live stream I wonder?

If the license was paid “per screen inch” in a house then it would make more sense to many, but the flat fee is, admittedly, easy to operate.

The concept that the license fee somehow makes the independent of the government is a fallacy which we should get rid of as well. The government directly decides how much the BBC gets, they just don’t do the collection for them. If n many ways paying for it out of general taxation, as a service for the public good, would be reasonable.
But it’s a long while since I’ve watched anything they’ve produced.
Very occasionally use their website, and sometimes listen to the radio.

Not sure they do much in public interest any more. Both political wings claim they are biased, which probably makes them reasonable. But they still have a tendency to always present an equal weight to two sides of a debate, even though one is clearly a crackpot - and they used to have a tendency to report on tomorrow’s activity rather than today’s in the “not happened yet”

[simonineaston]

In some ways, arguement or discussion over the merits, or otherwise, of the licencing system is academic. The topic is likely to be poorly understood by the majority of contributors (excluding us lot, obs!) and doesn't affect the content of the programmes one jot. On the other hand, what could be simpler than, "Pay if you watch - and if you don't watch, don't pay..."
But let's be honest. We know what happens. The fact that it is possible to watch and not pay leads to the worst sort of hypocritical bluster from the folk who choose to sneekily watch content they should pay for and don't, based on a ton of spurious reasons, such as, " It isn't good value, is stuffed full of gov. bias, robs from the police/social services etc.etc./deprives us of our human rights!" and so on, on & on, thinking presumably that if they protest enough, it'll somehow disguise the fact that they are being dishonest... If the ruddy stuff is so disappointing, then don't watch and don't pay. But otherwise, for goodness sake have the backbone to cough up!!

[mumbojumbo]

Those people advocating ending the license pay when buying items which are advertised,perhaps unconsciously.Therefore people pay to watch "free" ITV and freeview channels.I woiuld argue aspects of the BBC are essential like news and weather forecasts.I feel sorry for people so poor a license is unaffordable.

[thirdcrank]

It's a mess which goes deep.

The BBC has become one of the biggest sponsors of the performing arts. eg I heard something the other day which mentioned that the BBC is the country's biggest employer of musicians. The licence funding model seems to have gradually built up an institution with a flabby, self-perpetuating management, which is very slow to change. One result of this seems to be a massive pension commitment with a growing deficit.

It's increasingly incongruous that the BBC should rely on a sort of poll tax levied on users and the numerous non-users alike, enforced with the sanction of criminal prosecution, ultimately involving imprisonment. One current anomaly is that the bourgeois users of the service tend to quibble loudest over this. Another is that the woolly-minded types who tend to be hot on civil liberties are less strident on this type of enforcement and silent if they are on the BBC gravy train.

Sorting this out won't be easy and whatever happens it's likely to involve a big tax-payer funded bail-out, especially the pension deficit.

[Mick F]

Am I correct that non-payment is going to be de-criminalised?
If so, when does this happen?

If it does happen, the threatening letters we receive monthly will have to have their wording changed regarding threats of fines and/or imprisonment.

Can you imprison someone for infringement of a non-criminal law?

[[XAP]Bob]

In some ways, arguement or discussion over the merits, or otherwise, of the licencing system is academic. The topic is likely to be poorly understood by the majority of contributors (excluding us lot, obs!) and doesn't affect the content of the programmes one jot. On the other hand, what could be simpler than, "Pay if you watch - and if you don't watch, don't pay..."
But let's be honest. We know what happens. The fact that it is possible to watch and not pay leads to the worst sort of hypocritical bluster from the folk who choose to sneekily watch content they should pay for and don't, based on a ton of spurious reasons, such as, " It isn't good value, is stuffed full of gov. bias, robs from the police/social services etc.etc./deprives us of our human rights!" and so on, on & on, thinking presumably that if they protest enough, it'll somehow disguise the fact that they are being dishonest... If the ruddy stuff is so disappointing, then don't watch and don't pay. But otherwise, for goodness sake have the backbone to cough up!!

I didn’t pay for many years, then the rules changed (not that the rules were particularly well advertised if you didn’t watch the BBC) and I stopped watching the little catchup that I did previously, then after a while resumed paying and watching a tiny amount of their output.

I don’t consider it anything like value, but it’s a monopoly - it’s a bit like all the rubbish cable channel bundles... here’s this one channel you want, to view it you must buy these 289 useless ones as well.

I don’t do sky, cable, or terrestrial TV. I can’t even do live BBC because they don’t put subtitles on (despite broadcasting the subtitles, and having them available for catchup).

I do pay some subscriptions for media consumption, and the BBC isn’t expensive per se, but it produces *so* little that I want to watch that I don’t consider it anything close to good value.

Things I’ve watched on the BBC in the last year or two....
- six nations rugby (though most of the games I wanted to watch were on itv, so I streamed from STV, because they’ve worked out how to stream in better than 480p)
- Dr Who

Other things I’ve watched live:
- F1 (other people’s sky)

Oh no, I think we had an hour or so of comic relief, or whichever telethon the BBC do.

Radio - that’s a slightly different kettle of fish. Although I haven’t actually listened to the radio in several month either, preferring well made podcasts.

[simonineaston]

Whereas, I pay the licence fee by direct debit, seldom watch any 'telly' but listen to R3 & 4 or the World Service all the time (almost literally) and consider the content I hear to be consistantly super high quality and excellent value for money. Radio 3 in particular is an absolute fount of fabulous music, both new & old, traditional & experimental, loud & soft, energetic and restful and is totally worth the cost of the licence fee (to me) on its own. Forget notions of dull, high-brow, old-fashioned orchestral, pipeNslippers stuff, R3 these days is jammed full of great music of all sorts. Great new programmes such as Saturday afternoon's Sound Of Gaming & Sound of Cinema feature music composed for video games & films - some surprises there! And their live performances from The Proms, for example, and a ton of other concerts, are fabulous quality. Listened to on my audio stuff, it's just like being there - Priceless.
And R4's food programmes, like The Kitchen Cabinet and The Food Programme itself are consistantly informative and entertaining. Their news reporting is about as accurate and bias-free as you are likely to get in this day and age, and remains, in spite of the protestations of sundry frothing-at-the-mouth right/left-wing (take your pick) objectionists, the bench-mark of quality journalism here in the UK. Anybody who assumes that there is any such thing as totally objective "news" is living in a fantasy world and should try to grasp the simple notion that bias in the form of editorial stance is and always has been, a fact of publishng life. If you want a quick steer on how good (although never perfect) the Beeb is at news, just have a quick sift through the court journals to see how often the BBC has to defend prosecutions for libel and misrepresentation * (Clue: Not very often).
That's just 40 pence a day for all that... All in all, I don't have one tiny little thing to complain about the BBC and its licence policy - in fact, d'you know what? I'm off this minute to copy / paste this peon of praise to their inbox!! Maybe they'll offer me a year off...
* Poor old Sir Cliff an exception...

[thirdcrank]

Am I correct that non-payment is going to be de-criminalised? ...

Like almost every other government policy proposal, it's still being floated to see which way the wind is blowing, to mash the metaphors. And it's being used as a threat to cow the Beeb.

In fact, the only people who actually get as far as passing through the prison gates are those who are virtually penniless assuming that anybody who gets to court for no licence must have a fixed address. There's a drawn-out procedure for fine enforcement and magistrates' courts have the power to make attachment of earnings orders or send in bailiffs etc. Ultimately, there's the commitment to prison which always is conditional on the fine not being paid. In general, only the penniless cannot rustle up the funds at that stage.

Apart from anything else, the courts have huge backlogs, the police are busy and the gaols are over-full.

[simonineaston]

The above doesn't alter the simple fact that those who consume content for which a licence is required, and don't buy one, are behaving dishonestly as well as breaking the law. Take the example of someone living on the streets who pops into a corner shop for a can of Special Brew and nips out without paying. They may be without funds, struggling with addiction issues, suffering with depression and plain just not wanting to engage with society, but that, as far as the law is concerned, doesn't matter much.
Boils down to whether one minds being dishonest, or otherwise...