Abolish the Telly Tax? Fat chance, say MPs at non-binding debate Britons simply don't understand that "public sector broadcasting" is a "good for all society", a Labour MP lamented during a Westminster Hall debate on TV licensing. In spite of the dozen or so MPs who spoke during the 2.5-hour session, the debate managed to almost completely bypass the question of repealing the Telly Tax, as …
I don't know how this works in all different countries but the Army and the NHS are payed through taxation so why not the BBC too, then just demand that there be no adverts at all. The downside is of course that those guys running around had to go writing parking tickets instead, perhaps. And I think you should give some credit to the BBC, at least they used to make some good programs.
"I don't know how this works in all different countries but the Army and the NHS are payed through taxation so why not the BBC too..."
The Beeb gets £3.7Bn from the License fee. At present only those who have TV broadcast receiving equipment pay it. If you pay for it out of General Taxation, then every Tax Payer will be contributing, regardless of whether they watch TV or not. I thought this was what people were complaining about.
Iorisarvendu: The Beeb gets £3.7Bn from the License fee. At present only those who have TV broadcast receiving equipment pay it. If you pay for it out of General Taxation, then every Tax Payer will be contributing, regardless of whether they watch TV or not. I thought this was what people were complaining about.
If it came from income tax, it would be related to ability to pay, rather than being exactly the same for a mansion owned by a Baron, with a household of servants and dependants, as it is for a single mum in a bedsit in a council flat in Sunderland.
"If it came from income tax, it would be related to ability to pay, rather than being exactly the same for a mansion owned by a Baron, with a household of servants and dependants, as it is for a single mum in a bedsit in a council flat in Sunderland."
Yes but now you're proposing a system where the more you earn, the more your proportion of Telly Tax is...regardless of whether you watch TV or not! By making it payable out of general Taxation you've completely negated what a lot of comments here are saying - "Why should I pay the TV Tax when I don't watch TV."
@ lorisarvendu
What I described is what we did in Finland and quite frankly I am fully prepared to pay for not having to see any adverts. There are other channels for that, and then there is this question about domestic "home made" programs, I doubt Netflix would have "made" say Yes Minister or Monty Python or will ever "make" anything particularly English programs. There are other things to remember too that the BBC is supposed to deliver that no other channel have to deliver.
I also agree with technois comment.
The quality question is an other topic and who wants more of this and less of that, as the story goes one man was interviewed about the radio programs and how he liked them, and he did very much, and when they asked him what he listened to he said the time signal.
Personally I spend a lot more time on YouTube.
What I object to mainly is thus; We pay our licence fee, the BBC makes programmes. We get to see them once or twice, then the rights get sold on and if we want to watch it again, we have to buy it on DVD or equivalent.
If ALL bbc content was available in an archive, I'd likely have no objections to the fee. Instead, they take my money to make content I don't want to watch, prevent me watching it again, and make even more money from my investment, all whilst coming back cap in hand for more.
Nice little racket they have going on, eh?
Yeah US TV is dire with all the adverts* but the pledge drives on PBS are something else. I realise that what I'm about to say won't apply to many Americans but it does to me. What really bugs me is when the local PBS station is having a pledge drive. They show a bit of something and then stop and have some has been z list celebrity tell you to call in and support the station so great programming like this can continue. Only problem is it's normally a BBC show I'm watching and I've already paid for that because I pay my Licence Fee in the UK. God help us if the BBC are ever forced to resort to pledge drives
*They do make some great programmes every now and again plus I'm a baseball fan. Having an adbreak every 10 minutes is not good for my boredom threshold. Then the adverts are often for some antidepressant and they have to list every side effect so they drone on. May cause diarrhea, drowsiness, flatulence, mood swings, loss of sexual appetite, increased appetite, loss of sensitivity in the left hand side of your body, suicidal thoughts (hopefully not at the same time (especially the first three)) etc.
"What it seems to suggest is that the petitioners believe that their provider – whether Sky, BT or Virgin – should somehow pay the licence fee, even though the petitioners still want to watch BBC services."
As everyone "still wants to watch BBC services" then a subscription model would surely bring in a higher revenue - think of the enforcement savings alone they could make......
"If we do not want bland uniformity, an organisation that can encompass Radio 4 and Radio 6 Music and make programmes varying from EastEnders to The Sky at Night is an important thing to preserve."
And all of it total crap. I don't watch anything on the BBC or made by the BBC (with the exception of a couple of very old shows on Netflix). How is it that Netflix can make everything from House of Cards to The Expanse without a license fee? Give me Netflix, HBO and Starz over the BBC any day.
"How is it that Netflix can make everything from House of Cards to The Expanse without a license fee? Give me Netflix, HBO and Starz over the BBC any day."
Because they do fuck all when it comes to Radio, Websites, Current affairs; in fact anything they can't buy in several months in advance.
@ Lost all faith... "Because [Netflix] do fuck all when it comes to Radio, Websites, Current affairs; in fact anything they can't buy in several months in advance."
If you needed a licence to consume *any* BBC content then your argument would stack up, but most of the stuff you mention doesn't require a TV licence.
"If you needed a licence to consume *any* BBC content then your argument would stack up, but most of the stuff you mention doesn't require a TV licence."
Yes, it's disgusting, isn't it, All those services provided free to everyone but paid for by licence payers. Most which would not be available to anyone if the BBC was subscription only.
"And all of it total crap."
If you think that the output from the BBC is total crap, you really need to spend sometime watching the output from other countries, and then you would be aware of what crap broadcasting really looks like. In my neck of the woods, the output from the local state broadcaster would make re-runs of the Teletubbies look like Oscar winning material.
"And all of it total crap. I don't watch anything on the BBC"
You don't want to watch it therefore it's crap? All of radio 4, all of 6 Music, every episode of Eastenders (you might have a point there), every programme you don't watch?
Do you also think the government should stop funding roads to places you don't want to go, close schools when your kids (if you have any) have grown up, etc. etc?
"Do you also think the government should stop funding roads to places you don't want to go, close schools when your kids (if you have any) have grown up, etc. etc?"
Wow, not that old chestnut. Let's think about your argument for a second.....you are seriously suggesting that state provided entertainment is as important as roads and schools? Seriously!?!
Transport, Education = Public spending priority.
Homes under the hammer, antiques road trip = Not.
Netflix bought the UK streaming rights to The Expanse which is not the same as making The Expanse. The Expanse was made by Syfy which is a subsidiary of NBC.
This template reply can be repeated for a load of other things that it is claimed Netflix make but don't, but not the terrible excrement that Netflix really do make that people somehow forget to mention.
Umm...but the BBC buy in a lot from independent production companies...
That is because of changes made back in the 90's when it was determined that as both the leading UK broadcast organisation and commissioner of programmes that part of its public service obligation was to stimulate the programme production industry. Thus many former BBC employees were encouraged to set up their own production company and sell programmes back to the BBC and to others.
This action served two purposes: the first it gave the production companies greater freedom than they had when directly employed by the BBC, the second was that this could reduce the cost of the BBC and thus the cost of the licence fee.
The BBC also have a record for producing utter dross - see about 50% or 'comedy' and drama on R4.
Agree with respect to R4, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was a R3 production and much superior for it....
"Umm...but the BBC buy in a lot from independent production companies...thats why BakeOff is on Ch4 now."
Many of whom are BBC spin-offs/start-ups because the commercial TV lobbyists forced a break up of the BBC as being too big to compete against. Part of the knock on effect of this was to dumb down a lot of shows because now the owners licence them to the BBC but also want to sell, re-sell and sell some more to anyone they can elsewhere in the world. For the same reason, much of the "BBC" contents is gone from iPlayer after a short while because the BBC don't own them and the rights charges are high for on-demand.
Iron Fist was good, (it just could have been a couple of episodes shorter.)
But the argument is not about whether the BBC is good or crap or whether the alternatives are, it is whether you should have to pay a tax on streaming live TV to fund it.
I used to listen to Radio 4 at lot. Now seems to be obsessed with music and 'the stories of ordinary people'. I barely bother these days. Sometimes the Archers, sometimes Today for background noise. Everything else has become so dumbed down over the last few years I can't tolerate it.
The BBC has nothing I want and TBH if it vanished tomorrow I really wouldn't miss it.
I disagree with your opinion that the BBC makes nothing good.
However what I object to is being forced to 'subscribe' to it, if I wish to watch other services.
The amount of good stuff that I personally would want to watch does not justify the fee (for me personally).
What rankles is that I am, as a consequence, also denied streaming non funded channels.
This post has been deleted by its author
"Give me Netflix, HBO and Starz over the BBC any day."
You do realise they are cherry picking what they think is the best of TV, don't you? And just because they happen to buy or commission stuff you currently like doesn't mean that everyone likes what they do or even that you will still like what they next year or the year after.
I had a Netflix subscription, a 3 month freebie. I'd seen everything I was interested in the first 2 months (as had my wife, with different tastes to me) and barely looked at it in month three as we realised there was very little new stuff appearing. Assuming I get get a month by month subscription and not be tied to a 12 month contract, I may look again in a year or so.
"I don't watch anything on the BBC or made by the BBC"
Not even any of the BBC Worldwide/BBC America [co-]productions that get sold all over the place, sometimes not even to BBC UK, and eventually get broadcast here by other channels? Unless you watch the end credits right to the end, you might not even know a show is a BBC production in some case.
The Musketeers and Orphan Black come to mind.
Seriously - 7mins of content followed by 7mins of adds is not unusual.
There's a reason people move to HBO and Netflix in the US - to avoid adverts. And they pay at least 40p per day to do so.
So to the curmudgeons on this thread who own a TV but claim never to use the BBC I say - tough s**t, its for the public good.
You can make any huge amount of money seem small by dividing it into smaller and smaller packets and looking at that.
40p - what is that - per person per hour? Per day?
The money the BBC gets from the licence is £3.7 billion per year.
Now think of that going on cookery programs, dancing programs, and the media/political bubble's views on practically everything, particularly the rightness of collecting the licence fee.
With £3.7 billion per year they could take on Hollywood....
This post has been deleted by its author
"I do not really see culture programs being provided by the commercial channels. There was the Southbank show i suppose - but that stopped many years ago."
Sky Arts (1 and 2) started off with good intentions, but like most speciality commercial channels, very soon forget their name and why they are there and branch out into off-topic shows. Have you ever looked at MTV in recent years? The Horror Channel? SciFi? The Learning Channel (now TLC, letters actually mean nothing now)?
"With £3.7 billion per year they could take on Hollywood...."
Television only gets half of that. That 50.5% is then further split across news, drama, documentary and all the local stations around the country, not to mention BBC Scotland, which is a bit more than a "local" station. The BBC is a bit like the NHS, ie not a single monolithic organisation. But then neither is Hollywood for that matter.
Im going to keep coming back and checking this for an answer - We were away for two weeks and racked up at least £1 a day with just the pilot light on the boiler, the fridge and standing charges.
I honestly dont see how anyone living in the 21st century could just use £2 a day..
I mean with the standing charges that I mentioned all I have to do is have a shower and cook a meal and we are already pushing the £2 that this guy claims he uses all day. This is without us heating or lighting the house.
Sorry guy, but you're either super thrifty (and I NEED to know how to emulate it) or your talking out of your arse.
This post has been deleted by its author
'If one looks at ITV - i like some of the programs on ITV, but we have X Factor/Britains Got Talent, permanently, repeated on Sunday. Bank Holiday programming is so much worse than 30 years ago.'
I wouldn't disagree with that, but then the BBC retaliate with the dancing programme and that singing one with the chairs, so I'm not convinced they're doing any better.
There's Blue Planet 2, which features the most brilliant photography ever seen in a nature documentary.
I just wish it had subtitles continuously scrolling across the bottom
Shut the fuck up and listen to the programme.....Do not pause the fucking broadcast for everybody else to go out the room and piffle with something that could bloody well wait....Shut the fuck up and listen to the programme.........
I'm generally a fan of the BBC and Blue Planet 2 certainly looks beautiful but I am close to giving up on it because it is so uninformative. It feels like it just jumps around the weekly theme whispering 'oooh, shiny' without ever telling me anything useful about what is being shown
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
