(from Blithering Bunny)
From The Times:
THE BBC’s £2.8 billion licence fee is safe for the next ten years but will not survive into the digital age, ministers have decided.
The long-awaited Green Paper on the future of the BBC, which is due this month, will recommend that a sweeping review of the broadcasting industry is started shortly after 2012, paving the way for major changes in funding to reflect the digital revolution, The Times has learnt. The Green Paper, which sets out the Government’s conditions for renewing the ten-year royal charter in 2007, is currently circulating around Whitehall awaiting the approval of other key departments, including Downing Street.
10 * 2.8 Billion = 28Billion
Av UK wage 18,000GBP
So 1.5Million Man Years of slavery to fund entertainment!
panem et circenses
>So 1.5Million Man Years of slavery to fund entertainment!
I think you’re about a whole scale of magnitude out, but it still feels right. I don’t much object to the entertainment, it’s paying for their “news” which grates.
Am I right in thinking that from 2008 (2011 in the S.East) when the analogue signal is switched off and if you have a conventional, non digital TV, you will still be able to get cable and satellite, but BBC will be digitally transmitted so the facist licence fee extraction will not be enforcable as it is to anyone now who has a TV? If that is the case, this puppy will no longer be a licence fee subscriber – they can kiss my ass.
Not soon enough.
But within my life- time, provided I do not do anything too stupid.
I long for the day.
Am I right in thinking…
No. The licence fee is for receiving broadcast transmissions, not for receiving the Beeb. If you can receive only satellite or cable, you still have to get a TV licence.
Hello John B
I do not quite understand what you are saying, but it seems to be at odds with the drift of the article, which says that the licence fee that the BBC collects will end. What exactly are you saying?
I was responding to Kevin, who seemed to be conflating the planned analogue switch-off date with the planned licence fee changes.
If the Times report is accurate, the licence fee will continue in its present form for all TV-owning households until 2012 at the earliest, even if they only have digital (as they all will by 2012, since analogue will have been switched off).
If the broadcasting review scheduled for that year does indeed decide that the licence fee should be phased out, then any changes will be gradual and won’t take effect until at least 2013.
If in the Green Paper Labour concedes the principle of abolishing the licence fee, albeit a good way forward, that in itself is a major change. It puts the BBC on notice that it will need to make major adjustments.
And if by chance the Tories win the election they could decide to adopt Labour’s principle but bring forward the effective date. The Green Paper is after all a consultative document, formal policy awaits a White Paper.