Perhaps you may have read that the Adam Smith Institute has suggested that the BBC should wind up its licence fee and become a voluntary subscription-based service. I agree with that part but I would take issue with the view postulated by the Adam Smith Institute that the BBC is the UK’s strongest media asset. It is the UK’s most dangerous negative anti-British media liability and the idea that it can play a positive role in global terms is also contentious. The BBC license imposition must go. The BBC bias can stay so long as it does not cost me one penny. The BBC monster must be slain and there is no point of compromise with it. That is not to say that it does not have some professional staff working for it – it does and I know some of them. But the bias is so deep, so instinctive, so visceral, that it will never go away.
WHY THE ADAM SMITH INSTITUTE IS PARTIALLY WRONG!
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If the BBC had to fund itself it would have to change its left wing bias or die. In the USA the left wing TV networks are floundering.
I responded to a comment and link to this report on the open thread before I saw this thread. Can comments on the other thread be moved to this one?
Is the BBC still lobbying for those with internet access to be required to buy a TV license?
You already do need a licence. Here is the quote from the BBC News live page
“…The BBC News channel is available in the UK only. Don’t forget, to watch TV online as it’s being broadcast, you still need a TV Licence….”
That’s their claim. Has it been upheld in court?
So the availablity of live feed on the BBC website means I need a tv license or can I choose not to watch it and avoid the license?
The BBC claims that you need a licence to watch live TV-as-it-is-broadcast online.
It does not say that you must have a TV licence if you merely have a computer and don’t watch live broadcast TV on it.
I believe that ‘as it’s being broadcast’ is the key phrase here. So if you watch programmes on iPlayer (time-shifting) you do not need a license.
That is correct at the moment it is only required for ‘live viewing’ but there are two issues here.
1. Any computer or mobile device that has the ability to receive live TV (regardless of the fact you may not use it) technically needs a TV licence, if you buy a TV set for watching DVD’s only you will still be required to own a TV licence.
2. The BBC wants to have a licence fee for the iplayer, this is of course nonsense as the BBC could just do what Sky does and require you to register using your Sky account to be able to access their content online.
The BBC should simply be converted into a subscription service only and set top boxes would require the entering of a code ot unscramble the picture, this code would be unique to you box (as Sky work it) and that way only those who want the BBC would fund it.
I thought that the relevant condition was ‘equipment capable of receiving TV transmissions’. Wasn’t there a court case which TV Licencing lost, on the basis that the householder owned a TV purely to watch videotapes, and no longer had a TV aerial?
As far as BBC funding is concerned, micropayments/channel/theme subscriptions are the way forward. Stop the ‘me too-ism’ of BBC output, and if a licence fee is required at all (for news & current affairs) make it small.
If this is the case then the BBC has used it as a trojan horse to force everyone to buy a license. Surely it should be possible for your internet provider, at your request, to block access to the BBC website (or sub page supplying the video) then your “apparatus” would not be capable of receiving the BBC output. This is an imposition, I did not ask fo the BBC output so should not be forced to buy a license.
Perhaps they meant “asset” in the financial sense? In any case, this is all a false alarm. The report itself says that the news and children’s programming – the worst offenders of the entire organization – will remain free, subsidized in some way by the government. This means that the BBC will still be your official state broadcaster, and the News division will remain the protected, heavily biased outfit it is now.
Drama and other stuff would be available via subscription service but you will still be forced to pay for the same biased news you get right now. Only – as I’ve been saying for ages – it will be taken directly out of your taxes instead of a separate payment. Nothing about BBC bias will change, and the same generations-long special relationship which allows them to manipulate public opinion will remain intact as ever, and possibly even strengthened by what would surely be a huge story.
To be honest David if that happened the BBC news bit would slowly die off as it becomes less relevant (as the BBC is now) the justification for funding it no longer exists.
There are those in the Tory party who clearly despise the BBC, they really need to put pressure on Cameron, he might then be tempted to throw the right wing of his party something to chew on, i.e. the killing off of the BBC.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Typically the BBC refers to the Adam Smith Institute as a ‘right-wing think-tank’ in its own report on the issue. On it’s own web site the ASI refers to itself as libertarian and in favor of free markets. The various organizations constantly campaigning for more public funding and or/more market regulation in this or that field on the BBC are never referred to as left wing. Why is that I wonder?
thoughtful,
I was just about to post the same thing when I came to your post.
Think tanks are never “left-wing” , they are “respected”. All other think tanks are “right-wing”. Blatant BBC bias.
The BBC is a busted flush that is in its death throes. It has been rumbled as being completely disconnected from the mass of the people that fund it by compulsion. Its ability to set its own weather microclimate is only of concern to its receding and increasingly shrill cheerleaders within the elite that spawn ed and license it.
Today it looks different but it is not. It is simply Lord HawHaw without the principles…Lord Ha Ha more like. The coming generation will marvel at how bovine and supine we all were in letting the leech of public sector propaganda suck us dry for so long. File under “dog license”.
The whole project is unzipping itself and more fool us for paying our coppers for the tawdry striptease preceeding the riots to come…Reith deserved much better!
Why must the BBC monster be slain?
If the BBC could fund its mass manufacture of total trash by voluntary subscription then I wouldn’t mind it thriving. It’d wouldn’t be the first big business to make a success of cynically selling tacky rubbish to the less discriminating sections of our society.
I only object to the government using a nasty tax and the criminal law system to ensure that dross like Eastenders, Casualty, Cash in the Attic and Car Booty is produced in vast quantities.