BBC licence fee HIKED: Households forced to pay nearly £170.

The Beeb was after a 9% increase, which was this years rate of inflation and would have resulted in a fee of £173.33. Instead the government did a net bit of haggling and only allowed a 6.6% rise, which means that the licence is being reduced in real terms

I stopped paying for a licence years ago mate. The BBC can stuff their licence up there lefty woke biased arse.

Apologies - no idea what I did wrong there!

Here's what I was going to say..



Nonsense. The Beeb have been producing internal discussion documents for years on the subject.

In a nutshell, it isn't possible yet because - under the terms of the Charter and various bits of broadcasting legislation, services must be available to everyone, and telecom-delivered programming is still unavailable/patchy to some.

The most likely non-licence funding model remains general taxation (advertising is fraught with problems under the current charter terms).

As for streaming? That has half of the Board of Governors salivating at the prospect.

Opening a market to viewers from all over the world with a raft of saleable properties (anything from Doctor Who to Call the Midwife and everything between), and a ready to air back catalogue that no one else has (and everyone wants - just note how much content on streaming services is actually BBC programming) would make them, overnight, one of the biggest networks in the world.

(Contrary to the knocker's narrative, salaries at the BBC are far lower than paid by commercial broadcasters. The Beeb are duty bound to publish wages over a certain level. ITV, etc, aren't. If people saw how much some of the ITV presenters are pulling in, they might think twice about whining over the likes of Lineker and Norton, etc.)

Here are some facts to consider

1 BBC1 is the most watched TV channel on TV in this country, beating ITV, SKY and all other commercial channels

The reason for this is becauuse the BBC can afford to but on better quality programming, which includes less repeats than any other channel, more home made and BRITISH content, and less cheap programming, including imported, cheap foreign programmes.

2 BBC News continues to be the most watched news source in the UK, also the most listened to news source not only in the UK, but across the world.

The reason for this is that the funding sources allow the BBC to beat its competitors by producing quality news content, having more correspondents across the world, and as the worlds most trusted source of news, a reputation that the BBC has held for generations.

3 If we do not fund our BBC properly ( by funding in line with inflation ), then it will do considerable harm to British culture.

The BBC is now the only British TV station which makes / produces childrens programmes, unless the BBC is properly funded, we are at risk of feeding our children a diet of almost entirely American programming, and the programmes I grew up with, such as Blue Peter, which educates, informs and entertains will be lost.

IF YOU MAKE THE BBC INTO A SUBSCRIPTION OR PAY AS YOU WATCH CHANNEL

Its income will fall considerably, it will be relegated to just the same as all the other commercial channels, churning out endless repeats, imported programming, cheap content and it would put at risk your local BBC TV News, your local BBC radio station, BBC News & current affairs and it would risk there been no British made childrens programmes.

The bottom line here is that if you want our BBC to continue as the market leader, producing the most popular, quality programming, then lets fund it properly.

Apparently an increase of 6.6% rather than 9% will leave a £19 million funding hole in BBC finances. But I have every confidence that left wing Lineker will still be laughing all the way to the bank. 

The BBC now has adverts, for its own programmes. It should gradually have its share reduced so that it has equal funding with other big channels.