baldysblog.co.uk

Given the choice to pay a tax or not, most people quite sensibly will NOT. The BBC “TV Licence” is an interesting case in point because it is a Ring-Fenced Tax that is spent on the thing it is raised for – the British Broadcasting Corporation unlike say “Road Tax” which is not spent on roads, it’s just another tax.

However, just mention the TV Licence in passing in a paper like the Daily Telegraph as Gill Hornby did today and watch the feathers fly in the chicken coup !

A Matter of Opinion

A Brain Surgeon going down the pub will not get comments on whether he can do a “Great nip and tuck around the Cerebral Cortex Doc”. Lord help you though if you are a Footballer, Cricket Player or in TV/Film, just about everyone and their dog has an opinion. One might say that that is fair enough because the ‘public’ is paying for it in one way or another: A Season Ticket for a top flight Premiership side, costs serious money as does a ticket for Covent Garden so for ‘regular customers’ who put their money where their mouths are, they have a ‘right’ to comment even if they are not ‘right’.

The BBC Licence Fee

In context it is an oddity because like all, it is a compulsory not an optional tax but because it covers ‘entertainment’, everybody feels that they have a “God Given Right” to shape and mould it to their personal preferences and frankly, this is ridiculous but also very, very funny too. The  Licence Fee currently is £139.50p per household  for the year whereas the interest we will pay on current Government borrowings for next year will likely be at least x12 that per household and likely a lot more before we even start to pay our taxes.

Snatches from the Telegraph

Gill Hornby suggested that we should support the BBC not by a Licence Fee but by a “Help the BBC” programme like the recent “Children In Need” programme/appeal that raised loads of dosh, a funny tongue in cheek idea but… Some comments that involved me on the DT Comments pages, without further comments it perhaps paints a picture…

“Whilst I agree that the BBC needs a radical overhaul including, in common with all public sector pensions, a switch to Money Purchase pension rather than Final Salary. I am not in favour of abolishing the Licence Fee although using digital technology, a graduated one based on content delivered, might be both better and fairer to other broadcasters.

Yes the Licence Fee is a “Tax” but it is a ring-fenced tax. Look how sycophantic the BBC is towards the Brown Government today but imagine what it would be like if financed from general taxation – The Brown Broadcasting Corporation. Martial music and pictures of tractor production lines plus the pictures of the “Great Leader Brown,” receiving posies of flowers from smiling little girls.

This is a huge topic and even the word “broadcaster” is becoming and will continue to become ever more redundant. However a “BBC in Need” way of getting the public to contribute to its upkeep is too horrible to contemplate as it would result in wall to wall Eastenders, Come Dance/Sing/Get Me In/Get Me Out shows – a very bad idea indeed, go and lie down in a dark room Gill.”

Second Post

A very sensible lady posted who made various observations which were anti the Licence Fee, my comments were as follows:

“Whilst I can sympathise with you and all the others who resent paying the Licence Fee, I would suggest that for your own interests, you should cheerfully pay it for now. Change is almost certainly coming and that includes to the BBC but for the moment it makes sense to keep it (BBC+Funding), intact so that we the “consumers” have something to ‘trade’ with the Media later.

Yes you can argue and I certainly would, that the BBC does not make good use of its uniquely funded position to make high quality programming the main core of its output and possibly, it tries to do far too much and would be better off attempting less… You can debate this from many different aspects but if you look beyond BBC 1 & BBC2, no other media business offers the range and volume that they do from Web to Radio to TV.

We do need to tread carefully because the major change that will impact the BBC has already started because the web and On-Demand TV/Radio will destroy the commercial media as we know it. The ridiculous amounts of money spent in securing “Rights” to sports events like Football and so on are not a sign of “robust financial health” rather more of desperation.

The obvious move for the commercial media and this has been mooted already, is that some of the licence fee should be ‘shared’ with them which is about as attractive as public funding for political parties or, bailing out Northern Rock. Eventually a new “business model” for the commercial media will evolve which may well lead to ever greater fragmentation of the industry a process that has been underway for many years in programme making but could well accelerate.

No I don’t work for the BBC or Media, moan all you like but keep the Licence Fee for now, it does give us as consumers a “seat at the table” which otherwise would be dominated by subscribers to Sports Channels and their Providers. “

Some Other Person Post:

“Essentially this is just tolerating the status quo and guaranteeing more of the same.

The BBC will be the least affected by any cultural changes/commercial media diktats because it is publicly funded.

It can, and does, go against public sentiment and defies the tide because of this, and will continue to do so.

I don’t believe that your points justify tolerating its presence as currently defined and functioning any longer.
Mr Angry:”

Third Post

“I am sorry to be so ungracious as not to agree with your very important view, that must be very annoying – having to deal with such small minded people !

On the other hand, perhaps there are more important things to worry about in this World. Nick Robinson, Andrew Marr and that would be Thespian Pescot may be annoying but Gordon Brown is seriously dangerous to your financial health and mine. If only his destruction of the UK economy was limited to the cost of a TV Licence every year, we would all be happy. So first things first, let’s get rid of him and to be honest, I doubt that either your or my opinion will carry too much weight in terms of how things work out in the broadcast media anyway.”

Conclusion:

In the overall scheme of things, the TV Licence fee is a true nothing compared to the things that really count in terms of the economic impact upon British people such as the value of Sterling, Government debt and taxation levels. But it generates an amazing amount of “heat” and that is slightly worrying because it means a Government can get the electorate to concentrate on a ‘nothing subject’ to distract them from the real problems.

4 Responses to “The BBC and the Licence Fee”