I used to support the BBC. But not anymore. Not particularly because of their reporting, though the government has slowly put them in a position where they can’t seemingly say anything. But the entire concept of a TV licence is archaic and I refuse to pay it.
That’ll teach them to not report the news if it embarasses the government.
So, the exact same tactics they’ve been using on the NHS.
Defund it, make it operate as inefficiently as possible, blame it for everything wrong in the world, then sell off the profitable bits.
The BBC used to be world class. These cunts, who themselves are so far from being world class at anything but selling other people’s things, have destroyed it, like they do to everything they touch.
…and still around a third of the voting public want them in power.
To be fair, with the licence fee costing about the same as Netflix plus Amazon prime, it is getting expensive.
The Netflix price point comparison is completely the wrong one to make. The BBC provides employment to thousands of people across the UK, giving so many the opportunities to get into media, sport, radio, TV, web design content design, product management, production, writing, make up etc.
They also provide drastically more services than Netflix like sports coverage (Sky and BT cost a fortune in comparison), radio, weather, investigative journalism, regional news and news.
Finally because the BBC it isn’t so heavily incentivised by revenue generation over the years it’s given some our greatest writers, comedians etc the opportunity to take more chances on their work. The BBC have given so many of the UK’s best creatives the start or the space they’ve needed that you don’t get as much on fully commercialised channels.
I totally get why the comparison is made as it fits our mental model of a subscription. But, it’s like comparing apples and pears really.
PS this isn’t a comment on how I feel or you feel about the BBC, just about the comparison with Netflix.
Can they recoup some of this by cancelling Mrs. Brown’s Boys?
I don’t watch Netflix, so I don’t have to pay for it.
I don’t watch Amazon Prime, so I don’t have to pay for it.
I don’t watch the BBC, but I still have to pay for it.
BBC should be a subscription service, not a mandatory bill service that comes with the threat of jailtime if that mandatory bill isn’t paid.
Not had a license for nearly a decade and really don’t miss it.
Bbc news – dreadful
Soaps – dreadful
dramas – from what I hear ok but not my thing
Documentaries – the only thing i’d stay for but find their way to netflix eventually
But… but… they’ve been covering for the Tories for 10 years! Surely, if they do what the tories want, they won’t attack them any more?
It’s almost as if they should’ve just told the truth all along and at least had a chance at a government that didn’t attack them at every opportunity.
The same people would be whining if the license fee was increased in the face of massive cost of living increases. Isn’t the BBC the only bill that if you don’t pay you will get a criminal record for?
Fact is its about the tories. Just be honest. When corbyn was about you had no love for the BBC did you? You saw the biased nature that means many on all sides aren’t a fan.
Fact is I’d pay the license fee but the BBC has alot of growing up to do imo. Shouldn’t be paying the salaries it is to so called stars. It should be a place to get your start then if you want more you to the private sector
At this point the BBC may as well go for broke. The torys are going to kill what’s left of it anyway. Phone starmer, get him to agree to restore funding when labour win and go start reporting fairly against the torys. Stop holding their dicks whilst they piss on them.
I’m not even pro bbc but the writings on the wall, grow a pair. The BBC has way more media power than it realises.
Oh yeah, they can’t as the torys installed their sycophants on the board.
RIP.
When it’s finally gone and the spartists of r/uk have their socialist dream of a million different private paid for content suppliers, when we have lost: local radio, radio 4, radio 3, programming for people with disabilities, consumer affairs programmes, programming for ethnic minorities, kids tv without a commercial slant, educational content, world beating drama, news and documentaries, then we might realise what we had.
Edit: What they are right about is that the BBC isn’t just for them.
I believe it does improve society for all, whether one consumes content or not.
I believe one can easily get value from the license fee.
And that it’s worth paying it to keep our kids educated, our minority communities (be they ethnic, local or ability based) connected and to discuss things which don’t get a look in on commercial stations.
Instead, many would rather consolidate the hold of foreign billionaires on our national psyche and politics.
Of course their competitors hate the beeb. And their competitors fund our politicians.
Tories:
£30 billion for Tory donor managed Serco to run a pathetically ineffective Track & Trace system? Sure, where do I sign?
£100 billion hit to economy due to a madman’s version of Brexit that only the sviwel eyed wanted? Sure, where do I sign?
£3.7 billion to completely fund the BBC, reducing the license fee to zero, and continue to offer great content that isn’t controlled by media moguls while employing thousands of people and exporting the UK brand all over the world? Nah, that’s a waste of money, we should kill it off.
The BBC has actually sucked Boris’s cock his entire time as PM, yet somehow Tories still consider them biased against him
What I love about the BBC arguments is you have the tories trying to attack it for being Left leaning and now actively defunding it and then half the Labour supporters here blaming it for propping up the government and being state propaganda. I mean which is it?! Maybe it’s just not as bias as everyone seems to claim…
I agree that they should look at different ways to fund the BBC rather than a license fee but I’m not sure what that would look like.
The comparison to Netflix is entirely disingenuous. Netflix has some very good offerings but provides such a small percentage of the breadth of things the BBC provides. All the people saying “well other than Attenborough nothing good on bbc for years!” Load of bollocks – you clearly just don’t watch any of it. There have been great dramas, great documentaries, great investigative journalism, I’m mean even great kids tv shows. BBC is exported around the world and loved there too. So fine, a few people on Reddit that hate something does not sum up the UK. It’s like the Mrs Browns Boys debate.
We should be worried that the Government is trying to destroy something that a lot of our country rely on to keep themselves informed. Yes the quality of the BBC is getting worse – cutting their funding is not going to improve that.
Gotta feel for the BBC. They’ve tried to have a right wing lean to appease the tories but it’s clearly not been enough and the gov are punishing them anyway for not going into full Tory propaganda/whitewash mode.
It’s amazing. All you have to do is report the truth and the Government retaliates with a funding cut. This is the reason why the Police won’t investigate the parties.
We are now living under a fascist regime that believe they are above the law and will silence any voice that attempts to show the truth.
No matter what you thought are on the license fee, this is very bad news for democracy.
Tories hate to see a public business because they can’t get a cut.
The BBC should start advertising or be a subscription service. The way people are hounded for license fees is criminal.
BBC should be subscription based, not this archaic mandatory fee if you have a TV or else you’re going to jail.
Dorries doesn’t even know how Channel 4 is funded, as she made clear recently in public. To call her as ‘thick as mince’ is to seriously overestimate her intelligence and understanding of the media landscape. A cat could probably make more informed decisions.
I’ve just cancelled my TV license after paying for the last three years. I don’t watch anything from the BBC or listen to the radio.
Three years ago, while my gf was 9months pregnant, a TV license officer came to our property and out of naivety my gf let him in. He saw a TV playing Netflix and asked assumed it was live TV. My gf signed a document to say that we watch TV and off he went.
2 weeks later we get a court order to pay £700.00 to the BBC, while expecting a baby any moment and scraping by. I’ve been scared to stop paying but I work from home now so I have no problem shutting the door in the officers face, something that my heavily pregnant gf could never have done.
Fuck the BBC their programs are shit anyway
Reducing the license fee debate to “Do you use it as much as Netflix tho?” Is so disingenuous.
The BBC has that ‘direct’ element to it, yeah. Do I watch terrestrial TV much? Nah. If that was the be all and end all, fuck the £160 a year.
But it’s more complicated than that. It’s the soft power it extends around the globe, the image of Britain it projects which – let’s face it – is a much more attractive one than that of Nadine Dorries and her ilk. It’s the way it creates jobs, not only for ‘lefty arty types’ but thousands of other industries. It’s the benefit of having a news and entertainment industry that isn’t fully beholden to commercial interests; that is a rare thing indeed in 2022, and while it’s not perfect, that isn’t cause itself fo throw the baby out with the bath water.
The Tories like to frame this much like they did with Brexit. “We pay the EU millions each week – what do YOU get from it?” Directly, nothing maybe. But indirectly, a lot.
Not everything thing is a zero sum game, even if that’s the kind of lizard-brained, single-loop thinking that the Tories wish we’d all submit to.
Ah well done BBC, pander to the right wing and they still screw you.
I dunno, this seems like a pretty transparent distraction by Johnson’s biggest sycophant.
The sooner they scrap the TV licence the better. Was a system that worked fine in the past, but largely obsolete nowadays. If BBC wants to turn to PPV, then that’s fine. However they need to stop all the BS if scaring vulnerable people into paying for licences. The decommissioning of the TV licensing department alone will save millions.
Edit: just seen the news. Seems like my wish came true? Gone in 2027?
Next wish: The sooner I win £10m in the lottery the better……
The amount of folk defending the license fee is absolutely hilarious.
Why should anyone have to fund the BBC (especially with all the stuff that’s come out in the past 10 or so years) in order to watch ANY live TV?
It’s outdated and antiquated. And don’t get me started on the threatening letters, especially to elderly people.
They need to cut about 10 managers at the BBC and thats 2 billion saved.
The amount they pay senior staff is insane
What’s with the boomer clowns in this thread trying to guilt people into resubbing the BBC because they listen to a bit of radio sometimes?
I mean I *want* to be on the side of the BBC here, I really do. At it’s best it’s easily done more for British interests globally than all of the FTSE 100 companies put together. But in 2022 it’s just kind of a pointless mess, ground down by decades of [Birtism](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Birtism) to the point where there’s barely any of the original ‘Reithian’ values left in the corp. Ironically the few areas of the Beeb that *do* still *’inform, educate and entertain’* – BBC Three, Radio 3, 1xtra, the Asian Network, *some* of the podcasts on BBC Sounds, the wildlife/documentary division – are easily the best things about it.
But most of the BBC these days is just a copy of the other channels without any adverts – BBC One = ITV, BBC Two = Channel Four, BBC Four = Sky Arts, Radio 1 = Capitol, Radio 2 = Heart, Radio 5 = Talksport – plus it’s news and current affairs division is obviously a fucking joke now. So with this in mind, and baring the fact that I barely ever use the thing, why *should* I continue to pay the license fee? Seriously.
The BBC should cancel Strictly Come Dancing 2022 and say it’s because the government cut their funding and they can’t afford the costs. That’d get the public on the BBC’s side!
I worked for the BBC for 10 years. A long time ago, admittedly. The amount of waste I witnessed was awe-inspiring. It was full of middle managers (Head Of Paper Clips we used to call them) that didn’t do anything much (apart from manage the paper clips). They all paid themselves far too much and when it came time to cut the budgets they cut the producers, program makers and presenters. By the time they pay themselves there’s no money left over for programmes.
So, I haven’t got a lot of time for the corporation nowadays. Particularly with their very strange attitude to news (the latest being the ‘balance’ they are so keen on – giving air time to flat-earthers for instance. If a viewpoint is popular enough, they will represent it, apparently).
When I was there they got rid of a community helpline which was joint financed by Manpower. It cost about £3k a year and helped people every day. The same week they cut that, we got some new flash lamps for our office. Three grands worth. I’m not so naive to think they came from the same budgets. … but it wasn’t a good look.
They ordered £30,000 worth of drain-flaps for Broadcasting House. They sat at the bottom of the drainpipes and had the BBC logo on them. Trouble was- the BBC had just changed from the old angled logo to the upright one. So, they all got binned. £30.000 literally down the drain (or not).
They also nearly killed some friends of mine when they failed to replace the retiring chap that cleaned the filters in the air con. water systems. Some staff succumbed to Legionaires disease. Eeleven people I think. Just because some overpaid manager couldn’t get off his lazy arse to find out what the retiree actually did. I’ve got a million of these stories.
The BBC do produce some absolute tosh, but also some incredible (and important) programming.
The Conservatives seem intent on either selling off our cultural assets, or destroying them so that their chums can move into the space created.
Hardly ‘conservative’ and I’d even call it traitorous and treasonous.
This hateful idiot is clearly out her depth and trying to harm British institutions she herself can’t control.
She said “the days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors” were over.
Cunt, it was *THIS* tory government that stopped the free licence for the elderly.
35 comments
I used to support the BBC. But not anymore. Not particularly because of their reporting, though the government has slowly put them in a position where they can’t seemingly say anything. But the entire concept of a TV licence is archaic and I refuse to pay it.
That’ll teach them to not report the news if it embarasses the government.
So, the exact same tactics they’ve been using on the NHS.
Defund it, make it operate as inefficiently as possible, blame it for everything wrong in the world, then sell off the profitable bits.
The BBC used to be world class. These cunts, who themselves are so far from being world class at anything but selling other people’s things, have destroyed it, like they do to everything they touch.
…and still around a third of the voting public want them in power.
To be fair, with the licence fee costing about the same as Netflix plus Amazon prime, it is getting expensive.
The Netflix price point comparison is completely the wrong one to make. The BBC provides employment to thousands of people across the UK, giving so many the opportunities to get into media, sport, radio, TV, web design content design, product management, production, writing, make up etc.
They also provide drastically more services than Netflix like sports coverage (Sky and BT cost a fortune in comparison), radio, weather, investigative journalism, regional news and news.
Finally because the BBC it isn’t so heavily incentivised by revenue generation over the years it’s given some our greatest writers, comedians etc the opportunity to take more chances on their work. The BBC have given so many of the UK’s best creatives the start or the space they’ve needed that you don’t get as much on fully commercialised channels.
I totally get why the comparison is made as it fits our mental model of a subscription. But, it’s like comparing apples and pears really.
PS this isn’t a comment on how I feel or you feel about the BBC, just about the comparison with Netflix.
Can they recoup some of this by cancelling Mrs. Brown’s Boys?
I don’t watch Netflix, so I don’t have to pay for it.
I don’t watch Amazon Prime, so I don’t have to pay for it.
I don’t watch the BBC, but I still have to pay for it.
BBC should be a subscription service, not a mandatory bill service that comes with the threat of jailtime if that mandatory bill isn’t paid.
Not had a license for nearly a decade and really don’t miss it.
Bbc news – dreadful
Soaps – dreadful
dramas – from what I hear ok but not my thing
Documentaries – the only thing i’d stay for but find their way to netflix eventually
But… but… they’ve been covering for the Tories for 10 years! Surely, if they do what the tories want, they won’t attack them any more?
It’s almost as if they should’ve just told the truth all along and at least had a chance at a government that didn’t attack them at every opportunity.
The same people would be whining if the license fee was increased in the face of massive cost of living increases. Isn’t the BBC the only bill that if you don’t pay you will get a criminal record for?
Fact is its about the tories. Just be honest. When corbyn was about you had no love for the BBC did you? You saw the biased nature that means many on all sides aren’t a fan.
Fact is I’d pay the license fee but the BBC has alot of growing up to do imo. Shouldn’t be paying the salaries it is to so called stars. It should be a place to get your start then if you want more you to the private sector
At this point the BBC may as well go for broke. The torys are going to kill what’s left of it anyway. Phone starmer, get him to agree to restore funding when labour win and go start reporting fairly against the torys. Stop holding their dicks whilst they piss on them.
I’m not even pro bbc but the writings on the wall, grow a pair. The BBC has way more media power than it realises.
Oh yeah, they can’t as the torys installed their sycophants on the board.
RIP.
When it’s finally gone and the spartists of r/uk have their socialist dream of a million different private paid for content suppliers, when we have lost: local radio, radio 4, radio 3, programming for people with disabilities, consumer affairs programmes, programming for ethnic minorities, kids tv without a commercial slant, educational content, world beating drama, news and documentaries, then we might realise what we had.
Edit: What they are right about is that the BBC isn’t just for them.
I believe it does improve society for all, whether one consumes content or not.
I believe one can easily get value from the license fee.
And that it’s worth paying it to keep our kids educated, our minority communities (be they ethnic, local or ability based) connected and to discuss things which don’t get a look in on commercial stations.
Instead, many would rather consolidate the hold of foreign billionaires on our national psyche and politics.
Of course their competitors hate the beeb. And their competitors fund our politicians.
Tories:
£30 billion for Tory donor managed Serco to run a pathetically ineffective Track & Trace system? Sure, where do I sign?
£100 billion hit to economy due to a madman’s version of Brexit that only the sviwel eyed wanted? Sure, where do I sign?
£3.7 billion to completely fund the BBC, reducing the license fee to zero, and continue to offer great content that isn’t controlled by media moguls while employing thousands of people and exporting the UK brand all over the world? Nah, that’s a waste of money, we should kill it off.
The BBC has actually sucked Boris’s cock his entire time as PM, yet somehow Tories still consider them biased against him
What I love about the BBC arguments is you have the tories trying to attack it for being Left leaning and now actively defunding it and then half the Labour supporters here blaming it for propping up the government and being state propaganda. I mean which is it?! Maybe it’s just not as bias as everyone seems to claim…
I agree that they should look at different ways to fund the BBC rather than a license fee but I’m not sure what that would look like.
The comparison to Netflix is entirely disingenuous. Netflix has some very good offerings but provides such a small percentage of the breadth of things the BBC provides. All the people saying “well other than Attenborough nothing good on bbc for years!” Load of bollocks – you clearly just don’t watch any of it. There have been great dramas, great documentaries, great investigative journalism, I’m mean even great kids tv shows. BBC is exported around the world and loved there too. So fine, a few people on Reddit that hate something does not sum up the UK. It’s like the Mrs Browns Boys debate.
We should be worried that the Government is trying to destroy something that a lot of our country rely on to keep themselves informed. Yes the quality of the BBC is getting worse – cutting their funding is not going to improve that.
Gotta feel for the BBC. They’ve tried to have a right wing lean to appease the tories but it’s clearly not been enough and the gov are punishing them anyway for not going into full Tory propaganda/whitewash mode.
It’s amazing. All you have to do is report the truth and the Government retaliates with a funding cut. This is the reason why the Police won’t investigate the parties.
We are now living under a fascist regime that believe they are above the law and will silence any voice that attempts to show the truth.
No matter what you thought are on the license fee, this is very bad news for democracy.
Tories hate to see a public business because they can’t get a cut.
The BBC should start advertising or be a subscription service. The way people are hounded for license fees is criminal.
BBC should be subscription based, not this archaic mandatory fee if you have a TV or else you’re going to jail.
Dorries doesn’t even know how Channel 4 is funded, as she made clear recently in public. To call her as ‘thick as mince’ is to seriously overestimate her intelligence and understanding of the media landscape. A cat could probably make more informed decisions.
I’ve just cancelled my TV license after paying for the last three years. I don’t watch anything from the BBC or listen to the radio.
Three years ago, while my gf was 9months pregnant, a TV license officer came to our property and out of naivety my gf let him in. He saw a TV playing Netflix and asked assumed it was live TV. My gf signed a document to say that we watch TV and off he went.
2 weeks later we get a court order to pay £700.00 to the BBC, while expecting a baby any moment and scraping by. I’ve been scared to stop paying but I work from home now so I have no problem shutting the door in the officers face, something that my heavily pregnant gf could never have done.
Fuck the BBC their programs are shit anyway
Reducing the license fee debate to “Do you use it as much as Netflix tho?” Is so disingenuous.
The BBC has that ‘direct’ element to it, yeah. Do I watch terrestrial TV much? Nah. If that was the be all and end all, fuck the £160 a year.
But it’s more complicated than that. It’s the soft power it extends around the globe, the image of Britain it projects which – let’s face it – is a much more attractive one than that of Nadine Dorries and her ilk. It’s the way it creates jobs, not only for ‘lefty arty types’ but thousands of other industries. It’s the benefit of having a news and entertainment industry that isn’t fully beholden to commercial interests; that is a rare thing indeed in 2022, and while it’s not perfect, that isn’t cause itself fo throw the baby out with the bath water.
The Tories like to frame this much like they did with Brexit. “We pay the EU millions each week – what do YOU get from it?” Directly, nothing maybe. But indirectly, a lot.
Not everything thing is a zero sum game, even if that’s the kind of lizard-brained, single-loop thinking that the Tories wish we’d all submit to.
Ah well done BBC, pander to the right wing and they still screw you.
I dunno, this seems like a pretty transparent distraction by Johnson’s biggest sycophant.
The sooner they scrap the TV licence the better. Was a system that worked fine in the past, but largely obsolete nowadays. If BBC wants to turn to PPV, then that’s fine. However they need to stop all the BS if scaring vulnerable people into paying for licences. The decommissioning of the TV licensing department alone will save millions.
Edit: just seen the news. Seems like my wish came true? Gone in 2027?
Next wish: The sooner I win £10m in the lottery the better……
The amount of folk defending the license fee is absolutely hilarious.
Why should anyone have to fund the BBC (especially with all the stuff that’s come out in the past 10 or so years) in order to watch ANY live TV?
It’s outdated and antiquated. And don’t get me started on the threatening letters, especially to elderly people.
They need to cut about 10 managers at the BBC and thats 2 billion saved.
The amount they pay senior staff is insane
What’s with the boomer clowns in this thread trying to guilt people into resubbing the BBC because they listen to a bit of radio sometimes?
I mean I *want* to be on the side of the BBC here, I really do. At it’s best it’s easily done more for British interests globally than all of the FTSE 100 companies put together. But in 2022 it’s just kind of a pointless mess, ground down by decades of [Birtism](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Birtism) to the point where there’s barely any of the original ‘Reithian’ values left in the corp. Ironically the few areas of the Beeb that *do* still *’inform, educate and entertain’* – BBC Three, Radio 3, 1xtra, the Asian Network, *some* of the podcasts on BBC Sounds, the wildlife/documentary division – are easily the best things about it.
But most of the BBC these days is just a copy of the other channels without any adverts – BBC One = ITV, BBC Two = Channel Four, BBC Four = Sky Arts, Radio 1 = Capitol, Radio 2 = Heart, Radio 5 = Talksport – plus it’s news and current affairs division is obviously a fucking joke now. So with this in mind, and baring the fact that I barely ever use the thing, why *should* I continue to pay the license fee? Seriously.
The BBC should cancel Strictly Come Dancing 2022 and say it’s because the government cut their funding and they can’t afford the costs. That’d get the public on the BBC’s side!
I worked for the BBC for 10 years. A long time ago, admittedly. The amount of waste I witnessed was awe-inspiring. It was full of middle managers (Head Of Paper Clips we used to call them) that didn’t do anything much (apart from manage the paper clips). They all paid themselves far too much and when it came time to cut the budgets they cut the producers, program makers and presenters. By the time they pay themselves there’s no money left over for programmes.
So, I haven’t got a lot of time for the corporation nowadays. Particularly with their very strange attitude to news (the latest being the ‘balance’ they are so keen on – giving air time to flat-earthers for instance. If a viewpoint is popular enough, they will represent it, apparently).
When I was there they got rid of a community helpline which was joint financed by Manpower. It cost about £3k a year and helped people every day. The same week they cut that, we got some new flash lamps for our office. Three grands worth. I’m not so naive to think they came from the same budgets. … but it wasn’t a good look.
They ordered £30,000 worth of drain-flaps for Broadcasting House. They sat at the bottom of the drainpipes and had the BBC logo on them. Trouble was- the BBC had just changed from the old angled logo to the upright one. So, they all got binned. £30.000 literally down the drain (or not).
They also nearly killed some friends of mine when they failed to replace the retiring chap that cleaned the filters in the air con. water systems. Some staff succumbed to Legionaires disease. Eeleven people I think. Just because some overpaid manager couldn’t get off his lazy arse to find out what the retiree actually did. I’ve got a million of these stories.
The BBC do produce some absolute tosh, but also some incredible (and important) programming.
The Conservatives seem intent on either selling off our cultural assets, or destroying them so that their chums can move into the space created.
Hardly ‘conservative’ and I’d even call it traitorous and treasonous.
This hateful idiot is clearly out her depth and trying to harm British institutions she herself can’t control.
She said “the days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors” were over.
Cunt, it was *THIS* tory government that stopped the free licence for the elderly.
Cultural vandalism.