BBC loses £1.1billion as millions of homes refuse to pay the licence fee amid ‘bias’ storm

29 comments

1. If this is true (this is the Daily Mail so probably not)…

   Then the BBC will either ask the government for more powers to enforce the non-payment of licence fee laws…

   Or…

   There will be major cutbacks of spending. Television is already fading as a medium and this may well start the withdrawal of the BBC’s TV services.

2. This is obviously bollocks given it’s only been a couple weeks with said ‘bias’ storm.

3. This current government will probably add it as a levy to everyone’s electric bill!

4. Well yeh, with rising costs of everything, the bbc is one of those things that’s easy to drop or easy to lie about. One of the easier cost savings.

5. Despite spending £166 million on aggressive door to door salespeople, which is what they pretty much are – The BBC said that it has ‘become harder to get people to answer their doors’ compared to five years ago ‘which limits the enforcement effectiveness’.

6. People shouldn’t need to be coerced, if people don’t want to watch the bbc then they need to be sustained off of their own merit and strive they provide.

7. Nothing do with right wing culture war “bias” rubbish and everything to do with what people watch has changed. People just dont watch live TV anymore, dont see the need to have a licence for iplayer (even though you do, its not seen as a big deal), and generally have shifted to the big services like Netflix etc anyway.

8. Lol the irony of this story being covered by the daily mail. The bastion of impartial news.

9. TV licence is a scam

10. Sell the BBC off to China or the middle-east and let it run adverts. I wonder how mad the public will be especially the like of dailymail and sky

11. I pay the licence free and this came up in discussion amongst my friends last week. It turns out i am the only sucker that pays it. One friend lives in a flat and says he would never pay it, and would refuse to answer the door. They send threatening letters and he just ignores them. Another friend says he informed them he doesn’t need to pay it. Same with several others. They just refuse to pay it. I don’t remember ever watching iPlayer really and I don’t ever watch “normal” TV. My viewing is pretty much exclusively through a “dodgy stick” netflix, Amazon etc. why do I keep paying it? In fact fk it, I think ille stop.

12. Nobody is cancelling because of the panorama “bias”… Lots of people now have a handy excuse for just not paying it.

13. I wish they would simply separate the publicly funded news and panorama, with the entertainment side

14. I got an email the other day saying someone at my address is watching iplayer. I’m not, my housemate doesn’t. So I emailed them to give me times and dates of when I’m supposedly watching iplayer? I told them I watch zero live tv (at least in my address) so I don’t need a licence.

    How do they know, who, in a block of 60 flats, is watching iplayer?

    I am not paying for a company that hides paedophiles. Nope. Fuck off.

15. It’s another tax on the poor, fund it through general taxation.

16. How can they lose something they never had?

17. Honestly, my mindset is “Oh no! Anyway”. I watch so much on YouTube and occasionally Netflix, I’ve not needed live TV for a very long time. Were it not for the fact that I like to game and find it more relaxing to game while sitting on my sofa instead of at my desk, I probably wouldn’t need a TV.

    It doesn’t help that when I moved into my previous place, they barely gave me two weeks before sending people round to “check”. I was planning to sort a TV license within a month or two, as I felt things like my energy and internet bills, as well as updating my mailing addresses, were more important, but they wouldn’t hear it and demanded to be let in while I was preparing to go to work. I know now I could have told them to sod off, and I did try back then, but they were adamant about being let in. I showed them my TV was hooked to nothing but my Xbox 360, and they left in a huff. I swore there and then to never have nor need a TV license, and as someone who’s found the BBC’s output since Red Dwarf series 6 to be subpar, I don’t feel I’m missing anything of note anyway.

18. Saying you can’t watch ANY other service live unless you pay to fund one service is absolutely ludicrous.

19. with the amount of shite on live TV is it any wonder people aren’t paying to watch it, if the BBC had it their way you’d need to pay to watch any streaming service.

    It’s time for the TV licence to be scrapped and the BBC can fund itself in the same way ithe broadcasters do.

20. The BBC is predominantly a right wing organisation! It’s CEO was appointed by Boris Johnson, it’s key political pundits are all right wing (Marr, Kuensberg etc) – one programme edited a speech by the most vile and corrupt politician on earth (didn’t distort his key message which was insurrection) but admittedly a huge mistake!
    It’s huge, far from impartial coverage of Brexit and now it’s disproportionate coverage of reform demonstrates it’s right wing bias on a daily basis and yet we are now supposed to believe people are refusing to pay licence fees because the BBC doctored a video about Trump!
    Solution – trace those who have been paying and now stopped and fine them £10000 for each member of the household! Non payment equals custodial sentence!
    We have to stop being soft on these right wing, xenophobic bigots!

21. Funny how most of the voices complaining about BBC bias were silent during the blatant BBC bias during the PM Boris years and how the main political editor has been a stooge for the Tories. Apparently bias is only bad if it isn’t pro Right Wing.

22. I stopped paying the TV licence a few years ago as I do not watch live TV, record live tv or use BBC iPlayer. I have just had an email from them that I have to notify them that I still do not need a TV licence. Not going to happen. I don’t email the DVLA that I don’t need a driving licence because I don’t drive a motor vehicle.

23. There’s only one or two things that I watch on the BBC. They should update their business model and have users pay for programmes that they are interested in. The more programmes a user subscribe to, the more they will have to pay. If there are programmes that has low to no subscribers then that pretty much tells you that people are not interested, and it’s time to stop wasting money on it.

24. Now that the streaming services have put their prices up, put adverts on and have shit programming, the bbc seems like better value for money than maybe 5 years ago.

25. I mean… if you are weighing up costs and it comes to streaming services.. bbc comes to £14.50 a month and I think I saw that its going up.

    Amazon prime is 8.99 is month and you get free next day delivery with it….

    For me bbc is just not good value compared to other services these days, they haven’t kept up. The thing they used to do well was comedy sitcoms and panel shows but even thats been dead/dying

26. Stopped paying mine about 5 years ago. Get threatening letters all the time but never had anyone knock on my door. Sometimes I open them up and have a chuckle at them both most of the time just throw them straight in the bin. They’ll never get a penny from me.

27. Anyone who pays the licence-fee is a fool! LOL

    I haven’t paid it for 20-years now! 😁😁

28. They sent out 74 million letters last year. If they cut the crap they could save a fortune. But fact is no one watches bbc. They are just liars.

29. Weird that the BBC are held to a much higher account than the Mail, GBeebies and the like who just say whatever the hell they loke with no pretence of balance. It was a stupid oversight, and I think the BBC news is shite, but to lose the whole of the BBC over this would be tragic

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