I pay my licence fee , but have no say(in regard to the BBC) to what the money is spent on, The Top Gear debacle is a point in question, how much did all that cost?
I dont like all this bakery, and dancing progs, and all these chat shows,
I would like to know how much the BBC make when they sell these programmes to other channels.
To be fair, the only way to gauge what people want is a) the letters etc that people send in to a broadcaster (although thats not always a fair picture), b) research, focus groups and the like, and c) bums on seats. For the commercial companies, C is the biggie. I understand that the BBC used the first two a lot more than the third, and their obvious public broadcasting role means that ratings are not the only measure. We dont get a 'vote' - its not the X Factor, but if nobody watches something and everyone hates it, its probably not coming back.
I get the impression that Clarkeson had been trying to get fired for a while, and they'd kept him on when others would have been let go. I'm no fan of Top Gear, but I admit the three of them have a chemistry which is hard to replicate, but no programme stays the same for ever.
You might not like all those bakery, dancing and chat shows, but a) lots of people do, and b) there are really very few of them. There is Great British Bakeoff, which is now in Series 7 and has been on for six years, and each series is only on for about 10 weeks. True, there have been about 28 specials (mainly Sports Relief/Comic Relief), and for the second year running, 'An Extra Slice', which is 30min long and is shown a day or two later. CBBC also has Junior Bakeoff (which is really good - the kids are not drama queens, unlike some of the adult bakers). But for about 70-80% of the year, there is no Bakeoff.
Same goes for Strictly (although commercial companies have tried to copy the format). Its been on for 12 years, runs for roughly 3 and a half months for each series, and although there are specials at Christmas, Children in Need/Sports Relief, plus of course the daily
Strictly, It Takes Two whiles the series is running, again, for most of the year, Strictly is off the air. I'm not sure there are any more chat shows than there has been in the past - Grahame Norton, Jonathan Ross are the only two I can think of, although I suppose you could throw The One Show in as well.
As for how much the BBC makes from selling programmes and formats, etc, you can look at the accounts for BBC Worldwide (in fact the BBC has lots of information available). Obviously there will be commercially sensitive material they dont release, but you can see the general figures. Brianist at UKFree.TV wrote an article 3 years ago asking why they weren't making more money
https://ukfree.tv/article/1107052150/Why_does_BBC_Worldwide_not_make_more_profit_for_th - I'd quite like to see what his view is now.
Dick Emery was on the BBC (1963-81), and he only died 2 years after the last of his series was broadcast, so he certainly wasn't banned. Benny Hill got his break with the BBC, but he was hugely successful on ITV (the series was big in the States as well), and Alf Garnett was a
character written by Johnny Speight, which was broadcast by the BBC in
Till Death Us Do Part and
In Sickness and in Health, plus the 1998 chatshow
The Thoughts of Chairman Alf for LWT. Again, certainly not banned.
Now regarding having to have a licence to receive broadcasted signals, well dont phones pick up broadcasted signals, and as yet you dont need a licence for them.
No. Mobiles can normally pick up FM signals, which are of course not covered. You can stream Iplayer to a mobile, and depending where you are when you do that, you may or may not need to buy a licence. Frankly, watching TV on a mobile is even less joyfulan experience than watching a film on the screens you get on planes.
its against their whole epoch to have a service that cannot be privatised, Why because the BBC has no value, yes it could be given away and turned into a commercial venture, but who wants it, nobody.
The BBC cannot be sold, because the BBC (under its charter) owns...itself. The government would like to reduce the BBC to a sort of UK PBS, reliant on a tiny stipend and whatever it could raise from people holding bake sales (my favourite US station, KRCW often has ads that tell you how they can benefit from you donating your old car to them). The BBC archive, rights, and buildings could certainly be sold off (and very valuable they would be as well), but the BBC cannot just be handed over to Rupert Murdoch, much as he would like it.
its the BBC who look after the TV Masts that allow us to view the Freeview Channels through our aerials.
They dont. The masts of both the BBC and IBA were sold off decades ago, under the Thatcher government, and are now owned ultimately by a US company, Aqiva. The broadcasters all pay for their signal to be broadcast. However, for the 9% of the population which require Light transmitters (rural, low density populations, or problems with reception because of geography), apart from the PSB's (who have to deliver a basic service, like ITV1, C4, C5, and some of their other channels), the commercial broadcasters dont have to bother, and therefore dont.
The BBC, however, does do its best (where the transmitter allows it) to deliver the full range of BBC services, plus regional stuff like Alba, BBC Wales/S4C, etc.
Dewi - when I said
that people (hardly surprisingly) dont know whether any of them are workable',
I wasn't trying to be pompous - I was just pointing out reality. Until you know the revenues of the BBC, ITV and the other commercial channels (including Sky), plus the costs/downsides of any changes, including a subscription model, its no more than a throwaway thought. Once you do, those ideas really fall apart. I dont expect most people casually know such things. Do you?
As for polling, anyone can grab hold of a poll that suites them, but what I find interesting is just how many headlines about much the public hates the licence fee are not backed up by the actual figures they cite, even when you suspect that the questions were designed to come up with a particular answer. It would be nice for the actual raw data to be linked to (I like data), but this seldom happens. However, we are voting with our feet - nobody has to watch TV, never mind the BBC. And yet we clearly are.
The fact that a programme about baking(!) got almost twice as many viewers as anything else on TV, including ITV's new Victoria drama (and 5m more than X Factor)
http://www.barb.co.uk/ shows that the BBC is doing something right. Of course in actually doing stuff thats popular (ratings!), thats bad to some, because they obviously need to be doing deeply worth programmes that nobody watches. If they then made those, the complaint would be why should people pay for stuff that nobody watches - they are damned if they do, damned if they dont.
I think the old Huw Weldon phrase 'the good popular and the popular good' works very well. We all pay, and we all get something back. The BBC has a long article which sets out their case pretty well.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/9637e45d-c96c-36c6-9e3f-af141e81cab4
I have never had a problem with the licensing folk. I had a couple of letters which I responded to. A visit from a very polite chap asking if I had a tv. I invited him in immediately he said that wasn't necessary as he was satisfied and he should amend records so I wouldn't be bothered again for at least 3 years.
Dealing with officaldom is nearly always about how you react. Be calm polite and assertive when necessary. These folk are doing a crap job for little pay doesn't cost anything to be polite bad usually means a lot less hassle in the long run.
Agreed. One of my worries about the various anti-TV licence websites, etc, is that they takes a very strong antagonistic line, and see inspectors as 'goons', etc. It amps people up, and creates an atmosphere of paranoia. Being a TV Licence inspector isn't the most fun job in the world
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...attacked-by-a-householder-than-an-animal.html - they get spat at, hit and threatened. And the reality is that the majority of people they check up on are simply evading paying. And everyone has a bad day sometimes.
We obviously have no idea whats been said (or the tone used) in any exchange with Capita, but one person's polite reminder to pay the fee might be seen as someone else as harassment. And what sounds to one person like a reasonable request to check if someone lacks a TV set (as claimed) could be seen as a threat of illegal entry. The old adage is 'there are three sides to a story. Yours, mine and the truth', and when its comes to dealing with any large organisation (BT, British Gas, Inland Revenue, DSS, NHS, etc), the experience can be variable. But you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and try to ignore the barrack room lawyers on the net.
and replace TVs with computer monitor's if you can afford and it suits. The monitor has a better picture anyway.
If it suits. The biggest you can get in the high street is about 34-35in wide, these day 4k with normally a 21:9 aspect ratio. It will costs you over £500 (over £600 is average). You could pick up a 32in 1080 for about £250. If you are streaming Iplayer or using an app for live TV, you still need to pay for a TV Licence.
On the other hand, you can get the excellent 40in Samsung Full HD K6300 for about £450 at the moment (the cracking H6400 was still available the other day at £379 - a bloke at work got one when we had the last of them in). Or the very decent Samsung K6500 4K set in a 49in, for less than £700. If you want to watch Mo Farah live winning gold in your living room with all the family, which would you chose? And you might still get a year or two of the licence fee from the change between a relatively big monitor and much bigger TV.
In a not for profit organisation, there is 'commercially sensitive' information... wow!