BBC license fee ‘to be abolished in 2027’. What will that mean?

[Jeff Robinson]

There's much I dislike about the BBC, it's establishment bias in news presentation, the patrician upper middle class attitudes and voicing inherant in it's programming and editorials. It does need to modernise, be more open. More of a platform for developing new talent, taking risks on letting content creators reach a wider audience. But for all that, I wouldn't want to see it disappear.

 

[metalguru]

Thirdly, it would presumably have to pass a vote in the HoC even then.

I'm less reassured by that. The Owen Paterson fiasco shows that Conservative MPs will vote for clearly appallingly measures, whilst complaining about how bad it is they have to do so and that they don't't like doing it - as they are doing it!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Looking at this period of the mid 1960s through to the mid 1980s there was a very impressive number of plays and series produced by authors on the left including Communist Party members, Trotskyists, and fellow travelers that you just wouldn't see today. All from a working class perspective. It makes the current claims of the BBC being left wing in any shape or form seem ridiculous. Sadly the tradition of such authors and playrights, perhaps the move to independent films in the 80s, perhaps Thatchers crushing victory and her antipathy towards the BBC aided its decline. It's fascinating that they ever saw the light of day on a state funded broadcaster.

I think you're right that the space for overtly left-wing stuff has shrunk. And I agree that it's fascinating in a way that it was ever there. But there is still output like Four Lives. I've not seen it yet but by all accounts it doesn't pull its punches in criticising the police.

 

[chilango]

The Office, This Country, People Just Do Nothing and Alma's Not Normal are some more recent examples of the BBC taking a punt on some outsider comedies that became critical successes.

...true. But you could equally look at, say, Superstore for an example of risk-taking, w/c centric comedy (to a point) that has emerged from commercial broadcasters. I'm not at all convinced that BBC has some sort of unique ability or desire to put this stuff out.

 

[chilango]

Yes totally agree I was trying to tease out from posters a more than functional, ie no class dynamic , explanation of why such output ended.

...be equally, if not more, worth it to consider why such output was picked up and when.

 

[YouSir]

...true. But you could equally look at, say, Superstore for an example of risk-taking, w/c centric comedy (to a point) that has emerged from commercial broadcasters. I'm not at all convinced that BBC has some sort of unique ability or desire to put this stuff out.

It definitely doesn't. There's a huge amount of diverse stuff being created, institutional or commercial gate keepers occasionally picking up on it isn't a victory.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

...true. But you could equally look at, say, Superstore for an example of risk-taking, w/c centric comedy (to a point) that has emerged from commercial broadcasters. I'm not at all convinced that BBC has some sort of unique ability or desire to put this stuff out.

Not unique no, but in principle at least a public service broadcaster is freer from the constraints of market forces than the commercial sector. In my view its also worth defending in principle, no matter how far the present BBC is from the ideal of what we'd like it to be.

 

[xenon]

I'm less reassured by that. The Owen Paterson fiasco shows that Conservative MPs will vote for clearly appallingly measures, whilst complaining about how bad it is they have to do so and that they don't't like doing it - as they are doing it!

If Tories win again in 2024 or whenever next, with a sizeable majority again, we'll have a lot more to worry about than the details of BBC funding.

 

[Brainaddict]

The argument I've heard against funding the BBC from general taxation is that such a funding model would leave it vulnerable to pressure from the government.

Looking at the current awful state of BBC journalism under the current licence fee funding model, I'd say that such arguments are unconvincing cobblers.

Yep, the reality is that parliament always approved the BBC's mandate and its budget through licence fee anyway, so I think nothing is lost through moving it to general taxation.

 

[kabbes]

Not unique no, but in principle at least a public service broadcaster is freer from the constraints of market forces than the commercial sector. In my view its also worth defending in principle, no matter how far the present BBC is from the ideal of what we'd like it to be.

It has the constraints of being an arm of the establishment, though

 

[nogojones]

One of the things that'll go will be radio 4, which is pretty much unique as a free radio station that does news, comedy, drama, etc. Fantastic resource for blind people, as well as anyone who wants to listen to the radio but doesn't want music. Podcasts replace some of it, but you have to hunt them down and use bandwidth to access them.

I sometimes miss what R4 was a decade + ago, but it really went downhill. I stopped listening a couple of years ago as I just found it made me rage. I moved over to the World Service for a few months, which was marginally better, but it's just a projection of the states interest. Podcasts seem to now fill that gap for me.

I don't have a telly and only had one whilst the kids were growing up, so while I personally won't miss the BBC, whatever is going to replace it will be even worse for sure.

I'll miss the monthly love letters from the licensing people.

 

[Brainaddict]

...be equally, if not more, worth it to consider why such output was picked up and when.

Surely we can't separate the openness of the BBC to left wing writers in that period from cultural ferment of the time. For a while lots of people saw themselves as radicals in some way, including presumably more senior people in the 80s, having started their careers young and radical in the 60s - which would help explain why the period lasted so long.

This does suggest that similar cultural/political upheavals could once again make themselves felt through the BBC. I don't think that's an argument for keeping it as it is though. If anything it is an argument for opening it up more/breaking it down as a monolithic institution, so that such trends can make themselves felt more quickly.

 

[mauvais]

Yep, the reality is that parliament always approved the BBC's mandate and its budget through licence fee anyway, so I think nothing is lost through moving it to general taxation.

Taxation is immediately flexible whereas licence fee agreements are typically negotiated for up to whole Charter periods, which is five ten years, hence why our current crop of thieves can't do anything significant until the end of 2027.

That's not to say there is no appropriate mechanism for longer term stability, I'm not an expert in such things, but it is a challenge.

 

[Pickman's model]

Taxation is immediately flexible whereas licence fee agreements are typically negotiated for up to whole Charter periods, which is five years, hence why our current crop of thieves can't do anything significant until the end of 2027.

That's not to say there is no appropriate mechanism for longer term stability, I'm not an expert in such things, but it is a challenge.

the charter period is ten years. which is why the 2017 charter will be ending in 2027 and not 2022

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It has the constraints of being an arm of the establishment, though

Yep. Different sectors with different constraints. Between them they produce a wider range of content from within their constraints. Neither is perfect. The combination isn't perfect. We don't get perfect.

Specifically, the most damaging constraint of the commercial sector is the obvious one to do with money. If you're part of a group at whom advertising is not profitable, you will be ignored. In theory at least, the BBC's remit is explicitly not to do that.

 

[ska invita]

Yes, but the BBC makes the Green Planet. The Royals just make more Royais.

I hate bbc nature porn documentaries, they give the impression that there's all this pristine natural environment out there... yet more bbc propaganda!
people should be forced to watch drowning polar bear cubs and farmers poisoning foxes every sunday night if they want nature programmes

Green Planet type stuff will definitely survive whatever may come as it gets sold all over the world - its a big money earner for the BBC

 

[Brainaddict]

Taxation is immediately flexible whereas licence fee agreements are typically negotiated for up to whole Charter periods, which is five ten years, hence why our current crop of thieves can't do anything significant until the end of 2027.

That's not to say there is no appropriate mechanism for longer term stability, I'm not an expert in such things, but it is a challenge.

Is there any reason they couldn't create a similar charter period but with it funded from general taxation? The tax level would be set out in the act of parliament and to change it would require another act of parliament. The wording could explicitly exclude all the mechanisms for tax rule changes that are generally used to make quick tweaks to taxes.

 

[Pickman's model]

Is there any reason they couldn't create a similar charter period but with it funded from general taxation? The tax level would be set out in the act of parliament and to change it would require another act of parliament. The wording could explicitly exclude all the mechanisms for tax rule changes that are generally used to make quick tweaks to taxes.

er it wouldn't pass?

 

[nogojones]

As long as they keep commissioning Mrs Brown's Boys, I'm happy

Even though I've never met you I'll always held you in high regard. This, however rocks my whole world view.

 

[mauvais]

Is there any reason they couldn't create a similar charter period but with it funded from general taxation? The tax level would be set out in the act of parliament and to change it would require another act of parliament. The wording could explicitly exclude all the mechanisms for tax rule changes that are generally used to make quick tweaks to taxes.

This is it, I don't know, other than being aware of the restriction that a[n act of] parliament cannot bind a future parliament. Which these days is always about half an hour away.

 

[Pickman's model]

Even though I've never met you I'll always held you in high regard. This, however rocks my whole world view.

yeh it's the sort of thing that prompts you to change your opinion of someone

 

[JimW]

Surely we can't separate the openness of the BBC to left wing writers in that period from cultural ferment of the time. For a while lots of people saw themselves as radicals in some way, including presumably more senior people in the 80s, having started their careers young and radical in the 60s - which would help explain why the period lasted so long.

This does suggest that similar cultural/political upheavals could once again make themselves felt through the BBC. I don't think that's an argument for keeping it as it is though. If anything it is an argument for opening it up more/breaking it down as a monolithic institution, so that such trends can make themselves felt more quickly.

That post war class shake up must feature too, when a few less dim poshoes got to meet some working class at the battle fronts or after and realised they were actually rather spiffing chaps.

 

[Dillinger4]

The empty debate on the spectacle — that is, on the activities of the world’s owners — is thus organized by the spectacle itself: everything is said about the extensive means at its disposal, to ensure that nothing is said about their extensive deployment. Rather than talk of the spectacle, people often prefer to use the term ‘media.’ And by this they mean to describe a mere instrument, a kind of public service which with impartial ‘professionalism’ would facilitate the new wealth of mass communication through mass media [English in original] — a form of communication which has at last attained a unilateral purity, whereby decisions already taken are presented for peaceful admiration. For what is communicated are orders; and with great harmony, those who give them are also those who tell us what they think of them.

The power of the spectacle, which is so fundamentally unitary, a centralizer by the very weight of things, and entirely despotic in spirit, frequently rails at seeing the constitution under its rule of a politics-spectacle, a justice-spectacle, a medicine-spectacle and all the other similarly surprising examples of “mediatic excess.” Thus the spectacle would be nothing other than the excesses of the mediatic,[5] whose nature, unquestionably good since it facilitates communication, is sometimes driven to extremes. Often enough society’s bosses declare themselves ill-served by their media employees: more often they blame the plebian spectators for the common, almost bestial manner in which they indulge in mediatic pleasures. A virtually infinite number of supposed mediatic differences thus serve to dissimulate what is, on the contrary, the result of a spectacular convergence, pursued with remarkable tenacity. Just as the logic of the commodity reigns over capitalists’ competing ambitions, or the logic of war always dominates the frequent modifications in weaponry, so the harsh logic of the spectacle controls the abundant diversity of mediatic extravagances.

In all that has happened in the last twenty years, the most important change lies in the very continuity of the spectacle. This has nothing to do with the perfecting of its mediatic instrumentation, which had already reached a highly advanced stage of development; it means quite simply that the spectacle’s domination has succeeded in raising a whole generation molded to its laws. The extraordinary new conditions in which this entire generation has effectively lived constitute a precise and sufficient summary of all that, henceforth, the spectacle will forbid; and also all that it will permit.

Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

 

[danny la rouge]

I hate bbc nature porn documentaries, they give the impression that there's all this pristine natural environment out there... yet more bbc propaganda!
people should be forced to watch drowning polar bear cubs and farmers poisoning foxes every sunday night if they want nature programmes

Green Planet type stuff will definitely survive whatever may come as it gets sold all over the world - its a big money earner for the BBC

You clearly haven’t watched much of Attenborough’s output of late. It’s very much of the drowning polar bears school. The Green Planet last night had section on the small islands of rainforest between the vast palm oil plantations and what species of animal will die out if they get any smaller, and how sea grass meadows capture carbon but we kill them.

Yeah, I was just giving it as an example of programmes I like. Unlike kabbes who only likes hating Dr Who and wants to kill polar bear cubs.

 

[bimble]

All this stuff about 'well i don't watch it so i don't care' is depressing. I don't have kids but apparently bbc saved lots of people from going completely mad during the lockdowns with curriculum-based programming for school aged children. that wasn't on netflix. Dignifying this desperate headline grabber because of something about french post modernists seems a bit pathetic too tbh.
What else will they throw out there this week i wonder, what else is there that everybody in the country will have an opinion on, maybe they'll issue an official biscuit ranking.

eta oh. "Other plans expected in the coming days, according to the Sunday Times, include sending in the military to help tackle cross-Channel migration; training schemes for universal credit claimants – whose benefit was recently cut by £20 a week – and the much-delayed “levelling up” white paper."

 

[Gromit]

Yup - I had dealings with them just last year over my late mother's licence. She died just a few weeks before her free licence expired, so they went after her and then me as her executor (because I had written to properly inform them!) for not renewing it and It took a fair number of attempts before I finally got to someone who would accept her demise!

I had dealings with them where they constantly sent demands incorrectly.

In the end I demanded compensation, which they paid and the demands stopped no doubt because they didn't want to have to pay any further compensation rather than they finally got their act together.

 

[Pickman's model]

All this stuff about 'well i don't watch it so i don't care' is depressing. I don't have kids but apparently bbc saved lots of people from going completely mad during the lockdowns with curriculum-based programming for school aged children. that wasn't on netflix. Dignifying this desperate headline grabber because of something about french post modernists seems a bit pathetic too tbh.
What else will they throw out there this week i wonder, what else is there that everybody in the country will have an opinion on, maybe they'll issue an official biscuit ranking.

eta oh. "Other plans expected in the coming days, according to the Sunday Times, include sending in the military to help tackle cross-Channel migration; training schemes for universal credit claimants – whose benefit was recently cut by £20 a week – and the much-delayed “levelling up” white paper."

in the past when a claimant went on a training scheme they got £10 extra a week plus child rate fares iirc.

 

[Cerv]

I think that saying "we're going to abolish the licence fee" with zero suggestion on what they propose to replace it with is barely worth responding to. it's not a serious suggestion.

you can get out there and defend the UK licence fee model. but it's widely unpopular, and has clear problems in practice (generates such a quantity of court cases) regardless of what you believe about the principle.
or could just say you'll wait and respond if they ever actually put out something with enough detail to be worth responding to. I won't hold my breath for whoever's in government come 2027 to actually have done that.

 

[pogofish]

I had dealings with them where they constantly sent demands incorrectly.

In the end I demanded compensation, which they paid and the demands stopped no doubt because they didn't want to have to pay any further compensation rather than they finally got their act together.

Yes - That was exactly my first experience of them some years back.

There seem to be two sides to their operation. One based on a database, which can be delayed but cannot apparently be stopped by any legal means and the other staffed by humans who after badgering you constantly for a prolonged period, might just be convinced/prevailed upon to stop bothering you.

I could tell the difference between the two because one had a minor spelling mistake in my details but the other didn't.

 

[kabbes]

You clearly haven’t watched much of Attenborough’s output of late. It’s very much of the drowning polar bears school. The Green Planet last night had section on the small islands of rainforest between the vast palm oil plantations and what species of animal will die out if they get any smaller, and how sea grass meadows capture carbon but we kill them.

Yeah, I was just giving it as an example of programmes I like. Unlike kabbes who only likes hating Dr Who and wants to kill polar bear cubs.

It’s true, I do want to kill all polar bear cubs