Jonathan Ross’s salary is none of our business
Jonathan Ross announced his departure from the BBC during a snowy blast last month
IT WAS during Question Time earlier this month that it became clear just how much of a political consensus there now exists around a public ‘right to know’ exactly how much the BBC’s stars earned.
This is presented as making the BBC somehow more accountable. It isn’t a new story but it’s one that’s starting to irritate, because an alternative voice needs to be heard.
Media and current affairs junkies will recall that much of this came up last summer during the ongoing furore over politicians’ expenses. At a much trailed and reported McTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh television festival, James Murdoch, that renowned champion of civil liberties and doyen of public sector broadcasting (ahem), took the opportunity to coruscate OfCom and the BBC in what can only be described as Orwellian terms.
Readers of the Daily Mail will also be aware (as their journalists seem to spend most waking moments finding opportunities to repeat it) that broadcaster Jonathan Ross will, in June of this year, end his contract with his employer. It’s a development that is largely being seen – by those who see things this way – as a victory for the silent moral majority over a supposed crumbling, morally bankrupt edifice.
It is hard to see the logic behind how knowing what a particular BBC star is paid somehow makes the BBC more accountable to the licence fee payers. Ask yourself this: would Wales Today’s avuncular Derek Brockway be a better weatherman if you knew how much was transferred into his bank account every month? Would Jonathan Davies have screamed any louder at Shane Williams’s winning try against Scotland the other week if he thought that his salary might be affected by his performance? No, of course not. These are of course deeply silly points but they are only as silly and puerile as this debate has become.
This is some way from arguing that the BBC should not be accountable. On the contrary, its original Reithian message seems as resonant today as it was back in the early days of the corporation. But a list of salary details is not accountability. It is the politics of curtain twitchers.
There are many in this debate who appear to have a more pernicious and troubling (to this writer, anyway) agenda. This is far more than a debate about expenditure and better management of one of the UK’s most important organisations. There are many who have a clear political agenda to end the era of public sector broadcasting and to move to an entirely commercial free market.
This is the real danger. Without a continued commitment to public sector broadcasting, we would lose the richness, variety and sheer vitality of our broadcasting output. I think it deeply unlikely that a commercial broadcaster would give over six hours of prime time television to an in-depth and thoughtful history of Christianity, for example. Similarly, would we continue to enjoy local and regional news gathering, or Welsh language programming or your own personal choice? Doubt it. Let’s be honest – only the BBC could have done Hamlet on Boxing Day, whether Doctor Who starred in it or not, and that is a magnificent thing.
Proper accountability begins with a clear vision of mission and purpose; it continues with a sense of moral and community responsibility to provide a wide diversity of programming and it ends with getting the right people for the right jobs at the right price. Not the cheapest price, but the right price. This means setting salaries and contracts through a team of professional commercial directors with expertise of reward and incentivisation and knowledge of the business. It isn’t a job for the rest of us, irrespective of how well intentioned we believe we might be.
The BBC is a public sector body operating in a private sector world. The increased level of commercial competitiveness, the increased globalisation of entertainment and news gathering, the influence and reach of internet based communications and the 24/7 demands of an increasingly hostile media means that the challenges for the BBC are greater than ever. In the end, however, the BBC must continue to deliver quality and distinctive programming to its audience, and if this means paying some presenters an apparent king’s ransom then this is something that not only is a price worth paying, it’s a positive indication that the BBC continues to understand its mission and purpose and is brave to continue to do this against a tsunami of opprobrium.
We need to continue to have a debate about the BBC and our relationship with it. However, we need to do it in a way that recognises both its regulatory obligations as well as the very real and genuine commercial challenges and agendas, not just here in the UK but globally.
The debate over salaries may sell newspapers and start pub debates but it doesn’t make either for good governance or accountability. This is a classic case of needing to be careful about the law of unintended consequences. The only winners from the drive to know the pay of the BBC talent are owners of commercial channels and the anti- public sector broadcasting ideologues. So what reason is there to line their pockets or inspire their editorials?
By the way, buying the Daily Mail costs £40 a year more than the BBC licence fee. Where would you prefer your money went?
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“By the way, buying the Daily Mail costs £40 a year more than the BBC licence fee”
I have a choice whether or not I buy the Daily Mail or any other newspaper or magazine – I do not have a choice about the BBC licence fee – which is demanded in the form of a tax and treats people who do not have the relevant receiving apparatus as a liar and demands entry to one’s home or office as proof.
my problem is that the BBC made mountains of shows on MPs’ expenses, including a forthcoming BBC4 screen drama which by the looks of it aims to destroy any reputation Parliament has left. Now that’s not to say I disagree with their coverage of that, but if their view on public expenses is to be transparent and critical then it is shocking that they would be so secretive about another public bodies’ positions when it comes to their own.
The BBC is subsidized by the taxpayer, thus the taxpayer has a stake in how the BBC is ran, and what the BBC pays the “talent”.
I would rather that the BBC be fully devolved to the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament, with the rump left in England.
Furthermore, I would that television be commercial, and drop the extra license tax.
@Financier Quite. If the BBC have the right to hound me, enter my premises, infringe on my right to privacy in my own home, demand money from me for using equipment that is my property etc etc etc, then to state that what the BBC doesa with that money is “none of my business” is frankly absurd.
Oh, and if I ever hear some smarmy middle class idiot on the BBC saying “Oh, it’s ONLY £150 a year” again I swear to god I will track them down and slap them to death.
my problem with the BBC is it’s London bias. If I see another “Seven Ages Of Britain” type thing again that completely ignores the Brythonic then I’m joining Simon in the slap-fest.
(History Channel etc are also guilty of this, but they’re generally American things so they don’t know better)
And I’m sick of newsreaders and their “Government proposes taxing corpses shocker!” or whatever, only to be told (in a rushed “smallprint” thing somewhere later in the piece) that this “doesn’t apply to Wales or Scotland”. So why are you telling me about it then? or worse, when they say “Our country has never had it so good” – which country? Oh, you mean “The UK”. Well then say “The UK” then.
Sorry for the rant…. I’m with David, I’d like BBC Cymru to be completely devolved with location specific programming. Or better still, give my share of the licence fee money to S4C.
Its worse in the US not only do I pay for BBC America in cable fees, but it has more adverts than most of your network channels. And for what? wall to wall reruns of Gordon Ramsay and Cash in the Attic and some other rubbish! I think I will stick with good ol PBS!
And Wales (agreeing with Al) wheres that? Jonathan Ross may have a right to privacy, but not when it comes to your tax pound. And it gets plenty of revenue from commercials!
Should we be paying an apparent king’s ransom to presenters who have failed in their “moral and community responsibility”? Jonathan Ross’s salary only became a serious debating point when his behaviour was deemed to be at variance wih the values of the BBC.
Thanks for the comments so far. I was expecting some objections to the licence fee because of the absence of an opt out- I think the point is fair enough, I just don’t agree with it. I believe in public service broadcasting and think this is the least worst-as opposed to best- way of supporting it.
One thing that I do want to make clear though is this: at no point in my article did I argue that the BBC should not be accountable- on the contrary, I call for a far wider debate around greater levels of accountability. I’m arguing that the Ross/salary issue is a red herring masking a bigger debate that we aren’t having.
Keep the comments coming!
So if I have the ‘right’ to know what BBC presenters get paid because it is a public sector body, does that mean I also have the ‘right’ to know what the GP in my local surgery gets paid; what Sue from the Jobcentre gets paid; what the local policeman on his beat past my house gets paid? These are all paid for with my tax pound – so should the government publish names and salaries of all public sector workers?
And to those who say that they shouldn’t have to pay the licence fee because they don’t watch the BBC – do you feel the same way about the NHS? Should you be exempt from paying the portion of your income tax which goes towards the healthcare system because you only visit the doctor once a year? From paying for the police force because you, personally, have fortunately never had cause to call on their services?
Rather than constantly looking for reasons to berate the BBC, we should be congratulating them for continuing to produce thoughtful, insightful programmes which commercial broadcasters would not touch with a bargepole. Many decent programmes have been dropped by the commercial channels because they could not attract sufficient advertising pounds from chocolate, carpet shampoo, dog food, sofa manufacturers, whatever they may be flogging. I do not wish my viewing choices to be decided on the whim of big-bucks advertisers. I despair if the only choices I’m to be allowed in the future come from the sort of dumbed-down, lowest common denominator programming we receive from the likes of ITV and Channel 4 – wall-to-wall Wife Swap, Embarrassing Illnesses or Big Brother – give me strength.
The BBC is about so much more than Jonathon Ross’s salary – which compared to those paid by commercial channels is small beer. No commercial channel would produce BBC Alba with programming and a fully translated website in Gaelic, for example. So none of you ever use the excellent BBC news website then?
Incidentally, S4C receives over 10 of it’s 80 hours’ worth of programming from the BBC…
A lot of good issues to get at here. Let me attempt some of them:
1. The licence fee. Lot of anger at the compulsory requirement to pay by anyone who owns a TV, and at the approach taken to non-payers. Beginning with the last part first – absolutely agree. Every aspect of TV licensing is offensive, from its Big Brotheresque and frankly threatening advertising to the fact that refusing to pay for BBC programmes is a criminal matter.
I think the first part springs from a perceived lack of choice. Nobody likes to pay almost £150 a year if, when they switch on, all they are getting is re-runs of Keeping Up Appearances. Now this is a little unfair, because the best Beeb content can hold its own with anything in the world, even against US output. However, the Corporation is now spread too thinly, with far too many radio stations, a huge commitment to online (which remainds the gold standard), and often patchy televised output.
So if the BBC wants to damp down growing discontent over the licence fee, it should think of stepping back and taking a ‘less is more’ approach. It doesn’t have to do the whole Sky thing of premiering certain series on BBC3 and 4, because that spends money rather than makes it. With the switchover to digital to be completed in the next year or two, there is no reason why it can’t migrate its best content to its two terrestrial channels, close 3 and 4 and chuck all the re-runs onto Canvas (a sort of super-sized iPlayer and mega-archive). It needs to take a root and branch look at what it does best (online, local radio) and ditch what it does worst (most of its comedy, trying to guess the nation’s mood) and prioritise, because there is no way any politician would have the stomach for an increased licence fee.
2. Salaries and perks. Nobody in this country believes that an £800k-plus salary is the going rate for Fiona Bruce, while the argument that she (or any of the other faces, like the perplexingly popular John Barrowman) would receive more if they moved to the private sector is so shabby an argument that it is almost not worth asking: “You mean the private sector that has suffered such a huge slump in its primary source of income when the advertising markets collapsed, that it is now so completely on its uppers, to the point where the Government has devised the Independently Funded News Consortia as a means of protecting local news?”
It goes beyond that. The Sunday Times (a Murdoch title) has hit a rich seam of FOI-generated tales of BBC exec excess. Thousands and thousands of opunds – your pounds – spent on leaving soirees. Disgraceful, particularly if you have mates (as I have) on six-month contracts and not on handsome salaries, on very average salaries, unable to plan for their futures, living almost day-to-day.
So what begins to emerge here is a microcosm of the unfair society at large, an unpalatable disparity. And, as many of the comments above say, we have every right to question £18m salaries if we are the ones paying for it and we don’t see it being spent wisely. However, although he played this piece contentiously, Mat makes a very good point about the intent of the rest of the media in delivering us anti-Beeb stories.
I sincerely believe that, with the likes of the Daily Mail, it’s just down to a case of good, old-fashioned sour grapes. But Murdoch has different issues to contend with. He has built a business on paid-for content and now faces a world in which consumers expect their media for free. What to do? The response of News Corp has been to become aggressive in everything it does. Currently, it is toe-to-toe with both the Beeb over Project Canvas and with Google over content aggregation. This take-no-prisoners approach trickles down to it customer relations. There are good alternatives to Sky on the market now. But if you leave them, as I did, expect to be carpet bombed by sales calls, and plenty of excuses as to why they’ve called you back after you’ve explicitly (and expletively…) told them not to do so. So Mat is right. Discern the game. Although retain your anger at the waste and inefficiency.
3. Welsh content. I sincerely believe that some of the finest content anywhere across the entire corporation is found in BBC Radio Wales’ morning and evening output. After all these years, Good Morning Wales remains essential listening. It is precisely what PSB should be all about – unfussy, unshowy, un-dumbed down news and expert opinion. When this format puts in the shade the appalling BBC1 Breakfast … well, can we call it news? Perhaps Strictly Come Dancing AM would be nearer the mark … you have to ask what else would be gained from autonomy?
One issue bothers me: Dr Who. I know, from a conversation I had with a well-known Welsh actor who may or may not have appeared in the show, that BBC Wales sinks a helluva lot of its budget into the programme – to, so the actor claimed, the detriment of the rest of its drama output. It is BBC Wales’ jewel in the crown but it’s bloody expensive, so he claimed.
Perhaps the answer is a reduction in S4C’s budget with a diversion of funding to a more autonomous BBC Wales? Discuss…
Public-service broadcasting is just a pretty term to dress up what is in fact an undemocratic statist monopoly and an enforced authoritarian denial of freedom of choice, Anyway, that’s enough from me on that point. I can’t speak about the TV Licence at length without starting to spit blood.
As for Jonathan’s Ross wages, I agree that that is ephemeral.
Or S4C, and have BBC Wales producing English lang output, specific to Wales, and BBC Cymru producing Welsh lang output, specific to Wales. Smaller budgets, to be sure, but they would be producing Wales specific output, rather than English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, American, Indian, Afghanistan, so they wouldn’t necessarily need the astronomical budget that the BBC currently has.
I wouldn’t mind paying the licence fee then. I DO object to paying the Licence fee when the only (BBC) output I watch is Dragons Eye, and the odd show on Radio Wales. (Most of the stuff I watch is on Sky, the History Channel, kids channels etc, which are both ad supported AND I already pay a subscription to watch). I resent paying my licence fee to fund Eastenders and Strictly Moronic Dancing. Or even Dr Who. Sorry.
“But the BBC produces world-class wildlife documentaries! And great chat-shows featuring Jonathan Woss!” – So? if people want to watch that, let them pay for it. I don’t, so why should I? And why should I be a criminal if I refuse? It’s practically communist.
Before the advent of BBC America if I wanted to watch a British show, usually my local PBS station would carry a goodly number of them. You wont find BBC shows on CBS, ABC or even NBC (usually American ripoffs of shows like “Life on Mars” etc). So one has to ask why does the British taxpayer pay for duff American shows for? when these respective stations have no interest in buying top quality British ones?
I am not in favor of the public paying taxes to fund prime time or daytime soaps, talk shows, police, criminal, and hospital dramas, and reality shows of any kind. The government should not be in the business of entertaining the masses. All entertainment programming should be commercial, in my opinion. Let what is popular be set by the market, not any qusi government corporation. Then Ross’ salery doesn’t matter so much.
Additionally, I believe that television should generally be de regulated to encourage it up to competition, and oversight for broadcasting should be fully devoloved to Wales and Scotland.
Competition will streamline the broadcasting system through out the nations of the British and Irish Isles, driving down costs for the average Welsh taxpayer. It would provide an opportunity for new broadcasting companies to be established providing local jobs, allowing a wider choice in programming content and news perspectives.
Susan had asked the question (I hope it wasn’t rhetorical) if we as taxpayers have a right to know what police and educators and health care providers earn, since those services are provided by the taxpayer. Yes, the public does have a right to know what they are paying for, so they do have the right to know who gets paid, and what the terms for advancement is.
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The impression seems to be that the BBC is a state stooge and the private sector is the defender of media freedom.
Get in the real world – the BBC provides some of the most independent journalism in the world. While privately owned channels suck up to corporate customers or worse corrupt owners, anyone heard of Murdoch or Berlusconi?
Take Iraq for example. Who was it holding the government to account Fox News? Sky news? No it was the good old beeb.
As for the license fee I think it is fantastic value for money and Britain would be a poorer place without it.
“the BBC provides some of the most independent journalism in the world.”
Here we go. To which the answer is of course: So What?
You like it, you pay for it. But why should I pay for it just because you happen to like it?
And as an aside I happen to think that the quality of journalism on the BBC is often so poor as to be unwatchable.
“You like it, you pay for it. But why should I pay for it just because you happen to like it?”
I clearly am happy to do so, and I will continue to argue against people like you and the Murdoch’s who seem to think privately owned media monopolies are some sort of panacea. Be in no doubt that is the logical conclusion of your argument.
Do not assume either that your views are in the majority as I doubt they are.
“And as an aside I happen to think that the quality of journalism on the BBC is often so poor as to be unwatchable.”
What a silly statement.
I cannot finish without adding how brilliant I think the BBCs website is second only to the excellent coverage on Wales home.
Flattery will get you everywhere, Michael
“I clearly am happy to do so, and I will continue to argue against people like you and the Murdoch’s who seem to think privately owned media monopolies are some sort of panacea.”
What on earth are you talking about? Read my comments. I have made no such assertion. Not liking the BBC does not make me like Murdoch! The only positive thing I can say about Murdoch is that he, unlike the BBC, is not forcing me to pay for the privilege of using my own TV set,
“ Do not assume either that your views are in the majority as I doubt they are.”
I would suggest you take your own advice before recommending it to others.
“What a silly statement.”
What a silly statement.
On the contrary your earlier assertions that the BBC is something championed by the middle classes could have been lifted from a James Murdoch speech.
You go on to ask why should I pay for something I don’t use, this is a populist stance often pushed by the Murdoch right regarding all art forms.
Although as the author of the article suggests their current favourite is to shout about entertainers and their salaries.
Flippancy aside, as I stated earlier the logical conclusion of your and others arguments is to get rid of the BBC. This in my view would do immense damage to local news coverage, good quality entertainment (I look forward to the drama on MPs expenses) and most definitely tremendous damage to Welsh language programming.
This may not be your intention but there is a powerful lobby seeking this and you seem to becoming very closer to echoing them.
how about: reduce the licence fee to £30 a year, and use it just to fund BBC News and Internet. Other BBC output and channels be commercial interests, funded from private sector? In essence, split it in half.
That way you get top-quality, tax-funded, impartial journalism. High quality programming (either via ads or subscription). And the licence fee isn’t such a bit hit on people who can ill afford it (and it always comes the first week of January, when people are at their most skint!)
Like I said, I watch (mostly) History Channels. I pay for them every month, and have no problem doing so. I don’t watch BBC Output, yet I pay for that too! (That being said, I do visit the BBC News website, which is why I suggest only paying for news)
“What on earth are you talking about? Read my comments. I have made no such assertion. Not liking the BBC does not make me like Murdoch! The only positive thing I can say about Murdoch is that he, unlike the BBC, is not forcing me to pay for the privilege of using my own TV set,”
I share Simon Dyda’s sentiments. I certinly do not admire Murdoch, and the bias in his news corporation is offensive to me. The government should not force anyone to pay a license fee for television, nor should the government be in the entertainment business. The market should determine what is popular or not in terms of entertainment.
The BBC should be sold to private investors, and broadcasting should be a devolved authority to Wales.
Al,
I was going to attempt to argue your point on selling off BBC drama, but I convinced myself you were right as I wrote it.
What concerns me is funding for drama. There is a really good reason why US drama is streets – no, solar systems – ahead of our own. They have the money to spend and we don’t. This is most noticeable at the writing table.
ITV has laudably continued with drama in recent times, but it prefers the one-off, three-odd-part specials, which are of varying quality. One particular fine example recently was Collision, really good character-driven, gripping stuff. Compare that with the cardboard cut outs that pass for characters in BBC drama …
… and this is where I got to when I realised that we don’t necessarily have to emulate The Wire, or The Sopranos, or Mad Men. We don’t have to make big, lavish 60-episode, five season dramas. We can live within our means and make smaller, stripped-out but no less resonant pieces. Or book adaptations, like last year’s Red Riding trilogy.
Good argument – I’m converted.
yeah, that was kind-of the comparison I was looking at. I follow a lot of Welsh Twitterers, and the most talked about shows (apart from Question Time) are Lost, Babylon 5 etc. They are commercially funded affairs, and none the worse for it. (Granted, a lot of money they recoup is in sales to TV channels worldwide). BUT there is nothing stopping BBC licensing out their content worldwide either – they do it already!
Basically, commercialism isn’t a barrier to good drama . Neither is the licence fee a guarantee of it (BBC brand-name is the thing that sells imo)
Lets get real a large amount of the BBC’s revenue already comes from commercials!
I like Al’s idea, too. Commercialise entertainment programming.
But why not also news? Privatise the BBC, sell off the various BBC channels and deregulate bradcasting to increase competition, and let the market decide through viewership what programs to patronise. Regulations and a robust oversight agency would ensure impartiality in news coverage, from whatever source. Stations would still be able to sell commercial time slots to generate positive cash flow and fund programming.
What this would do is limit the government’s role in broadcasting to that of oversight (which as stated before should be a devolved authority), encourage competition for viewership, streamline positive revenue flow, and eleminiate fees for the consumer.
As both Al and Duncan have both point out, commercial television does generate edgy and provocative dramas, and commercial television has the money (generated from selling commercial time) to invest in these programs, polishing them up to a very high standard and attracting professional actors and directors of a high calibur.
Sounds good to me re: commercialised drama. 99% of the shows I follow are from the US.
But there’s more to the TV licence than TV. It also covers computers and mobiles. That is to say, even if you threw out your TV you’d still have to pay for having a computer or smart phone.
“You need to be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record TV as it’s being broadcast. This includes the use of devices such as a computer, laptop, mobile phone or DVD/video recorder.” -http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check/index.aspx
In other words, one day the BBC launch their online streaming services and the next day you are bound by law to pay for them, whether you want to use them or not. No consultation, no opt-outs offered, steamrolled right over the public without even a By Your Leave,
That my friends is called “taking the piss”, or as middle class beebophiles would call it “Public Service Broadcasting”.
It’s clear that there are sound Libertarian grounds for scrapping the BBC – but as with any Libertarian stance advocated in the modern day, the Left & Right wings of Libertarianism will both take the platform, and often confuse onlookers as to the Left/Right dynamic of the argument.
Right-wing Libertarians would advocate scrapping the BBC on the grounds of consumer choice, fair market competition and on the basis that it undermines the private sector, even if such is already monopolised by the likes of the Murdock dynasty.
Left-wing Libertarians would advocate scrapping the BBC because it can and has been seen as a means of propagandising the masses, that its claims of neutrality often fall woefully short (especially in coverage of ‘national’ (sic) (v. devolved) politics or ‘national’ (sic) history) and that the means of policing the license fee is simply too coercive and heavy-handed to be justified.
It’s plainly not as simple a position as Russell T. Davies’ assertions that opposition of the BBC is tantamount to Thatcherism, because any die-hard Anarchist would oppose the BBC too.
As a Left Libertarian myself, I find myself hesitant to call for the abolition of the BBC, because the absence of a free, state media in the USA suggests a predicament where the position of neutral broadcasting is far less stable than in the UK, and where largely (I presume) programmes and whole channels will be produced with a target audience of one political persuasion or another already in mind albeit with the average watcher as the principal target market.
One thing which gives me comfort along those lines is the way in which WalesHome itself administers to neutrality; although none of its regular readers would be convinced of the supreme neutrality of its editorship, the format its editors have devised – by affording a platform in which anyone (within reason, presumably) may submit content, and where there is always space and encouragement for that content to be debated – does afford a highly satisfactory compromise towards a workable neutrality to an independent media platform.
Perhaps as our media evolves into some new, dynamic and interactive hybrid of the forms we see from digital TV & the World-Wide-Web, issues of neutrality and the independence of the means of media production needn’t necessarily be mutually exclusive, nor need they be monopolised by the likes of the Murdock dynasty so there is still some credibility even to Left-wing calls for the BBC to be disbanded.
Some good ideas.
I think that we should have a welsh arm of public service broadcasting – which would provide both BBC Wales and S4C. This could lead to sharing of resources, and a common focus on welsh programming.
Ross’ Salary is of course our business. To me this reminds of all the tired debates we have around high pay. Firstly, they rely on the fact that the UK we seem to be prude about disclosing or knowing we all earn (which might be right or wrong). Secondly, we are told that if Bank/Channel/Government/Club X does not pay top rates, they will bugger off somewhere else. Perhaps something radical might be to call people’s bluff. At the end of the day, there is not room for all BBC’s talent to work at other channels.
I just cannot accept the ‘i am not funding a service I hardly use’ point. Public service as a model relies on a good many people chipping in for universal services that they might not use. Many people dont have children who go to school, many people have private health and many people do not collect any benefits – the point is that it is there if we do use them and we make a fair contribution for the wider good.
Now this might not transfer as well to the BBC granted. But could you imagine a few people’s reaction on here if the article argued that ‘I should not have to pay for S4C because I dont watch it’. Or ‘I dont want to pay for schools because I dont have kids’ – it does not fly in that context.
“I just cannot accept the ‘i am not funding a service I hardly use’ point.”
It’s simple.
Who pays for the TV set?
Who pays for the TV subscription?
Who pays for the DVDs?
Who pays for the DVD player?
Who pays for the mobile phone?
Who pays for the mobile phone charges?
Who pays for the computer?
Who pays for the internet provider?
The answer to none of these questions is “the BBC”.
The BBC is not an universal service. It’s not a public service either. It’s just a TV channel.
hmm.. but the BBC isn’t an essential service, like schools or hospitals. If I didn’t have kids, I would absolutely consent to my taxes being used to fund schools and hospitals (even if I had the choice).
However, the BBC isn’t an essential service, it is entertainment. If you like it, pay for it. If you don’t, don’t. Back in the 90s I actually threw my TV out, because it was gathering dust. I had SIX doorknocks from TV Licencing asking why I haven’t bought a licence. If I don’t use it, why should I pay?
No. It’s not the same thing, and the comparison is silly.
Nearest equivalent would be a car. I don’t own a car, so I don’t pay road-tax. By your reasoning, I should be paying roadtax, for the benefit of car users, delivery vans, ambulances etc. No, it is down to the end-user to pay for that, and everyone thinks that is fair and proper. Why is the BBC/Licence a special case? It isn’t as if it is the ONLY broadcaster anymore.
big news of today is that the BBC are “cutting back”, dropping Radio 6Music and Asian Network, stopping buying in of shows from US, cutting web content etc etc. People are up in arms about it – why?
Comes the day after the Beeb was slated for wasting money rebuilding broadcasting house, BBC Scotland building (in London) etc.