Comes the day after the Beeb was slated for wasting money rebuilding broadcasting house, BBC Scotland building (in London) etc.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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)