I am a 39 year old man with five kids. I have one girl (16) and four boys (15,13,10,9).
Not been ...
I am a 39 year old man with five kids. I have one girl (16) and four boys (15,13,10,9).
Not been around the site for a while, but gonna start writing soon :)
Member since:01.08.2000
Reviews:50
Members who trust:5
The BBC is now an antiquated institution that no longer requires our support. The original idea behind the licence was good, in that it provided the nation with a supported structure of national and regionalised TV and radio, when nothing much else was available.
The problem now is that people do have a choice of TV and radio from all over the world through the use of services like BskyB and the cable networks. Through these services you can now receive hundreds of channels of music and programming, meeting most tastes. What do you pay for these services, between £6 & £40 a month which roughly works out to around £3.50 a channel per year or much less, depending on the package you choose.
So why do the BBC feel that £100+/year is good value for their services. They say that they offer specialist services that cannot be replaced by commercial offerings. So what is so unique, Radio 3, no! just listen to classic FM, Radio 1, no! just listen to Kiss FM or Galaxy, BBC 2 education, no! Discovery have 6 channels. The truth is that there is not one of the BBC services that does not have its commercial counterpart elsewhere, either nationally or regionally or would not have it's void filled by another venture looking for market share.
They would also argue that they produce unique programming especially for BBC viewers. They do, but only until they discover that they can make a profit out of it. Take the example of 'Mrs Brown' the film about Queen Victoria, which was actually made for TV using fee payers money, but was then released to the cinema instead. So not only did we pay to have it made, we then had to pay to go and see it??? In contrast BskyB has now made three films of it's own, which were all premiered on it's own movie channels before cinema release !!!
The overall point is that years ago the BBC did not make it's own money and required support, but now the BBC makes more money than the licence fee could ever generate from selling programmes worldwide and things like video's and books etc. So if they are going to act like a commercial company, why should they not become a commercial company. If the argument comes back that they would not be able to survive as a commercial company, then i say 'BBC OUT.'
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Dec 12th, 2000
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