The worthiness of a TV licence?
(1 vote)
i'm just about to pay my TV licence for another year and it got me thinking. Apart from Strictly Come Dancing on a Saturday night i rarely watch BBC programmes or listen to BBC radio. The fee is pretty much the same as my road tax which i can justify because i use the roads everyday.
Does anyone agree that there needs to be a useage charge here? It might be a sad sign of the times, but could we not be given the choice to turn off BBC access and avoid this hefty charge? There's always iplayer to catch up on anything good.
I personally feel that I get very good value for the cost of my TV license. Although I don't have a TV (yeah, that's weird, isn't it?) I do watch a lot of programmes on iPlayer... I'm a sucker for a good documentary or nature series!
bbc must of sold the older comedy to the likes of uk gold and other sky channels, i never watch bbc tv and rarely itv and think its just another way of getting tax from you for something you dont need, and how they have the cheek to say if you have a pc you need to pay the licence, and like comments above i think they make the wages up, if someone can tell me how alan hanson is worth 43k a show is beyond me for what amounts to about 5 - 10 minuets talk
I resent paying a licence fee when I am already paying Sky.
If there was an option for Sky TV without BBC channels and no licence fee I would take it, the amount I watch BBC channels doesn't warrant the £13 a month I pay for them !
My view is that the BBC has gone downhill extremely quickly in recent times. Indeed, there is nothing whatever to make them want to produce quality material - virtually every household is subject to the TV tax (and that's exactly what it is) and if you don't have a TV you are hounded and harrassed and complete strangers even demand the right to enter your home and look for one! Absolutely indefensible!
I watch very little BBC programming and these days listen to very little radio. I find, frankly, nothing to interest me, yet I am compelled to pay for it all. I also hate advertising and ITV in particular has greatly increased the number of times it shows a decreasing variety of adverts, all of them annoying and childish, not to mention that the content is usually not relevant to the product being advertised. I make a point of not buying from businesses whose advertising annoys me, and I turn off the sound and often leave the room when the adverts come on. It seems to me that we are all stuck here - we have to pay for the BBC which hugely overpays many people and rams them down our throats incessantly (e.g. Smug Stephen Fry, annoying Dara O'Briain), or we suffer endless advertising on commercial channels. There has to be a better way, but I don't know what it is.
There are far too many channels, many of them having to be paid for yet still carrying adverts (Virgin, Sky) and almost all of them showing repeats. There is nothing like enough decent material to support endless channels broadcasting all day, every day and the time is past when we really need a cull and some sort of attempt to produce soething other than mind-numbing dross.
I do watch the Beeb, and also listen to R4. However there is no way that the licence fee is worth the money spent. Not only that, the salaries paid to the staff are excessive. Personnally if any body in the Beeb is paid over £50,000 per year (any level) then they are robbing the British Public.
As a thought, if they dropped the licence collection wouldnt they save money?
I have some sympathy but because at my age I do not have to pay, I think like many BBC Executives. 71151
I totally agree, i never watch nor listen to the BBC but i still have to apy for them to make programmes, can someone please tell me why, and why has nothing ever been done about it? I seem to remember years and years ago, a chap actually challenged the BBC in court and won, he had never watched the BBC so refused to pay for his tv license, not sure how he won his case though. Time for change methinks.
I have to say that i never watch or listen to BBC content live. However, i do watch older BBC content on BT vision and use the BBC website. You could argue that i'm paying for the BBC content through BT vision separately. I also know that if the BBC website started charging for content like news and the weather I would no longer use it.
Thinking that the if the TV license was cut then the radio programmes would contain adverts, I wouldn't mind that. Equally we tend to get adverts for other BBC shows between the broadcast shows that would reduce to make space for adverts (and of course reducing a 55 minute show to 42 minutes as is the case with the other channels.
I have to say that if the TV license was removed and the only visible (meaning ignoring programme quality) effect was adverts within programmes, I wouldn't mind that.
Based on your comments, I would totally agree but, and it's a large but, the total revenues then received by the BBC Trust would have to be from advertising. Based on that argument, there are not many channels that presently provide good and varied content without mindless advertisments. The way forward is for the licence payers to request the BBC to openly show how the money is used and for you, as a licence payer, be given the opportunity to determine what should be shown and what "stars" should be receiving from the licence fees.
I'm on the fence. On the one hand I really don't feel as though the quality of the content is up to scratch for the money that you have to fork out, but on the other hand I'd imagine the consequences of the system being abolished or changed would result in even worse programmes coming though the tube!
There are, of course, a few gems. Wonders of the solar system and wonders of the galaxy were fantastic, as well as things like frozen planet - really great shows. The rest though, not that impressed!