If so many people support the Licence Fee...

OK let's reduce the fee, put a levy on Satellite and Cable subscriptions to maintain the quality of free television, after all those who pay for it could afford that easily.

If 9M subscribe say £50 per year initially would raise £450M annually, give £25M to ITV for local news, another £25M to Ch4 to cover their PSB requirements, £400M to the BBC which would reduce the fee to £126 a saving for all of £16.50.

Perhaps over time this levy could rise to £120 per year which would raise over a billion for the BBC which could bring the fee down by a further £24.50 reducing it to £101.50.

All well and good I think, would do some wealth re-distribution too from those who earn sufficient to be able to afford pay tv subscriptions to those who don't.

Right. Well? I've asked you a number of questions, and yet you still don't appear to want to answer. To make it easy, here they are once again:

What have you done to "make your voice heard"?

What "type of people" support the licence fee? Is there a typical person?

Perhaps you could list some of the BBC shows you make use of, and what you think the BBC could do in order to make itself more attractive to your tastes. More American imports? More Sci-Fi?

At what point do you think the £140 a year Licence Fee would become value for your parents - sorry - your money?

Can you honestly say you never ever look through your Sky Guide and see a programme of interest on any of the BBC's TV or Radio networks that stands out to you? That makes you think "Hey, Sky wouldn't make that, I might put that on and broaden my horizons rather than watching decade old repeats of american imports"?

Oh, and finally, are you Sky Is Tops on DigitalSpy, and if not, would you agree that its more than a coincidence that you both have the exact same tastes, posting style, unnatural obsession with Sky and pathological hatred of the BBC?

Since no-one can get rid of you, then I'll await you answer to each question in turn.

I'm not out to make you look stupid... just answer some questions, which I only posted one page back... here they are again:

Skyfan: Two honest questions:

1) Why should households have to pay £20+/month for content on Sky, when Sky show adverts? Shouldn't the adverts cover the cost of the imported programmes?

2) What alternative is there to the licence fee, when it covers things which are not commercially viable and wouldn't exist without the licence fee, but are each used by thousands of people (local non music based radio, local TV news, UK based childrens production, and many more examples on previous pages)? Commercials wouldn't work either as that would reduce the incomes of the other commercial channels, causing an even bigger seperation of funds.

The licence fee may not be ideal, but it's the best of a group of bad options, and without the BBC not being under direct commercial pressures the entire broadcast landscape in the UK would be far worse. We have some of the most varied and successful television and radio broadcasters on the planet broadcasting in this country, something virtually unheard of in any other country this size.

1) People have the CHOICE whether TO or NOT
2) Other things are not comercially viable, because the BBC is dominating the market. That's why local commercial radio is badly suffering.

Nothing to do with their crap output? Also, ironic you have you brought up radio on TV Forum to argue your case given what you've posted in another thread?

Firstly, I was being asked a question, and I answered it.

Secondly, the "CRAP OUTPUT" is to do with no being able to afford decent programming, and why? because the BBC is dominating the market. Read my posts, and you will get the answers already.

Commercial Radio stations have been (and some indeed still are) highly profitable businesses. The problem is the lack of investment, which has lead to a reduction in 'real' programming, which has instead been replaced by recorded link and automated playlists, whilst profits were creamed off for management and shareholders.

Also, any chance you'll answer my questions posed in post 62?

Local commercial radio, like all commercial entities at the moment is suffering. Not because of the BBC. In Wales there is ONE BBC station broadcasting in English, serving a reach of 2.5million listeners, of which is has only an 8% share of its potential audience. In contrast Real Radio, which serves most of South and mid Wales, has a 10% share of its TSA. Red Dragon also has a 10% share of its TSA. Both these stations in my area at least outperform Radio Wales. Recently I visited Dorset, and found Wave and Wessex FM both more attractive a listen than Radio Solent. BBC Local Radio certainly doesn't provide all what a listening audience wants.

The reason why commercial radio is suffering is because of homogenisation. Instead of promoting a local service, chasing local advertising and serving the local people, the bigwigs at Bauer/Global/GCap etc (whatever it's called this week) decided to call every station Heart and promptly wipe out interest in most areas of the country in their local station, due to most programming being automated cheap crap coming out of a computer in London. Oh, and I neglected to mention that the new owners of Heart were part of a former regime at ITV, who...oh...homogenised all the local station names and changed them all to ITV. And ITV is now facing financial disaster.

Go figure.

It's not the BBC who's to blame, it's those self-serving idiots in charge of the competition. And it's their failures that breed misguided negative blinkered views like yours, Skyfan. By their failures, and by resentment of the BBC's position, a tendency to blame the BBC is bred.

So next time you bash the BBC and the license fee, be grateful for the relative stability it gives the UK to have a properly funded national, local and minority service as opposed what would happen if the kind of people running ITV and Heart were in charge.

Exactly, as a regular listener to Capital FM between 1995-2001 it saddens me (not literally) to hear what a p*ss poor station Capital FM has become these days & why, no not the BBC but because the station has been absorbed into one big media giant who don't care about audience, just how much they can save.

Personally I'm happy to pay for the BBC, they are a great service & they aren't stopping others from doing other services like them, these other firms have a choice but choose not to.

Who is denying you?


As is everyone else

You want the BBC to be subscription only. How will this work on Freeview?
If you propose the use of CI cards, then that will be a problem for people without Freeview boxes/TVs/recorders with CI slots. Why should they have to fork out for new boxes just to watch the BBC?

The BBC would have to have these cards made for them, which would have to be sent out to every subscriber. Would you have to pay extra for each box in your house? You'd have to, to stop people getting round the system. If there was a limit, why should you be limited to how many rooms you can watch the BBC in?

You would have to fork out extra for each platform you use. The BBC would have to devise a password system for all BBC websites.

How do you propose radio to be encrypted? That would be nigh-on impossible.

How about an advert system? How can you expect the BBC to comment upon companies in an unbiased manner, if two minutes later, they are flogging their wares? All old programming will have to be edited to accommodate the shorter time-periods - this includes anything that has been prerecorded. Or, schedules will have to be messed with.

All of this will cost money. In a subscription system, where will this cost come from? You, since there will be no regulation on pricing or funding. The charges will increase, customers will increase, and it wouldn't be sustainable. In an advertising system? Slot prices would increase, advertisers will decrease, and it still wouldn't be sustainable.

So, is it really worth it?

Well James, can I call you James, Mr Murdoch?
The fact is that many of the things that BBC radio does just aren't commercially viable full stop. If the BBC ceased to be today, the commercial stations with their diet of 'that was, this is' music presentation or phone-ins are not suddenly going to flip over to broadcasting dramas, specialist music, community affairs, comedy and everything else the BBC does.

The problems that commercial radio has is nothing to do with the BBC, it's due to years of underinvestment and a failure to be creative and take risks. What we're left with on the whole is a load of very bland independent radio stations.

The lack of advertising is also a factor, the main problem that commercial radio and tv has is that there's just not enough advertising. Google makes more money from advertising than ITV despite it being the most popular TV channel in the UK. That isn't going to change without a BBC, and of course if the BBC stations remained but started taking adverts it would suck even more advertising out of the system

It should also be noted that, as Private Eye pointed out recently, in the world of commercial radio news Sky are dominating the market. A station needs news and only has 2 choices now - do it themselves (expensive) or take Sky's.