TV Licence Fee Decision

Well sports rights aren’t really considered PSB.

But it’s just your fantasy anyway. I know see no real political desire to get rid of the BBC and even though this has turned into a bit of PR disaster for the BBC it’s still not that high up on the agenda even from the Daily Mail. The BBC will either backtrack or the story will just die down and it will be forgotten about in 6 months time.

The desire has been long game - something to do slowly to make protest's less.

Should the BBC give up on children's programmes? It's well known that kids don't watch broadcast TV as much as they used to but if CBeebies and CBBC are axed then it's more than two nails in the coffin for broadcast TV and kids. The next generation of kids brought up on tablets and YouTube, due to a shortage of appealing programmes on the terrestrial TV channels, will probably not bother much with broadcast TV when they get older. This will ultimately drive nails into the coffin for the entire BBC!

Probably like this . . .

I see Piers Morgan, Susanna Reid "fighting back tears", together with the backing of the BBC-bashing press who report on every twist and turn on Good Morning Britain, are milking this story for every thing it's worth at the moment, whipping hostility against the BBC.

Wouldn't be surprised to see Good Morning Britain leapfrog in front of BBC Breakfast now in the ratings and viewer share, and the BBC's viewing figures collapse generally.

I don't think there is a chance of GMB leapfrogging Breakfast at this time, although big news for the BBC, ITV current offering is failing to provide people rely on in the morning.

I'm not saying they should give them up. I'm saying they can't afford two children's channels.

They could probably get away with moving them online like BBC Three

How would that help?

The cost in running channels is commissioning and acquiring the content to go on them.

BBC Three moving online didn't make it massively cheaper, reducing the amount of content it commissioned or bought for the channeldid... The move online was an inevitable result of slashing BBC Three's commissioning budget, and reducing it's acquisition budget to almost zero, to a level where a linear channel would have literally just been days and days worth of repeats of the same few shows.

The BBC is one of, if not the most respected broadcaster in the world and a huge vehicle for Britain's soft power. At this time of volatility about our place in the world the government should be investing, not cutting back. I heard on the radio that the GDP contribution of the UK creative industries dwarf that of manufacturing so that investment would benefit the economy as a whole proportionately well.

Also, while we discuss edge cases of people who can't pay / won't pay the BBC continues to be valued by the vast majority of the nation.

Having said that, all public institutions should keep an eye on sprawl. The trouble with getting bigger is it is incredibly difficult to shrink without the users of those services calling foul. The outcry from a cut will undoubtedly be louder than any of the calls to create new services. Take Ceebeebies as an example - was there a vocal campaign to create a service with 12 hours of dedicated pre-school programming? You can bet there would be outcry if it were to be removed. See 6 Music for more detail.

It would be interesting to see how the perception of BBC value has changed over the past 20 years. Has it increased with the additional services? Has it stayed static given the need to match an increasingly diverse competition? Has it decreased? Is it even measured?

No, as its the perfect example of public service broadcasting, one of the handful of genres that the commercial sector has largely given up on as it doesn't make money.


The non linear issue is less a factor with a chanel like Cbeebies, parents want to leave it on and not have to keep loading new programmes. But it's also embracing non linear because that's useful too, and Cbeebies are pushing their iplayer hard at the mo. There's no reason why YouTube and tablets mean that kids won't watch BBC content as its available there. Our son has a tablet and uses it to watch Cbeebies content, we don't really let him watch anything else on it as its not a safe a space. Kids YouTube is great but needs supervision

Yeah, I noticed GMB is now suddenly oh so concerned about D Day veterans despite just days ago dedicating their entire D Day anniversary show to piers and trump

Will this make watching TV technically illegal for people who have defaulted on paying their council tax?

A council tax default will also include a TV licence fee default along with it?

Can such defaulters then be prosecuted for watching TV without paying the licence fee BEFORE being prosecuted for defaulting on council tax?