Grinning BBC boss blows raspberry at UK.gov, eyes up buffet The BBC has blown a raspberry at both the Minister of Fun and the Chancellor, who want a smaller and more focused BBC, by setting out plans to embiggen itself. The media giant’s new strategy, which has a pre-election feel to it, sees the Corporation expanding furiously in all directions while threatening to close down iconic …
if channel 5 can afford all of the american tv and good films and engineering doc`s, and was sold for $30m, then the bbc should be able to afford the same, and make a few docs and victorian drama`s with £150m of the tv licence money, and not need a £1bn and have nothing to watch or no radio shows left for anyone to care about
all you ever hear on the bbc news is reuters, and seems like they have no journalists
the bbc are rubbish and should be on a decoder card
1 in 10 Magistrate Court appearances are for non-payment of TV licence, and one person a week goes to jail for non-payment, as it is treated as a criminal offence. Shame on the BBC for pursuing these prosecutions - 3000 a week!
http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/media-culture/non-payment-of-bbc-licence-fee-accounts-for-10-of-prosecutions/
Hi, Andrew,
If the Register were to share and experiment with a series of programs of novel note and radical free enterprise, would it be practically impossible for the BBC to not follow and report on their development[s]?
And yes, that is a live proposal you can accept as being already all ready for launching to explore the virtual strength of such as is advanced intelligent programming.
"Now I'm off to play with my twanger..."
Is it a big red one? Zippy's got a big red one. And don't forget, once you've got your twanger out you can bounce your balls as well if you like. Don't worry if you havent got any balls, you can ask a friend if you can play with his...
Advertisers are now king
See, for example, the Daily Telegraph not mentioning HSBC scandals until days after everyone else has done so, because HSBC provides one of their big advertising contracts.
I am probably even more anti-BBC than Andrew Orlowski. However, if and when they go to a subscription model, we will, one way or the other, end up paying a lot more for our TV. We might be happy with that, but it will be more expensive.
The Beeb can only knock out telly for £145 because the entire TV owning population pays on pain of criminal prosecution. With a subscription model, their subscriber base will shrink and as it shrinks, remaining subscribers will pay more and more. In the end, BBC will probably cost even more than Sky, because Sky is an efficient private company and the Beeb is anything but efficient.
So it will be 2k per year for Sky or 3k per year for beeb.
Shifting to a subscription model is very unlikely to happen in a short time frame, and may well be kicked down the road until the next charter review.
That's because it will require a replacement of a huge amount of equipment, as Freeview kit doesn't support the card readers required. I talked about this in July's Breaking Fad. Obviously, not all Reg writers have the same view of the BBC.
My argument there is that, whatever you think of the BBC, a shift to subscription (at least in the short term) may well be the death knell for Freeview. How so? If people have to replace equipment in order to pay for a subscription service, why pay to do so out of their own pockets? I suspect that a substantial number of people would think "Well, if we have subscribe anyway, let's get some extra stuff too" and jump ship from Freeview to Virgin or Sky, both of whom will also jump at the chance to reel you in with a free box.
If the proportion of people doing that is significant, given the audience share the BBC presently has on Freeview, it may be the case that the other channels on the platform will decide to cut their losses, rather than pay for expensive distribution to a dwindling market. That would, of course, suit the mobile companies who want to grab the spectrum, as well.
Would ITV and C4 be enough to keep Freeview going, on their own? I doubt it, frankly.
Of course, there are other ways a move to subscription could pan out, especially if it were phased in well in advance - essentially if it was decided now, for instance, that it would happen in ten years time, then natural equipment replacement would probably ensure most people had suitable kit before it was required.
But if not, then in my view, given the current share of free to air viewing that the BBC does have, changing it to a subscription model might well have be sufficient to kill off quality free TV in the UK altogether.
"Sky puts out enough repeats of it. 3 or 4 Simpsons episodes in a row at teatime/early evening. I half wonder if its a Murdoch plan to stop people watching regional news programmes on Beeb and ITV."
My 5yo grandson is happy to watch the same episodes of Chuggington again and again. Most people above the age of 5 are a little more discerning and tend not to watch the same Simpsons episodes day after day. I wonder what Skys viewing figures are for the daily repeats of The Simpsons broken down by age groups?
As for the Beeb going subscription only, I give you Fox News. Advert and agenda driven "newsotainment". Watch it and weep.
"Businesses will pay nearly £8bn less corporation tax a year by 2016-17"
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c0afbfc4-02af-11e4-a68d-00144feab7de.html#axzz3lB2gLnrZ
the gov should keep a few points of a percent and get rid of the tv licence, and pay for the bbc with the money
The archaic license fee can not continue. The fee is a tax which is effectively controlled by the government, so why not tax everyone? Most people are not paying for BBC content, occupants (family members) of houses of which contain a licensed TV, users of a PC, mobile devices, BBC radio listeners.
Over the air TV's will probably disappear completely with users choosing to watch content at a time they want to watch.
Poll taxes, for that is your proposal, are even more archaic and have a History of civil unrest. I moved away from Sky to Freeview because Sky wasn't worth the subscription (not a sports fan) and while I can record stuff I rarely bother to do so - there is only so much TV you can watch without going all spongiform in the brain.
My coat is the one with the 20 year old Radio Times in .
the bloody BBC overseas service, painting its false portrait of Britain as a saccharine-sweet land of milk, honey, dolecheques and free health care is one reason why we have so many damned immigrants clustering to invade our shores. The BBC presents us as a land of gold and beautiful women, available to all, and the aliens - illegal or otherwise - want a piece
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