BBC LIcence Fee
£10.96/month (with discounts for various people such as the blind and the elderly)
which is spent as follows (according to their website)
£7.54 - Eight national TV stations plus regional programming
£1.17 - Ten national radio stations
£0.75 - Forty local radio stations
£0.49 - Over 240 websites
£1.01 - transmission costs and other costs including TV licence collection
And somewhere in there is the subsidy for helping Channel 4 switch over to digital broadcasting and for the rest of the big digital switchover so the government can sell off the old analog channels.
As a "public service" broadcaster, the BBC service is available in much the same way that schools, rubbish collection, NHS hospitals etc. are. Even if you don't use the services, there's a cost that is spread among a larger group of people. To make it a little "fairer", they only charge the licence fee from people that have some sort of TV receiver (even if it is a tuner card in a PC that is only used to watch ITV). And for reasons I haven't seen explained, they make the websites and such available to people in other countries at no cost (though they do add advertising to some websites such as BBC News).
And to help fund the BBC, they have groups such as BBC Enterprises/Worldwide which sell BBC productions to other countries and then use the money to help make more programming and keep the licence fee down.
I *do* think that if you have a TV licence you should be allowed to watch TV whereever you are (in the world). But then I'd expect the TV licence to become more of a "per person" rather than "per household" fee, and perhaps rolled into general taxation which would make it harder to give individual discounts based on disability or age (would have to be refunded via tax credits and/or higher pensions etc.)
However I can't see why my licence fee money is being spent on making EastEnders. The Archers at least has some nearly subliminal information about farming policies, innoculations, European regulations etc. encoded into it, but EastEnders appears to have no socially redeeming or educational content at all. Even something like The Weakest Link is promoting knowledge and belitting ignorance, so it has some societal value.
Actually, I take it back about EastEnders ... they *do* try to show people getting on in a multi-cultural society and occasionally have story lines about things like Breast Cancer and Spousal Abuse which are then supported through information and support lines after the show ... so as a form of societal normalisation and encouraging tolerance and such I'll grudgingly accept it.
Now buying in Neighbours or some other foreign soap, less good ...
Even Top Gear has shown me parts of the world (the Polar Ice Caps and parts of Africa) in an entertaining way that was also educational and made me want to find out more about them (much the same as Long Way Down), and I have no objection to being entertained as part of my licence fee (education doesn't have to be boring, dull or tedious, and not everything has to be educational every moment it is on).
Sorry about that, drifted off into a rant ... :-)
I pay for schools, though I have no children, plus a lot of other services for society that I use to a greater or lesser extent ... because being part of a society means that we each have to play a role whether it is as a giver or receiver or both. The child that gets educated with my money this year, may be my doctor, MP or plumber in ten years time, and I'd like to hope they'd be good at their job.
So I'm happy to pay for all the BBC services (like 1Xtra and UK Parliament) that I'll probably never use as part of being British and living in this society ... and knowing that somewhere there's a 1Xtra or 5Live listener (with a TV licence!) that's helping to sponsor next year's BBC Radio 2 Cambridge Folk Festival :-)
And in the meantime, if I want to watch/listen to BBC content while travelling, I'll either download it in the UK and stick it on my iPod to watch/listen to later, or I'll invest in something like a Slingbox so I can watch it on my phone/PC while travelling.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
