King Cole, I believe that sort of thing still happens in many more rural parts of America. Voluntary subscriptions are the route through which more isolated communities can get fire services, but if you don't pay that's a big risk.
You stop if there's a reason why society needs that service. Society needs the fire brigade, so you stop there.
Fair enough. I hate sports. Let us cut all sports coverage from the BBC. Those who like them can pay for them on Sky.
To paraphrase a poster of this parish, "No one ever died from missing a football match on the telly...."
I 100% agree with you. If people want to watch sports they can pay a subscription or pay adverts, they don't need a telly tax to pay for it. There is no need for taxes to pay for Gary Linekar, I'm sure he can find a job without our taxes.
It's hard to see this guy getting the base out. Then again it's hard to see Bernie attracting pussy moderates. And Warren looks beaten. But Trump MUST be defeated. Four more years of him is not an option. So where does this leave us? Pete or Amy to come through and take it? Both did very well in NH.
Buttigieg-Klobuchar could be a great ticket. That could be how Pete wins.
Healthcare, the police, the fire brigade are a necessity.
No they are not. I do not need them, why should I pay for them?
I might need them later, but I can be taxed at the point of use.
If you want to argue that then be my guest.
The BBC OTOH is not something that anyone might "need" later. Nobody ever "needs" it. Some people want it, they can pay for it, nobody "needs" it.
What do I "need" the Fire Brigade for? My house is not on fire. And if install the correct fire suppression systems then I will never have a fire in the house.
I thought you right-wing types were all for personal responsibility and not putting burdens on the state... or is it all just about contributing as little as possible except where it benefits you or matches your prejudices?
You may need the fire service to extricate you from a car crash or other accident
My car insurance can deal with it. Specialist private firms can be set up....
The point I am making is that we CAN abolish all these services so that we can pick and choose our taxes, but it is a thin-end-of-the-wedge strategy. Sooner or later we wind up being the US with different tax rates in every town, county and state, patchy coverage everywhere, etc. Those who advocate such schemes are either disingenuous or have not thought through the obvious conclusion. Once you start salami slicing, where do you stop?
Why stop?
You stop if there's a reason why society needs that service. Society needs the fire brigade, so you stop there.
Fair enough. I hate sports. Let us cut all sports coverage from the BBC. Those who like them can pay for them on Sky.
To paraphrase a poster of this parish, "No one ever died from missing a football match on the telly...."
Oh don't worry, that's what we have to do. Quite why Labour didn't in 2019 propose to chuck a PL package, The Open, home England cricket test matches and the Six Nations on the crown jewels list, I don't know.
But Wimbledon, of course, that's still on the BBC each year at a very high cost.
It's hard to see this guy getting the base out. Then again it's hard to see Bernie attracting pussy moderates. And Warren looks beaten. But Trump MUST be defeated. Four more years of him is not an option. So where does this leave us? Pete or Amy to come through and take it? Both did very well in NH.
Buttigieg-Klobuchar could be a great ticket. That could be how Pete wins.
The BBC are rubbish at sport and most sport coverage is on Sky or BT that we actually pay for it we want to follow it
Again, BBC when it comes to sport, little to no innovation. MOTD has been the same forever. Its fine, but I can now get the bog standard highlights legally from YouTube quicker.
And on the analysis side, look at for instance what Tifo Football do on YouTube or the StatsBomb podcast, there is some really high quality in depth analysis that explains far more about what is actually going on.
BBC MOTD reminds me of when the cricket was shown with a camera from a single end, compared to Sky's coverage with Hawkeye, Snikko, 27 different high speed cameras.
The ' Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act ' sounds dangerous, as there are plenty of 'good' interventions which have saved countless lives.
would prefer MPs to use their judgement on this on a case by case basis.
The ' Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act ' sounds dangerous, as there are plenty of 'good' interventions which have saved countless lives.
would prefer MPs to use their judgement on this on a case by case basis.
Indeed. That's so sensible I dont know why it's such an issue - maybe someone is inclined for or against interventions but either way the situation would need to be judged on its merits in its particular context. People automatically for or against are being idiotic.
The BBC are rubbish at sport and most sport coverage is on Sky or BT that we actually pay for it we want to follow it
Again, BBC when it comes to sport, little to no innovation. MOTD has been the same forever. Its fine, but I can now get the bog standard highlights legally from YouTube quicker.
And on the analysis side, look at for instance what Tifo Football do on YouTube or the StatsBomb podcast, there is some really high quality in depth analysis that explains far more about what is actually going on.
Unfortunately I think football broadcasting is in the gutter at the moment. There is absolutely no incentive to innovate as once you have the rights then that's it.
But Wimbledon, of course, that's still on the BBC each year at a very high cost.
Wimbledon viewing figures will wane once Federer & to a lesser extent Nadal retire I think. Djokovic dominating Zverev and Thiem doesn't have the same appeal. I know Djoko and Nadal are roughly the same age but Nadal probably retiring first of the two.
The idea Starmer is going to confront and take on the far left is absurd. He signed up wholeheartedly to Corbyn, served happily with RLB and Burgon and now he's trying to win the leadership with this claptrap.
Starmer is not only no Blair, he's not even a Kinnock!
I am amazed that he has not learned any lessons from the last election
Are you? Did you not see the polling yesterday where Labour Members (ie the ones with the votes in this competition) thought that Corbyn was the best leader of recent times? That's the electorate he has to win no matter what he actually thinks. And he's going to. It's not exactly a nail biter.
I am to be honest.
I thought he would be his own person but he has swallowed the failed 2019 election manifesto hook , line and sinker and looks as if labour will be in the wilderness for decades
He's got 4 years to find more credible lines. What's the rush? A lot is going to happen in that time for good or ill. Right now he wants to win convincingly and he will.
Let's just hope he doesn't put these pledges on an Ed Stone!
If Joe Biden drops out at some point, who does he endorse? That might well be the decisive moment of the race for the Democratic nomination.
Surely not Pete given his recent attacks.
Not sure, though they would certainly be mentioned by thwarted suitors if he did.
He might not endorse anyone, of course, but I suspect he would want to help stop Bernie Sanders. If that was his motivation, I expect he would want to put his shoulder behind the candidate who then seemed most viable to stop Bernie Sanders, whoever that was.
Fair enough. I hate sports. Let us cut all sports coverage from the BBC. Those who like them can pay for them on Sky.
To paraphrase a poster of this parish, "No one ever died from missing a football match on the telly...."
That's fine. There's ITV which can do it as well, or channel 4, or BT, or Sky.
Was that an argument?
Not really...
The point still stands. We elect governments to manage our tax spend even if they allocate things to services we do not use because otherwise, we end up running around trying to monitor and fiddle with everything on an individual level.
Knowing a few Americans who go through hell doing their tax returns each year, I thought I would just play Devil's Advocate for those who seem to be advocating the thin end of that particular wedge.
My wife and I love the Big Bang Theory. If there's nothing on or we just want some background noise we often put that on, on Netflix. 14 seasons, 279 episodes. The BBC just can't compete with that.
My issue with the BBC isn't that its great but left or anything like that. The fact is its just not that great. And people need to realise that sooner than later - my generation just does not watch that much BBC - and this isn't a thing that will change with age like left v right, we've grown up with choice and have embraced it.
Unless older people making decisions realise that and adopt changes sooner than later then it is only a matter of time before people that have no love at all for the BBC will make decisions over its future. I couldn't care less if the BBC lives or dies, if you do you should want it on a sustainable model. ITV, Sky, Netflix and more sustain themselves, why can't the BBC?
Away from drama, another problem is how accessible high quality camera gear and the editing tools are now. You only have to see just how much the production quality on some YouTube channels have improved in a few years. Increasingly they have teams of trained camera operators, editors, etc.
e.g. Linus Tech Tips is just as high quality a production as BBC Click tech show and the difference is LTT put out a new video daily. In fact they release in 4k, unlike the BBC.
A bit like 30-40 years ago you couldn't product high quality music without access to a handful of professional studio, now lots of people can do it from their bedroom.
BBC Click is a programme which makes me think, “what audience are they targeting?”. If it’s enthusiasts, they’ll know anyway and in more detailed terms. If it’s the mass public, BBC News is not the most obvious location. If it’s bored expats with access to only a few English language channels, that’s a limited market. Perhaps it’s just cheap, repeatable, filler.
I’d be genuinely interested in knowing what they think they’re doing with it. And the audience figures.
Is Bernie Sanders actually THAT hard left ? His platform looks to be to the right of the Lib Dems here, on taxation at least.
Yes he is,
From the top of my head:
He is still a man who will not fromely join the democrats because 'they are all far to contract for him. He thought it apprpreat to honeymoon in the USSR and was happy for the USSR to use that as publicity/propaganda. He has given countless complements and visits to South American 'socialist' Stated that rationing and queuing, are better ways of disputing food than price and shopping. Thinks that limiting the chose of deodorants will somehow help pore people.
As Sherwood-O’Regan said, “As we grow and climate change becomes a harsher reality, privileged activists need to learn to de-centre themselves and meaningfully support Indigenous, disabled, queer, global south, POC, and other marginalized people who are on the frontlines of climate change.”
I am struggling to see how "queer" is a defining characteristic for the frontline of climate change....
Yes, I was wondering that.
No comma after 'who'. Defining relative clause? He's restricting his remark to those people who are both indigenous, disabled, queer etc. and are on the front line of climate change. He's not saying that all indigenous, disabled, queer etc. are on the front line of climate change.
Some are dubious of the most zealous man-made global warming enthusiasts because they want to push far left policies and impose them with the threat of the apocalypse.
My wife and I love the Big Bang Theory. If there's nothing on or we just want some background noise we often put that on, on Netflix. 14 seasons, 279 episodes. The BBC just can't compete with that.
My issue with the BBC isn't that its great but left or anything like that. The fact is its just not that great. And people need to realise that sooner than later - my generation just does not watch that much BBC - and this isn't a thing that will change with age like left v right, we've grown up with choice and have embraced it.
Unless older people making decisions realise that and adopt changes sooner than later then it is only a matter of time before people that have no love at all for the BBC will make decisions over its future. I couldn't care less if the BBC lives or dies, if you do you should want it on a sustainable model. ITV, Sky, Netflix and more sustain themselves, why can't the BBC?
Away from drama, another problem is how accessible high quality camera gear and the editing tools are now. You only have to see just how much the production quality on some YouTube channels have improved in a few years. Increasingly they have teams of trained camera operators, editors, etc.
e.g. Linus Tech Tips is just as high quality a production as BBC Click tech show and the difference is LTT put out a new video daily. In fact they release in 4k, unlike the BBC.
A bit like 30-40 years ago you couldn't product high quality music without access to a handful of professional studio, now lots of people can do it from their bedroom.
BBC Click is a programme which makes me think, “what audience are they targeting?”. If it’s enthusiasts, they’ll know anyway and in more detailed terms. If it’s the mass public, BBC News is not the most obvious location. If it’s bored expats with access to only a few English language channels, that’s a limited market. Perhaps it’s just cheap, repeatable, filler.
I’d be genuinely interested in knowing what they think they’re doing with it. And the audience figures.
The audience figures will be tiny. Their YouTube also gets bugger all views.
Again it strikes me like the BBC feel the need to produce a tech show, public service remit and all that, but what you get is a very stale product in a market that is now dominated by YouTube channels that are massive and increasingly high quality.
If Joe Biden drops out at some point, who does he endorse? That might well be the decisive moment of the race for the Democratic nomination.
There's a related question: Who does *Obama* endorse. I know former presidents usually stay out of it but if you're looking at a Bernie win on a minority vote, or a horrendous convention food fight, wouldn't he stop it if he could? And he could: Once Biden is gone, if Obama endorses Baemy or Mayor Pete, that's the nominee.
Since the license fee has become a hot topic on this thread....
A decade or so ago, long before the law change on iPlayer, I didn't have a TV license. At the time, I listened to Radio 4 all of the time, as well as other BBC stations. I used the BBC website a lot. The value of the BBC was far greater than the cost of the license fee. So in the end I decided to get a TV license, even though I wasn't legally obliged to.
The thing that stopped me doing so much earlier was the moronic approach to enforcing the license fee. Essentially a person would turn up at my door with a badge that doesn't look different from something a criminal could cheaply reproduce, and demanded to search my house. If I asked them to give a verifiable telephone number I could call to check that they were legitimate, they were unable to. They then would start making veiled threats. And of course, as a private company, there was no accountability.
But worse than that: throughout this period, I had the option not to fund the BBC, but I was compelled to fund the ITV, Channel 4, and so on, despite making no use of them whatsoever. I still don't use them, aside from the Six Nations, and I still fund them. The ubiquity of advertising means that there is no means of opting out of funding them that is more plausible than becoming a subsistence farmer.
Replacing the license fee with advertising as a funding model would force the BBC to focus more ruthlessly on maximising its viewers:costs ratio (clearly a bad thing, in my view). What it would absolutely would not do is increase consumer choice. It would decrease it, by replacing something that you can realistically opt out of with something that you can't.
I know Djoko and Nadal are roughly the same age but Nadal probably retiring first of the two.
Probably right. The chase for most Slams for the Big 3 is a great narrative. I make Djok the fav, then Nad, then Fed - i.e. in reverse order of current tallies. But it could feasibly finish all 3 tied on 20 or 21.
For the BBC, would a National Trust Type model work?
NT generates £630m and has 5.5m members. That is roughly 250m memberships, 200m from properties, 80m donations legacies, 80m commercial, 25m investment. Life membrship now costs £1750.
DG of NT is paid a little under 200k. NT makes a 20% surplus.
Church of England raises about £500m a year through straight donations from churchgoers to parishes, of whom there are maybe about a million. Do not have a current number for the average donation, but it is well north of £500 a year.
Would such a model - or a membership / commercial / sponsorship hybrid - work for the BBC?
Why not? What is it worth to you? Would you pay £5k for life membership of the BBC?
Would the BBC slebs work for less than 600k a year? Or less than a couple of millions for Lineker?
Would they put their money where their mouths are?
Fair enough. I hate sports. Let us cut all sports coverage from the BBC. Those who like them can pay for them on Sky.
To paraphrase a poster of this parish, "No one ever died from missing a football match on the telly...."
That's fine. There's ITV which can do it as well, or channel 4, or BT, or Sky.
Was that an argument?
Not really...
The point still stands. We elect governments to manage our tax spend even if they allocate things to services we do not use because otherwise, we end up running around trying to monitor and fiddle with everything on an individual level.
Knowing a few Americans who go through hell doing their tax returns each year, I thought I would just play Devil's Advocate for those who seem to be advocating the thin end of that particular wedge.
Yes, the BBC is part of the core cultural infrastructure of the country, and a major commissioner of British talent. These are some of our most successful service industries.
Certainly we could abandon the field to capitalists bringing in cheap globalised product, but is that in our long term interest?
If we do not want the government to spend on cultural infrastructure, then why spend it on transport infrastructure too. After all, nearly every mile of railway in the country was originally built by a private company.
I just want the BBC to be recognised as a national asset. I would rather my tax money paid for it than HS2.
Since the license fee has become a hot topic on this thread....
A decade or so ago, long before the law change on iPlayer, I didn't have a TV license. At the time, I listened to Radio 4 all of the time, as well as other BBC stations. I used the BBC website a lot. The value of the BBC was far greater than the cost of the license fee. So in the end I decided to get a TV license, even though I wasn't legally obliged to.
The thing that stopped me doing so much earlier was the moronic approach to enforcing the license fee. Essentially a person would turn up at my door with a badge that doesn't look different from something a criminal could cheaply reproduce, and demanded to search my house. If I asked them to give a verifiable telephone number I could call to verify that they were legitimate, they were unable to. They then would start making veiled threats. And of course, as a private company, there was no accountability.
But worse than that: throughout this period, I had the option not to fund the BBC, but I was compelled to fund the ITV, Channel 4, and so on, despite making no use of them whatsoever. I still don't use them, aside from the Six Nations, and I still fund them. The ubiquity of advertising means that there is no means of opting out of funding them that is more plausible than becoming a subsistence farmer.
Replacing the license fee with advertising as a funding model would force the BBC to focus more ruthlessly on maximising its viewers:costs ratio (clearly a bad thing, in my view). What it would absolutely would not do is increase consumer choice. It would decrease it, by replacing something that you can realistically opt out of with something that you can't.
You know that you're perfectly entitled just to shut the door on them?
Another thing I notice BBC is failing at, is the YouTube game (which is where all the next gen are).
A lot of the US channels having seen how popular YouTube is, have really made a push e.g. the clips of James Corden Late show, with the likes of Carpool Karaoke all get millions of views.
In comparison, BBC Three, their supposed dead popular can't get rid of it, youth focused channel, rarely gets more than a 10k's viewers per video.
You might say, well that is a big US show vs UK, but a) we live in a globalized world and b) there are loads of youth focused British YouTubers who get millions of views, so the market is there.
Isn't that where we are now? Okay, some money gets spent on prisons (and the justice system), but the absolute bare minimum.
Popular things getting funded at the expense of less popular but equally essential things? Yes, it's an issue regardless. But would allowing each taxpayer to allocate where their taxes go help or hinder in this regard? I suspect the latter.
The BBC are rubbish at sport and most sport coverage is on Sky or BT that we actually pay for it we want to follow it
Again, BBC when it comes to sport, little to no innovation. MOTD has been the same forever. Its fine, but I can now get the bog standard highlights legally from YouTube quicker.
And on the analysis side, look at for instance what Tifo Football do on YouTube or the StatsBomb podcast, there is some really high quality in depth analysis that explains far more about what is actually going on.
Unfortunately I think football broadcasting is in the gutter at the moment. There is absolutely no incentive to innovate as once you have the rights then that's it.
How can you innovate 22 millionaires kicking a ball for 90 minutes? How does next week's plot differ from this weeks? Does the ball get an inheritance? Do the players find out that their manager is a communist mole from North Korea? Watch next week's unexciting episode...
My car insurance can deal with it. Specialist private firms can be set up....
The point I am making is that we CAN abolish all these services so that we can pick and choose our taxes, but it is a thin-end-of-the-wedge strategy. Sooner or later we wind up being the US with different tax rates in every town, county and state, patchy coverage everywhere, etc. Those who advocate such schemes are either disingenuous or have not thought through the obvious conclusion. Once you start salami slicing, where do you stop?
The BBC should not be a poll tax to be honest
Advertising is also effectively a tax over which we have no control - it delivers lots of mostly useless brand statements and adds to the cost of nearly everything we buy - which is why most tech-savvy people use ad-blockers online. For TV it is not just irritating but actively harmful, since the expectation of ad breaks affects the scripting of drama, creating a need for artificial cliff-hangers every N minutes. It's as though every 10th line in a PB header turned out to be an advert for deodorant.
I subscribe to Axios, a US news service which is genuinely useful at times, but illustrates the next step - they give you 8 or so useful facts each day, numbered 1,2,3... but when you look closely you find that a couple of them are not actually facts at all, merely somebody pushing corporate image sufficiently subtly that you may read it as fact (e.g. "How Google is promoting local sport").
If Bargain Hunt is a core part of our cultural infrastructure that's a damning statement on this country. Our culture vastly exceeds the BBC and we as a nation punch well above our weight with cultural exports.
But MattW's National Trust type model is an excellent suggestion. Free up the BBC to be truly independent, let it do what it wants answering only to the BBC Trust and let the BBC Trust get funds however it wants to do so - with no licence fee. If that's voluntary subscriptions then fine, but it could be voluntary donations instead if people love the BBC I'm sure they'd be happy to voluntarily donate the equivalent of the licence fee or maybe even more. Their choice.
Since the license fee has become a hot topic on this thread....
A decade or so ago, long before the law change on iPlayer, I didn't have a TV license. At the time, I listened to Radio 4 all of the time, as well as other BBC stations. I used the BBC website a lot. The value of the BBC was far greater than the cost of the license fee. So in the end I decided to get a TV license, even though I wasn't legally obliged to.
The thing that stopped me doing so much earlier was the moronic approach to enforcing the license fee. Essentially a person would turn up at my door with a badge that doesn't look different from something a criminal could cheaply reproduce, and demanded to search my house. If I asked them to give a verifiable telephone number I could call to verify that they were legitimate, they were unable to. They then would start making veiled threats. And of course, as a private company, there was no accountability.
But worse than that: throughout this period, I had the option not to fund the BBC, but I was compelled to fund the ITV, Channel 4, and so on, despite making no use of them whatsoever. I still don't use them, aside from the Six Nations, and I still fund them. The ubiquity of advertising means that there is no means of opting out of funding them that is more plausible than becoming a subsistence farmer.
Replacing the license fee with advertising as a funding model would force the BBC to focus more ruthlessly on maximising its viewers:costs ratio (clearly a bad thing, in my view). What it would absolutely would not do is increase consumer choice. It would decrease it, by replacing something that you can realistically opt out of with something that you can't.
You know that you're perfectly entitled just to shut the door on them?
When you go door-knocking, from time to time you see people putting up notices that state they have withdrawn the implied authority for people to have access to their property. I believe this is to do with TV licence enforcors/heavies.
Away from drama, another problem is how accessible high quality camera gear and the editing tools are now. You only have to see just how much the production quality on some YouTube channels have improved in a few years. Increasingly they have teams of trained camera operators, editors, etc.
e.g. Linus Tech Tips is just as high quality a production as BBC Click tech show and the difference is LTT put out a new video daily. In fact they release in 4k, unlike the BBC.
A bit like 30-40 years ago you couldn't product high quality music without access to a handful of professional studio, now lots of people can do it from their bedroom.
BBC Click is a programme which makes me think, “what audience are they targeting?”. If it’s enthusiasts, they’ll know anyway and in more detailed terms. If it’s the mass public, BBC News is not the most obvious location. If it’s bored expats with access to only a few English language channels, that’s a limited market. Perhaps it’s just cheap, repeatable, filler.
I’d be genuinely interested in knowing what they think they’re doing with it. And the audience figures.
The audience figures will be tiny. Their YouTube also gets bugger all views.
Again it strikes me like the BBC feel the need to produce a tech show, public service remit and all that, but what you get is a very stale product in a market that is now dominated by YouTube channels that are massive and increasingly high quality.
It's a tricky thing, because I think they feel the need (maybe they are compelled to feel the need) to dumb down so anyone - 'the public' - can get it.
BBC science articles in my field are not very good (neither are news segments) because I know where they are grossly oversimplifying, sometimes to the extent of getting it wrong. Articles in other science fields are not so obviously deficient, but that probably reflects my (lack of) expertise, not better article quality. I used to work in an oceanographic centre and some people there had issues with some of the BBC Natural History Unit output, which most people - myself included - view as pretty great.
I can imagine that my parents, if they watched Click, might get something out of it, but the News channel, rather than say BBC 2, is an odd location.
Another thing I notice BBC is failing at, is the YouTube game (which is where all the next gen are).
A lot of the US channels having seen how popular YouTube is, have really made a push e.g. the clips of James Corden Late show, with the likes of Carpool Karaoke all get millions of views.
In comparison, BBC Three, their supposed dead popular can't get rid of it, youth focused channel, rarely gets more than a 10k's viewers per video.
You might say, well that is a big US show vs UK, but a) we live in a globalized world and b) there are loads of youth focused British YouTubers who get millions of views, so the market is there.
The problem is the BBC's just not that good or innovative. If it was they'd get plenty of YouTube views.
Remember Keir is talking to the Labour party right now, not the electorate.
As a member, how would you feel if he pivoted to a different approach on being elected? That you’d been taken for a fool? That you always knew he was a liar but, hey he’s our liar?
I don’t think his pledges are contentious, but they are currently packaged in a way that appeals to Labour party members. I don’t expect him to pivot away from them.
I would hope that the ‘package’ is better marketed to the electorate once elected, in a way that actually appeals to voters, i.e. by focussing on real issues rather than abstract concepts.
If Bargain Hunt is a core part of our cultural infrastructure that's a damning statement on this country. Our culture vastly exceeds the BBC and we as a nation punch well above our weight with cultural exports.
But MattW's National Trust type model is an excellent suggestion. Free up the BBC to be truly independent, let it do what it wants answering only to the BBC Trust and let the BBC Trust get funds however it wants to do so - with no licence fee. If that's voluntary subscriptions then fine, but it could be voluntary donations instead if people love the BBC I'm sure they'd be happy to voluntarily donate the equivalent of the licence fee or maybe even more. Their choice.
Bargain Hunt is not my cup of tea, but it is the sort of programme that keeps production teams going, and generates training and work experience.
Not wanting to pay for the BBC is the same as not wanting to pay for HS2.
I see Joe Biden's first South Carolina rally after his New Hampshire loss was filled with supporters carrying posters saying 'South Carolina is Biden country' many of them African Americans.
George W Bush did the same in 2000 with 'South Carolina is Bush country' posters after he lost New Hampshire to McCain
Another thing I notice BBC is failing at, is the YouTube game (which is where all the next gen are).
A lot of the US channels having seen how popular YouTube is, have really made a push e.g. the clips of James Corden Late show, with the likes of Carpool Karaoke all get millions of views.
In comparison, BBC Three, their supposed dead popular can't get rid of it, youth focused channel, rarely gets more than a 10k's viewers per video.
You might say, well that is a big US show vs UK, but a) we live in a globalized world and b) there are loads of youth focused British YouTubers who get millions of views, so the market is there.
The problem is the BBC's just not that good or innovative. If it was they'd get plenty of YouTube views.
Its embarrassing e.g. BBC Sport YouTube channel has loads and loads of videos with just 5-10k views. A geekfest Tifo Football deep dive into the tactics of a particular team usually gets 100-200k views.
One have a massive multi-channel network with a website visited by millions every day, where they can direct people to their YouTube channel (I notice Jug Ears now regularly trying to persuade people to do so)...the other is 5 blokes in a tiny office.
I personally don’t have a problem with the license fee being removed and replaced with a subscription service, so long that it still retains a subsidy from the general taxation to pay for programming that perhaps would not see the light of day in a commercial setting, BBC 4 type stuff.
The BBC are rubbish at sport and most sport coverage is on Sky or BT that we actually pay for it we want to follow it
Again, BBC when it comes to sport, little to no innovation. MOTD has been the same forever. Its fine, but I can now get the bog standard highlights legally from YouTube quicker.
And on the analysis side, look at for instance what Tifo Football do on YouTube or the StatsBomb podcast, there is some really high quality in depth analysis that explains far more about what is actually going on.
Unfortunately I think football broadcasting is in the gutter at the moment. There is absolutely no incentive to innovate as once you have the rights then that's it.
How can you innovate 22 millionaires kicking a ball for 90 minutes? How does next week's plot differ from this weeks? Does the ball get an inheritance? Do the players find out that their manager is a communist mole from North Korea? Watch next week's unexciting episode...
For instance I do not have diabetes so I should get a discount on my taxes to remove support for diabetes. In fact, I make virtually no use of the NHS so other people who do use it should pay for it. Perhaps a form of health insurance would work? I am sure The Donald can give us a few pointers.
I rarely call the cops for anything, so another discount there... and I have never called the Fire Brigade, so another tax break there.....
So many options. I could spend my entire life just monitoring what I am due to pay taxes on. It would be a libertarian paradise. And my idea of hell.....
Healthcare, the police, the fire brigade are a necessity.
No they are not. I do not need them, why should I pay for them?
I might need them later, but I can be taxed at the point of use.
If you want to argue that then be my guest.
The BBC OTOH is not something that anyone might "need" later. Nobody ever "needs" it. Some people want it, they can pay for it, nobody "needs" it.
I thought you right-wing types were all for personal responsibility and not putting burdens on the state... or is it all just about contributing as little as possible except where it benefits you or matches your prejudices?
You may need the fire service to extricate you from a car crash or other accident
My car insurance can deal with it. Specialist private firms can be set up....
The point I am making is that we CAN abolish all these services so that we can pick and choose our taxes, but it is a thin-end-of-the-wedge strategy. Sooner or later we wind up being the US with different tax rates in every town, county and state, patchy coverage everywhere, etc. Those who advocate such schemes are either disingenuous or have not thought through the obvious conclusion. Once you start salami slicing, where do you stop?
Why stop?
You stop if there's a reason why society needs that service. Society needs the fire brigade, so you stop there.
Fair enough. I hate sports. Let us cut all sports coverage from the BBC. Those who like them can pay for them on Sky.
To paraphrase a poster of this parish, "No one ever died from missing a football match on the telly...."
All the good domestic sport has been cut from the BBC, and people who like them do pay for them on sky
Yes, the BBC is part of the core cultural infrastructure of the country, and a major commissioner of British talent. These are some of our most successful service industries.
Certainly we could abandon the field to capitalists bringing in cheap globalised product, but is that in our long term interest?
If we do not want the government to spend on cultural infrastructure, then why spend it on transport infrastructure too. After all, nearly every mile of railway in the country was originally built by a private company.
I just want the BBC to be recognised as a national asset.
Censored your last sentence since I disagree with you on HS2 (I support it) but as to the rest it's a complete and utter "+1".
TV to be 100% commercialized? No, thank you. Not to save me £3 a week - not even to ensure rigorous and intellectually satisfying compliance with a hardcore libertarian view of what the state should or should not do.
The idea Starmer is going to confront and take on the far left is absurd. He signed up wholeheartedly to Corbyn, served happily with RLB and Burgon and now he's trying to win the leadership with this claptrap.
Starmer is not only no Blair, he's not even a Kinnock!
I am amazed that he has not learned any lessons from the last election
Are you? Did you not see the polling yesterday where Labour Members (ie the ones with the votes in this competition) thought that Corbyn was the best leader of recent times? That's the electorate he has to win no matter what he actually thinks. And he's going to. It's not exactly a nail biter.
I am to be honest.
I thought he would be his own person but he has swallowed the failed 2019 election manifesto hook , line and sinker and looks as if labour will be in the wilderness for decades
Except that polling evidence suggests it was largely Corbyn not the policies that sunk Labour in December. They came within 2 points of the Tories two years earlier even with Corbyn at the helm.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
As Sherwood-O’Regan said, “As we grow and climate change becomes a harsher reality, privileged activists need to learn to de-centre themselves and meaningfully support Indigenous, disabled, queer, global south, POC, and other marginalized people who are on the frontlines of climate change.”
We’re not far off the point where everyone becomes sick and tired of this pile of wank.
When it comes to votes in real elections, it's way down the priority list for most people. People will do stuff about it till it comes to seriously affecting their automony etc (Banning cars).
What's needed are more centrist/non left voices on climate change. He's not everyone's cup of tea or always right but Elon Musk is an interesting and different advocate for climate change compared to the normal lefty luvvies.
The problem is that the climate change voices politics are usually that of big state intervention, high tax etc... I’d have thought it quite easy to make a right wing argument for personal responsibly towards easing climate change, such as tax breaks etc
If Bargain Hunt is a core part of our cultural infrastructure that's a damning statement on this country. Our culture vastly exceeds the BBC and we as a nation punch well above our weight with cultural exports.
But MattW's National Trust type model is an excellent suggestion. Free up the BBC to be truly independent, let it do what it wants answering only to the BBC Trust and let the BBC Trust get funds however it wants to do so - with no licence fee. If that's voluntary subscriptions then fine, but it could be voluntary donations instead if people love the BBC I'm sure they'd be happy to voluntarily donate the equivalent of the licence fee or maybe even more. Their choice.
Bargain Hunt is not my cup of tea, but it is the sort of programme that keeps production teams going, and generates training and work experience.
Not wanting to pay for the BBC is the same as not wanting to pay for HS2.
No its not, one is infrastructure - the other is not.
If the best that can be said for something is "it creates jobs" then that is never a reason to waste our taxes on it. Plenty of jobs exist within the creative industries in this country, no need to pad out crap TV to create a few more.
BT and the Post Office were once a single organisation, and were only separated out in 1981. The BBC performs many different functions and I'm less and less convinced that all of them need public support in the same way.
BT and the Post Office were once a single organisation, and were only separated out in 1981. The BBC performs many different functions and I'm less and less convinced that all of them need public support in the same way.
What needs support - the news broadly speaking rather than sports and entertainment perhaps ?
The idea Starmer is going to confront and take on the far left is absurd. He signed up wholeheartedly to Corbyn, served happily with RLB and Burgon and now he's trying to win the leadership with this claptrap.
Starmer is not only no Blair, he's not even a Kinnock!
I am amazed that he has not learned any lessons from the last election
Are you? Did you not see the polling yesterday where Labour Members (ie the ones with the votes in this competition) thought that Corbyn was the best leader of recent times? That's the electorate he has to win no matter what he actually thinks. And he's going to. It's not exactly a nail biter.
I am to be honest.
I thought he would be his own person but he has swallowed the failed 2019 election manifesto hook , line and sinker and looks as if labour will be in the wilderness for decades
Except that polling evidence suggests it was largely Corbyn not the policies that sunk Labour in December. They came within 2 points of the Tories two years earlier even with Corbyn at the helm.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
Have you read Lord Ashcroft's polling report on labour's GE released this week
YouTube is part of a circa trillion-dollar media giant that would like to destroy and replace the BBC if it had the option. You can't compare the BBC's position regarding YouTube to entertainment content-creating supplicants like teenage YouTubers.
I see Jezza was standing up for Julian Assange....brave, even the Guardian don't want anything to do with a bloke who is it now pretty clear is intertwined with the Russians.
Since the license fee has become a hot topic on this thread....
A decade or so ago, long before the law change on iPlayer, I didn't have a TV license. At the time, I listened to Radio 4 all of the time, as well as other BBC stations. I used the BBC website a lot. The value of the BBC was far greater than the cost of the license fee. So in the end I decided to get a TV license, even though I wasn't legally obliged to.
The thing that stopped me doing so much earlier was the moronic approach to enforcing the license fee. Essentially a person would turn up at my door with a badge that doesn't look different from something a criminal could cheaply reproduce, and demanded to search my house. If I asked them to give a verifiable telephone number I could call to verify that they were legitimate, they were unable to. They then would start making veiled threats. And of course, as a private company, there was no accountability.
But worse than that: throughout this period, I had the option not to fund the BBC, but I was compelled to fund the ITV, Channel 4, and so on, despite making no use of them whatsoever. I still don't use them, aside from the Six Nations, and I still fund them. The ubiquity of advertising means that there is no means of opting out of funding them that is more plausible than becoming a subsistence farmer.
Replacing the license fee with advertising as a funding model would force the BBC to focus more ruthlessly on maximising its viewers:costs ratio (clearly a bad thing, in my view). What it would absolutely would not do is increase consumer choice. It would decrease it, by replacing something that you can realistically opt out of with something that you can't.
You know that you're perfectly entitled just to shut the door on them?
Yes, but that's equivalent of yelling at the person working at the call centre over screw-ups by people who have 20 times their salary.
Since the license fee has become a hot topic on this thread....
A decade or so ago, long before the law change on iPlayer, I didn't have a TV license. At the time, I listened to Radio 4 all of the time, as well as other BBC stations. I used the BBC website a lot. The value of the BBC was far greater than the cost of the license fee. So in the end I decided to get a TV license, even though I wasn't legally obliged to.
The thing that stopped me doing so much earlier was the moronic approach to enforcing the license fee. Essentially a person would turn up at my door with a badge that doesn't look different from something a criminal could cheaply reproduce, and demanded to search my house. If I asked them to give a verifiable telephone number I could call to verify that they were legitimate, they were unable to. They then would start making veiled threats. And of course, as a private company, there was no accountability.
But worse than that: throughout this period, I had the option not to fund the BBC, but I was compelled to fund the ITV, Channel 4, and so on, despite making no use of them whatsoever. I still don't use them, aside from the Six Nations, and I still fund them. The ubiquity of advertising means that there is no means of opting out of funding them that is more plausible than becoming a subsistence farmer.
Replacing the license fee with advertising as a funding model would force the BBC to focus more ruthlessly on maximising its viewers:costs ratio (clearly a bad thing, in my view). What it would absolutely would not do is increase consumer choice. It would decrease it, by replacing something that you can realistically opt out of with something that you can't.
You know that you're perfectly entitled just to shut the door on them?
When you go door-knocking, from time to time you see people putting up notices that state they have withdrawn the implied authority for people to have access to their property. I believe this is to do with TV licence enforcors/heavies.
When I see the no junk mail signs the leaflet gets pushed through the door anyway.
Someone once chased me down the road to complain and after I'd given him the whole people fought and died for this spiel he was quite contrite.
Starmer's 10-point plan looks a bit too north-London hand-wringery for my liking.
Vote Nandy.
If Labour want to win back Leave voters in the North and Midlands and Wales who switched from Labour to the Tories or Brexit Party then Nandy is their best bet. Starmer is their best bet to win Tory or LD Remainers or soft Leavers in London, the South and SNP voters in Scotland and they can pick Long Bailey if they just want to defend what they have
BT and the Post Office were once a single organisation, and were only separated out in 1981. The BBC performs many different functions and I'm less and less convinced that all of them need public support in the same way.
And now the Post Office once again provides telephone services.
Do we all at least agree that despite Neil and Kuennsberg, in the long-term, a larger role for billionaire-owned media is better for the Conservatives.
YouTube is part of a circa trillion-dollar media giant that would like to destroy and replace the BBC if it had the option. You can't compare the BBC's position regarding YouTube to entertainment content-creating supplicants like teenage YouTubers.
Yes you can, when all the kids are coming home every day and not turning on the tv to watch traditional tv, rather putting YouTube on. Most of the major US TV channels have woken up to this, the BBC haven't. You need to use YouTube to get people to interested in your content.
Its like bands saying they won't go on Spotify. Good luck with that.
I personally don’t have a problem with the license fee being removed and replaced with a subscription service, so long that it still retains a subsidy from the general taxation to pay for programming that perhaps would not see the light of day in a commercial setting, BBC 4 type stuff.
That subsidy could also go to ITV, C5 and Sky if they provide cultural, scientific, sporting programmes or cover major current affairs events too
The idea Starmer is going to confront and take on the far left is absurd. He signed up wholeheartedly to Corbyn, served happily with RLB and Burgon and now he's trying to win the leadership with this claptrap.
Starmer is not only no Blair, he's not even a Kinnock!
I am amazed that he has not learned any lessons from the last election
Are you? Did you not see the polling yesterday where Labour Members (ie the ones with the votes in this competition) thought that Corbyn was the best leader of recent times? That's the electorate he has to win no matter what he actually thinks. And he's going to. It's not exactly a nail biter.
I am to be honest.
I thought he would be his own person but he has swallowed the failed 2019 election manifesto hook , line and sinker and looks as if labour will be in the wilderness for decades
Except that polling evidence suggests it was largely Corbyn not the policies that sunk Labour in December. They came within 2 points of the Tories two years earlier even with Corbyn at the helm.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
Have you read Lord Ashcroft's polling report on labour's GE released this week
Yes. Which particular aspect do you feel Keir is not addressing?
All the good domestic sport has been cut from the BBC, and people who like them do pay for them on sky
Except they don’t. I recall that F1 viewership in the UK has plummeted since it went to Sky. Only diehards will pay for Sky simply for the sport.
Same with test cricket. Same with boxing.
So why should we pay the BBC for it?
If people want to pay for live sport they can, but if they just want highlights etc that's available freely and legally on YouTube and plenty of other sites too. We don't need the BBC to package together some highlights program to be viewed after the day when it can be on YouTube within the hour.
The idea Starmer is going to confront and take on the far left is absurd. He signed up wholeheartedly to Corbyn, served happily with RLB and Burgon and now he's trying to win the leadership with this claptrap.
Starmer is not only no Blair, he's not even a Kinnock!
I am amazed that he has not learned any lessons from the last election
Are you? Did you not see the polling yesterday where Labour Members (ie the ones with the votes in this competition) thought that Corbyn was the best leader of recent times? That's the electorate he has to win no matter what he actually thinks. And he's going to. It's not exactly a nail biter.
I am to be honest.
I thought he would be his own person but he has swallowed the failed 2019 election manifesto hook , line and sinker and looks as if labour will be in the wilderness for decades
Except that polling evidence suggests it was largely Corbyn not the policies that sunk Labour in December. They came within 2 points of the Tories two years earlier even with Corbyn at the helm.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
Have you read Lord Ashcroft's polling report on labour's GE released this week
Yes. Which particular aspect do you feel Keir is not addressing?
Starmer is ignoring the message and pandering to the members to get elected
Surely the same point that many right wingers make here, that the climate change activists are dominated by posho white students?
It isn't the same point. We don't agree with the Left's take on identity politics because it is full of contradictions, so are happy to point them out. Clearly if minority quotas mean more than Climate Change then you aren't that serious about it.
The idea Starmer is going to confront and take on the far left is absurd. He signed up wholeheartedly to Corbyn, served happily with RLB and Burgon and now he's trying to win the leadership with this claptrap.
Starmer is not only no Blair, he's not even a Kinnock!
I am amazed that he has not learned any lessons from the last election
Are you? Did you not see the polling yesterday where Labour Members (ie the ones with the votes in this competition) thought that Corbyn was the best leader of recent times? That's the electorate he has to win no matter what he actually thinks. And he's going to. It's not exactly a nail biter.
I am to be honest.
I thought he would be his own person but he has swallowed the failed 2019 election manifesto hook , line and sinker and looks as if labour will be in the wilderness for decades
Except that polling evidence suggests it was largely Corbyn not the policies that sunk Labour in December. They came within 2 points of the Tories two years earlier even with Corbyn at the helm.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
Have you read Lord Ashcroft's polling report on labour's GE released this week
Yes. Which particular aspect do you feel Keir is not addressing?
Starmer is ignoring the message and pandering to the members to get elected
All the good domestic sport has been cut from the BBC, and people who like them do pay for them on sky
Except they don’t. I recall that F1 viewership in the UK has plummeted since it went to Sky. Only diehards will pay for Sky simply for the sport.
Same with test cricket. Same with boxing.
So why should we pay the BBC for it?
If people want to pay for live sport they can, but if they just want highlights etc that's available freely and legally on YouTube and plenty of other sites too. We don't need the BBC to package together some highlights program to be viewed after the day when it can be on YouTube within the hour.
I didn’t say we should pay the BBC for it. I’m just stating a fact rather than offering a solution. Everyone used to know who the heavyweight champion of the world was. F1 used to be on in most homes on Sunday afternoons.
Now it’s just the die hards. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
The idea Starmer is going to confront and take on the far left is absurd. He signed up wholeheartedly to Corbyn, served happily with RLB and Burgon and now he's trying to win the leadership with this claptrap.
Starmer is not only no Blair, he's not even a Kinnock!
I am amazed that he has not learned any lessons from the last election
Are you? Did you not see the polling yesterday where Labour Members (ie the ones with the votes in this competition) thought that Corbyn was the best leader of recent times? That's the electorate he has to win no matter what he actually thinks. And he's going to. It's not exactly a nail biter.
I am to be honest.
I thought he would be his own person but he has swallowed the failed 2019 election manifesto hook , line and sinker and looks as if labour will be in the wilderness for decades
Except that polling evidence suggests it was largely Corbyn not the policies that sunk Labour in December. They came within 2 points of the Tories two years earlier even with Corbyn at the helm.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
Have you read Lord Ashcroft's polling report on labour's GE released this week
Yes. Which particular aspect do you feel Keir is not addressing?
Starmer is ignoring the message and pandering to the members to get elected
The idea Starmer is going to confront and take on the far left is absurd. He signed up wholeheartedly to Corbyn, served happily with RLB and Burgon and now he's trying to win the leadership with this claptrap.
Starmer is not only no Blair, he's not even a Kinnock!
I am amazed that he has not learned any lessons from the last election
Are you? Did you not see the polling yesterday where Labour Members (ie the ones with the votes in this competition) thought that Corbyn was the best leader of recent times? That's the electorate he has to win no matter what he actually thinks. And he's going to. It's not exactly a nail biter.
I am to be honest.
I thought he would be his own person but he has swallowed the failed 2019 election manifesto hook , line and sinker and looks as if labour will be in the wilderness for decades
Except that polling evidence suggests it was largely Corbyn not the policies that sunk Labour in December. They came within 2 points of the Tories two years earlier even with Corbyn at the helm.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
Have you read Lord Ashcroft's polling report on labour's GE released this week
Yes. Which particular aspect do you feel Keir is not addressing?
Starmer is ignoring the message and pandering to the members to get elected
How else is he supposed to get elected?
And nothing changes
We don’t know that yet. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and will judge him on his actions as leader (if elected).
I recall you asking people to treat Boris the same way.
Since the license fee has become a hot topic on this thread....
A decade or so ago, long before the law change on iPlayer, I didn't have a TV license. At the time, I listened to Radio 4 all of the time, as well as other BBC stations. I used the BBC website a lot. The value of the BBC was far greater than the cost of the license fee. So in the end I decided to get a TV license, even though I wasn't legally obliged to.
The thing that stopped me doing so much earlier was the moronic approach to enforcing the license fee. Essentially a person would turn up at my door with a badge that doesn't look different from something a criminal could cheaply reproduce, and demanded to search my house. If I asked them to give a verifiable telephone number I could call to verify that they were legitimate, they were unable to. They then would start making veiled threats. And of course, as a private company, there was no accountability.
But worse than that: throughout this period, I had the option not to fund the BBC, but I was compelled to fund the ITV, Channel 4, and so on, despite making no use of them whatsoever. I still don't use them, aside from the Six Nations, and I still fund them. The ubiquity of advertising means that there is no means of opting out of funding them that is more plausible than becoming a subsistence farmer.
Replacing the license fee with advertising as a funding model would force the BBC to focus more ruthlessly on maximising its viewers:costs ratio (clearly a bad thing, in my view). What it would absolutely would not do is increase consumer choice. It would decrease it, by replacing something that you can realistically opt out of with something that you can't.
You know that you're perfectly entitled just to shut the door on them?
Yes, but that's equivalent of yelling at the person working at the call centre over screw-ups by people who have 20 times their salary.
Whoever he is the person at my door demanding to search the house without lawful authority is the person who needs to be told to get a proper job and stop making threats.
YouTube is part of a circa trillion-dollar media giant that would like to destroy and replace the BBC if it had the option. You can't compare the BBC's position regarding YouTube to entertainment content-creating supplicants like teenage YouTubers.
Yes you can, when all the kids are coming home every day and not turning on the tv to watch traditional tv, rather putting YouTube on. Most of the major US TV channels have woken up to this, the BBC haven't. You need to use YouTube to get people to interested in your content.
Its like bands saying they won't go on Spotify. Good luck with that.
Nah because then the BBC would be dependent on YouTube. The BBC are right not to be competing with teenagers and the like for YouTube hits. The solution is just to make iPlayer far better than it is. It was quite innovative a few years ago and since then they have basically done nothing to improve it.
Are those advocating a National Trust style model ignoring the fact that most National Trust properties have huge walls around them keeping out those who aren't members? If non-members want to go in, they have to pay on the door. How exactly do you do that with 5Live, Radio 2, Radio 4 etc?
My car insurance can deal with it. Specialist private firms can be set up....
The point I am making is that we CAN abolish all these services so that we can pick and choose our taxes, but it is a thin-end-of-the-wedge strategy. Sooner or later we wind up being the US with different tax rates in every town, county and state, patchy coverage everywhere, etc. Those who advocate such schemes are either disingenuous or have not thought through the obvious conclusion. Once you start salami slicing, where do you stop?
The BBC should not be a poll tax to be honest
Advertising is also effectively a tax over which we have no control - it delivers lots of mostly useless brand statements and adds to the cost of nearly everything we buy - which is why most tech-savvy people use ad-blockers online. For TV it is not just irritating but actively harmful, since the expectation of ad breaks affects the scripting of drama, creating a need for artificial cliff-hangers every N minutes. It's as though every 10th line in a PB header turned out to be an advert for deodorant.
I subscribe to Axios, a US news service which is genuinely useful at times, but illustrates the next step - they give you 8 or so useful facts each day, numbered 1,2,3... but when you look closely you find that a couple of them are not actually facts at all, merely somebody pushing corporate image sufficiently subtly that you may read it as fact (e.g. "How Google is promoting local sport").
I rather doubt that PB will ever reach that stage [Cummings saves the world - click here to see how]unless OGH gets absolutely desperate for revenue. I doubt the posters would stand for it either as it would [An important message from our sponsor - Keir for PM - click here] break up the points being made and maybe even [Mees-Rogg Investments - only a click away - start your portfolio now] cause arguments
I see Joe Biden's first South Carolina rally after his New Hampshire loss was filled with supporters carrying posters saying 'South Carolina is Biden country' many of them African Americans.
George W Bush did the same in 2000 with 'South Carolina is Bush country' posters after he lost New Hampshire to McCain
Since the license fee has become a hot topic on this thread....
A decade or so ago, long before the law change on iPlayer, I didn't have a TV license. At the time, I listened to Radio 4 all of the time, as well as other BBC stations. I used the BBC website a lot. The value of the BBC was far greater than the cost of the license fee. So in the end I decided to get a TV license, even though I wasn't legally obliged to.
The thing that stopped me doing so much earlier was the moronic approach to enforcing the license fee. Essentially a person would turn up at my door with a badge that doesn't look different from something a criminal could cheaply reproduce, and demanded to search my house. If I asked them to give a verifiable telephone number I could call to verify that they were legitimate, they were unable to. They then would start making veiled threats. And of course, as a private company, there was no accountability.
But worse than that: throughout this period, I had the option not to fund the BBC, but I was compelled to fund the ITV, Channel 4, and so on, despite making no use of them whatsoever. I still don't use them, aside from the Six Nations, and I still fund them. The ubiquity of advertising means that there is no means of opting out of funding them that is more plausible than becoming a subsistence farmer.
Replacing the license fee with advertising as a funding model would force the BBC to focus more ruthlessly on maximising its viewers:costs ratio (clearly a bad thing, in my view). What it would absolutely would not do is increase consumer choice. It would decrease it, by replacing something that you can realistically opt out of with something that you can't.
You know that you're perfectly entitled just to shut the door on them?
When you go door-knocking, from time to time you see people putting up notices that state they have withdrawn the implied authority for people to have access to their property. I believe this is to do with TV licence enforcors/heavies.
When I see the no junk mail signs the leaflet gets pushed through the door anyway.
Someone once chased me down the road to complain and after I'd given him the whole people fought and died for this spiel he was quite contrite.
Anyway must dash. Bargain Hunt calls.
There is no implied right of access inside whatever.
All the good domestic sport has been cut from the BBC, and people who like them do pay for them on sky
Except they don’t. I recall that F1 viewership in the UK has plummeted since it went to Sky. Only diehards will pay for Sky simply for the sport.
Same with test cricket. Same with boxing.
So why should we pay the BBC for it?
If people want to pay for live sport they can, but if they just want highlights etc that's available freely and legally on YouTube and plenty of other sites too. We don't need the BBC to package together some highlights program to be viewed after the day when it can be on YouTube within the hour.
We are paying for it one way or the other. The choice is:
(a) everyone paying for advertising that is mostly an irritant to the people who watch it; or
(b) people who have decided that a TV license is worth having paying for it, and it being ad-free for those who watch it.
The idea Starmer is going to confront and take on the far left is absurd. He signed up wholeheartedly to Corbyn, served happily with RLB and Burgon and now he's trying to win the leadership with this claptrap.
Starmer is not only no Blair, he's not even a Kinnock!
I am amazed that he has not learned any lessons from the last election
Are you? Did you not see the polling yesterday where Labour Members (ie the ones with the votes in this competition) thought that Corbyn was the best leader of recent times? That's the electorate he has to win no matter what he actually thinks. And he's going to. It's not exactly a nail biter.
I am to be honest.
I thought he would be his own person but he has swallowed the failed 2019 election manifesto hook , line and sinker and looks as if labour will be in the wilderness for decades
Except that polling evidence suggests it was largely Corbyn not the policies that sunk Labour in December. They came within 2 points of the Tories two years earlier even with Corbyn at the helm.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
Have you read Lord Ashcroft's polling report on labour's GE released this week
Yes. Which particular aspect do you feel Keir is not addressing?
Starmer is ignoring the message and pandering to the members to get elected
How else is he supposed to get elected?
Showing leadership rather than a bit of left wing leg...?
If he isn't capable of speaking difficult truths to the membership, he isn't a leader.
Perhaps Starmer is a bit of a Manchurian candidate.
In order to beat the Mancunian candidate.
His inner bloke down the pub will be revealed once he's elected.
I don’t think anyone is expecting that.
I’m expecting him to put competent people in the right positions in the shadow cabinet, and get a good team around him in order to put together a complete policy package that will actually resonate with those outside the Labour bubble.
I hope he lets people like Nandy and Rayner shine and steers the ship, almost in an “above it all” role.
Since the license fee has become a hot topic on this thread....
A decade or so ago, long before the law change on iPlayer, I didn't have a TV license. At the time, I listened to Radio 4 all of the time, as well as other BBC stations. I used the BBC website a lot. The value of the BBC was far greater than the cost of the license fee. So in the end I decided to get a TV license, even though I wasn't legally obliged to.
The thing that stopped me doing so much earlier was the moronic approach to enforcing the license fee. Essentially a person would turn up at my door with a badge that doesn't look different from something a criminal could cheaply reproduce, and demanded to search my house. If I asked them to give a verifiable telephone number I could call to verify that they were legitimate, they were unable to. They then would start making veiled threats. And of course, as a private company, there was no accountability.
But worse than that: throughout this period, I had the option not to fund the BBC, but I was compelled to fund the ITV, Channel 4, and so on, despite making no use of them whatsoever. I still don't use them, aside from the Six Nations, and I still fund them. The ubiquity of advertising means that there is no means of opting out of funding them that is more plausible than becoming a subsistence farmer.
Replacing the license fee with advertising as a funding model would force the BBC to focus more ruthlessly on maximising its viewers:costs ratio (clearly a bad thing, in my view). What it would absolutely would not do is increase consumer choice. It would decrease it, by replacing something that you can realistically opt out of with something that you can't.
You know that you're perfectly entitled just to shut the door on them?
Yes, but that's equivalent of yelling at the person working at the call centre over screw-ups by people who have 20 times their salary.
Not really. It's the equivalent of saying "I'm sorry: I need to put the phone down", then putting the phone down. You aren't compelled to talk to people.
Except that polling evidence suggests it was largely Corbyn not the policies that sunk Labour in December. They came within 2 points of the Tories two years earlier even with Corbyn at the helm.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
Corbyn AND "Get Brexit Done" sank Labour. That plus a bit of "Boris" appeal to WWC Leavers.
Next time 2 of these (Corbyn and Brexit) will be gone. And although "Boris" will no doubt still be there, giving it the old "Boris" thing for all he's worth, it's likely that plenty will have tired of it and him, certainly many of the less gullible types will have.
So, all told, I am quite bullish for Labour at GE24.
The idea Starmer is going to confront and take on the far left is absurd. He signed up wholeheartedly to Corbyn, served happily with RLB and Burgon and now he's trying to win the leadership with this claptrap.
Starmer is not only no Blair, he's not even a Kinnock!
I am amazed that he has not learned any lessons from the last election
Are you? Did you not see the polling yesterday where Labour Members (ie the ones with the votes in this competition) thought that Corbyn was the best leader of recent times? That's the electorate he has to win no matter what he actually thinks. And he's going to. It's not exactly a nail biter.
I am to be honest.
I thought he would be his own person but he has swallowed the failed 2019 election manifesto hook , line and sinker and looks as if labour will be in the wilderness for decades
Except that polling evidence suggests it was largely Corbyn not the policies that sunk Labour in December. They came within 2 points of the Tories two years earlier even with Corbyn at the helm.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
Have you read Lord Ashcroft's polling report on labour's GE released this week
Yes. Which particular aspect do you feel Keir is not addressing?
Starmer is ignoring the message and pandering to the members to get elected
How else is he supposed to get elected?
Showing leadership rather than a bit of left wing leg...?
If he isn't capable of speaking difficult truths to the membership, he isn't a leader.
He also isn’t a leader if he doesn’t get elected. This is politics. Boris Johnson spouted almost constant drivel in order to get elected. He told everyone what they wanted to hear. Keir Starmer is doing the same.
He also isn’t a leader if he doesn’t get elected. This is politics. Boris Johnson spouted almost constant drivel in order to get elected. He told everyone what they wanted to hear. Keir Starmer is doing the same.
Exactly so. Get the job, do the job. It has to be in this order.
All the good domestic sport has been cut from the BBC, and people who like them do pay for them on sky
Except they don’t. I recall that F1 viewership in the UK has plummeted since it went to Sky. Only diehards will pay for Sky simply for the sport.
Same with test cricket. Same with boxing.
So why should we pay the BBC for it?
If people want to pay for live sport they can, but if they just want highlights etc that's available freely and legally on YouTube and plenty of other sites too. We don't need the BBC to package together some highlights program to be viewed after the day when it can be on YouTube within the hour.
We are paying for it one way or the other. The choice is:
(a) everyone paying for advertising that is mostly an irritant to the people who watch it; or
(b) people who have decided that a TV license is worth having paying for it, and it being ad-free for those who watch it.
We don't pay for advertising.
But yes if people voluntarily want to pay a BBC subscription I have no qualms with that. The issue is the TV license is not voluntary if you want to watch any rival live TV.
All the good domestic sport has been cut from the BBC, and people who like them do pay for them on sky
Except they don’t. I recall that F1 viewership in the UK has plummeted since it went to Sky. Only diehards will pay for Sky simply for the sport.
Same with test cricket. Same with boxing.
So why should we pay the BBC for it?
If people want to pay for live sport they can, but if they just want highlights etc that's available freely and legally on YouTube and plenty of other sites too. We don't need the BBC to package together some highlights program to be viewed after the day when it can be on YouTube within the hour.
We are paying for it one way or the other. The choice is:
(a) everyone paying for advertising that is mostly an irritant to the people who watch it; or
(b) people who have decided that a TV license is worth having paying for it, and it being ad-free for those who watch it.
Perhaps Starmer is a bit of a Manchurian candidate.
In order to beat the Mancunian candidate.
His inner bloke down the pub will be revealed once he's elected.
I don’t think anyone is expecting that.
I’m expecting him to put competent people in the right positions in the shadow cabinet, and get a good team around him in order to put together a complete policy package that will actually resonate with those outside the Labour bubble.
I hope he lets people like Nandy and Rayner shine and steers the ship, almost in an “above it all” role.
We will see.
Where is he going to find these "competent people" in the ranks of his current Labour MPs?
Perhaps Starmer is a bit of a Manchurian candidate.
In order to beat the Mancunian candidate.
His inner bloke down the pub will be revealed once he's elected.
I don’t think anyone is expecting that.
I’m expecting him to put competent people in the right positions in the shadow cabinet, and get a good team around him in order to put together a complete policy package that will actually resonate with those outside the Labour bubble.
I hope he lets people like Nandy and Rayner shine and steers the ship, almost in an “above it all” role.
We will see.
Where is he going to find these "competent people" in the ranks of his current Labour MPs?
All the good domestic sport has been cut from the BBC, and people who like them do pay for them on sky
Except they don’t. I recall that F1 viewership in the UK has plummeted since it went to Sky. Only diehards will pay for Sky simply for the sport.
Same with test cricket. Same with boxing.
So why should we pay the BBC for it?
If people want to pay for live sport they can, but if they just want highlights etc that's available freely and legally on YouTube and plenty of other sites too. We don't need the BBC to package together some highlights program to be viewed after the day when it can be on YouTube within the hour.
We are paying for it one way or the other. The choice is:
(a) everyone paying for advertising that is mostly an irritant to the people who watch it; or
(b) people who have decided that a TV license is worth having paying for it, and it being ad-free for those who watch it.
We don't pay for advertising.
Don't we pay with our time?
Not really. Does the few seconds of pressing fast forward to skip the ads bother you that much? Or you can do something else if watching it live.
This is exactly the moment that Starmer should be telling the Labour membership that winning from the extreme left isn't going to be possible and campaigning to win the leadership from the centre. Instead he's completely capitulated to the left and now he's going to have to flip flop or fail at the GE.
Comments
But Wimbledon, of course, that's still on the BBC each year at a very high cost.
And on the analysis side, look at for instance what Tifo Football do on YouTube or the StatsBomb podcast, there is some really high quality in depth analysis that explains far more about what is actually going on.
BBC MOTD reminds me of when the cricket was shown with a camera from a single end, compared to Sky's coverage with Hawkeye, Snikko, 27 different high speed cameras.
Djokovic dominating Zverev and Thiem doesn't have the same appeal.
I know Djoko and Nadal are roughly the same age but Nadal probably retiring first of the two.
He might not endorse anyone, of course, but I suspect he would want to help stop Bernie Sanders. If that was his motivation, I expect he would want to put his shoulder behind the candidate who then seemed most viable to stop Bernie Sanders, whoever that was.
The point still stands. We elect governments to manage our tax spend even if they allocate things to services we do not use because otherwise, we end up running around trying to monitor and fiddle with everything on an individual level.
Knowing a few Americans who go through hell doing their tax returns each year, I thought I would just play Devil's Advocate for those who seem to be advocating the thin end of that particular wedge.
I’d be genuinely interested in knowing what they think they’re doing with it. And the audience figures.
From the top of my head:
He is still a man who will not fromely join the democrats because 'they are all far to contract for him.
He thought it apprpreat to honeymoon in the USSR and was happy for the USSR to use that as publicity/propaganda.
He has given countless complements and visits to South American 'socialist'
Stated that rationing and queuing, are better ways of disputing food than price and shopping.
Thinks that limiting the chose of deodorants will somehow help pore people.
Some are dubious of the most zealous man-made global warming enthusiasts because they want to push far left policies and impose them with the threat of the apocalypse.
That has nothing to do with skin colour.
Again it strikes me like the BBC feel the need to produce a tech show, public service remit and all that, but what you get is a very stale product in a market that is now dominated by YouTube channels that are massive and increasingly high quality.
A decade or so ago, long before the law change on iPlayer, I didn't have a TV license. At the time, I listened to Radio 4 all of the time, as well as other BBC stations. I used the BBC website a lot. The value of the BBC was far greater than the cost of the license fee. So in the end I decided to get a TV license, even though I wasn't legally obliged to.
The thing that stopped me doing so much earlier was the moronic approach to enforcing the license fee. Essentially a person would turn up at my door with a badge that doesn't look different from something a criminal could cheaply reproduce, and demanded to search my house. If I asked them to give a verifiable telephone number I could call to check that they were legitimate, they were unable to. They then would start making veiled threats. And of course, as a private company, there was no accountability.
But worse than that: throughout this period, I had the option not to fund the BBC, but I was compelled to fund the ITV, Channel 4, and so on, despite making no use of them whatsoever. I still don't use them, aside from the Six Nations, and I still fund them. The ubiquity of advertising means that there is no means of opting out of funding them that is more plausible than becoming a subsistence farmer.
Replacing the license fee with advertising as a funding model would force the BBC to focus more ruthlessly on maximising its viewers:costs ratio (clearly a bad thing, in my view). What it would absolutely would not do is increase consumer choice. It would decrease it, by replacing something that you can realistically opt out of with something that you can't.
NT generates £630m and has 5.5m members. That is roughly 250m memberships, 200m from properties, 80m donations legacies, 80m commercial, 25m investment. Life membrship now costs £1750.
DG of NT is paid a little under 200k. NT makes a 20% surplus.
Church of England raises about £500m a year through straight donations from churchgoers to parishes, of whom there are maybe about a million. Do not have a current number for the average donation, but it is well north of £500 a year.
Would such a model - or a membership / commercial / sponsorship hybrid - work for the BBC?
Why not? What is it worth to you? Would you pay £5k for life membership of the BBC?
Would the BBC slebs work for less than 600k a year? Or less than a couple of millions for Lineker?
Would they put their money where their mouths are?
Certainly we could abandon the field to capitalists bringing in cheap globalised product, but is that in our long term interest?
If we do not want the government to spend on cultural infrastructure, then why spend it on transport infrastructure too. After all, nearly every mile of railway in the country was originally built by a private company.
I just want the BBC to be recognised as a national asset. I would rather my tax money paid for it than HS2.
Dem nom:
Sanders 3 / 3.05
Bloomberg 3.85 / 3.9
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.128161111
Vote Nandy.
A lot of the US channels having seen how popular YouTube is, have really made a push e.g. the clips of James Corden Late show, with the likes of Carpool Karaoke all get millions of views.
In comparison, BBC Three, their supposed dead popular can't get rid of it, youth focused channel, rarely gets more than a 10k's viewers per video.
You might say, well that is a big US show vs UK, but a) we live in a globalized world and b) there are loads of youth focused British YouTubers who get millions of views, so the market is there.
I subscribe to Axios, a US news service which is genuinely useful at times, but illustrates the next step - they give you 8 or so useful facts each day, numbered 1,2,3... but when you look closely you find that a couple of them are not actually facts at all, merely somebody pushing corporate image sufficiently subtly that you may read it as fact (e.g. "How Google is promoting local sport").
But MattW's National Trust type model is an excellent suggestion. Free up the BBC to be truly independent, let it do what it wants answering only to the BBC Trust and let the BBC Trust get funds however it wants to do so - with no licence fee. If that's voluntary subscriptions then fine, but it could be voluntary donations instead if people love the BBC I'm sure they'd be happy to voluntarily donate the equivalent of the licence fee or maybe even more. Their choice.
BBC science articles in my field are not very good (neither are news segments) because I know where they are grossly oversimplifying, sometimes to the extent of getting it wrong. Articles in other science fields are not so obviously deficient, but that probably reflects my (lack of) expertise, not better article quality. I used to work in an oceanographic centre and some people there had issues with some of the BBC Natural History Unit output, which most people - myself included - view as pretty great.
I can imagine that my parents, if they watched Click, might get something out of it, but the News channel, rather than say BBC 2, is an odd location.
I would hope that the ‘package’ is better marketed to the electorate once elected, in a way that actually appeals to voters, i.e. by focussing on real issues rather than abstract concepts.
( @Big_G_NorthWales )
Not wanting to pay for the BBC is the same as not wanting to pay for HS2.
Quite rightly derided by MPs.
He does not understand the difference between an extradition treaty and the conventions surrounding diplomats and their dependents.
Idiot.
George W Bush did the same in 2000 with 'South Carolina is Bush country' posters after he lost New Hampshire to McCain
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51470088
One have a massive multi-channel network with a website visited by millions every day, where they can direct people to their YouTube channel (I notice Jug Ears now regularly trying to persuade people to do so)...the other is 5 blokes in a tiny office.
Same with test cricket. Same with boxing.
TV to be 100% commercialized? No, thank you. Not to save me £3 a week - not even to ensure rigorous and intellectually satisfying compliance with a hardcore libertarian view of what the state should or should not do.
You had better cross your fingers that Johnson actually delivers on his breezy optimistic vision of Brexit Britain or who knows what the voters will do next time.
If the best that can be said for something is "it creates jobs" then that is never a reason to waste our taxes on it. Plenty of jobs exist within the creative industries in this country, no need to pad out crap TV to create a few more.
Someone once chased me down the road to complain and after I'd given him the whole people fought and died for this spiel he was quite contrite.
Anyway must dash. Bargain Hunt calls.
Its like bands saying they won't go on Spotify. Good luck with that.
If people want to pay for live sport they can, but if they just want highlights etc that's available freely and legally on YouTube and plenty of other sites too. We don't need the BBC to package together some highlights program to be viewed after the day when it can be on YouTube within the hour.
Now it’s just the die hards. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
I recall you asking people to treat Boris the same way.
Are those advocating a National Trust style model ignoring the fact that most National Trust properties have huge walls around them keeping out those who aren't members? If non-members want to go in, they have to pay on the door. How exactly do you do that with 5Live, Radio 2, Radio 4 etc?
In order to beat the Mancunian candidate.
His inner bloke down the pub will be revealed once he's elected.
It will never happen
As campaign slogans go, it's a bit lacking...
(a) everyone paying for advertising that is mostly an irritant to the people who watch it; or
(b) people who have decided that a TV license is worth having paying for it, and it being ad-free for those who watch it.
If he isn't capable of speaking difficult truths to the membership, he isn't a leader.
I’m expecting him to put competent people in the right positions in the shadow cabinet, and get a good team around him in order to put together a complete policy package that will actually resonate with those outside the Labour bubble.
I hope he lets people like Nandy and Rayner shine and steers the ship, almost in an “above it all” role.
We will see.
Next time 2 of these (Corbyn and Brexit) will be gone. And although "Boris" will no doubt still be there, giving it the old "Boris" thing for all he's worth, it's likely that plenty will have tired of it and him, certainly many of the less gullible types will have.
So, all told, I am quite bullish for Labour at GE24.
But yes if people voluntarily want to pay a BBC subscription I have no qualms with that. The issue is the TV license is not voluntary if you want to watch any rival live TV.
He's a complete idiot.