BBC licence fee payment in perspective
On Twitter yesterday, I posted this:
I had two reasons for doing so. First, it shows that the BBC offers great value compared to supposed ‘direct’ commercial alternatives; secondly, it shows costs compared to a service from a company driven by Rupert Murdoch, the BBC’s main critic.
Predictably, responses have been split. The tweet got retweeted by a bunch of people and also ended up on Twitter’s home page for a while. Others have been angered by what I wrote, noting that you aren’t ‘forced’ to buy the Times Online if you want to read a newspaper, whereas you are ‘forced’ to fund the BBC if you want to watch Sky.
Two responses of my own to this common argument:
First, I equate the BBC to a public service that just happens to be very similar to commercial products. This happens elsewhere in the UK for funding things of cultural significance, such as museums. I’m ‘forced’ to fund museums I’ll never visit, but nonetheless have to pay to visit ones I’m interested in. Rather than stomping my feet about the unfairness of it all, I got over it in about a nanosecond, realising that the funded museums are there for the good of the country and are essential to the UK’s cultural landscape, providing what more commercial enterprises cannot or will not. I believe the BBC is the same.
Secondly, a lot of people are getting taken in by spin, which is mostly coming from Rupert Murdoch and his right-wing media lapdogs. They argue that the BBC is bloated and offers poor value, and the public is starting to lap this up. The thing is, this is total bollocks. The ad-free BBC, with its four main stations, radio and websites, is excellent value compared to commercial competitors.
However, Murdoch doesn’t really care about the ‘value’ of the BBC anyway. He just wants to see the BBC reduced to nothing, because then more people will be reliant on Sky for quality programming; he and his media cronies also dislike the BBC because it has the audacity to offer a relatively impartial stance when it comes to news, unlike Sky’s output that’s alarmingly tending towards the garbage you see on the likes of Fox in the USA.
So even if you don’t care for BBC content, realise that it needs to be there. And if you do care for it, now would be the time to say so to ensure its survival.
The BBC can be excused for being schizophrenic – a public service broadcaster that gets criticised if it is too highbrow or chases ratings. And it is both succesful commercially (selling countless shows and formats overseas, as well as co-developing programmes) and critically.
It doesn’t get everything right. But it does do a lot of things very well.