Why we need the licence fee

Next year, we'll all be paying slightly more for our TV licence, a piece of paper that costs £131.50 and keeps our national public service broadcaster up and running.




Now the sheer fact that you have to buy this piece of paper should you happen to own any equipment capable of receiving television transmissions doesn't always go down well with certain sections of the general public and it certainly doesn't go well with any media organisation that isn't the BBC (apart from Channel 4 perhaps).
Their argument is that the BBC, like any other business, should be self-sufficient, relying on advertising rather than a public subsidy and perhaps more crucially, be able to operate at a profit.

And it's that latter point that is responsible for the current the mass media slump.
We the consumer have more choice than we have ever had. The established and traditional mediums are seeing increased competition from digital broadcasting and online rivals. Media services now cater for every possible interest, community and niche market and that's just fine.
But that has it's problems. With all these niche markets, advertisers can pick and choose where they aim their products. Got a power drill to sell? Why advertise on ITV when there's a dedicated DIY channel with exactly the sort of viewer you want to speak to?
The net result? Advertising revenue within the mainstream media has plummeted. Overall, television advertising has fallen 3%, with ITV sales dropping by 11%. Google UK now makes more in advertising sales than Britain's biggest independent television broadcaster. The story isn't any brighter in radio.

With the drive for profit not yielding, costs need to be slashed and that has meant quality being sacrificed for quantity. Saturday night is a prime example. Unless you want to watch a talent show of some variety, you're pretty much stuck. Last Saturday's offering included, as far as I could decipher, a contest to see who could fold themselves in half in the most stupid manner possible.

The drive to cut costs has eventually led to the new 'Jack Radio' format kicking off. The idea started in the US and literally involves plugging an iPod into a radio transmitter and .....erm........er.......going home. No DJ's, no talk, just the iTunes collection of a complete stranger.
The worst part is, it's now crossed the Atlantic and heading to Oxford. Many have heralded this as the death of the DJ and have proclaimed that rather than video, it'll be the Internet that kills the radio star.

It's this very idea that means we should still keep the BBC as a public service. Let's just assume that those "privatise the Beeb" mob get their wish. You can say goodbye to BBC local radio for a start. Radio Leeds has seen it's budget cut in recent years and one of their presenters has told me before that they are literally having to fight for more cash from Wood Lane, just to stop themselves from becoming another Radio Aire or Galaxy. There's no way that Radio 4 would continue in it's current form and Radio 1's 'Newsbeat' would soon disappear. OK, it's not exactly hard-hitting journalism, but as an informative piece, it is very effective in delivering to it's audience. No commercial independent, with the same target audience, does anything to rival that.
The BBC website, regarded as the most respected and comprehensive in the world, would soon become a classified publication of online casino and 'shoot the duck to win an iPod' banners.

TV programmes would suffer a similar fate.
"wastes" a monumental amount of film in pursuit of the perfect programme. A typical programme works on a 20:1 ratio. For every 20 minutes of film shot, one minute makes it on screen. Top Gear uses nowhere near that ratio. It uses an estimated 500:1 ratio. Commercially, it's completely You'd never for instance, get a show like Top Gear on a commercial channel, it's just two expensive. The estimated £500,000 per episode cost doesn't tell half of it. The real story runs on it's filiming ratio.
A typical programme runs roughly on a 20:1 ratio. For every 20 minutes that you shoot, one minute makes the airwaves. For Top Gear, to get one minute into the final cut can take a staggering 500 minutes of tape. Commercially, that's just not viable.

As for the BBC's remit to entertain, educate and inform, when was the last time you saw anything educational or informative on ITV? Scrub that, when was the last time you saw anything entertaining either?

Still, if you don't like it, you can still keep handing £50 every month to Rupert.

That is So Unfair!

See that person there? That's Kevin the Teenager. One of the most popular characters from the TV show "Harry Enfield & Chums" which took pride of place on the BBC's comedy line-up in the late 1990's.


He was a comedic depiction of the typical teenager as any parent of teenagers would testify and his trademark line "That is SO unfair!" is one of the most remembered phrases in modern TV.

And today it emerged that the Sun is now edited by Kevin the Teenager.

The television licence fee, the primary source of funding for the BBC, will increase by £3.95 to £135.45 per year for a colour television licence. The increases were actually less that the BBC's requested "above inflation" increase for what it claimed was needed to cover spiralling costs, the relocation of BBC Sport from London to Manchester and concerns over the cost of the digital switchover in 2012 whilst the National Union of Journalists supported the BBC's request over concerns of job losses.

But not everyone is happy. The BBC funding has always been a sore point for commercial media organisations who would love nothing more to be as respected and trusted as Auntie, but who are bound by commercial pressures and the whims of their advertisers.

The Sun today ranted on, with it's usual plethoric use of BOLD CAPITALS, that such increases in the TV licence fee have no place in their idealistic immigrant free, human rights devoid world.

Apparently the BBC wastes my cash on programmes that I don't want to watch, or so says an inaccurately written piece of garbage. You know that the "journalist" in question (term used very loosely) is talking rubbish when he claims that none of the BBC's rivals receive any TV licence funding - not a single penny, completely oblivious to the fact that Channel Four are currently benefiting from a £70m cheque from the very same fee.

The poor audience figures are cited as a primary reason why the TV licence should be cut. What isn't mentioned is that public broadcasting is not about attracting audience ratings, it's about meeting the diverse needs of the populace. Producing trash TV to appeal to the lowest common denominator is the realm of ITV, not the BBC whose remit is to produce quality entertainment, informative and educational programming.
Now your typical Sun reader would be pretty confused as he read 'quality', would understand to a degree the word 'entertainment' but then would be completely lost by the time he reached the words 'informative' and 'educational', so would your typical Sun columnist.

The other sore point is the BBC website. Rather than having a quality website with accurate journalism and outstanding feature writing which can be read across the world free from advertising, the Sun would prefer us to be bombarded with adverts for 'online casino' and 'big money bingo'.

But none of this is surprising. The owner of the aforementioned rag happens to be Rupert Murdoch, the very same individual who owns Britain's biggest multi-channel broadcaster, BSkyB.

Murdoch, who has made no secret of his dislike for the BBC and it's funding is essentially telling us that whilst we should be outraged at being asked to pay £135 a year to watch quality news, documentaries, sport, entertainment and of course, Kevin the Teenager, we should still be racing to the phone to pay even more to watch the proverbial TV wheelie bin containing "Cirque de Celebrite", "Sexcetera" and "Eurotrash".

But what Murdoch or the Sun won't be telling you is that tonight, the BBC will allow you to watch both sport and a movie for £10.96 per month. Mr Murdoch on the other hand, will charge you nearer £50 for the month for the same privilege.

Now, who was ripping off who again?