I’m not sure how much cut through this has had outside of the UK, but the government are currently in serious trouble because of constant leaks about parties in Number 10 Downing Street during the pandemic - including a particularly poorly timed one the day before the Queen was photographed at her husband’s funeral alone.
The leaks are ongoing, so we know that this particular plan is part of “Operation Red Meat”, which might be familiar if you’ve heard “red meat for the base”. That’s what this is. It’s going to cause serious problems for the BBC while this government remains in power, but this isn’t a serious proposal for the future of that organisation. It’s an effort to get furious Conservative supporters back on side and secure Boris Johnson’s position.
Other aspects of Operation Red Meat are reported to be military involvement at the Channel Crossing, and a ban on alcohol in Number 10. There’s another set of plans called Operation Save Big Dog too, which mostly seem to involve firing a bunch of other senior figures.
Only to answer your question about the party scandals - it totally made its way across the Atlantic. The severity of the scandal has been stated but is not obvious (Boris May lose his prime ministership over this?) However, it was drowned out by the ouster of Phillip.
Your comment does't make any sense. You are saying that the Conservative party are making this huge change to distract from their current problems. Are you saying they created the entire plan in a few weeks? Do you have any evidence for your extraordinary claims?
Yes, the current government is in complete shambles, but the arguments against funding the BBC with a TV License have been made for many years. It's not just hot air from Number 10 trying to prevent bad headlines. Netflix has proven that the subscription model is perfectly viable, meaning there's little justification to make someone a criminal for watching late night shopping channels without first having paid the BBC.
One of the great things of the Licence fee was that the Government does not get to control the national TV like it does when the one who pays is it directly.
In places like Spain the national TV(and regional TV too) becomes a propaganda machine for the exclusive service of the Government(s, national and regional).
It is awful to have your taxes redirected for the private interest of the Party in charge.
In fact with the crisis and private TV also being subsidized, the Media is being captured like the Gramma, Pravda, or Global Times, when the government never can go wrong or do mistakes.
> the Government does not get to control the national TV like it does when the one who pays is it directly.
You may want to double check who's in charge of the BBC. The Director-General Tim Davie is a former deputy chairman of a local Conservative party and Conservative councillor candidate. Not that bad, perhaps. But the Chairman of the BBC, Richard Sharp, was a banker at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, advisor to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, and has donated more than £400,000 to the Tory party.
The Conservative party does control the BBC, selecting the leadership according to their political aims or whichever donor has thrown them the most money recently. And the BBC budget and license fee are decided by the government, of course the government can cut funding at any time...
None of this is to say that the BBC is as bad as the worst of state controlled media, just that there are obvious elements of government control, and having one model of funding over another doesn't really change that - the government can still squeeze funding whenever it wants to (and they have done this before).
> One of the great things of the Licence fee was that the Government does not get to control the national TV like it does when the one who pays is it directly.
Don't know about that. Here in Germany public state broadcasters have a board elected by parties, churches, unions and other large bodies aiming, on paper, for proportional representation. The results are insufferable, mediocre palliative-care TV shows, corrupt sports (I hear they have that in UK, too ;), and news shows, with the occasional outstanding documentation (public radio stations are better IMO).
Until recently, I regarded their news as ok-ish, but the hysterical focus on CoVid and their tendency to polarize and putting every critique against the party line into the realm of Corona deniers or some such in the last two years has pulled the curtain for me, to show a self-referential political-medial complex bringing up topics irrelevant for large parts of the populace.
What about the license fee prevent the control by the government? The money goes through the government, and government chooses who pays and how much, so it's pretty close to as if the government was "paying" it directly.
Poland, as mentioned by a sibling, is a counter-example.
In Spain both public and private TV channels are at the service of the government. The government always finds an excuse to give money to private channels to make sure they say what they have to say. It's a disgrace.
We have a license fee in Germany, too. The income from that comes out at about twice of that in the UK. (With most of it burned for pensions.) And the public TV stations still appease our government so they (the government) never question the license fee amount.
Italy has a license fee but the parliament nominates part of the board. It's a little less clear cut now but until the 90s the only three channels of RAI at the time were clearly aligned to demochristians (RAI 1, center), socialists (RAI 2, left) and communists (RAI 3, when they were almost what you would think a communist is.) The three major parties of the time.
The BBC is a propaganda mouthpiece of the state just like everywhere else. Even private media outfits in the UK are mouthpieces of the state like Reuters and Bellingcat.
Peak BBC is making a story about the BBC headline news on the BBC news website. As if anyone else cared when they opened their new offices.
I’ve never really understood the rage the licence fee provokes in a certain type of voter and I have little faith that any replacement proposed by this government will be an improvement.
More likely there is no comment until the UK government makes the announcement public - rather than responding to 'informed sources'.
BBC is caught between a rock and hard place. Its journalists 'need' to report the story or risk being accused of 'censorship' for not reporting on the rumour/leak/background-briefings when other news organisations are reporting those, but at the same time the BBC board [0] (10 non-execs and 4 execs) will presumably have been preparing a measured response to publish once the UK government makes the 'official' announcement.
I like much of what the BBC do and produce, especially BBC news, but the licence fee has always felt like a relic from the past with a bad strategy of enforcement (With their threatening letters and misguiding terminology as to when a license is required). Their actual broadcast service is lacking in some areas too. On BBC One HD I still get a blank place-holder screen for local news, advising to switch to the non-HD channel, which is just bizarre at this point, 10 years after support for HD viewing.
I hope the BBC continues to survive, just with a more modern funding approach.
I feel the complete opposite way about BBC news.
BBC shows, documentaries and radio programmes are some of the best worldwide. But BBC news is often either notoriously pro-government (especially since 2016, when Cameron dictated that government appoints the BBC board) or with a ridiculous view on impartiality for anything else (the infamous "if we discuss earth's curvature we have to invite a flat earther for balance" approach).
I remember receiving a fair amount of threatening letters about the TV licence as a student, shortly after I moved out of my parents place to attend university.
It was extremely confusing and made me a little anxious.
Not only did I not own a TV or watch TV of any kind, even online, any effort to make this clear fell on deaf ears and the threatening letters continued.
Eventually it became normality and I learned to drone them out of my conscience but it was such a strange concept to me back then.
I'm just thankful I never got anyone knocking on my door demanding to check my room.
I have issues with the BBC - especially its partisan news reporting on the current government and its performance during the Scottish independence referendum, but would still like it to exist
I find BBC drama is consistently of a high quality - and unlike the paid services i can watch 6 episodes and its pretty much ended. Everything on netflix/prime is like 10 seasons of 20 episodes
Sad times - but im sure Rupert Murdoch will be happy
> especially its partisan news reporting on the current government
I just want to say that the BBC has had partisan claims by people from all the aisles. The BBC tends to be more left leaning and progressive with a lot of its coverage, I'm assuming that's mostly because journalists tend to be, however there have been certain "coincidences" when it comes to Conservative coverage.
I don't know whether or not they're partisan, but I feel when both left and right leaning people call the BBC partisan, it feels like they're less likely to be partisan.
ITV also make short drama series which are often better, in my opinion, and manage to do this without threatening to send people to jail for not contributing financially. You can subscribe for £3.99 to have an almost ad-free experience too. I doubt the BBC could compete at this level as a subscription only service in its current state though?
Worth noting also, the prevelance of BBC ads for its own content which have become something of an irritant over the past few years.
>> Time now to discuss and debate new ways of funding, supporting and selling great British content.
Perhaps it's time for the BBC to "beg for money" from the government every 4 years and do something in exchange for that(i.e. less critical to gov actions, more propaganda etc).
'Linear TV' (broadcast TV) is dead and the BBC probably have known this for some time. The idea of a TV schedule feels antiquated today amid unprecedented on-demand content. On commercial streaming services, only prestige series (seasons) are released weekly, everything else gets a whole series released in one go. (The BBC already does this on iPlayer for some series.)
It's worth remembering that the BBC is a Public Service Broadcaster (PSB) and does vastly more than YouTube or Netflix.
- News: the world's largest news organisation
- TV: everything from drama to documentaries to kids programmes
- Radio: national radio stations (covering every music genre + speech), 40+ local radio stations, and the World Service.
- Kids TV: ad-free TV kids programmes with strict guidelines on commercial influences and product placement.
- Education: massive educational content for schools (Bitesize) that has no commercial equivalent. (Who else other than BBC would launch the micro:bit project in schools with all the related educational resources to support it?)
- Music: promotes new music artists, funds 5 orchestras, runs the world's largest classical music festival (the Proms). Provides live music festival coverage (Glastonbury, Leeds, Reading etc)
- Accessibility: 100% of recorded programmes subtitled, + a proportion of audio-signed and signed programmes
The list goes on. Even simply browsing the BBC news website is one of the few news websites in the UK that is ad-free (if you are outside the UK browsing the BBC website, you're probably seeing ads).
Not all the above will disappear with a different funding model, but it's likely that the BBC will be slimmed down. (And that is something BBC critics will want to see happen.)
Aside: Nadine Dorries is minister for 'Digital, Culture, Media and Sport' - the BBC falls under the remit of this department. Dorries didn't even know that Channel 4 (another PSB in the UK) does not receive any public funds (it is funded by advertising). When this was pointed out to her when facing other politicians, she babbled incoherently unable to admit her error. Make up you own mind about the calibre of this politician: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/nadine-dorries-channe...
What is interesting is that the BBC have been reporting recently on the sitting government's complete disregard for their own rules w.r.t lockdowns.
It began with Matt Hancock breaking COVID distancing rules and cheating on his wife with his aide.
Now it's a slow burn leak of more and more damning evidence that they've held parties- while the police force have openly stated that they "do not prosecute crimes retroactively".
All in all it's a bit of a shit-show and I'm not convinced that this isn't a form of retribution, especially since yesterday a tory backbencher accused the BBC of trying to incite a coup against the conservative government: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/michael-fabri...
This issue has been going on well before C19. The BBC have abused their power and it is absolutely ridiculous that people have to pay license fees to them when media has changed so much.
Britain is following the Australian Government model of reducing funding for the national broadcast commission.
There is no mention in the article, but in Australia at least the funding to the ABC and SBS networks was reduced because of heavy lobbying by the Murdoch Media in order to reduce competition to their Foxtel cable/satellite TV media.
Murdoch is powerful in Britain too. I would not be at all surprised to discover that there has been 'behind the scenes' pressure on the Government from Murdoch to phase out the BBC also.
I know there's lots of conflicting horror stories online but years ago when I moved house and had no TV at all, I submitted a declaration[1] saying I didn't need one and haven't had any hassle since. After a few months I realised I wasn't missing live TV at all and never went back.
I don't need to pay for a license fee because I don't watch TV. I watch Netflix, amazon, apple, disney etc.
I still pay it because I'm listening to radio 2 at the moment, and have the news website in the background. While legally I don't need a license fee for that, it feels wrong to not be contributing.
Unless you're some weird boomer still paying £600 a year for a sky subscription to watch shit TV broken by adverts, I'm not sure why you'd pay a license fee (unless of course you actually watch BBC output)
You don't pay because you watch it. You pay so other people have some access to actual information so that we can have a functioning democracy and society. If you don't want those things, move to a failed state somewhere. If you do, pay up and get over yourself.
I don’t like discussing politics on here, but… i am extremely sceptical whether he has the political capital right now to see through such a radical move. This is part of “Operation Red Meat” in which Boris Johnson attempts to hold on to support of his party by giving the right-wing of his party everything it dreams of. In other words “turn a blind eye to the corruption and incompetence, and we’ll prioritise every policy you’ve ever dreamed of”.
It’s been the same strategy from mainstream parties in UK and US for the last few years, particularly well-executed by the right. If it works again, Boris Johnson will be the winner, while the British political system will be the big loser.
[+] [-] mcintyre1994|4 years ago|reply
The leaks are ongoing, so we know that this particular plan is part of “Operation Red Meat”, which might be familiar if you’ve heard “red meat for the base”. That’s what this is. It’s going to cause serious problems for the BBC while this government remains in power, but this isn’t a serious proposal for the future of that organisation. It’s an effort to get furious Conservative supporters back on side and secure Boris Johnson’s position.
Other aspects of Operation Red Meat are reported to be military involvement at the Channel Crossing, and a ban on alcohol in Number 10. There’s another set of plans called Operation Save Big Dog too, which mostly seem to involve firing a bunch of other senior figures.
Some more info: https://www.politics.co.uk/news-in-brief/pm-working-on-serie...
[+] [-] HWR_14|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Freskis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkingemote|4 years ago|reply
The other changes are:
•Announce a No 10 workplace “booze ban” in an effort to end the drinking culture in “Club Downing Street”.
•Freeze the BBC licence fee for two years to help the cost of living.
•Hand to the military control of the battle to stop illegal immigrants in the Channel.
•Unveil new plans to tackle the backlog of operations in the NHS.
•Unveil extra money for skills and job training for the 1.5 million people who are out of work and on universal credit.
•Lift the remaining coronavirus restrictions on January 26.
•Publish Michael Gove’s levelling-up white paper the following week. It aims to improve lives in neglected towns in the north.
[+] [-] tobbob|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cracrecry|4 years ago|reply
In places like Spain the national TV(and regional TV too) becomes a propaganda machine for the exclusive service of the Government(s, national and regional).
It is awful to have your taxes redirected for the private interest of the Party in charge.
In fact with the crisis and private TV also being subsidized, the Media is being captured like the Gramma, Pravda, or Global Times, when the government never can go wrong or do mistakes.
[+] [-] kaashif|4 years ago|reply
You may want to double check who's in charge of the BBC. The Director-General Tim Davie is a former deputy chairman of a local Conservative party and Conservative councillor candidate. Not that bad, perhaps. But the Chairman of the BBC, Richard Sharp, was a banker at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, advisor to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, and has donated more than £400,000 to the Tory party.
The Conservative party does control the BBC, selecting the leadership according to their political aims or whichever donor has thrown them the most money recently. And the BBC budget and license fee are decided by the government, of course the government can cut funding at any time...
None of this is to say that the BBC is as bad as the worst of state controlled media, just that there are obvious elements of government control, and having one model of funding over another doesn't really change that - the government can still squeeze funding whenever it wants to (and they have done this before).
[+] [-] tannhaeuser|4 years ago|reply
Don't know about that. Here in Germany public state broadcasters have a board elected by parties, churches, unions and other large bodies aiming, on paper, for proportional representation. The results are insufferable, mediocre palliative-care TV shows, corrupt sports (I hear they have that in UK, too ;), and news shows, with the occasional outstanding documentation (public radio stations are better IMO).
Until recently, I regarded their news as ok-ish, but the hysterical focus on CoVid and their tendency to polarize and putting every critique against the party line into the realm of Corona deniers or some such in the last two years has pulled the curtain for me, to show a self-referential political-medial complex bringing up topics irrelevant for large parts of the populace.
[+] [-] cromka|4 years ago|reply
Spain? Spain pales in comparison with Poland. Where they collect the license fee, too.
[+] [-] rhn_mk1|4 years ago|reply
Poland, as mentioned by a sibling, is a counter-example.
How does the license fee prevent the propaganda?
[+] [-] iqanq|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nextgrid|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbirth|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] C19is20|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmontra|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1cvmask|4 years ago|reply
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-of...
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-25/Reuters-BBC-participat...
[+] [-] koolba|4 years ago|reply
In the USA this is solved by having your taxes only go towards liberal media outlets regardless of who’s in power: https://wcti12.com/news/nation-world/pbs-attorney-fired-afte...
[+] [-] chrisseaton|4 years ago|reply
> The BBC has declined to comment.
Nothing more BBC than the BBC writing an article about the BBC saying that the BBC haven't commented.
[+] [-] bambataa|4 years ago|reply
I’ve never really understood the rage the licence fee provokes in a certain type of voter and I have little faith that any replacement proposed by this government will be an improvement.
[+] [-] iam-TJ|4 years ago|reply
BBC is caught between a rock and hard place. Its journalists 'need' to report the story or risk being accused of 'censorship' for not reporting on the rumour/leak/background-briefings when other news organisations are reporting those, but at the same time the BBC board [0] (10 non-execs and 4 execs) will presumably have been preparing a measured response to publish once the UK government makes the 'official' announcement.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/whoweare/bbcboard
[+] [-] odiroot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hamuko|4 years ago|reply
Could've ended with "other news organizations are available".
[+] [-] ssddanbrown|4 years ago|reply
I hope the BBC continues to survive, just with a more modern funding approach.
[+] [-] rvieira|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gundamdoubleO|4 years ago|reply
Not only did I not own a TV or watch TV of any kind, even online, any effort to make this clear fell on deaf ears and the threatening letters continued.
Eventually it became normality and I learned to drone them out of my conscience but it was such a strange concept to me back then. I'm just thankful I never got anyone knocking on my door demanding to check my room.
[+] [-] fiftyacorn|4 years ago|reply
I find BBC drama is consistently of a high quality - and unlike the paid services i can watch 6 episodes and its pretty much ended. Everything on netflix/prime is like 10 seasons of 20 episodes
Sad times - but im sure Rupert Murdoch will be happy
[+] [-] mkdirp|4 years ago|reply
I just want to say that the BBC has had partisan claims by people from all the aisles. The BBC tends to be more left leaning and progressive with a lot of its coverage, I'm assuming that's mostly because journalists tend to be, however there have been certain "coincidences" when it comes to Conservative coverage.
I don't know whether or not they're partisan, but I feel when both left and right leaning people call the BBC partisan, it feels like they're less likely to be partisan.
[+] [-] iso1210|4 years ago|reply
Is that pro-government or anti-government in your view?
[+] [-] dazc|4 years ago|reply
Worth noting also, the prevelance of BBC ads for its own content which have become something of an irritant over the past few years.
[+] [-] odiroot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themihai|4 years ago|reply
Perhaps it's time for the BBC to "beg for money" from the government every 4 years and do something in exchange for that(i.e. less critical to gov actions, more propaganda etc).
[+] [-] pseudolus|4 years ago|reply
"The source added that 'the days of state-run TV are over' and praised the growth of US-run companies such as Netflix and YouTube."
Yes, let's run to our algorithmically run and siloed future.
[+] [-] in3d|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] open-source-ux|4 years ago|reply
It's worth remembering that the BBC is a Public Service Broadcaster (PSB) and does vastly more than YouTube or Netflix.
- News: the world's largest news organisation
- TV: everything from drama to documentaries to kids programmes
- Radio: national radio stations (covering every music genre + speech), 40+ local radio stations, and the World Service.
- Kids TV: ad-free TV kids programmes with strict guidelines on commercial influences and product placement.
- Education: massive educational content for schools (Bitesize) that has no commercial equivalent. (Who else other than BBC would launch the micro:bit project in schools with all the related educational resources to support it?)
- Music: promotes new music artists, funds 5 orchestras, runs the world's largest classical music festival (the Proms). Provides live music festival coverage (Glastonbury, Leeds, Reading etc)
- Accessibility: 100% of recorded programmes subtitled, + a proportion of audio-signed and signed programmes
The list goes on. Even simply browsing the BBC news website is one of the few news websites in the UK that is ad-free (if you are outside the UK browsing the BBC website, you're probably seeing ads).
Not all the above will disappear with a different funding model, but it's likely that the BBC will be slimmed down. (And that is something BBC critics will want to see happen.)
Aside: Nadine Dorries is minister for 'Digital, Culture, Media and Sport' - the BBC falls under the remit of this department. Dorries didn't even know that Channel 4 (another PSB in the UK) does not receive any public funds (it is funded by advertising). When this was pointed out to her when facing other politicians, she babbled incoherently unable to admit her error. Make up you own mind about the calibre of this politician: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/nadine-dorries-channe...
[+] [-] iso1210|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dijit|4 years ago|reply
It began with Matt Hancock breaking COVID distancing rules and cheating on his wife with his aide.
Now it's a slow burn leak of more and more damning evidence that they've held parties- while the police force have openly stated that they "do not prosecute crimes retroactively".
All in all it's a bit of a shit-show and I'm not convinced that this isn't a form of retribution, especially since yesterday a tory backbencher accused the BBC of trying to incite a coup against the conservative government: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/michael-fabri...
[+] [-] neilsense|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonblack|4 years ago|reply
There is no mention in the article, but in Australia at least the funding to the ABC and SBS networks was reduced because of heavy lobbying by the Murdoch Media in order to reduce competition to their Foxtel cable/satellite TV media.
Murdoch is powerful in Britain too. I would not be at all surprised to discover that there has been 'behind the scenes' pressure on the Government from Murdoch to phase out the BBC also.
[+] [-] beardyw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bennysomething|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verytrivial|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaymzcampbell|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/t...
[+] [-] thinkingemote|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iso1210|4 years ago|reply
I still pay it because I'm listening to radio 2 at the moment, and have the news website in the background. While legally I don't need a license fee for that, it feels wrong to not be contributing.
Unless you're some weird boomer still paying £600 a year for a sky subscription to watch shit TV broken by adverts, I'm not sure why you'd pay a license fee (unless of course you actually watch BBC output)
[+] [-] LatteLazy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickhalfasleep|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blowski|4 years ago|reply
It’s been the same strategy from mainstream parties in UK and US for the last few years, particularly well-executed by the right. If it works again, Boris Johnson will be the winner, while the British political system will be the big loser.
[+] [-] amriksohata|4 years ago|reply