Scrap the whole damn TV licence system
Tuesday 27th July 2010, 7:06AM BST.
THE television-licence system is so stupid that it could only have been dreamed up by civil servants, writes Peter Rhodes.
First, you create a monstrously expensive BBC which is watched by virtually every household in the land.
Then you invent an enforcement system which contacts every household to make sure they are all paying £145.50 per year (or less if they are blind, or nothing if they are over 75).
Then you buy fleets of detector vans to make sure they’re all telling the truth.
Then, because the licence is so expensive, you have to invent savings stamps for the less well-off. In a sane world, a new government would sweep this outdated nonsense off the face of the earth.
Instead, the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is seriously suggesting extending it, with licence fees to be demanded of anyone who watches TV programmes on a computer.
Why stop there, Jeremy? How long before the detector vans are pouncing on people watching EastEnders on laptops or the latest generation of mobile phones?
It is all cobblers, man. Scrap the whole damn system.
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Yet another simplistic view from Peter Rhodes.
‘It is all cobblers, man. Scrap the whole damn system’
By this do you mean scrap the BBC entirely? ok. Well say that.
Or do you mean scrap the TV licence system but keep the BBC? If so, how do you pay for it?
Or do you mean change the TV licencing system to something else? If so, what?
This article is all cobblers, man. Scrap this blog!
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This is quite possibly the worst article I have ever read.
Where is the research? Where are the facts? Where is the coherent argument for or against?
As somone who would genuinely like a crack at journalism it really angers me to see such rubbish written and then published (in any form).
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I’m with Peter Rhodes.
I have Sky and I pay for what I choose to watch.I do not watch anything on the BBC, the sport is dross, I don’t want to watch overpaid ex celebs dancing and what they pay Ross, Norton etc is an outrage, and we’re paying for it.
If I choose to shop at Sainsb*rys I don’t have to pay Tesc* or M & * nearly £150 a year just because they exist!
Put adverts on the BBC and scrap the fee. Oh,and before people pipe up about adverts and how “they ruin my viewing pleasure” check out Sky. The main channels have ads but “Sky movies” never have adverts in them, so It can be done.
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1. & 2. you nailed it!
Why not rename this section “Peter’s Reckon”.
(See Mitchell and Webb if you don’t get it).
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The BBC should move forward in this modern world, and gain revenue from adverts like any other TV production company to pay their way.
The BBC have said they have been against adverts for years, yet they advertise all their own items related to programmes, like books, DVD’s etc.
New zealand scrapped the licence a few years back, so why does the goverment stick, with the most hated tax next to the poll tax. I am sure if the conservatives had the abolishment of the licence in their manifesto, they would of won the election out right..
Let us hope someone with common sense rights this wrong one day.
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Well said Peter rhodes
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It must be fun to be paid to produce a few lines of ill-considered ranting; although it admirably illustrates (by omission) what the BBC is supposed to provide – a balanced argument.
What’s missing is what we should do instead. Is this an argument for a privatised, profit-making BBC – or is it an argument for a different method of funding a public broadcaster ?
The argument in favour of a public broadcaster is that it should provide an objective voice, not beholden to the often nauseating views of a billionaire owner (Murdoch, Berlusconi etc.), nor to pressure from the corporations who place adverts. Without the need to make a profit, it should also be able to show programs which are not lowest-common-denominator trash.
Whether the BBC meets those objectives – and how we should fund it, if at all – are debates worth having.
Taking a pop at a tax without proposing an alternative is just shooting fish in a barrel.
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This is an astonishingly crass article.
Commenters calling for the BBC to be funded by adverts can possibly be forgiven for not knowing that the media in general are in crisis because of the collapse of this income model.
But Peter Rhodes is a paid journalist working in these media, so he has no excuse. His own profession, print media, is currently in deep trouble because of its reliance on adverts.
Back to TV for a mo: for decades ITV was firmly in favour of the BBC getting the licence fee. Simply because it gave ITV a monopoly of income from advertising. As a result, in the 60s and 70s ITV was producing programmes of a quality that rivalled and frequently bettered the BBC.
The introduction of Channel4 was a fudge. Public service programming was written into its charter, and as that might not find favour with advertisers, it was and is partly funded by contributions from BBC and ITV.
This was all hunky-dory until deregulation brought us C5, Sky and loads of other channels. Instead of providing choice for minority interests as we were told it would, all this did was to suck away advertising revenue from ITV and C4. So there was less money to invest in quality programmes, and there followed the inevitable slide into increasingly samey, cheap and dumbed-down material.
A similar pattern can be seen in print media. Once the cover price wars kicked off among the tabloids, advertising revenue was all they had left. And everybody had to fight for their slice of the advertising pie.
The killer was the rise of the World Wide Web. Suddenly people started producing vaguely “news” material and giving it away for free. At the same time, Google and others began poaching the advertising revenue that was already thinly spread. To advertisers, the Web offers much higher return on investment than TV or print.
So now we have an ITV that’s on its knees. We have The Guardian giving away its content on the web, losing a fortune every day, which it can’t keep up for much longer. Murdoch has resorted to putting The Times behind a paywall, and every newspaper editor in the world must be watching to see if this is kill or cure for traditional professional journalism.
Wake up, Peter Rhodes. “Scrap the licence fee” was an idiotic war-cry even 40 years ago. At your age maybe you can afford to watch “traditional” media crumble around you while you await your pension. But your younger colleagues might be thinking that the column inches you’re wasting like this could be put to better use.
Oh, and you already have to pay the licence fee to watch TV on a computer. I haven’t had a TV for 2 years, but I still have to pay up. And I don’t mind.
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It seems the instant this crops up, there are many loud and articulate voices uniting to convince everyone that the BBC is well justified in having the power to enforce this payment.
I suppose it never crosses the mind of the owners of those voices that millions of decent people in this country simply can’t afford to pay the licence fee – and their punishment is a criminal record.
If you can’t pay the licence, they summon you to Magistrates Court and fine you; and if you can’t afford to pay the fine (which obviously you would not be able to if you can’t afford the licence) they issue a warrant for your arrest and the same court will send you to HM Prison. It’s as simple as that.
I lost my job over twelve months ago and for me the tv licence accounts for 5% of my gross income. For a household earning £40,000, the same 5% would amount to a couple of grand a year. (bang goes the annual family holiday.)
I am merely one of those unemployed people so I don’t expect any sympathy from anyone, but the situation is as bad for other poor people such as students and low paid working families.
A comment to a similar article, stated those in poverty should not be entitled to luxuries like tvs; and that comment got unanimous support. Just shows how judgemental and self righteous this society is becoming.
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If I didn’t have the BBC I’d have to put up with drivel like this from the Express & Star for news. No thanks Peter Rhodes.
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@David J: I don’t suppose you’d get much sympathy from someone like Mr Rhodes, but for what it’s worth I do sympathise.
Several members of my family have spent periods of time jobless, and I’ve been on the brink of it for some time and still am. So I count myself lucky I can still afford things for the moment.
And I’m not one of those people who begrudges the jobless a few creature comforts.
But I’m sorry, I can’t see how that makes a difference to how TV might be funded. The fact is that like everyone else you’re paying for the advertising revenue that “free” channels and “free” newspapers depend on. Every time you buy food from a supermarket, or clothes, for example; and you don’t have any choice about needing those. They don’t give you the option of cheaper essentials in return for not watching a particular TV channel.
The elderly get help with paying for their TV licence and personally I wouldn’t object if the jobless did too. In that case other forms of taxation would have to make up the difference, of course. If you want TV programmes to be made and transmitted they still have to be paid for somehow.
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I agree with Peter, scrap the fee and pay partly from the state and partly from product placement, after all the producers are gettign free adverts at present.
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Scrap the licence fee. Why should i who exists on a pension subscribe nearly £3 per week to to pay the likes of Ross Norton ect millions of pounds per year.Tell me if anyone thiks this is fair
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Geoff, unfortunately fairness has nothing to do with it. The reason that Ross, Norton etc get paid what they do is because they are commodities in a market economy based on audience figures. This is also why footballers earn so much.
Commercial TV companies depend on audience figures to attract advertisers, which are their source of income. The BBC doesn’t have to attract advertisers but it does have to justify the licence fee on the basis of audience share.
So anyone who brings in lots of viewers is worth big money, whether you’re the BBC or ITV. Why else would ITV be willing to pay Ross to move to them?
This is also true of news media. If newspapers like E&S were really about disinterested fact-based investigative journalism and intelligent, informed commentary, the likes of Peter Rhodes would be out of a job. The reason they’re employed is that they whip up debate in the crudest way possible – for or against, as in these comments – which is a way to attract buyers of the papers or readers of the web site. But the real reason this is important is given away by what you see at the very top of this web page: Classified, Directory, Jobs, Motors, Property. I.e. advertising revenue.
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