Given how you translated the cost into $, am I correct in assuming that you’re not British?
Because I am, and honestly, £14.50 a month for what the BBC actually offers is, if anything, not enough. Because it’s not just TV.
The income from the licence fee covers TV, radio, broadcasting infrastructure, and R&D into said infrastructure. It also covers a broad range of community initiatives (several orchestras receive much of their funding from the BBC). And let’s not forget the iPlayer. It may have since been surpassed in utility by some of the other streaming companies, but it was one of the first to offer that kind of service, and for a long time, pretty much the gold standard.
On top of that is the intangible benefits of having a state broadcaster that is, according to the rules by which it is bound, absolutely not allowed to run advertising for commercial products. Other broadcasters in the UK are held up in comparison to the BBC, which means that they have yet to fall to the diabolical levels that commercial broadcasters in places like the US have. If they did, people would switch off.
BBC News can piss up a rope though. Sometimes stories don’t need balance.
sorghum@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
The part that is most offensive is the lack of choice if you don’t want to fund things that really don’t need to be funded by the public at large anymore. The price also really isn’t justifiable when a year of amazon prime and monthly Netflix is still cheaper. Even if paying for the infra was the most important thing, it isn’t needed anymore with broadband internet access available everywhere now. It’s like saying we need the pony express to deliver mail in the age of planes trains and automobiles.
Besides here in the US I don’t want the government running a public broadcast/propaganda machine. It isn’t getting better over there either. The same government that will arrest you for a social media post for being deemed offensive by an unelected beaurocrat is the same government I don’t want running any kind of propaganda arm. Which gets back to choice. If I wanted to watch any alternative, I’d still have to fund the BBC.
They are. Subs to traditional pay TV here in the states have been dwindling for years. With how broadcast television is dying anyway I wouldn’t be surprised if the UK would soon require a license to watch any live streams on the internet even without owning a TV just to make up the lost revenue. Governments are diabolical when it comes to protecting their revenue especially when they have a monopoly on violence.
djdarren@piefed.social 1 week ago
Not everyone has fast internet. And in a world where internet access is not a public utility, but people can still receive TV and radio over the air, there is still a need for broadcasting infrastructure. The BBC was founded on the promise to educate, entertain, and inform, and has a mandate to be available to as many people as possible. As such, the maintenance of that infrastructure means that people in the most remote areas of the UK can still receive education, entertainment, and information over the airwaves, regardless of the profit motives of private companies.
I will grant that the BBC is not in the best of health currently, after 15 years of Tory misrule, and the positioning of conservative sympathisers in the highest positions. However, suggesting that private organisations would perform any better denies the existence of Fox News, for example. Private organisations are led by private ideals, and will almost always bend towards the greatest income. Which is understandable. The BBC is still able to speak truth to power. Currently.
I admit that I don’t know the context to this, but I will say that almost every example I can think of of people being arrested for social media posts is because they posted something inflammatory. The one exception off the top of my head was Paul Chambers, who was arrested for posting a joke about blowing up an airport. He was eventually found not guilty, but taken at face value even that could be (and was) considered inflammatory.
This is pure speculation. There is no evidence to support this concern. That said, you do technically need a TV licence to watch programs on the iPlayer. But that’s all BBC content anyway, so it’s functionally no different than watching it via broadcast.