Unneccessary and unjust (TV Licence)

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Product:	TV Licence
Date:	19/07/00 (6 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Aboslutely none whatsoever.

Disadvantages: It is unneccessary and immoral.

Some people will talk of the British teleivsion license fee as though it is the only thing standing between a decent society, one that watches the opera and documentaries on the mating habits of the lesser known willow moth, and Channel Five. This is frankly absurd.

Channel 4, the range of Discovery channels, History channel, and especially Performance if you can receive it all go to show that intellectual programming can be made in the commercial sector. The truth is though that the license fee goes more to protecting Eastenders than it does for David Attenborough.

The telelvision license fee goes towards funding BBC telelvision and radio channels within the UK. International BBC channels and the world Service are funded commerically and by governament grants respectively. So do we need the license fee, are BBC ONE and RADIO One both unable to stand on their own commercially, and do they offer a public service? No. They are just offering the same as is available for free, and are blatent in their desire for beating compeetitors in terms of audience share. Classic FM has shown that RADIO Three could exist commercially and RADIO Five Live with it's speech based sports and news schedule would have no difficulty finding advertisers. The audience for RADIO Two is large enough to find interested sponsors which only leaves local radio, RADIO Four and BBC 2. The channels I mentioned in the previous paragraph, in particular Channel 4, show that BBC TWO could survive commercially. A smallish governement grant should be sufficent for RADIO Four and local services considering that a large part of their costs have been met by the shared resources of the organization as a whole, plus even they would find advertisers easy to attract. The RADIO Four audience is comprised of a lot of people with large disposable incomes. No more license fee.

I'm not advocating that the BBC ceases to be a public service broadcaster, after all strictly s
peaking ITV is also one and franchise holders have to meet certain programming requirements as a part of their license. In most of Europe the public broadcasters carry advertising.

So what's wrong with advertising? Imparitality is one of the biggest claims coming from the BBC. But if they remain as a corporation, as is the case Channel 4, then it is the governors who make the decisions, not people motivated by profit. Some companies may choose to boycott certain shows if they don't get concessions but impartiality is only an issue if the govenors concede to these demands. A advertising supported BBC would not have shareholders to satisfy like ITV and so they only need to be self sufficent, not profit making. The imparitiality of an organization is only as good as those who run it and with friends-in-high-places and commercial spin offs the BBC is just as likely to be corrupt whil being funded by a license fee.

A side benefit of being advertising supported is that the BBC will be in a stronger position to compete for sports rights. Expensive advertising spots and programme sponsorship will allow the corporation to compete with commercial players which is in the interests of sports fans and would allow the corpoartion to plough more money into other programming. Those who claim that expensive period dramas would be risked only need to look at how they are funded - coproductions with US advertising and sponsorship supported public television.

The only criticism against advertising would be that people like to see uninterrupted programmes. Only in practice can it be seen how much money the BBC would make through advertising, in part because of the competition for advertisers offered by ITV, but it is possible that advertising would only be required between programmes and sponosrship. Advertising is a fact of modern life though and preferable to a compulsary fee. Pay-per-view television will soon be with us and I would expect
we'd be given the choice of programming with advertisements or a small fee to watch uninterrupted programming, as is the case with Sky's movie channels.

For those who don't watch the BBC the license fee is immoral. For those who feel that Eastenders is not something that is essential to the cultural well-being of the country there is no defence for this outmoded concept.

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