BBC Scaremongering again

[selectortone]

.... and, paradoxically, I never referred to it as scaremongering when I wrote to them two weeks ago during the fuel shortages complaining that they and the rest of the media were unnecessarily stoking up panic buying. They replied with a template response they were obviously sending out en masse which denied 'scaremongering' (their word). So I'm clearly not the only one annoyed by their lack of objectivity and social responsibility.

 

[selectortone]

Perhaps I should change my signature to "It must be true, I saw it on the BBC"

 

[Jacob]

Eh? The scaremongering I referred to when I started this thread.

Oh yes! "Don't panic buy" Actually I did notice it too when I saw the prog.
Dunno it's 6 of one and half doz of the other. Arguably it was a reassuring comment, the facts themselves were scary enough for most! Seems a fairly trivial detail against the bigger picture.
I'd say the BBC wasn't anywhere near scaremongering enough about bigger issues, particularly Climate Change. David Attenborough held back until quite recently - probably about 20 years too late.
We need more scaremongering not less!

 

[selectortone]

Oh yes! "Don't panic buy" Actually I did notice it too when I saw the prog.
Dunno it's 6 of one and half doz of the other. Arguably was a reassuring comment, the facts themselves were scary enough for most!

How can "Don't panic buy" be a reassuring comment? Everyone knows that as soon as anyone mentions panic buying in the media, a certain section of the British public goes berserk, empties supermarket shelves, petrol stations or whatever, and creates shortages for the rest of us. Thank god there's no way of storing large volumes of gas domestically, or the pipes in the street would be empty.

 

[ian33a]

.... Thank god there's no way of storing large volumes of gas domestically, or the pipes in the street would be empty.

My wife complains that I store large volumes of gas and, rather too regularly, expel it at bed time.

 

[hairy]

An article in the UKMSM by a long standing reporter was talking about Aus and it's lock down possibly being helped by a "more complicit" media. I thought it surprising that someone who has reported with bias in a place of bias acknowledged that the MSM is/was and forever shall be so. He also mentioned vitamin D which was surely taking things too far?

I totally do not understand Sky selling a whole TV when Amazon and the Fire stick is all that's needed for £25. No dish fair enough, but replacing your TV to do so? Why don't Sky have a free Fire type stick to get you into paying £50 a month? Bargain.

I'd quite like to pay for impartial world and domestic news. I wonder how impartial the BBC actually was back in the day?

 

[John Brown]

How does anybody think things would work if the licence fee is dropped? More annoying childish advertising? How would a subscription work? I guess it'd be another set top box or something. I don't know what percentage of the population rely on terrestrial live broadcasts.
I personally like the BBC, and don't begrudge the licence fee, but I can understand the opposite viewpoint. I just don't see any easy solution to making it a subscription service.
It could have been done when digital terrestrial broadcasting was introduced. By now, we could have had the necessary decryption hardware present in all TV sets and set top boxes.
That didn't happen, or did it? Does every TV or set top box have a slot for a Conditional Access Module (as I seem to remember they were called)?

Just interested in possible solutions, not in the politics.

 

[Jacob]

How does anybody think things would work if the licence fee is dropped? ....

No change - it would be paid for by government just the same, but the money would come from increased taxation instead of the licence fee.

 

[John Brown]

No change - it would be paid for by government just the same, but the money would come from increased taxation instead of the licence fee.

I can understand that, Jacob, but the people who object to the current licence fee would probably also object to that. I am asking about how a transition could occur to a subscription service.

 

[selectortone]

I'm happy to pay my TV licence for a service that informs, educates and entertains as per its remit as a public service broadcaster. My dad was in the RAF and I spent a lot of my childhood overseas and I have a lot of affection for the BBC. The BBC world service continues to be respected the world over as an objective and impartial news source.

What I object greatly to (if you'll all forgive me harping on about it) is the apparent abdication of social responsibility by BBC News. They must know what effect the words 'panic buying' have, so why start their flagship 6pm programme on BBC1 with them if not for sensationalism?

 

[Jacob]

I can understand that, Jacob, but the people who object to the current licence fee would probably also object to that. I am asking about how a transition could occur to a subscription service.

Channel4 could be the model. Highly successful, commercial, independent, but publicly owned by us, the state.
Threatened with sell-off at the moment, for no good reason.
https://www.ft.com/content/cba2975b-9a64-49dd-afaa-1ba1c977db4a
The usual way to privatise is simply to sell things off, which would probably mean breaking it up too. Then as they fail bring them back into public ownership after enough confusion and bad service/mismanagement has occurred, as with energy and rail.

 

[Rustic Mike]

The BBC have done the scare stories over toys to turkeys, now they are on to chicken prices going up 10%.
As a retired journalist, I remember how the BBC was looked on as a pretty pathetic operation that simply lifted most of its regional coverage from the local newspapers. Made one smile when their reports would begin "..the BBC can reveal."
Make it a subscription service and give people the right to choose an unbiased and reliable set-up.

I used to love the bbc back in it halcyon days, I now have cancelled my license with them and have not missed it in the last twelve months at all and we are going out tonight for a lovely Thai meal with the money we’ve saved they are total rubbish now.

 

[Sporky McGuffin]

I totally do not understand Sky selling a whole TV when Amazon and the Fire stick is all that's needed for £25. No dish fair enough, but replacing your TV to do so? Why don't Sky have a free Fire type stick to get you into paying £50 a month? Bargain.

The Sky telly is more revenue for them, better integration of service (no vulnerability to issues betwixt Sky box and 3rd party display) , and a stronger lock-in to the service.

I'm not sure it makes sense for the consumer, except if it's screen-as-a-service and part of your overall subscription, in which case its easy to ignore as just a monthly cost, but for Sky it's genius.

 

[ian33a]

FWIW, I find channel 4, in the main, fairly hopeless as a TV broadcaster. I have a degree of respect for their news and use it, somewhat, as a balance to what I get from the BBC but many of the other shows, I find, to be below average at best.

I also find that the station is plastered with irritating advertising. For me, it doesn't represent great public service broadcasting.

I don't find the BBC to be perfect, but better than many stations that I have seen both in the UK and dotted around the globe. And no, I wasn't featured on this :

Not The Nine O'Clock News - Points of View - YouTube

 

[hairy]

The Sky telly is more revenue for them, better integration of service (no vulnerability to issues betwixt Sky box and 3rd party display) , and a stronger lock-in to the service.

I'm not sure it makes sense for the consumer, except if it's screen-as-a-service and part of your overall subscription, in which case its easy to ignore as just a monthly cost, but for Sky it's genius.

I think it shows Sky have absolutely no idea what to do. McDonalds don't sell cars to promote drive thru? National Trust selling shoes, and only allowing those with their shoes in? They profit from content not hardware, their hardware just facilitates what they sell. If their TV had software to block anyone using anthing else like NetflixAmazonYouTube whatever they will limit uptake even further. I would bet they will persuade some folks to buy one who don't want the hassle of choosing, but I also bet it will be a dead duck very soon.

 

[southendwoodworker]

We choose whether to read or watch anything owned by Murdoch or anyone else. If we wish to watch any other live TV we have to pay the BBC tax. That's where it is different, wrong and beyond any justification. Whether it is or isn't good value or biased doesn't even come into it.

I hear and understand with what you are saying, which if I read right is: "if i don't use the service, regardless value, why should I pay for it?"

From my limited understanding, there is the choice not to use it and therefor not to pay for it by simply telling them you don't watch live tv.

Technically it isn't a tax though - this is an important distinction. A tax is mandatory, a licence allows you to opt out, which you can. That is a good thing about the licence.

If the licence was centrally funded by tax, it would make opting out of it impossible. And people would probably get worked up about it more (rightly or wrongly) as they'd feel it isn't good value or that they don't use it.

Ultimately I see the gripes around bbc and how they are being funded as purely academic argument around payment method. The underlying issue is that people don't want to pay it because they don't use it or think it's a bad service. Any public service is like that and will always be like that. The alternative is either full privatisation or a user pays system, which will introduce horrid advertising and introduce further bias, making the public service worse for all. With the licence people do still have the choice.

If the discussion is around the payment, it invariably relates to a persons perception of quality and value of a service, and whether it is worth the price paid. The "bias" of the news service as what people factor consider when measuring quality and value. They are all kind of linked together.

I think the problem overall is very hard to answer fairly for everyone, the current solution isn't ideal, but then on the other hand all other solutions introduce other types of problems which are just as bad. It seems like maybe the licence is the best of all the bad potential solutions, and is fair enough for the majority of people.

 

[southendwoodworker]

How does anybody think things would work if the licence fee is dropped? More annoying childish advertising? How would a subscription work? I guess it'd be another set top box or something. I don't know what percentage of the population rely on terrestrial live broadcasts.
I personally like the BBC, and don't begrudge the licence fee, but I can understand the opposite viewpoint. I just don't see any easy solution to making it a subscription service.
It could have been done when digital terrestrial broadcasting was introduced. By now, we could have had the necessary decryption hardware present in all TV sets and set top boxes.
That didn't happen, or did it? Does every TV or set top box have a slot for a Conditional Access Module (as I seem to remember they were called)?

Just interested in possible solutions, not in the politics.

I think there are four possibilities:
- subscription service
- paid centrally from tax
- commercial entity which uses advertising to fund itself
- licence scheme

subscription service: would just be a pain in the bum to administer, there would have to be set top boxes, decoders, whatever, and all the admin cost and wastage having deal with that

paid centrally from tax: it would prevent people from opting out of paying it who don't use it, make it biased as its funding will be tied closer to political whims

commercial entity: this is the worse solution, ads are really the worst thing ever, it is a race to the bottom

licence scheme: what we have at the moment, people can opt out. not as bad as the other options in my opinion.

 

[Jacob]

You've missed the Channel4 option - it's an independent commercial operator but state owned. Seems to work fine and isn't obviously biased .

 

[southendwoodworker]

You've missed the Channel4 option - it's an independent commercial operator but state owned. Seems to work fine and isn't obviously biased .

how does that roughly work?

 

[Jacob]

how does that roughly work?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_4