BBC says 'irreversible' trends mean it will not survive without major overhaul

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/mar/05/bbc-charter-renewal-tv-licence-major-overhaul

by beardyw • 5 months ago

28 65 5 months ago

I refuse to pay the license fee and watch BBC content simply because how TV licensing is enforced is grotesque and the cover ups of child molesters committed by the BBC.

Put it behind a subscription and give me a choice whether the BBC deserves its revenue, my current opinion falls firmly on no.

felixgallo• 5 months ago

I'm sure you feel the same way about Sky News and the tabloids, right?

pjc504• 5 months ago

You're not legally required to pay for either of those simply because you own a television.

I have a lot of love for the BBC and its history, but the license fee is very difficult to justify.

IG_Semmelweiss• 5 months ago

How, dare I ask, does one "opt out" of a govt subscription service ?

Some private companies make it so hard these days (Adobe & NYT being the kings of subcription dark patterns), I am curious how the process goes with a govt entity like the BBC ?

dgxyz• 5 months ago

One tells them to fuck off when they turn up at the door. And off they fuck.

PaulDavisThe1st11• 5 months ago

How, dare I ask, does one "opt out" of a govt subscription service ?

Currently, by not using a television.

beardyw3• 5 months ago

Here

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/t...

nephihaha13• 5 months ago

Quite easily. I haven't had a licence for over twenty years.

TV Licensing has no right of access to your home, so if they turn up, you can turn them away. You also ignore their letters. TV licensing is actually a private company separate from the BBC and the government.

In order to get access, they have to apply for a warrant to get into your home. To do that they have to fill out a lot of paperwork. If you have a TV (and I don't), it should not be visible or audible from anywhere outside these little toerags can hear/see it.

CommanderData• 5 months ago

The BBC also behaved indefensibly when covering Israel's genocide of Palestinians.

Their behaviour is largely what led to me siding with the Palestinians plight some years ago, the use of words on Israel's side VS Palestinians was enough to lead me down a rabbit hole and I have never seen the BBC the same since.

It is literally state news with amazing bits of other content.

rvz• 5 months ago

Sounds like cope.

blargthorwars• 5 months ago

Imagine needing a government licence to look at a screen.

graemep2• 5 months ago

Its a hypothocated tax.

Its not required to "look at a screen". its required to watch broadcast TV and use the BBc's online TV services. You can watch as much as you like on Youtube or Netflix or whatever without paying it.

it was very good value for money when half of all TV output (and the better half) was from the BBC and ad free.

mytailorisrich4• 5 months ago

You can watch as much as you like on Youtube or Netflix or whatever without paying it.

Careful here because there is live TV on Youtube and a valid licence is required to watch that. There are also live shows on Netflix, which may count as "live TV programmes" so requiring a licence.

beardyw3• 5 months ago

It's a historical accident. At first there was no TV, so when the BBC started broadcasting I suppose it made sense. Moving away from that seems to be difficult without them introducing advertising for live TV, which would be a quick fix, but that seems to be a diminishing market.

For streaming it's easy to manage.

tokai• 5 months ago

It's not an accident. Funding state media with a licence fee instead of from the taxes/state budget, makes it harder to exert political control over said state media.

nephihaha13• 5 months ago

No accident at all, in fact Lord Reith wanted the BBC to create the correct British values, i.e. to speak with a particular accent, to be loyal to the royal family and not to get involved in anything that was a threat to the system. The service was very much centred on London, with some paltry "regional" services.

The creation of ITV was supposed to provide an alternative, but was all too cosy and even today ITV pushes much the same programming as the BBC in outlook and news etc. The first real threat was pirate radio, which proved more popular than the BBC, and forced them to introduce Radio 1 for pop music.

Channel 4 was supposed to provide further competition, but in fact it was VCRs and video hire that really undermined the BBC's monopoly in the 80s. By the 90s, they were outclassed by satellite broadcasting (particularly sports and films). By the late 1990s, internet was breaking the state stranglehold on news and information... Leading to a crackdown in the 2010s with whatever scarestories they could come up with like cyberbullying, terrorism, pro-ana, porn etc.

Now the BBC are saying they want a fee for mobile phone and internet usage, although they haven't succeeded in that yet. Both of which are pretty much mandatory now.

nephihaha13• 5 months ago

You mean like digital ID? Don't worry, we'll all need it to watch screens soon.

In Turkey and Israel you need a licence for radios as well.

oxfordmale• 5 months ago

I am happy to pay for the BBC licence fee if they stop harassing old grannies.

SirFatty• 5 months ago

How about the young grannies?

nephihaha13• 5 months ago

I have not paid for the TV licence in over twenty years. I refuse to pay for state propaganda and repeats from forty or fifty years ago.

dmix• 5 months ago

the corporation said 94% of people in the UK continued to use the BBC each month, but fewer than 80% of households contributed to the licence fee.

That's a pretty good ratio no? Plenty of services survive with lower ratios than that. Do they really expect every household to pay? Or is the issue they have much bigger spending plans than they make from it.

pjc504• 5 months ago

They're legally require to do so! People are sent to jail for not paying the tax! https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/29/tv-licence-fee...

(what that stat actually means is that the missing 14% are pensioners who are exempt)

xvxvx• 5 months ago

Easy fix: make the BBC a paid subscription and let people choose.

PaulDavisThe1st11• 5 months ago

That is not part of the conception of the BBC as a social good, a non-commercial institution that provides value to the UK (and the world).

You can argue that this conception has to change, and that's fine. But the BBC was established by the UK government, with stated intentions and goals, and it currently isn't and never has been seen as a "pay-to-watch" sort of thing.

nephihaha13• 5 months ago

It may not be seen as "pay to watch", but that is effectively what it always has been. Back in the early days, that idea could be excused — because TV was basically them and ITV, and Channel 4 in the early eighties — since there was a good chance you'd be watching their content. Back in my childhood there were so few channels you could often guess what someone had watched the night before, and you would chat about it. Not anymore.

Since the emergence of VHS/DVDs, satellite television and the internet, their viewing share has reduced considerably. They've gone from being 2/3 of the available channels to 1/2, to about a dozen out of hundreds of channels.

Right now, more British under-30s are watching YouTube than the BBC, which has undermined their stranglehold on TV. Many people simply aren't watching the BBC at all. BBC3 is an attempt to appeal to the young, which has had mixed results. Many children simply don't watch BBC content anymore.

pjc504• 5 months ago

Personally I'd choose an arbitrary point like the year 2000, and split the BBC into "heritage" (nationalized body that holds all the archives, like the British Library or the British Museum), BBC Radio (taxpayer funded by DCMS, this is not very expensive) and "continuity TV" (commercial body that has to fund itself like any other).

This does mean Doctor Who getting split in half, but that's not the worst that's happened to him/her.

PaulDavisThe1st11• 5 months ago

BBC News?

yesfitz• 5 months ago

The BBC's Annual Plan for 2025/2026[1] is an interesting read.

They spend a lot of money (billions) on making and delivering content, but that's still not much compared to other large for-profit media companies[2].

The TV License has been the model since World War II[3], and the entire mass media landscape has completely changed since then.

The proposals to replace the TV License with ads or subscriptions are enshittification. The BBC is not a for-profit media company and should not be treated like one. It is a soft-power organization (cynically: propaganda arm) for the British government. There isn't anything inherently wrong with spreading your government's/culture's messages, especially when it's as obvious as the BBC, but it should not be expected to make money. How much is it worth that Britain stays relevant throughout the Anglosphere and beyond? Or that British points of view are available everywhere with a shortwave radio or VPN?

So fund it like it's defense spending. Maybe if the next leader of a foreign country has a fondness for Del Boy or Red Dwarf, negotiations will go a little more smoothly.

As an American, I think I'd prefer having an official propaganda arm like the BBC instead of whatever quiet public-private partnerships (cynically: backroom deals) we have instead. I'd hate it, but it'd be good to have something concrete to direct my criticism at, instead of constantly wondering if NPR is really presenting unbiased facts or the movie about our Navy jet fighters being the best, most freedom-loving planes flown by handsome rascals is just a good time.

1: https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/documents/bbc-annual-plan-...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Fox#

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...

ViktorRay• 5 months ago

The BBC operates independently of the UK government. It is an autonomous entity that is publicly funded. It is not a “propaganda arm” of the UK government in the manner of state television.

comrade1234• 5 months ago

I didn't pay the license fee here in Switzerland for a long time because I didn't have a tv or radio (I guess they didn't know about my car). In 2019 (I think) they just said 'fuck it, everyone pays' and changed it so you pay whether you have a tv or radio.

I could say that I don't watch Swiss tv but then the tv series Tschugger came out and made a few years of payments worth it. Otherwise it's just watching endless Jass (Swiss card game) tournaments.

mamonster• 5 months ago

Serafe is completely crazy. For business it's based on turnover, so every financial company gets screwed. And for students 300 CHF is half your semester cost if my memory serves me right.

rich_sasha• 5 months ago

People complain about the BBC's bias. And since everyone has a different idea of what "unbiased" looks like, it's almost impossible to please everyone.

But it struck me how few serious, general, global news outlets there are left in the world that aren't tied to some major interest. Fox News, CNN, WSJ... So much stuff is owned by Murdoch or by some other mogul. The Guardian is pretty good IMO but does not even pretend not to have a lefty skew.

I was thinking about the spiral of death that happens to so many media outlets where serious news doesn't pay the bills anymore, so they either have to rent themselves out to some deep pocket, or chase clicks for ads, losing veracity in the process.

BBC is one of the few organisations left that's somewhat immune to that. I won't claim all their stuff is unbiased, but they're just as likely to publish something left- as right-biased. So now I'm rooting for them and hope they make it. Apparently it is the second most trusted news source in the US, right after the Weather Channel. So truly a global phenomenon: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/52272-trust-in-media-2025-...

pjc504• 5 months ago

The news coverage is in general OK compared to commercial news, and especially to US propaganda outfits, but Channel 4 (also public sector) are also pretty good. The UK politics coverage is abysmal. They have become cautious stenographers and promoters of whichever party Farage is heading at the time. Not surprising when you see what happens to reporting that genuinely challenges power.

asplake• 5 months ago

Agree that Channel 4 is also pretty good, perhaps better even than the BBC for politics now. But so much UK politics coverage these days has moved to podcasts – some of them staffed by ex-BBC people.

nephihaha13• 5 months ago

BBC Question Time has been a joke for a while. One of the previous producers was actually busted for trying to source colourful characters for the audience, often from the far right or UKIP/Reform crew.

As I say above, apart from regional factors, the BBC has a built in bias against Scottish independence because it would lose 10% of its licence fee funding if it occurred.

nephihaha13• 5 months ago

The most obvious example of BBC bias (to me anyway) is their coverage of the British royal family. It is incredibly sycophantic. In fact, I notice they tried to bury the Andrew story on several occasions and it never went away.

They have an institutional bias against Scottish independence, since they would lose 10% of their funding if it occurred.

hyperman1• 5 months ago

I'd add Al Jazeera to decent media. They are heavily skewed about the middle east, and readonably neutral/disinterested for the rest of the world.

As a non muslim EU inhabitant, they tend to open the window where our media stay silent.

abanana• 5 months ago

The BBC continually tries to convince the government that their problems are due to illegal action that must be stopped.

They do everything in their power to distract from the real issue - that the landscape of television has changed beyond recognition since the tax was brought in.

It's completely clear to everybody that the TV licence is an outdated model that makes no sense in today's world of competing commercial streaming services, but they're desperate to control the narrative to avoid losing their income stream. Which is understandable I suppose, from their narrow point of view. But for the country's point of view, we need a politician with balls, to step up and reform the system. But I'm not sure those even exist anymore.

PaulDavisThe1st11• 5 months ago

The BBC obviously wants to avoid losing their income stream, and the current UK government has made clear verbal statements that they not only want the BBC to avoid losing their income stream but that they also want a change to a more sustainable and enforceable model for this. The BBC has not argued that the current license fee is the only model, but they have argued that if this is the model that is going to be used, something about it needs to change if they are to have the income stream that they need.

It also isn't clear to me that the TV license is an outdated model in entirety. The notion that a country would levy a fee on more or less any instance of an activity in order to fund a non-commercial institution related to that activity doesn't seem strange to me at all. What is true is that the nature of the activity and the enforceability of the fee have both changed, and that therefore something probably does need to be done.

nephihaha13• 5 months ago

They will probably end up following the Australian model where it is funded directly by taxation. Of course this will undermine the BBC's supposed quasi-independence.

The BBC is ridiculously slow to pick up on trends. BBC pop radio (Radio 1) only came in as a response to pirate radio. Its streaming services aren't as good as they could be, and they have the double paradox of showing the same content over and over (such as "Dad's Army" made before I was born), while keeping a lot of classic content unavailable.

tw852• 5 months ago

This thread is quite eye opening. A lot of comments bemoaning the lack of agreement on what constitutes bias, mixed with claims the BBC is right wing and even a Nigel Farage fluffer (that's a howler). I didn't see anyone mention that, just a couple months back, two very high profile BBCers were forced to resign over the doctoring of Trump's Jan. 6 speech to completely alter its meaning. That simply doesn't happen unless it's a very serious scandal.

BBC says 'irreversible' trends mean it will not survive without major overhaul

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