BBC Self Link? Charter Renewal and the Future of Auntie

May 12, 2016 7:22 AM

The BBC must put "distinctive content" at its heart, Culture Secretary John Whittingdale has said. It is part of a major overhaul of how the BBC is run, which has been unveiled by the government. The licence fee will continue for at least 11 years and will be linked to inflation - and viewers will need to pay it to use BBC iPlayer. Mr Whittingdale made clear he was "emphatically not saying the BBC should not be popular".

(Comments worth reading, though they tend to range wildly; sort by most popular to get the best view of what viewers are saying.)

posted by marienbad (21 comments total)

There is a word (used often in the UK) that I would use to describe Whittingdale, but you are not allowed to say it on here, so I won't.
posted by marienbad at 7:22 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

How will the iPlayer change affect people outside Britain who listen to BBC radio programmes online, I wonder? That BBC service is branded as "iPlayer Radio", but all the White Paper coverage I've seen so far concentrates on television alone.
posted by Paul Slade at 7:30 AM on May 12, 2016

I knew nothing about license fees so I went where you go when you want to know something, and the Wikipedia article about enforcement is so detailed and so weirdly hilarious that I'm starting to think Monty Python was a documentary.

Is the BBC in fact a cover for a program of total employment of silly detectives?
posted by selfnoise at 7:30 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Presumably this is why they brought the editorial position of the news department in line with that if the Daily Telegraph.
posted by Grangousier at 7:31 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

As someone in America who sometimes will stream the BBC live (mostly only when there's a British election), I wonder how this will affect me? Are they going to ask for your TV license details, like a login? Right now you just get a stern warning about needing to have one.
posted by Automocar at 7:33 AM on May 12, 2016

So the Government has largely backed down. Of course, Polls show most over-60s don’t trust Tories’ plans for changes to the broadcaster’s charter, and since the over-60s vote Tory (and crucially vote at all) then that's sensible of them.
posted by alasdair at 7:50 AM on May 12, 2016

I knew nothing about license fees so I went where you go when you want to know something, and the Wikipedia article about enforcement is so detailed and so weirdly hilarious that I'm starting to think Monty Python was a documentary.

Funny you should mention it...
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:58 AM on May 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

This article doesn't mention that the plans include the shuttering of the BBC Food recipes site, which has got most of my friends extremely riled.
posted by fight or flight at 7:59 AM on May 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

So the Government has largely backed down.

This is the thing. The reforms announced will annoy BBC supporters, yet they go nowhere near satisfying BBC opponents. I don't understand.

I hardly watch or listen to anything telly or radio, so I don't feel invested in the debate. But I do think that the licence fee will be increasingly outdated and that the government should have attempted something. Maybe proposals which are pro-BBC but still look to a long run future without the licence fee. I don't know what that would like though.
posted by Emma May Smith at 8:16 AM on May 12, 2016

Requiring a licence fee for iPlayer makes economic sense, as otherwise the fee becomes a tax on late adopters. I just hope that they have some kind of day-pass system for light viewers.
posted by acb at 8:26 AM on May 12, 2016

£145 a year for ad-free TV sounds like a bargain. I think the BBC is fighting an uphill battle on this one, just like paywalled newspapers & DRM enthusiasts, but they're not wrong about the pricing.
posted by chavenet at 8:41 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

"The Government therefore welcomes the BBC's intention to explore whether additional revenue could be raised at home or abroad from additional subscription services, sitting alongside the core universal fee.

Seriously, get on this, BBC types.
I already give PBS a yearly fee. I'd happily give you one as well if it meant I didn't have to jump through a bunch of VPN hoops just to watch iplayer.
posted by madajb at 8:46 AM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

Also, how did CBeebies fair?
Some of the folks I follow on Twitter were quite concerned about drastic changes/cuts in the programming.
posted by madajb at 8:48 AM on May 12, 2016

> shuttering of the BBC Food recipes site

That's absolutely ridiculous, it takes almost zero maintenance and is easily one of the best online sources of recipes. Fuck's sake.
posted by lucidium at 9:13 AM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

I already give PBS a yearly fee. I'd happily give you one as well if it meant I didn't have to jump through a bunch of VPN hoops just to watch iplayer.

I'm in the US and would cheerfully pay a license fee to watch iPlayer, better than hoping stuff doesn't get blocked from YouTube or trying to maintain a ratio. BBC's earned my dollars, just charge me already.
posted by davros42 at 9:16 AM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

couldn't you just fund the BBC outright with a tax on unoccupied flats in London?
posted by ennui.bz at 10:04 AM on May 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

Anecdote Filter: I walked into the Shepard's Bush BBC location in 1995, looking to buy my dad a BBC mug or a tie as an American broadcasting joke, and the giant security guard looked at me like I was a dog speaking French, called a nice PR-ish woman over and had to explain in simple terms to me that they didn't have a gift shop.

I now take sole responsibility for the BBC's gift shop.
posted by Sphinx at 10:07 AM on May 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

I still think pay per view executions are the answer.
posted by vbfg at 10:16 AM on May 12, 2016

That's absolutely ridiculous, it takes almost zero maintenance and is easily one of the best online sources of recipes. Fuck's sake.

Auntie's online efforts have been on the chopping block before in this sort of situation, to show willingness on the Beeb's part to take whichever government's concerns about how it has lost its focus or is too competitive with commercial interests seriously. Closee down some subsites or initiatives that nobody (for certain values of nobody) cares about and you can placate some of the critics while also mobilising your allies worried about your spinelessness.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:19 AM on May 12, 2016

I got a visit from a TV detective when I lived in the UK. He was polite but it was silly. He said "You don't pay the TV license fee" and I said "I don't watch live TV" and he said "We will send you harassing letters forever if you don't let me see that your TV has no antenna." and I thought about it and said "OK take a look" and he did and then checked a box on his clipboard form and I never heard a peep again for the next 3 years.

The dumb part is that I would have happily paid the license fee even without using live TV, because I believe in the idea of the BBC, if I could download it to my modded Xbox or whatever devices I wanted but at that time the officially allowed options were iPhone or fuck off and that shattered my apparently fragile idealism. So I fucked off, used getiplayer and had 150 more quid for the pub.
posted by srboisvert at 12:54 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

I still think pay per view executions are the answer.

Well, this turned into Black Mirror very quickly.

Something Something prime minister something pig.
posted by Mezentian at 8:56 PM on May 13, 2016