8. How should the BBC be funded beyond 2016?

[Beef Oven!]

An appropriate sum would be added to every taxpayer's tax bill: just as the ordinary taxpayer foots the bill for jobseeker's allowance, the NHS, national defence, the Iraq war &c &c.

The exchequer doesn't have any money except what is paid in through taxes - general (personal) taxation, VAT, corporation tax, capital gains tax ...

The advantages of this are:

1) that TV Licensing - and the collection costs associated with it - are abolished.

2) Every taxpayer contributes a proportionate sum, rather than one member of the household paying and the rest having the service free. This increases the number of people paying (I think it would be from c 25m to c 30m), with each paying a sum proportionate to taxable income rather than everyone paying the same amount regardless of income.

It also means that people like me who don't have a TV and therefore have no licence would also chip in our share, according to our means, just as we chip in for locally funded and nationally funded services that we shan't use.

I would have an independent supervisory body that would set the amount that the BBC should receive annually/every five or ten years (as the government does now) and ideally it should stipulate the amount that should be allocated by the BBC towards the kind of public service programming as aeolium refers to, rather than have the BBC starving some areas of funding in order to splash out on popular entertainment to attract a big audience. At present, the feel 'obliged' to do this because many licence fee payers won't watch the BBC if they don't and will moan even more about paying the licence fee for programmes they don't watch.

In fact, with the right conditions, I think this is the system I would favour.

So it is going to be a burden on the exchequer and another bashing for the tax-payer!

I don't know whether the argument is more disingenuous than it is unimaginative.

[aeolium]

People don't like advertising? People don't like paying for things either! Not sure this point really says anything.

Actually the point here was not so much about what people like or don't like as the fact that people don't like advertising leads them to find ways not to watch it, and technology is helping them. That doesn't bode well in the long run for the advertising industry (or for any service wholly dependent on advertising).

There is also another point against advertising. It is not, as some people imagine, cost-free so that someone else is always paying. Everyone ultimately pays for advertising in the increased price of goods and services. Lots of people would be paying for the extra £3 bn or so that would be loaded onto advertising to replace the licence fee.

I think the Telegraph poll about how many people would like to get rid of the licence fee and replace it with advertising simply shows that if people are offered a choice in which one alternative is for them to pay less for a service they are very likely to choose it, especially if they don't have to think hard about the consequences.

[Beef Oven!]

Actually the point here was not so much about what people like or don't like as the fact that people don't like advertising leads them to find ways not to watch it, and technology is helping them. That doesn't bode well in the long run for the advertising industry (or for any service wholly dependent on advertising).

There is also another point against advertising. It is not, as some people imagine, cost-free so that someone else is always paying. Everyone ultimately pays for advertising in the increased price of goods and services. Lots of people would be paying for the extra £3 bn or so that would be loaded onto advertising to replace the licence fee.

I think the Telegraph poll about how many people would like to get rid of the licence fee and replace it with advertising simply shows that if people are offered a choice in which one alternative is for them to pay less for a service they are very likely to choose it, especially if they don't have to think hard about the consequences.

Choice? Ok. how do we opt out (or to use ff lexicon, chip-out).

[french frank]

So it is going to be a burden on the exchequer and another bashing for the tax-payer!

I don't know whether the argument is more disingenuous than it is unimaginative.

The 'bashing' for the taxpayer is offset by the abolition of the annual licence fee and since there are more taxpayers than licence fee payers the annual payment would be smaller. It's just that the freeloaders would now have to pay to ensure that sum was smaller for the individual. Which seems fair to me.

On TV advertising revenue: in 2007 it amounted in total to about £4.7bn but crashed in 2009. So if the BBC entered that market the available revenue would have to near double. With the current struggle to raise the necessary amounts, it is hardly likely that the market would find twice the amount overnight.

[french frank]

Choice? Ok. how do we opt out (or to use ff lexicon, chip-out).

The same way as you opt out of not paying for the Iraq war.

[aeolium]

I would have an independent supervisory body that would set the amount that the BBC should receive annually/every five or ten years (as the government does now) and ideally it should stipulate the amount that should be allocated by the BBC towards the kind of public service programming as aeolium refers to, rather than have the BBC starving some areas of funding in order to splash out on popular entertainment to attract a big audience. At present, they feel 'obliged' to do this because many licence fee payers won't watch the BBC if they don't, and will moan even more about paying the licence fee for programmes they don't watch.

I generally agree with this, with the exception of the periodic subsidy grant. I can foresee problems with pressure being mounted on the supervisory body whenever the grant allocation date approached, especially in times of recession and austerity programmes. I would rather have the funding levels incorporated into the charter governing the BBC as a percentage of overall public spending (based on, e.g. an average from the last 20 years); in that way, PSB spending would rise and fall with the level of overall spending.

[Beef Oven!]

The same way as you opt out of not paying for the Iraq war.

Answer the question please, it's a serious and important one.

You talk about paying 'our share', so maybe your argument is not honest concerning 'chipping in' or out - we have to pay.

But it's not really 'our share' is it? It's the tax-payer you're interested in.

The non-tax-payer can happily 'chip-out' of the Iraq war, can't they?

[french frank]

Answer the question please, it's a serious and important one.

You talk about paying 'our share', so maybe your argument is not honest concerning 'chipping in' or out - we have to pay.

But it's not really 'our share' is it? It's the tax-payer you're interested in.

The non-tax-payer can happily 'chip-out' of the Iraq war, can't they?

I thought it was an answer: the taxpayer can't opt out of many government-imposed taxes. Yes, it's the taxpayer I'm 'interested' in, because on the whole the non-taxpayers are those on very low incomes. My alternative would be a licence fee (with all the problems that causes) linked to income so that those on benefit of any kind (not just the over 75s) would have free licences. If free bus passes - which those in work and paying tax pay for, and can't opt out of - why not free TV licences?

PS I am a taxpayer.

[Beef Oven!]

I thought it was an answer: the taxpayer can't opt out of many government-imposed taxes. Yes, it's the taxpayer I'm 'interested' in, because on the whole the non-taxpayers are those on very low incomes. My alternative would be a licence fee (with all the problems that causes) linked to income so that those on benefit of any kind (not just the over 75s) would have free licences. If free bus passes - which those in work and paying tax pay for, and can't opt out of - why not free TV licences?

PS I am a taxpayer.

Can't you think of anything else beyond adding the cost of the BBC to the exchequer and tax-payer?

Adding yet another benefit to the benefits package, why? Doesn't seem to make any sense.

A ride on the bus, 2 stops to my local Morrisons and back for my groceries costs £2.80. A packet of cigarettes is about £7.80, a pint of beer is about £3.40. A £150 p.a. licence works out to £2.87 per week!!!!

Linking the license to economic class, low pay etc is as irrelevant as it is melodramatic. Now come on, let's get this subject out of lazy arm-chair socialism and get it back on track.

P.S. I assumed that you are a tax-payer - so what?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well the taxpayer always pays and is always ripped off; imv such considerations are not relevant ....

is an independent and multi channel/platform BBC is an unalloyed benefit to the whole society? a license fee avoids political interference that is so much easier via the exchequer .... a license fee can be set at a current rate [£150 looks good eh] and can then be maintained at a given ration to a specified parameter of personal incomes [x% of the median income or y% of the lowest decile] to keep it cheap and affordable and lerft that way for a very long time ... if it is not an unalloyed benefit to the whole society a subscription base is likely the most suitable answer ... with free to air news channel .... [but funded by tax]

we should not let the politicians forget that they are a menace, [Mr Schapps eh?] just as much as the BC management is evasive and greedy on recent form

the difficulty is that no one in power of any kind can be trusted not to lie cheat steal or worse in our Hanoverian pig swill of a nation .......

[french frank]

Can't you think of anything else beyond adding the cost of the BBC to the exchequer and tax-payer?

Adding yet another benefit to the benefits package, why? Doesn't seem to make any sense. [...] Linking the license to economic class, low pay etc is as irrelevant as it is melodramatic.

End of discussion, then, as I think it relevant.

[french frank]

So, aka, what is your preferred method? The licence fee certainly didn't avoid political interference last time : it clobbered the BBC.

[Ed: In fact it was George Osborne's Spending Review of 2010 which handed over responsibility for funding the World Service (and S4C) to the BBC/licence fee payer. And also froze the licence fee for 6 years, which I think you might call 'political interference.]

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

what i indicated above; a license fee of £150 tied to personal incomes so that it is inflation proofed in the long term .... but, and it is a big but, i would want to see a much more trustworthy Trust and Independence; far less entertainment on the BBC and far more 'serious' programming tied in to the Universities as NPR is in the USA ... i would ban the BBC from basing any strategy on demographic analyses so that programmes were not targeted at age groups or social classes and i would close down Radio 1 on principle; slim down BBC1 and R2 considerably and boost the other channels, regional and serious programming substantially .... then it might be the BBC!

i would want to see a lot more radical programming by young talent as well ... [untrammelled by committee structures that rival the celestial palace for profoundness of complex inertia and reverberations of millennial wavelengths with utterances of self serving jargon and managerial creed] ... lean mean and interesting to know ...

but fat chance eh?

[RobertLeDiable]

Interesting discussion. I would be very wary of funding by taxation. We currently have a government that is bent on 'shrinking the state' and taking publicly funded services back to the levels of 1948 so asking the tax payer to contribute to new services is hardly likely to appeal to them. In any case whether or not the government is still Tory when the licence fee comes up, the last thing we want is a BBC that is completely at any government's mercy and which can decide for us exactly what 'public service' should mean. It's not an accident that the public service broadcasting systems most respected for their impartiality in Europe are licence fee funded.

As for subscription - anyone who seriously believes that a Radio 3 or a Radio 4 as we currently know them could be funded on that basis is in cloud cuckoo land. You would end up with the pathetic shadow of PSB that they have in the States - basically a Classic FM without commercial adverts, but with frequent pleas for donations. And you could say goodbye to the BBC orchestras, which I might remind you constitute around a third of the UK's symphony orchestras.

The licence fee is still the best option, even if justifying it in an increasingly hostile climate will be difficult.

I would just add that those who think the BBC should be divested of 'popular' programming should reflect that even in the 1930s, Lord Reith recognised that 'light entertainment' had to be part of the mix in order to maintain the support of the widest range of licence fee payers. And he was one of the most vehement opposers of the introduction of a specialist 'high brow' channel in the shape of the Third Programme.

[aeolium]

In any case whether or not the government is still Tory when the licence fee comes up, the last thing we want is a BBC that is completely at any government's mercy and which can decide for us exactly what 'public service' should mean.

But that is precisely what can happen under the present system. It is the current Coalition government that has "negotiated" an effective 20% real-time reduction in the licence fee - the BBC Trust and management had no real say in it. In what way is this different from cutting funding under a general taxation system? And any government is perfectly at liberty to initiate a review into what constitutes public service broadcasting before the BBC Charter comes up for renewal.

For me the inequities in licence fee funding are a killer for the BBC and that is why every recent survey has shown big differences in support for the licence fee in ABC social groups compared with DE groups (much higher in the former). Obviously the licence fee system is good for those who are reasonably well off or richer and not good for the poor. Ultimately it means support is gradually being eroded from the BBC, especially as the BBC becomes one provider among many in a digital world.

In any case, my proposal for changing the basis to PSB funding by general taxation would operate under a protected formula whereby funding was guaranteed to be a set percentage of overall spending, averaged over 5 years, so that it would rise (or fall) in line with overall public spending. This spending formula would be underpinned by a Charter which - as with the recent press regulation charter - would require a substantial majority (like 66%) in Parliament to amend. I think this would better protect BBC funding than the current system and be fairer in being linked to ability to pay - as well as resulting in the abolition of the wasteful licence fee collection system and the clogging up of courts with non-payment cases.