The BBC's initial reaction to competition, when I was young, was to destroy it using the organisation's privileged broadcasting power. Thus was the entire Anglian region under 25 years old converted to Radio Caroline, the plucky gang on the trawler just beyond the UK 3-mile limit that broadcast defiance to the authoritarian BBC. Of course the organisation could not maintain a broadcasting oligopoly as technology advanced; demands for bits of the FM spectrum from a multitude of independent radio stations, the rise of analogue satellite TV and video rental. The BBC fought a rearguard action with some success until the internet came along. Then it was all over.
The BBC has been a long time dying. Its demise was on the cards, according to Parkinson's law, when it spent hundreds of millions on swish new headquarters, studios and executive office refurbishment. Big beasts take a long time to fall, and the BBC may still be with us after the next Charter renewal in 2027, but the era of expansion and an ever-increasing TV tax enforced through criminal law is coming to an end.
The Prime Minister clearly has a strategy. First, de-criminalise non-payment of the TV tax. This doesn't mean, as some MSM commenters have assumed, that payment would be voluntary - only that recovery would become a civil, not criminal matter. The 180,000 people every year hitherto prosecuted by the BBC in the magistrates' court would in future be defendants in the county court. As many of these simply can't afford the TV tax, the BBC has been happy until now to land them with a criminal conviction and fine, including the compulsory £15 'victim surcharge'. Those paying it are often foodbank users - the prosecutor is a £4bn a year behemoth. Just who is the victim here?
Using bailiffs or other recovery methods to enforce county court judgements for such low value debts will clearly challenge the BBC. TV footage of bailiffs seizing the pathetic belongings of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society (obviously this will not be shown on the BBC ...) will further turn the public against the broadcaster; cameras are banned from the magistrates courts, so their vindictiveness is currently hidden.
I expect there will be some sort of eminent, independent cross-party review of the Charter and its irrelevance in an age of digital diversity. There will be fudges and special interests will be accommodated. Expensive and unwieldy compromises will be enacted. It will take time. But this is the beginning of the end for the BBC as it is now, and the impact of its fall will smash the chains as effectively as did Stalin's gigantic statues when they toppled.
You really might enjoy this - Boris' final election video
24 comments:
Yes, a clever ad and I expect Richard Curtis and Wanker Hugh will be spitting tacks. Shame they had to spoil it with the politically correct mixed-race relationship propaganda which currently features in virtually every TV ad.
Nice to see that, once again, Boris is taking his policy lead from Nigel and the Reformers :)
The day that the establishment starts to eat itself, I will buy a hat, and contemplate eating it.
Satellite has given us so much more choice - and even the much praised documentaries became also-rans when they focused on kamikaze walrus and runt/geriatric polar bears. NHK IMO beats them on quality, subject matter and most crucially, narration (given that Attenborough has the usual age related speech issues).
Impartial reporting, speed of delivery, butts on the ground is Aljazera, with them and CGTV concentrating on areas the BBC deems inconsequential. Press TV reports on our system failures and - perversely - acts to enable several independent producers.
As you say, the Internet has spawned a multitude of alt media platforms, so allowing contrarians like myself to contribute on subjects the MSM either ignore, or deem unworthy.
The rise of the blog space, sott and LiveLeak is because they're driven by ordinary people, frequently for no financial reward. It is very empowering.
All of these Tory poll taxes should go.
The Licence Fee, the rail user paying the privateers' franchises for them on getting to work, Council Tax - it still is, in essence - and all the rest.
Public spending should generally be funded by progressive taxation.
The BBC has never been independent, and it is constructive to pretend that it is.
@JPM
You should be careful about what you wish for. 'Nationalise' the railways, pay for local services through national taxation (completely rather than partially as at present) and pay for the BBC through national taxation... and you shift any possibility of local control beyond your grasp. One size will fit all, and if you don't like it there is no alternative, no economic or democratic control beyond voting for Big Brother.
Cheese is a middle class Marxist scumbag. The ONLY freedom he wants for you is the freedom to obey Commissar's orders. All tax is theft anyway.
It is now a 2 horse race. Even if Blojo MIGHT try to cheat on the FTA--we can force him to do a decent deal. Because--unlike the vile Jizz Corbyn --he can not create 4 million new fake voters to destroy democracy.
VOTE TORY TO GET BREXIT AND BREAK LEFTIST SCUM LIKE CHEESE.
It's interesting that no one ever mentions the racist far-left bbc's commercial arm that brings in billions each year from worldwide sales of their crap and propaganda.
I hope that sooner rather than later the racist far-left bbc is forced to adopt a subscription based form of funding but it won't cause their demise unfortunately.
TV broadcasting will simply waste out.
My 15 year old son NEVER EVER switches the thing on. Neither, I gather, do any of his cohort.
They communicate instantly through their SM. Within five minutes past midnight on his last birthday he had received 94 Instagram messages from mates all over the world.
As he matures politically he will regard the sight of tired a old hack standing in the rain outside a hospital at 11pm desperately looking for something new to say as faintly puzzling.
Eee, I don't know.
Labour were kind to all the education-immune low-life in the 1960s and 1970s with benefits and housing, and they have now multiplied to the point where, when they vote, you get exactly the sort of country that you would expect.
If things don't change, then they'll have to stay as they are...
It'll be a LONG time before the BBC are ever forced to take subscriptions. The 'public' broadcast media has always been a political tool for the incumbent party (or opposition) and their bias on subjects that promote a Globalist position is both very evident and despicable.
If Boris does anything at all he could at least force some form of route to punishment/compensation on the BBC for their transgressions.
Ever tried to complain about their output? Total waste of time and effort regardless of the validity of your claim. The BBC clearly abuse their Charter and the repercussions?? NONE.
If ANY viewer has cause to complain about BBC bias, error or obfuscation they should, BY LAW, be prevented from prosecution for non-payment of licence fee until the matter has been resolved. This is why I don't pay the licence fee.
I've written to the BBC on numerous occasions about their bias and even demanded they sue me in court as I want the opportunity to call for 'discovery' and will cite the Balen Report as evidence.
In a 'proper' court of law the BBC wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Hope you all noticed the hit on Boris yesterday? Brandishing a photo of a little boy in distress our esteemed broadcasters took turns to wallop the PM over 'failures in the NHS' - Tory failures mind you because they didn't want the NHS back in 1948. Did you see it? The BBC 6 o'clock news: first 10 minutes entirely devoted to it. Ditto ITV at 6:30. This comes after Marr's Freudian "we're moving in the right direction" from the previous week. There are literally hundreds of examples every year. We know it, they know it so why argue about it. Like some abused wife who despite being slapped around stays with her husband we too hang in there, hoping things will improve one day. It never does of course. It only gets worse. We're in an abusive relationship with our broadcasters and we have to leave. The question now is where do we go?
Steve
Sorry folks, but I'm a fan of the BBC. Much of its drama, documentary output and some of its comedy is world class; and I've even become a fan of Strictly Come Dancing! Regardless of how it is funded, the fee is money well spent when compared to a Sky or Netflix subscription.
The BBC's political shows and its the news output are easily avoided but I doubt if they unduly influence viewers anyway. Bias is all around us and we've become immune to it.
Dave, no need to apologise, it's fine that you enjoy the BBC. And as you like it I'm sure you are quite happy to pay for it.
I on the other hand do not watch or listen to the BBC and really *really* resent having to pay for it.
So the solution is simple - let those who want it, pay for it. And those that don't, don't.
After all, I don't expect you to chip-in for my Netflix subs :o)
The point about al BBC is that it operates under a charter which specifically requires it to be impartial and it pointedly and deliberately refuses. This alone is reason to stop taxpayer funding.
And it's not just the insanely biased propaganda it laughably calls "news" or political coverage.
Even the one thing it does supremely well, its wildlife documentaries, are riddled with "climatethought".
It has nakedly biased and racist recruitment.
I could go on. Unfortunately it will.
Fairly predictable how Boris' Love Actually is going to end.
Some good old fashioned public-school trouser dropping and bending over to agent Orange.
Dream on Annonymarx.
Dave @ 12:51
"The BBC's political shows and its the news output are easily avoided but I doubt if they unduly influence viewers anyway. Bias is all around us and we've become immune to it."
Then you are part of the problem! Just look at the numbers of how many people get their main news from one or more of the BBC outlets. It is up in the 60-70%. To say they do good comedy/drama/docuemntary so it's all Ok is to forgive a mass muerderer because he gives a lot to charity.
Just as a simple and quite 'innocuous' example of the ingrained bias, the news last night at six (probably a regional version as I was in A&E in a northern town) they ahd a summary of the blue, red and yellow NHS policies; sub titles were on but the speech subtitles for the blue policies completely obscured the actual 'pop-up banners' with the text of the policies on (this is the fault of the sub-titling, not the BBC surely I hear you say??) yet the red and yellow the sub-titles did not obscure the actual words on screen...these things are easily avoidable but they are not avoided.
Dave
The BBC's bias infects almost all its output from quiz shows, comedies, dramas... Whenever there is a trailer for a new BBC drama series I have a bet with myself how easy it will be to spot the agenda. It's almost always apparent within even a 15 second span.
Classics are rewritten to conform to "2019 Yo!" and history distorted.
According to BBC drama, when I was growing up I was surrounded by black people, no one smoked and women were doing all the important and glamorous jobs.
Curiously, I remember never meeting a black person until I went to college at 18, that for an adult not to smoke was a sign of oddness and that, out of a class of more than 20, only one of our mothers worked. I must be wrong apparently.
@Mr Ecks .... "Dream on ..."
It very much looks like you enjoy that kind of subjugation. It is deeply unpleasant to the wider population.
Replying to DeeDee99:
"Shame they had to spoil it with the politically correct mixed-race relationship propaganda which currently features in virtually every TV ad."
That's exactly why they put it in. The whole thing is a parody of the typical TV ad.
A very neat piece of work, I think.
Don Cox
@DeeDee99
"Shame they had to spoil it with the politically correct mixed-race relationship propaganda which currently features in virtually every TV ad."
Perhaps... but if you look for the Carol Singers 'Love, Actually' clip on YouTube you will find the original couple on the couch were in a mixed race relationship too. So perhaps 'Brexit, Actually' was striving to minimise the difference in setting to emphasise the message on the cards?
It still made me smile.
DJ
Thanks for that information.
Helped greatly as I have never (and never will) seen the film!
@ Anonymous 12:38
It's just history repeating itself, do you not remember labour and "Jenifers ear".
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