The Television license fee, like the poll tax, is a flat rate fee. Richard Branson pays as much as a family of unemployed Dockers in Liverpool. There are some pathetic variations (about £8 off if you're blind, nothing to pay if you're over 75), but basically each household hands over its hundred quid a year. What do we get in return?
Well, the most important thing we get for our money is the right to watch commercial television. That's right, free channels cannot be viewed unless you have a license fee. In fact, premium channels, such as FilmFour also require their viewers to be license-holders. It is technically possible to modify a television so it can't receive the terrestial signals, the only way of exempting yourself from paying, but to my knowledge only one person out of 60 million has done this. And he had to go to court to uphold his position.
The BBC itself has two main channels, and several cable and digital ones. BBC 1 & 2 come with the license fee, as do (for Digital viewers) BBC NEWS 24, BBC PARLIAMENT, BBC CHOICE, BBC FOUR, CBBC, CBEEBIES and the interactive stuff with BBCi. BBC1 is the down-market populist channel, which pays vast fees to badly-regarded celebs such as Jim Davidson, Nick Berry and Gabby Roslin, amongst others. Most of the stuff on this channel is exactly the same as the stuff on ITV and even Sky One, with the exception that you don't get advert breaks.
BBC2 is an up-market, "quality" channel for the more discerning viewer. As such, it shows programmes that are pretty interesting, but the commercially funded competitor Channel 4 does the same thing only tons better. BBC2 show contempt for it's audience for all but its flagship programmes. Take BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER for instance. This has short runs which are split up arbitrarily by the obviously disinterested controller, who frequently interrupts even these for weeks at time to make way for such treats as "European Ice Skating." This is not a new phenomena, as fans of QUANTUM LEAP will testify. Whereas Sky One shows newer episodes of BUFFY in the same slot week in week out. Sky One treats its viewers with
The minority channels are a rather sinister attempt to shore up the Beeb's position as the broadcasting landscape eventually moves past terrestrial analogue into a bright, shiny digital future. Assuming that this new order ever stops wrecking lower league football clubs and actually takes off properly, we will end up with a competitor to Channel 5 in BBC CHOICE, all the decent stuff from BBC2 buried in the BBC4 graveyard, Sky News only cheaper, and the Tweenies 24/7. Hardly what Lord Reith set out to achieve all those years ago! Furthermore, the BBC's website is the most popular in Europe, and in many ways excellent, but way beyond their remit and another example of spending public money to maintain what is little more than a self-perpetuating media empire.
Some viewers might point to the high Quality "costume" dramas that the BBC often makes as evidence that there is a reason for the BBC to exist in it's present form. These people probably don't read very much, or they would notice that the corporation repeatedly reduces great works of literature to middle-class whimsy, goes OTT with the sets and costumes, then gets a variety of co-producers to foot the not inconsiderable bill. Take WIVES AND DAUGHTERS or the oft-repeated PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Could this kind of thing, made after all with an international market in mind, really not be produced commercially?
Well, ITV could probably do it better, in fact. OLIVER TWIST at least has a proper writer to justify it's existence, and adaptations of MOLL FLANDERS, THE FORSYTE SAGA and JANE EYRE have been artistic and ratings successes. True, ITV have financial problems so have been skimping on this recently, but generally their track record is okay. Channel 4 have got WHITE TEETH just starting, and have a history of quality adaptations like THE CAMOMILE LAWN and A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME that aren't paid for by Joe Public.
The commercial channels are out to make money, of course, and this should be the difference between them and the BBC. But it certainly is not. The BBC is if anything greedier and more ashamedly Thatcherite in it's financial dealing than any of Britain's other broadcasters. It has pay-channels – UK GOLD, UK STYLE, UK PLAY, UK ARENA, UK HORIZONS are all part-owned by the Beeb - so you pay them to make the shows and then you pay them so you can watch them. This is even more ridiculous when you consider the DVD and video sales operation. How can they charge for a tape of DOCTOR WHO, for instance, when we paid for the show to be made, it was widely loved and in any rational system would have been able to stop the men in suits from unjustifiably cancelling it?
They can do it because they can do anything. The BBC is not accountable to license payers. It's provides jobs for untalented Oxbridge types and it provides programmes aimed at no one in particular, save perhaps a few PBS executives. It does nothing that couldn't be done anyway and it costs far too much.
In the digital age where channels can be paid for or not, ordered or cancelled at will, the BBC cannot be justified. We at GCUK have no objections to the BBC continuing, but we are adamant that it must only be funded by those that want it and that can afford to pay. Unfortunately this is not the prevailing view amongst Tessa Jowell and her cronies in the Department of Culture. The Secretary of State has gone on record as saying that she cannot envisage any other method of funding the BBC than the license fee in its current form. Keep in mind, though, that this is a Ministry of Political Failures, already wiped out once after the 2001 General Election (remember Chris Smith anyone?) and responsible for such national disgraces as the Dome, Wembley Stadium redevelopment, Athletics World Championship debacle, Wobbly Bridge etc., etc., etc....
One of the first things we did at Garbled was to advocate the abolition of the Telly Poll Tax. Three years on and nothing has changed our mind. Please put your opinion on the forum and sign our petition for the abolition of the licence fee and let us know whether this is a crusade in need of pursuing or a folly best consigned to the dustbin of webzine history, along with Say It Like It Is...
Chris Denton.
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