Cuts at the BBC

Auntie’s razor

The BBC gives up trying to please everyone

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Readers' comments


Samantha White

You can't please everyone. That goes for life and business. Each company has it's own beliefs and with that being said they should focus on those. If you don't get an approval rating from everyone who cares. Just make sure that the people you do get an approval rating from are staying interested and you are keeping them in check.


So, if I understand this article correctly, Britain uses a TV tax to raise revenue? Interesting. The initial reaction to most Americans, myself included, is mistrust and questioning the legitimacy of such a revenue source, but really, is it less legitimate than a tax on income? Economically speaking, a TV tax would have far less effect on incentives for production, which would be beneficial. There is the possibility that people will substitute away from TV consumption, but that seems unlikely given the current state of affairs. And if they did, would that really be bad? Perhaps Britain should use the licence fee for general revenue generation.


It is never possible to please every demographic, and BBC has done a fair job in trying to do so. There will never be such thing as a network that will be able to accomplish that, but BBC should be commended for their efforts to try and do so. However, BBC should not receive government funding seeing that it is not an absolute necessary entity in the UK. Were BBC to no longer exist, the world would still turn, and culture would continue to chug on regardless. BBC has become an important filament in every day life for Brits, but that does not mean it is irreplaceable.


CA-Oxonian has got it spot-on. If the BBC is going to provide the same lowbrow stuff as the commercial channels, there is no point in having it.

hikeandski makes the case against his own views perfectly - if the American-system results in people believing that global warming isn't happening, it is clearly inadequate and socially irresponsible on a huge scale. We need a responsible, high quality BBC to be the impartial voice of reason which the commercial sector fails to provide.

Retaining radio 4 intact is a good move but surely radios 1 & 2 and BBC3 could have been sacrificed in order to preserve BBC4.


The BBC has been trying to unsuccessfully fly under the radar with these ridiculous TV taxes. At the same time stretching themselves to thin trying to satisfy the masses. They need to get back to their roots and present unbiased news and programs. The TV License payers are funding the top players in the companies salaries, even Mark Thompson the Director General of the BBC said "The BBC is 'awash in a jacuzzi' of cash".


The BBC should not be funded by government at all. It should be funded by private donations much like public radio in the USA. The BBC does not provide full true and plain disclosure in its operations. It provides a lying, biased, misleading source of information and interviews. A good example is its broadcasting on the subject of "CO2 causes global warming". It gives unfettered and uncontradicting support to supporters of the IPCC theory and no support and contradicting interviews to any skeptic it allows on its system.


The poor BBC has always struggled to satisfy opposing requirements dictated by fuzzy-thinking politicians. The only point of having a state-supported content creator/distributor is to provide content that would not otherwise be provided by the private sector yet which is believed to be socially important. This would imply the creation and delivery of thoughtful content - what the article refers to as "highbrow" programming. But... because everyone pays for the BBC through the so-called license fee, there's a contradictory belief that "lowbrow" (mass market) programming must also be provided. Yet there's plenty of lowbrow mass market programming being provided by commercial vendors and it's not obvious that the world needs more of the same.

So the first step to enabling serious cost control would be for politicians to be more honest about the function of the BBC - but this would no doubt be perceived as elitist. Perhaps a better strategy would be for the government to state that it believes an important civic function is provided by the creation and delivery of "highbrow" content and therefore the BBC will be directly subsidized by the State. Abolishing the license fee and funding the BBC directly out of general tax revenues would put the institution on the same level as the NHS and the armed forces, to name but two recipients of direct tax support. This would, I submit, be a far more coherent, efficient, and cost-effective approach than the perpetual muddle the UK has lived with since the 1960s.


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