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BBC To Be Smaller Post-Switchover

Sure. Why not? The public service could sell to whatever private companies it chooses to, not just one, though.
but wont the public company end up only collecting the news it knows it can sell on to commercial companys, as everything else would just sit unused and be a total waste of public funds, it would have the same effect as the news gathers working for private companys.

Exactly. Why taxpayer fund it instead of letting viewers choose what they want pay for?
so that all can benefit, not just those that can afford Pay & possibly subscription TV.

As for the US market, it is so vastly bigger than the UK one, that it can support far more than the UK market can, hell at this point ITV is cutting back on drama, because it cant afford it, in favour of X-Factor, please tell me how you think this market would cover for the BBC if it was shut down? I just dont buy that, it would happen.
 
Sure. Why not? The public service could sell to whatever private companies it chooses to, not just one, though.
but wont the public company end up only collecting the news it knows it can sell on to commercial companys, as everything else would just sit unused and be a total waste of public funds, it would have the same effect as the news gathers working for private companys.

No, because public funds would keep non-commercially viable elements of the information gathering system going. It wouldn't be run as a for-profit entity, purely as an information gathering entity for the state, just defraying part of the overall cost by selling commercially viable content to private providers.

I should point out that I'm even iffy on whether the information-gathering aspect should be public. If it can be comfortably demonstrated that there would be no security loss to the nation from privatising that aspect of the BBC, then privatise that too. Other players in the news business are commercia (or even private not-for-profits), on both sides of the political spectrum - CNN, News Corporation, Reuters, Associated Press, etc, etc. They survive just fine. My only reservation is that I suspect there may be national security benefits to the information-gathering role of the BBC.

Exactly. Why taxpayer fund it instead of letting viewers choose what they want pay for?
so that all can benefit, not just those that can afford Pay & possibly subscription TV.

Freeview has plenty of channels apart from the BBC.

And considering the BBC acts as a large state-subsidised competitor to private providers (massively distorting the market) in the field of mass entertainment, if it wasn't competing in that arena, there would be scope for more private companies to move profitably into that field. With the BBC being so massive, it's very difficult for new competition to enter the field. Shrink the BBC, and it becomes viable again. A commercial analogy would be why it's so hard to create a new competitor to eBay - it's too big in the marketplace. If it wasn't there, the business model of an internet auction site/clearing house still has massive commercial potential and new businesses would start up overnight. The BBC isn't AS dominant in the entertainment industry as eBay is in auctions, but the principle remains - shrink it as a player, and more competitors would emerge. The fact that the BBC is essentially state-funded makes the state a competitor to private businesses. That's a very uneven playing field.

I just don't see why anything that can be provided commercially by the private sector should be provided by the state, paid for involuntarily by us all, unless it's a core need of the population. This is especially so in the realm of television, where 90% of the content is entertainment which is hardly a core human right. Let the viewer choose what to pay for, and if they don't want to pay, that's also OK. There would still be plenty of TV paid for purely by on-air advertising.

Anyway, fun though this theoretical discussion is, the truth is it's probably never going to happen. It's simply not worth the effort politically to change too much since we have much bigger fish to fry. But if I was drafting an ideal country, when I got to page two zillion and three and starting sketching out the TV system, I sure as hell wouldn't have a massive state-funded broadcaster.
 
No, because public funds would keep non-commercially viable elements of the information gathering system going.
but what would be the point, as the commercial media would not want that stuff, it would just be collected and never aired. Unless you are also suggesting a public news broadcaster?

but the principle remains - shrink it as a player, and more competitors would emerge.
I dont agree, I think ITV has far too much competition than it can currently handle, hence why its so rubbish, to ask ITV to face more competition only makes matters worse.

there is nothing to suggest that shutting down the BBC would provide ITV with any new revenue, X Factor will be just as rubbish with or without the BBC.

I just don't see why anything that can be provided commercially by the private sector should be provided by the state, paid for involuntarily by us all, unless it's a core need of the population.
and when we talk about entertainment, you have a point, however is society really better off for having high quality dramas & documentary's exclusive to Pay TV?

But if I was drafting an ideal country, when I got to page two zillion and three and starting sketching out the TV system, I sure as hell wouldn't have a massive state-funded broadcaster.
oh well if we are talking about fantasy land, sure draw up what you like.
 
The problem with all that speculation though Holdfast is that this country has never existed without the BBC, at least in the broadcasting age, and removing the BBC as a competitor also removes the supplier for a lot of the content, be that archive material or source of new shows. A majority of things that air on Dave or Yesterday (UKTV's channels in general) are BBC shows, even things show on ITV3 are BBC shows. Any new shows on UKTV channels have all been BBC Worldwide co-productions.

So material for those channels would dry up. And really, there isn't plenty of choice on Freeview (or Sky for that matter), name me 5 channels worthwhile on Freeview that aren't owned by the BBC or their already established competitors? A majority of shows on those channels that are worthwhile are US imports, Sky One has the occasions special event Drama e.g. Skellig or Discworld, but nothing else really.
The BBC may be an artificial distortion of the market, but now without them I think a large part of the market would collapse.

On a slightly different topic, BARB have been trying out a new ratings gathering system which they plan to implement next year, and found their current estimates are low by about 4%, so this could bring in a bit more ad revenue to those struggling commercial broadcasters.
 
Bob the Skutter When I look at what I watch on Freeview must of it, is either a BBC channel, a C4 channel or Five, very little from other sources.

When I do watch Dave its a BBC show im watching, and when I do watch V1 or Sky 3, its a US import.
 
I have been talking about this on another board and someone talked about a piece private eye have done on the BBC VS Murdoch. I have not read it but i was wondering if anyone here has seen it?
The poster said that they wrote about Archie Norman was appointed head of ITV (Sky has a stake in ITV of 17.9%). He was the Chief Executive of the Conservative Party and a Tory MP for 8 years.
Also details the direct links between News International, the Conservative Party and the Press Complaints Commission.
 
Mostly the same for me. Right now on my recorder...

  • BBC Channels: British 21, Imports 1
  • ITV Channels: British 1, Imports 3
  • C4 Channels: British 6, Imports 3
  • Five Channels: 3 imports
  • Other Channels: British 1, imports 5
From that I was as much on the BBC as all others combined (and that's including some Freesat channels too), and the BBC has almost 3 times as much British content as the others combined (at least in my viewing).
 
I have been talking about this on another board and someone talked about a piece private eye have done on the BBC VS Murdoch. I have not read it but i was wondering if anyone here has seen it?
The poster said that they wrote about Archie Norman was appointed head of ITV (Sky has a stake in ITV of 17.9%). He was the Chief Executive of the Conservative Party and a Tory MP for 8 years.
Also details the direct links between News International, the Conservative Party and the Press Complaints Commission.

There's a kernel of truth in all this, actually, but it's blown way out of proportion. Especially when you consider that Archie Norman was WAY down the list of preferred candidates for the Chair of ITV. They had a lot of people turn down the job before he accepted it, and had a nightmare filling the role for various financial and board-related reasons.

But there certainly are some links between News International and the Conservatives. This is hardly surprising considering the Tories are favourites to win the next election and the Sun recently switched sides to support them. It would be odd if the favourites to be elected didn't have media connections, esp. considering Cameron used to work for Carlton at one stage.

But cast your mind back to pre-1997 and the intense courting Tony Blair did of Rupert Murdoch. Wining and dining the media and forming close connections and revolving doors between the press and political parties is just normal.

There is always a thriving revolving door of employment between various papers, think tanks and whichever party happens to be in the ascendancy at that moment in time.

The problem with all that speculation though Holdfast is that this country has never existed without the BBC... The BBC may be an artificial distortion of the market, but now without them I think a large part of the market would collapse.

This (and wamdue's version of the same post) is at its heart a restatement of the "too big to fail" doctrine applied to larger financial institutions during the recent economic distress. It essentially suggests that removal of a dominant market player that has been indulging in anticompetitive practices should not be allowed to happen because of the systemic effect on the rest of the market, leading to catastrophic collapse.

I hated the bank bailouts from an ideological perspective but accepted them because complete collapse of the financial system would have had catastrophic consequences for our entire way of life.

I cannot be convinced the same consequences threaten us if EastEnders goes off the air. What I mean is, the market will always right itself eventually. If there's a market for quality drama, etc, etc, a commercial broadcaster will find a way of making it pay, as people generally like to make money. A few years of relatively poor television in between, while private competitors grow and move into the market, is hardly sufficiently serious consequence to negate the longer-term benefits of reducing the size of the public sector, encouraging private industry and wealth creation, cutting taxes, increasing invidual choice over what one pays for, and removing the state from a broadcasting role.

Drastically shrink the BBC's remit/funding and there would certainly be a brief but serious period of upheaval since you are quite right that it is a major player. But sooner or later other players would enter the field and make programmes you'd enjoy watching. It works in other countries, I see no reason it couldn't work here.

(and just to preempt an obvious rejoinder: saying you tend to watch more BBC output than international imports is totally spurious as a judgement on the efficacy of their markets, since their output is actually intended to appeal to their own domestic markets not to you as a British audience. New companies that arose in the UK following the shrinking of the BBC would cater in large part to our tastes and so appeal more to the domestic audience... though I suspect they would also want to create programming suitable to export too).

But if I was drafting an ideal country, when I got to page two zillion and three and starting sketching out the TV system, I sure as hell wouldn't have a massive state-funded broadcaster.
oh well if we are talking about fantasy land, sure draw up what you like.

The point I was making with that line, is that the whole discussion we're having about the role of the BBC is fantasyland, since neither party is actually going to make any truly significant changes to the BBC (the suggestions the article talks about are really very minor - not to mention counter-productive - in the grand scheme, and internally generated by the BBC).

It is however much more interesting and fun to me to actually consider what the role of the BBC in the state should theoretically be, which was the direction the thread was moving in when I chimed in upthread.
 
The BBC is like the NHS then. No political party would attempt to dismantle either of them. Meddling round the edges is fine.
 
The BBC is like the NHS then. No political party would attempt to dismantle either of them.

There certainly are a lot of sacred cows, yes. Personally I think we should be making more animal sacrifices to the gods instead. :devil:

Meddling round the edges is fine.

Rather depends on one's definition of "fine". :lol:
 
Fair game for the politicians, not the people who are being meddled with. Unless you like that sort of thing of course.
 
I doubt that restructuring of the BBC is going to happen in the short term as Cameron et al will have their work cut out fixing the mess that Labour have left of the economy. Have the Conservatives published any policy documents recently on this subject? If not, I guess we'll have to wait to see what's in their election manifesto. I'd like the BBC websites to survive -- I don't want to pay money to Murdoch to read his revisionist take on world events.
 
Holdfast I wouldn't suggest I don't watch a lot of imports, a lot of my favourite shows are American. But America has a much larger market and can handle 4 multi-billion networks, you add all 4 of our terrestrial networks together and their budgets around 1 of their networks. And it doesn't especially work in any other country, most seem to have state funded broadcasters. Most of Europe have a licence fee or tax funded broadcasting, they may be smaller than the BBC but they don't really have the remit the BBC does. And what other country can you name that seems to have a TV industry as big as ours, never mind the US? I think we're the second biggest exporter of TV behind the US. I really think without the BBC there would be less effort made in TV productions in the UK and we wouldn't be one of the biggest and best producers in the world.

To be honest, I don't particularly disagree in fact, just in principle. Which isn't especially surprising since it seems ideologically we're on different end of the political spectrum.
 
The BBC is like the NHS then. No political party would attempt to dismantle either of them.

There certainly are a lot of sacred cows, yes. Personally I think we should be making more animal sacrifices to the gods instead. :devil:

Sorry for the double post, but I just spotted this. Do I take this to mean you would like to see the NHS and the BBC go? Along with other state funded programmes?
 
The BBC is like the NHS then. No political party would attempt to dismantle either of them.

There certainly are a lot of sacred cows, yes. Personally I think we should be making more animal sacrifices to the gods instead. :devil:

Sorry for the double post, but I just spotted this. Do I take this to mean you would like to see the NHS and the BBC go? Along with other state funded programmes?

This is way beyond the scope of this thread, so I'm not going to reply in detail on the NHS (though I'm pretty sure I have done in other threads on the board about it at various times in the past). In brief, I most definitely see a role for the state providing healthcare coverage for those unable to pay for it themselves either through an insurance scheme, through their employer or directly. Beyond that purchasing role for the poorest/most vulnerable, I need a lot of convincing on the role of the state in actually delivering health care itself, rather than as a regulator. But this is completely off-topic, liable to become highly controversial and I won't be continuing that discussion in this thread.
 
There certainly are a lot of sacred cows, yes. Personally I think we should be making more animal sacrifices to the gods instead. :devil:

Sorry for the double post, but I just spotted this. Do I take this to mean you would like to see the NHS and the BBC go? Along with other state funded programmes?

This is way beyond the scope of this thread, so I'm not going to reply in detail on the NHS (though I'm pretty sure I have done in other threads on the board about it at various times in the past). In brief, I most definitely see a role for the state providing healthcare coverage for those unable to pay for it themselves either through an insurance scheme, through their employer or directly. Beyond that purchasing role for the poorest/most vulnerable, I need a lot of convincing on the role of the state in actually delivering health care itself, rather than as a regulator. But this is completely off-topic, liable to become highly controversial and I won't be continuing that discussion in this thread.

I can understand wanting general healthcare to be independent but regulated, I would never want to see it become a private and profit motivated beyond as a personal choice for those would can afford it.

But yeah, you're right it's a discussion for another thread.

I dislike the general idea that "a free market will provide" though. It just isn't true, or if it is it does it doesn't necessarily mean it will provide at an affordable cost.
 
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