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MPs recommend BBC charter renewal is scrapped and licence fee is extended beyond TV (www.bbc.co.uk)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
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[–] 12 points 1 month ago (1 child)

The ridiculousness of the license fee is only highlighted in the modern world.

Tesco do not come hounding me because I've not been shopping in there. Yet routinely for the last 20 years I've been hounded by collectors from Capita about the license fee. Intimidating letters, bouncers at the door trying to barge in, demanding they can see my TV through the windows. The bullying tactics of this are the exact reason I refuse to pay for it.

Move to a better model, put all the old back catalogue on iPlayer and charge a monthly subscription like Netflix. Use the profits from that to subsidise the over the airwaves stuff. Bill me because I use it, don't threaten me because I don't.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    Trying to restrict iPlayer access to the UK is absurd and self defeating. There's a huge international market who would gladly pay to watch iPlayer, but the BBC refuses to take their money. Go spend your money on a VPN instead.

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    • [–] [S] 4 points 1 month ago (8 children)

    I'm worried that "extended to services outside of TV" means the end of BBC podcasts outside of BBC Sounds. They're already limited, for instance with a week's delay in some cases, but I'd be really sad if I lost all of them. I'm not really sure what else they could extend it to, unless they also make news paywalled, which would go against the whole point of the organisation.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I don't like paying the licence fee because in a whole year I barely watch two shows on the BBC. However I carnivorously munch my way through their podcasts and have fond memories of watching BBC content as a child so I pay the fee each year.

    If they start limiting more and more the content and podcast radio services, well... that would be a shame. I will cancel my payments.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 month ago

    I feel quite similar. I love the idea of the BBC and I have fond memories of listening to comedy shows with my dad in the car as a kid. I think they do good investigative journalism, although I wish they were less timid. I consume the panel shows, podcasts, the news website. I really want to support it and help it succeed.

    But, they really frustrate me when they try to lock things down. If podcasts go sounds-only, I'll stop listening, because I don't want two different ways of consuming podcasts, and supporting open standards is more important to me than supporting the BBC.

    I understand that they lock things down to prevent people free-riding, but I wish the government would stick a progressive ring-fenced tax on, and then they could release everything openly to everyone. Every step away from that feels like a dilution of its role as a public service.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Agreed. I hate this, the BBC has some wicked podcasts but their RSS feeds are a state. I'd pay a couple quid a month to have BBC sounds without BBC sounds.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    Oooo that's an idea, I'd also pay so much for subscriber-only RSS feeds like Nebula, if they were undelayed, had all the shows and didn't have adverts for BBC sounds every 30 mins.

    Hopefully Lisa Nandy is reading this thread 🤣

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    News is paywalled isn’t it? It started fairly recently, but for me in Canada, a lot of articles ask for money.

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    • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Buying in content seems like a huge waste of money given how the modern media landscape works. I also really have no interest in buying a licence - my options are to pay for a year or to pay for nothing. The lack of middle ground means I simply opt out.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Middle ground in the sense of paying monthly, or paying less for a limited subsection of the content?

    I ask because I pay by monthly direct debit. When I was a student, I also paid while I was using it and then cancelled it when I was not, and got a refund for the time I didn't use it.

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