As
the BBC is a high-quality, low-cost broadcaster it’s clearly terrible news for
Sky, which costs a lot. Furthermore, the BBC’s charter that requires it to be
unbiased means that it doesn’t give the flattering, right-wing coverage that
online echo-chambers and less regulated media outlets do. The further someone
gets from the truth, the more objectionable they will find an organisation that
is committed to it.
I
therefore take people’s dislike of the BBC as a convenient measure for how
loony they are. There are perfectly good ways of complaining to the BBC about
its impartiality, and complaints are investigated. The endless chorus of
criticism serves three interlinked purposes: big media organisations put the
boot into a major competitor that can’t fight back; it encourages people to
distrust the truth and believe what the organisation is peddling; and it
creates a marketing niche.
Given
that inflation does indeed occur, a freeze is effectively a cut in income. The
BBC is one of the most widely-recognised and widely-trusted media organisations
in the world, with a global reach. When the Syrian government condemned western
countries’ interference with the Middle East, it attacked America, because they
have power, and Britain, because the BBC’s Arabic service was telling Syrians
what was actually happening, in contrast with Syrian state propaganda.
Similarly, Afghans liked to listen to the World Service. The Foreign Office has
cut support for the World Service.
Advertising
isn’t a perfect way to fund television instead: advertising does have costs. Beyond the insidious
effects of advertising on programme quality, there’s the simple fact that this
money doesn’t magically appear. We pay for it in consumer goods. I haven’t been
able to find a relatively old article I once read that calculated the total
cost to an average consumer of ITV, but it worked out that it was more than the
license fee. And although the licence fee is regressive, a bit like a poll tax,
advertising is no better. The poor spend a much higher proportion of their
income on basic goods, so they’ll pay more for advertising than the rich.
The
BBC might focus too much on ratings, because its executives have come from
commercial broadcasters, and it might have a stupid interpretation of
‘unbiased’, in which science deniers get an equal platform with truth, but
these are not complaints about its overarching purpose, nor any reason to cut
funding.
Yes,
as people give up on televisions and watch ‘television’ on numerous devices we
will need to give up on the licence fee, which needed reforming anyway. But I
see no proposal to replace the lost money for the BBC. This is simply business
bias against competitors. It shouldn’t be the Conservatives’ job to do
competitors’ dirty work by shutting down the BBC. Media organisations should
just work hard to deserve their audiences.
The
licence fee is currently worth £3.6bn to the BBC, so a freeze,
preventing it rising with inflation, will be an effective cut of £377 million
per year by the end of the Parliament, assuming inflation at the BoE target of
2%. A cut of 10% is important. Further news shows that the BBC has instead
agreed to fund free licences for old people. I’m not sure why old people get
free licences, but since this is worth £650m per year, it seems that the BBC
has been pushed into a 20% cut right there. I’d like to see a business take a
20% cut and survive. Perhaps the
government should mandate that Sky charges 20% less for all services.
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