On the subject of the BBC licence fee. Screw it, I'm more than happy to pay a little more. And to be entirely honest, if the BBC promised to stop chasing down the real knuckle-dragger audience out there with programs like that twice weekly Lottery show, Just For Laughs, and various make-over nonsense, I'd even be happy to go the extra mile and pay what they were hoping for.Because....
...the Beeb produce a helluva lot of decent quality stuff that we just sort of take for granted because it's always there.
I mean the only news/current affairs shows I watch these days are Newsnight and Panorama (Paxman is truly first class). The dramas; Spooks, Rome, Messiah...to name the first three that popped into my head. Light entertainment: They Think it's All Over, Buzzcocks, Jonathon Ross etc etc
Not to mention all the radio output. I simply can't survive without Radio 4 now. All those so-laugh-out-loud-funny panel shows that have me pissing myself whilst I'm washing the dishes in the kitchen, or swerving to avoid oncoming traffic during the day....absolutely brilliant.
Oh, and let's not forget the BBC has got to fork out the cost for putting freebie digital boxes in Gawd-knows how many hundreds of thousands of homes.
All that for about £11 a month.
And then you got SKY...and it has basically, Battlestar Galactica and the Simpsons, and that's pretty much it...except of course, you have to wade through an avalanche of commercial breaks to enjoy those gems.
Oh, and there's the other channels, the only noteworthy ones being the Discovery bunch, which is fine I s'pose if you want to see endless doccies on 'Hitlers Henchmen'.
And finally, there's Carol Vorderman, in virtually every single commerical break, the little tramp, selling you finance with that ernest I-do-the numbers-on-CountDown, you-can-trust-me smile of hers....
And Sky hits you up for a minimum of £17 (I think) a month.
Trust me, the Beeb is the envy of the world. Amongst all the cock-ups, over-spends, and complete dogs-dinners that seem to be the hallmark of everything we do in this country, the BBC is the ONE thing we've got right.
5 comments:
I for one have no real objection for paying the licence fee, as you say there are many excellent programs out there.
My only objection is the fact you have to pay it regardless of if you want the BBC or not, if there was a mechanism to opt out as it were, then we'd have the option, I think its the not having a choice gets peoples backs up.
I have no isue with the TV licence, but that picture on the blog is disturbing!!
I wasn't going to go there :-)
To as you say disturbing
I agree with you to a certain extent, Alex, though your example of quality drama are the shows I gave up watching as too bad to be bothered with! Which just shows that the BBC _does_ cater to a range of tastes. You're dead right about the dross, those lottery shows etc. But do you really think Jonathan Ross is worth _that_ much money?
The license fee also includes BBC radio programmes, and after all the dumbing down productions on TV, its BBC radio I prefer to listen to. At least that doesn't seem to have succumb to the public's Neanderthal mentality yet. Actually, that's probably being insulting to Neaderthals.
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