BBC licence fee rises

net1

The BBC is to benefit from another above-inflation increase in the television licence fee next year. From April 1, the cost of a colour licence will increase by £5.50 to £126.50, and a black and white licence by £1.50 to £42.

The increase comes at a cost though - the corporation has committed to generating £1bn in efficiency savings and improved income between 2000/01 and 2006/7 in return for annual fee hikes of 1.5% over inflation during the same period.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell told the Commons: "This settlement is designed to enable the BBC to provide a strong and distinctive schedule of high quality programmes and remain at the forefront of broadcasting technology."

HISAT

It's worth every penny not to have an advert break after just 10-12 Minutes of progrmmes - what do you all think?

martinw01908

Outrageous. Have we ever done a poll on here to ask if the BBC was subscription based if we would happily pay it? Myself for one would make do with FTA satellite and freeview commerical channels than have to pay a tax for your TV

rolfw

If you set up a poll to see if people wanted to pay for any channels, the no vote would win hands down. In real terms, the licence fee is a general tax, most if not all other European countries have one, the difference here, is that most of the money goes to the BBC. If it weren't for the BBC, there probably wouldn't be any commercial Terrestrial digital service, don't forget the ITV fiasco, bear in mind also, that the ITV and independants, seem to have no interest whatsoever in providing a free satellite service.

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gameboy

The BBC supply a great Internet service.

I think their 'bit size' school exam service is the best you can get - if you have children doing secondary education you should check it out.

Their Internet news service is also excellent.

As long as the increase goes towards keeping up this standard and supporting their FTA offerings I, for one, am happy to continue paying.

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Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.

Simba27

I'm with Martin on this one.

I see no reason why the BBC can't raise money via advertising like the other channels do. It annoys me to pay so much money for channels that I almost never watch. I think most of their programs are complete rubbish.

It's exactly the same principle as if you were forced to buy a sky subscription just so you could watch the FTA channels.

There is so much covert advertising on the BBC anyway - like product placement, gratuitous plugging, and news stories that are clearly just PR. Not to mention the self-congratulatory advertising of the BBC's own products. Why don't they just go the whole hog, become commercial and save us all 120 quid a year.

BGonaSTICK

Yeah but as Rolf said, it's not so much a TV licence, but a general tax.

Like the old 'Window Tax', at least you have the choice of living in the dark!

... and no, I don't remember it personally!

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gameboy

Spoke too soon...

The BBC has said it will shut down more websites this year as it focuses on core public service commitments.

h**p://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story1134.shtml

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Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.

Milkybarkid

I don't like paying the licence fee,but I also dislike ads every ten -fifteen minutes.At least with the BEEB I can watch a prog uninterrupted. Same goes for radio.Ever tried listening to the commercial stations i.e. Mike Dickin on Talksport,........it's all ad breaks.

Pmartin252

If you want to see how public service television looks without a licence fee, I suggest you take a look at spanish TV. Their equivelent to BBC1 - TVE 1 has over 20 minutes of ad's in every hour. A feature film which starts at about 10pm typically finishes after 2am. The commercial channels are even worse- the quality of the TV in that culture rich country is heading in only one direction DOWN. Nobody tapes anything as there is literally nothing on worth taping let alone watching - just endless drivel - *talk* shows, game shows, and more *talk* shows. It's very easy to knock the BBC and complain about the licence fee but, IMHO without it the other channels would have no standard against which they could compare themselves.