TV License price fix?

Really? I found 4 from April - May last year, and a promotion for a 4 part series about Diana. And that IRA documentary that used footage from a computer game instead of footage of an IRA operation.

Oh yes, and a programme about Micheal Bulbe is described as a documentary - whereas most discerning viewers would consider that part of the entertainment output.

that just wishful thinking?

How do ITV work? How does Sky work? Why should BBC be any different?

ITN is worse than the beeb.

There are a number of models used in commercial TV:

- selling socially desirable things like sub-prime loans, and the services of ambulance chasing lawyers, together with the replacement of last year's phone, polluting transportation, alcohol, cosmetics, and detergents;

- by charging users for certain classes of programme, or certain individual programmes, and denying them to other people;

- by running premium rate phone line opinion polls;

- by running premium rate phone line lotteries masquerading as quizzes.

Most of these encourage lowest common denominator programming dumbing down of mandated public service content.

Unfortunately, the BBC has been forced, by governments, to compete in the market, but they do set standards which tend to mitigate against descending to US levels in commercial TV and do provide news which is controlled by a media mogul, even if governments accuse it of bias.

But they don't get oodles of public money from what is, effectively a tax, but a tax that is not based upon ability to pay or graduated according to earnings, unlike income tax.

In message , David Woolley writes

Why? Because a country should have at least one independent media that is not influenced by business or government. The BBC meets the first half of this and struggles to meet the second half.

It fetches in the viewers that watch the adverts that pay for it, sad really :-(

Bearing in mind that the BBC is nowhere near what it used to be a few years ago, changes in its financial position have caused a lot of in house jobs to go. OB's are now farmed out, SIS have taken over most of it and are now, allegedly, telling their ex BBC contactors that the pay this year will be less than last, take it or leave it. So maintenance standards etc. will no doubt drop.

Anyone got any ideas how we can have a truly unbiased self financing national TV company? Answers in less than 100 words please.

that just wishful thinking?

In which case, if this is so "vital", why not subsidise ALL children's programmes, regardless of who makes them? If one looks at the money they were paying Jonathan Ross for the crap he was spewing out then the BBC should lose all of the licence funding.

but Radio 1, 2, 5, TV

The BBC is too much social worker, socialist worker & cambridge snivel snivel. Despite the former, and perhaps due to interference by the latter, it has shirked its obvious responsibility and vast commercial opportunity to create high quality educational programs which could be sold around the world.

OU programs used to be high quality science & engineering, now replaced by superficial eco-ecology-history. A lot of primary & secondary education is brain washing green without the other side being presented at all, a guise to hide declining living standards and rising cost of living. Except to the Blair's of course.

BBC should be forced to redo all the OU programs, but as a silent project - to educate to old O-level, old A-level and old degree-level,

6am to 2pm. For free. Of course that would undermine "we can't because then tertiary education can't charge for what used to be free in secondary education". Tough, let the useless and invariably corrupt higher education crowd go prove the value of their qualifications since they boast it will earn 400,000 more over their life with than without.

Shoot the drama music crowd, who drown out the dialogue. Shoot the computer crowd with silly CGI, except where they actually ADD something rather than waste budget.

Retired QMC & Imperial lecturers, they can bring their woolly jumpers I do not care - just bring back some real science & engineering. It could repeat in the evening on BBC2 6pm-2am for 6 days a week instead of the utter dross that is television.

It might even get Arts crowd to understand something... like how "a lot of concrete means it holds the heat from summer to release it in the winter" is a load of rubbish. Turn off your heating and see how long it takes for you to get cold; a whole lot less than two seasons even if you play Vivaldi over the top at full volume.

We might even create some science & engineering based journalists who when arts politicians talk out of their backside say "bollocks". Likewise lets have an economics group - who teaches BOTH Keynesian AND Von Mises.

Many children, perhaps all, in their early years can learn a whole lot FASTER than the pedestrian nanny wants to create drones and socialist dependents in a darling nutter of Princeton socio-economic ex RAND corporation junk professor.

The BBC will not... after all... in those imitable words "whatever happens to you people, we still get paid".

At my gym last week I was aware of one such "quiz" (I think the program in question was Daybreak, it's the one with that ex-Sky newsreader with the lisp who changes her hairstyle every day).

Which of these musical instruments has strings?

A) trumpet B) trombone C) guitar

My views on how the UK education system has been systematically dumbed down are on record but WTF?

One of my favourites was "Who wrote "Romeo and Juliette""

a. William Shakespear b. Sonic the Hedgehog

That is the whole point. The answer is made to be so easy that it compels people to act and telephone without thinking of the odds of winning and the cost. It is about getting a compulsive action from coach potatoes :-)

What few realise is the odds are lousy, the profits very considerable.

In message , Rob wrote

c) Francis Bacon d) Christopher Marlowe e) The 17th Earl of Oxford

Looks like it may have been either Berlioz or Gounod!