Discussion

BBC says ‘irreversible’ trends mean it will not survive without major overhaul

blargthorwars: Imagine needing a government licence to look at a screen.

oxfordmale: I am happy to pay for the BBC licence fee if they stop harassing old grannies.

SirFatty: How about the young grannies?

ChocolateGod: I refuse to pay the license fee and watch BBC content simply because how TV licensing is enforced is grotesque and the cover ups of child molesters committed by the BBC.Put it behind a subscription and give me a choice whether the BBC deserves its revenue, my current opinion falls firmly on no.

felixgallo: I'm sure you feel the same way about Sky News and the tabloids, right?

dmix: > the corporation said 94% of people in the UK continued to use the BBC each month, but fewer than 80% of households contributed to the licence fee.That's a pretty good ratio no? Plenty of services survive with lower ratios than that. Do they really expect every household to pay? Or is the issue they have much bigger spending plans than they make from it.

alephnerd: You can't gentrify Manchester without more money. Won't someone think about the poor property developers in MediaCity

beardyw: It's a historical accident. At first there was no TV, so when the BBC started broadcasting I suppose it made sense. Moving away from that seems to be difficult without them introducing advertising for live TV, which would be a quick fix, but that seems to be a diminishing market.For streaming it's easy to manage.

tokai: It's not an accident. Funding state media with a licence fee instead of from the taxes/state budget, makes it harder to exert political control over said state media.

pjc50: Personally I'd choose an arbitrary point like the year 2000, and split the BBC into "heritage" (nationalized body that holds all the archives, like the British Library or the British Museum), BBC Radio (taxpayer funded by DCMS, this is not very expensive) and "continuity TV" (commercial body that has to fund itself like any other).This does mean Doctor Who getting split in half, but that's not the worst that's happened to him/her.

CommanderData: The BBC also behaved indefensibly when covering Israel's genocide of Palestinians.Their behaviour is largely what led to me siding with the Palestinians plight some years ago, the use of words on Israel's side VS Palestinians was enough to lead me down a rabbit hole and I have never seen the BBC the same since.It is literally state news with amazing bits of other content.

nailer: I refuse to because they have very consistently relayed communication from Hamas as news without attributing the source is Hamas. As a result a significant quantity of my left leaning friends in the UK have extreme takes on the war in Gaza.

dgxyz: 100% this. They published straight up misinformation as fact first, announced it as breaking news, pushed it to BBC app, then corrected it all later then pretended nothing happened.I don't pay for a license because the programming is crap now though.

mrexcess: >They published straight up misinformation as fact firstCan you add some specifics to this claim? I'm unaware of the BBC having reported "Hamas-sourced" substantial misinformation as fact. I'm sure some errors and retractions have been done - especially given that BBC like all Western media continues to be forbidden to operate freely in Gaza.

dgxyz: During the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital incident they posted an entirely unverified and unattributed story stating that the cause was an Israeli air strike, pushed this as breaking news and 43 minutes later changed the attribution to Hamas and PIJ sources confirmed.This lead to two of my female Jewish friends getting spat on and having their hair pulled on the tube.

pjc50: > This lead to two of my female Jewish friends getting spat on and having their hair pulled on the tube and called murdering zionistsDo you think this is specifically and only due to that specific, single story, or do you think it might be a cumulative effect due to all the rest of what's been happening? Not that this excuses or justifies random attacks on other people simply because they happen to be Jewish, that's how the cycle of reprisal happens.

graemep: Its a hypothocated tax.Its not required to "look at a screen". its required to watch broadcast TV and use the BBc's online TV services. You can watch as much as you like on Youtube or Netflix or whatever without paying it.it was very good value for money when half of all TV output (and the better half) was from the BBC and ad free.

mytailorisrich: > You can watch as much as you like on Youtube or Netflix or whatever without paying it.Careful here because there is live TV on Youtube and a valid licence is required to watch that. There are also live shows on Netflix, which may count as "live TV programmes" so requiring a licence.

IAmBroom: You're moving the goalposts.Watching non-live BBC programmes in the UK legally requires a license fee. The same is not true of Netflix.

nailer: The way it’s worded it is that any thing that could be deemed “live TV” is liable for the tax regardless of who produced the content.

alecco: Obligatory reminder BBC staff is "vetted" by MI5 since 1937:https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/august/mi5...MI5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5) is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency.

constantius: I'm not going to dispute what you're saying, but the causal relation (between BBC and the attack, or especially their faith and the attack) and the overall context seem murky and very ambiguous.

dgxyz: I'm not saying it was entirely intentional or there was an agenda, it's just unprofessionalism over and over and over again. At some point it becomes institutionalised at which point you become a propaganda outfit for a foreign entity publishing their statements verbatim.See my other post in the thread for some further extrapolation of the side effects, but this was quoted over and over again by social media using the BBC's reputation to legitimise it.

rich_sasha: People complain about the BBC's bias. And since everyone has a different idea of what "unbiased" looks like, it's almost impossible to please everyone.But it struck me how few serious, general, global news outlets there are left in the world that aren't tied to some major interest. Fox News, CNN, WSJ... So much stuff is owned by Murdoch or by some other mogul. The Guardian is pretty good IMO but does not even pretend not to have a lefty skew.I was thinking about the spiral of death that happens to so many media outlets where serious news doesn't pay the bills anymore, so they either have to rent themselves out to some deep pocket, or chase clicks for ads, losing veracity in the process.BBC is one of the few organisations left that's somewhat immune to that. I won't claim all their stuff is unbiased, but they're just as likely to publish something left- as right-biased. So now I'm rooting for them and hope they make it. Apparently it is the second most trusted news source in the US, right after the Weather Channel. So truly a global phenomenon: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/52272-trust-in-media-2025-...

pjc50: The news coverage is in general OK compared to commercial news, and especially to US propaganda outfits, but Channel 4 (also public sector) are also pretty good. The UK politics coverage is abysmal. They have become cautious stenographers and promoters of whichever party Farage is heading at the time. Not surprising when you see what happens to reporting that genuinely challenges power.

asplake: Agree that Channel 4 is also pretty good, perhaps better even than the BBC for politics now. But so much UK politics coverage these days has moved to podcasts – some of them staffed by ex-BBC people.

graemep: It has to be television. So i think it depends on the particular live stream you watch - e.g. one that is also on a TV channel at the same time.https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/tv-licence https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/faqs/FAQ33The example given by TV licensing is Sky News. it has to be part of a "television programme"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/part/4

mytailorisrich: Yes, you highlight that a TV livence may be required for some content on Youtube. It is apparently also required for some content (live) on Netflix [1]. For example it seems that WWE Raw, which is live and on Netflix is deemed "live TV" [1]:"Services include YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Now, Sky Go, BBC iPlayer, ITVX and more. Live TV or events can include:Champions League matches or live channels on Amazon Prime VideoWWE or NFL events on NetflixNews or sports channels on YouTube"It's a bit of a mess...[1] https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/w...

pjc50: You're not legally required to pay for either of those simply because you own a television.I have a lot of love for the BBC and its history, but the license fee is very difficult to justify.

PaulDavisThe1st: The justification is pretty simple, even if you disagree with it. It goes something like this: we, the people of the UK, believe that a non-commercial broadcaster and news and production company are of significant value to us, and that in order to fund these social goods we will levy a license fee on the use of any television within the UK.Now of course, you can disagree about the value proposition, and you can disagree about the choice on how to fund it. But that's the justification, and it's not hard.

tw85: If that justification held up, the BBC would have no trouble staying afloat through voluntary subscription fees, pay to watch content and advertising revenue. Instead, they harass anyone who doesn't pony up the license fee and put the onus on them to prove they aren't in violation.

mrexcess: >I refuse to because they have very consistently relayed communication from Hamas as news without attributing the source is Hamas.I'm a US-ian and have no particular dog in this hunt, but could you relate any instances where this led to the British public being significantly misinformed about a major event?Everything I've seen, including recent statements from the Israeli government, indicate that the Gaza Health Ministry (often referred to by Israel-sympathetic press as part of Hamas, rather than part of the government of Gaza which Hamas currently dominates) death toll statistics from the Gaza war were largely accurate.Is there a case of BBC reporting "Hamas-sourced" information in a way that was notably harmful to the British public's truthful understanding of the conflict?

dlubarov: One example was their documentary with "sanitized" translations, like replacing "jihad against the Jews" with "fighting and resisting Israeli forces".

mrexcess: >I'm not saying it was entirely intentional or there was an agenda, it's just unprofessionalism over and over and over again.A few things here:1) I'm not seeing the "over and over again" part at all, can you help me there?2) The more scrutiny we give to this claim, the more the strength of it seems to fade. We went from BBC critically misinforming the British public by uncritically reporting Hamas statements, to the BBC misattributing an attack in a war full of misattributed attacks on both sides, which was corrected within hours.3) Do you think there are similar examples of BBC reporting or publication that could be used to make the opposite case - that BBC holds a pro-Israel bias?

nailer: 1. Not the OP, but check out the BBC's own internal memo.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/06/read-devastating...Direct link to Israel/Hamas section:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/06/read-devastating...Here's a Guardian (obvious left bias) report about the Director General resigning over reports of bias across multiple issues including Israel/Hamas:https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/nov/09/tim-davie-expe...And Reuters:https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/britains-bbc-...

mrexcess: >"jihad against the Jews" with "fighting and resisting Israeli forces"But isn't this a fair editorial change? "Jihad" just means "fighting for a noble cause", and most Palestinians don't like to refer to the proper name "Israel" since they feel it validates the existence of that country. Thus, they tend to refer to "Israelis" by the ethnic designation that they came to be known as during the colonial era - "the Jews".If the editor hadn't made that correction, Jewish people living in London or New York City might believe that Palestinian resistance groups intend to fight them, while the correction makes the true context much more clear?

dlubarov: If I didn't like to refer to the US by name because of my personal hatred for it, so I called it the Great Satan instead, would it be fair game to edit that back to "the US" in subtitles?Arabic speakers have plenty of options for referring to Israeli forces other than "Yahud". There's the widely used Arabized transliteration of Israel, or "occupation forces", "enemy forces", etc. When someone says "Yahud", it's because they're referring to Jews, not because some limitation in their language forced them to say it.But even if (hypothetically) language limitations plausibly forced a certain "unintended" choice of words, it's not the role of a translator to come up with a fundamentally different statement that they might have meant to say. If they were worried that a literal translation would led to confusion, they could have just omitted the quote.

mrexcess: It's apples and oranges to compare an externally-imposed nickname like "The Great Satan" with an ethnic designation that was the group's primary identity within the lifetimes of still-living people. There were no Israelis during the colonization of Palestine, recall. There were "the Jews", however, which is when the term entered the region's popular lexicon.FWIW though, if there was some other group called "The Great Satan" that wasn't the US, and you were a journalist reporting on what someone had said about the US while terming then "The Great Satan", yes, you would still want to clarify that, I think?>Arabic speakers have plenty of options for referring to Israeli forces other than "Yahud".Don't Israelis also refer to themselves as "the Jews", though? As in, "eternal homeland of The Jews", "Netanyahu is the leader of the Jewish people", etc.? And wasn't that what most Palestinians, including Jewish ones, called the Jewish colonial population of Palestine prior to Israel's formation in 1948?>it's not the role of a translator to come up with a fundamentally different statement that they might have meant to say.But it isn't fundamentally different, when understood in the likely intended context. Jihad just means "fighting for a noble cause", and "the Jews" to anyone in the region clearly refers to Israelis, so there's no change in meaning, just the opposite - the chance of a drastic misunderstanding is reduced by the translation.

dlubarov: > There were no Israelis ...Israel has existed for 78 years now, and it didn't take long for us to update language, like replacing "Jewish militias" with "Israeli forces" to reflect the present reality. Such updates happened universally, across nations and languages (Arabic included).Even political leaders who don't recognize Israel as a state still mostly refer to it by name. The few holdouts who refuse to say "Israel" are doing so out of hatred, not because 78 years wasn't enough time to work out the proper linguistic updates.> you would still want to clarify thatYes, but not by changing the statement and sanitizing its meaning. The usual method is to add bracketed context, like "The Great Satan [reference to the US]".> Don't Israelis also refer to themselves as "the Jews", though? As in, "eternal homeland of The Jews", "Netanyahu is the leader of the Jewish people", etc.?Both are actual references to the Jews, not to Israel. The latter is just a weird metaphorical statement.

nephihaha: I tend to find Sky has the best serious political coverage now, despite being Murdoch-controlled. They are a very different beast from Sky Australia.

nephihaha: BBC Question Time has been a joke for a while. One of the previous producers was actually busted for trying to source colourful characters for the audience, often from the far right or UKIP/Reform crew.As I say above, apart from regional factors, the BBC has a built in bias against Scottish independence because it would lose 10% of its licence fee funding if it occurred.

nephihaha: The most obvious example of BBC bias (to me anyway) is their coverage of the British royal family. It is incredibly sycophantic. In fact, I notice they tried to bury the Andrew story on several occasions and it never went away.They have an institutional bias against Scottish independence, since they would lose 10% of their funding if it occurred.

PaulDavisThe1st: Are you suggesting that there's significant ambiguity about what "live TV" means?

nailer: Yes. TNT shows live TV for example, last I checked they were produced by the UFC rather than BBC.

PaulDavisThe1st: The UK law is specifically designed to cover this. It's not some weird thing. Any "live TV" requires a license even if you watch it via streaming services.

hyperman1: I'd add Al Jazeera to decent media. They are heavily skewed about the middle east, and readonably neutral/disinterested for the rest of the world.As a non muslim EU inhabitant, they tend to open the window where our media stay silent.

nailer: If the law intends this, this is specifically a very weird thing. Why would the law intend to make people pay the BBC to watch UFC?

IG_Semmelweiss: How, dare I ask, does one "opt out" of a govt subscription service ?Some private companies make it so hard these days (Adobe & NYT being the kings of subcription dark patterns), I am curious how the process goes with a govt entity like the BBC ?

nephihaha: Quite easily. I haven't had a licence for over twenty years.TV Licensing has no right of access to your home, so if they turn up, you can turn them away. You also ignore their letters. TV licensing is actually a private company separate from the BBC and the government.In order to get access, they have to apply for a warrant to get into your home. To do that they have to fill out a lot of paperwork. If you have a TV (and I don't), it should not be visible or audible from anywhere outside these little toerags can hear/see it.

abanana: The BBC continually tries to convince the government that their problems are due to illegal action that must be stopped.They do everything in their power to distract from the real issue - that the landscape of television has changed beyond recognition since the tax was brought in.It's completely clear to everybody that the TV licence is an outdated model that makes no sense in today's world of competing commercial streaming services, but they're desperate to control the narrative to avoid losing their income stream. Which is understandable I suppose, from their narrow point of view. But for the country's point of view, we need a politician with balls, to step up and reform the system. But I'm not sure those even exist anymore.

PaulDavisThe1st: The BBC obviously wants to avoid losing their income stream, and the current UK government has made clear verbal statements that they not only want the BBC to avoid losing their income stream but that they also want a change to a more sustainable and enforceable model for this. The BBC has not argued that the current license fee is the only model, but they have argued that if this is the model that is going to be used, something about it needs to change if they are to have the income stream that they need.It also isn't clear to me that the TV license is an outdated model in entirety. The notion that a country would levy a fee on more or less any instance of an activity in order to fund a non-commercial institution related to that activity doesn't seem strange to me at all. What is true is that the nature of the activity and the enforceability of the fee have both changed, and that therefore something probably does need to be done.

nephihaha: They will probably end up following the Australian model where it is funded directly by taxation. Of course this will undermine the BBC's supposed quasi-independence.The BBC is ridiculously slow to pick up on trends. BBC pop radio (Radio 1) only came in as a response to pirate radio. Its streaming services aren't as good as they could be, and they have the double paradox of showing the same content over and over (such as "Dad's Army" made before I was born), while keeping a lot of classic content unavailable.

PaulDavisThe1st: The BBC was set up to be advertising free, so that option is not a part of the current structure.The license fee was established because of fundamental beliefs about issues like free riding, externalities and more. You might prefer a subscription based model - I'm sort of on the fence myself, but it's not obviously wrong - but the BBC license fee was set up out of an explicit disbelief that such systems would work. Granted, some of the issues were technological - you couldn't actually stop people watching OTA broadcasts at the time. But even though those have changed, the beliefs about the funding structure have not.

nephihaha: The BBC does have some advertising on it, if you can call it that. Most of it tends to be inhouse. So in addition to TV programmes, in the past I have seen them advertising "Radio Times" (a magazine they used to own giving TV listings), tie-in books, TV licences, DVDs/VHS, and their other channels and digital services. They also cross-promote their material. When David Tennant was playing Doctor Who, you would frequently see BBC News 24 being featured in the programme.Nowhere near as bad as other channels in that sense, but still there.Historically, there have been also been substantial numbers of people who watched the BBC without licences in the Republic of Ireland and the Netherlands, but they couldn't do a thing about it. The BBC tended to be watched in the east of the Republic of Ireland and near the border with Northern Ireland. (Not so much in France from what I can tell.) Many of the houses in Dublin used to have massive tall TV aerials to receive it. Most have been removed now. (Within the Republic of Ireland, RTÉ is funded by their own licence system, but also has proper advertising on it, unlike the BBC. It has had similar questions about it.)

PaulDavisThe1st: > The BBC does have some advertising on it, if you can call it that.No, I can't.

nephihaha: Well, I can. I'm old enough to remember "Radio Times", and other magazines, being advertised quite openly on the BBC. I think they had to sell their share in "Radio Times", but they still do many tie-in books.The other advertising includes heavy promotion of BBC linked charities such as Comic Relief, Children in Need and so on.

yesfitz: The BBC's Annual Plan for 2025/2026[1] is an interesting read.They spend a lot of money (billions) on making and delivering content, but that's still not much compared to other large for-profit media companies[2].The TV License has been the model since World War II[3], and the entire mass media landscape has completely changed since then.The proposals to replace the TV License with ads or subscriptions are enshittification. The BBC is not a for-profit media company and should not be treated like one. It is a soft-power organization (cynically: propaganda arm) for the British government. There isn't anything inherently wrong with spreading your government's/culture's messages, especially when it's as obvious as the BBC, but it should not be expected to make money. How much is it worth that Britain stays relevant throughout the Anglosphere and beyond? Or that British points of view are available everywhere with a shortwave radio or VPN?So fund it like it's defense spending. Maybe if the next leader of a foreign country has a fondness for Del Boy or Red Dwarf, negotiations will go a little more smoothly.As an American, I think I'd prefer having an official propaganda arm like the BBC instead of whatever quiet public-private partnerships (cynically: backroom deals) we have instead. I'd hate it, but it'd be good to have something concrete to direct my criticism at, instead of constantly wondering if NPR is really presenting unbiased facts or the movie about our Navy jet fighters being the best, most freedom-loving planes flown by handsome rascals is just a good time.1: https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/documents/bbc-annual-plan-...2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Fox#3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...

ViktorRay: The BBC operates independently of the UK government. It is an autonomous entity that is publicly funded. It is not a “propaganda arm” of the UK government in the manner of state television.