Rather than scrap the licence fee, it should be reduced considerably, the BBC made to stop competing with commercial channels, stop spending outrageous money on “talent” and provide high quality entertainment and public interest broadcasting without bias. Of course that wont happen. Like the NHS it’s too powerful and self-serving. Oh, and I hardly watch any BBC TV, but I might if the above happened.
In all fairness I agree with some of your points, especially the outrageous sums of money on its “talent”. However after, 75yrs I’m a firm believer the television license should be abolished, as we are no longer in a post war era.
The BBC Royal charter ends in 2027, the government has said its funds will be cut and the license fee abolished. Were post GE come 2027 so anything could happen but, sticking to the current plans – the BBC in return has said, it will have to make deep cuts to its services. Why! There are many models the BBC could follow without making any cuts to its services.
One such example is looking at the model of Channel four TV, which receives no public funding and is instead funded entirely by its own commercial activities, in a smilar way to ITV etc.
BBC Worldwide now BBC studios is commercialy funded which operates services throughout the world, which is a commercial subsidiary and owned by the BBC. Likewise BBC Global news which is also a commercial arm of the BBC, to increase its audience across the world. In essence the BBC is quite capable of abolishing the license fee itself and commercialy funded itself just like any other channel. BBC world service as your aware is international and broadcast in many languages. It is state funded and in 2021 and 2023 alone recieved more than £28m in funding. Regardless of the petty amount it adds to the license fee, why should we be paying for that? Is the vast amount of state funding for this service also payed for from our taxes?
Given the yearly rise in those that no longer require a license, surely its in the BBC’s own interest to look at a commercial funding model.