BBC RIP 1996
Guest Blogger – Robert Winter – London
In 1996 I was employed by BBC News. At that time I was asked to help build the contracts between BBC News and Current Affairs and the BBC Corporate centre and BBC Worldwide, the sales arm. This involved how much money was paid in advance by BBC Worldwide to each of the programme makers as an advance. For Panorama for example, BBC Worldwide would offer x thousand pounds for all rights in all media in perpetuity for the forthcoming season of Panorama. My job was to gauge exactly what the commercial value of that would be to a commercial distributor. Without question or exception the true value of this programme series, and most others across all genre of the BBC at that time, would be ten times in excess of the value placed on it by the BBC’s own internal selling division, BBC Worldwide.
Not only that, when Panorama was sold across the world, the revenues were not returned to the series programme makers, but just put into the general pot. So the following year Panorama again had to fight for decent funding. Niot only were the programme makers deprived of good value and valuable programme making funds, the licence fee payer was deprived of true value by getting a true financial return for the programmes they were watching and paying for via the licence fee.
The core of the problem is that BBC Worldwide was one of the most inefficient programme sales companies at that time, and not only squandered much of the programme sales revenues, most of the money it did bring in, simply did not go back to the programme makers that our licence fees were paying. Had this been more efficient and at true commercial value, then the BBC would simply not need the huge hikes in licence fees that it has been demanding.
Tags: BBC TV TAX
November 26th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
There is no longer any justification for the licence fee. The BBC produces an unremarkable collection of TV and Radio programmes and in some ways falls short of the commercial sector.
To warrant a licence fee, the BBC would have to be like a great library or museum – offering a variety of entertainment and culture, with a passion and ability to educate and illuminate. It does not do this in a way which is unique or fundamentally different to commercial broadcasting. Indeed as I said it is in some ways inferior. Two examples:
The Arts are now a very low priority with the BBC, particularly BBC TV. There is rarely here a full performance of a great classic, or a great opera, ballet or musical work. It seems the BBC is afraid to do much more than episodes of costume dramas. There used to be on BBC2 a simultaneous live broadcast with BBC Radio 3 on Saturday evening from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, sometimes with binaural output. That’s long gone, as has Arena and the other Arts’ programmes.
In contrast SKY TV ARTS offers two channels broadcasting most of the day for the cost of the general Sky subscription. For example, in the past two weeks, there has been on Sky Arts 2 a broadcast of Saltzburg Festspiel’s “Parsifal”, with an informative introduction, a superb production of “She Stoops to Conquer”, as well as “Don Giovanni”, “Manon Lescaut” the Bolshoi performing “Swan Lake” and many others. All complete performances. There are commentaries and discussions on the arts as well. This in itself, of course, far eclipses what the BBC ever did, but now it has many channels it is interesting to note that it does not see more Arts and Cultural output as necessary. And that’s not all. Sky Arts 1 offers a more eclectic, modern output, with many fascinating, interesting and entertaining programmes. This output is what one should expect from the BBC as part of its remit. It brings great pleasure and culture to those who because of work or cost or both cannot very often get to central London where most of this sort of thing is performed. But the BBC obviously doesn’t think this a good way to spend its money. It prefers to spend licence payers’ millions on people like Jonathan Ross, who as his best friends will allow, is only a mediocre, low-comedy performer.
As regards news, in spite of getting the licence funding, and seemingly having a never-ending surplus of reporters for any story, BBC TV news does not match, for example, the incisiveness of Channel 4 News with its far fewer number of reporters and its far greater need to budget carefully to survive. Apart from an unbelievable plethora of reporters, it now seems almost everyone in the BBC is an “Editor” which means presumably they’re paid more. And how can the “Today” programme justify the huge expense to send Mr Naughtie on his frequent jaunts abroad on often flimsy pretexts – culminating in the ludicrous situation of his interviewing another BBC “Editor” Justin Webb at the time of the recent elections in the USA. Mr N’s trips add nothing to that which a good foreign correspondent could report.
There seems to be no end to the BBC’s enthusiasm for spending our money on salaries and staff expenses. Many of the senior staff are paid more than the Prime Minister. This cannot in any way be justified while the licence fee is compulsorily collected.
It may be that soon enough people will have the guts to stop paying the licence and force the government into abandoning it altogether. The BBC will of course easily survive in the commercial world. There’ll just be far less staff, far lower pay packets and a requirement for a more imaginative programming output. Firstly the licence fee has to go, and then the BBC asks itself critically who it wants as customers, and how it will persuade them to subscribe to its services!
July 14th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
How come we pay the licence fee for BBC wonderful services but we have to pay SKY if we want to watch England v Australia. It seems that the BBC would rather spend money on the extreme elements who f… & use other obscenities in the name of humour.
Guess who is voting with his feet and getting out of this corrupt system?