1 in 6 people don't watch BBC TV

"JNugent" wrote in message
...
Pyriform wrote:

JNugent wrote:
John Cartmell wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:

It's a lot of money wasted if you don't watch BBC TV or watch
so
little that you wouldn't want to pay the £130 (going up to £180
over the next few years).

Some people won't pay their way for anything if they can get out
of
it. They're freeloading parasites on the rest of us so their
vote on
the matter is not one to seriously consider.

Why haven't you x-posted this to uk.rec.cycling?

Your point being?

Oh, wait - there won't be one. I recognise the name now. You're
the one who
came up with the intellectually compelling argument that
advertising doesn't
cost anyone anything.

Abandon all logic, ye who enter here..

It certainly doesn't cost *you* anything, unless you are a
businessman with
poor commercial judgement.


Oh yes it does moron, unless you are a shoplifter....

JNugent wrote:
Pyriform wrote:

JNugent wrote:

I do not doubt that you fail to make sense of anything that requires
knowledge of business and microeconomics.

But that's your problem.

It is true that my academic background is in proper science, rather
than dismal science - but I find it equips me to sniff out bull****
wherever it is being excreted. And you are full of it!

There you have it... a post from someone who imagines that every shop
price is made up of a myriad of tiny but identifiable bits that
relate to every cost the manufacturer and distributor ever incurred.

There you go again. A selection of perfectly ordinary English words, which
you have carefully arranged into a sequence devoid of any meaningful
content.

You are an advertising copywriter, and I claim my five pounds!

"Malcolm H" wrote in message
...

"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
...

It was merely a comment on the unsustainability of the BBC licence fee -
I will continue to watch BBC TV when it becomes a subscription service.


from a previous post:
"I don't have Sky at home, and nor am I a supporter of Sky"


If you don't watch 'BBC' and you don't watch 'Sky' what the hell do you
watch?

Learn German and get a satellite dish?
According to Babel Fish:
erlernen Sie Deutsches und erhalten Sie einen Satellitenteller :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SES_Astra

"Arfur Million" wrote in message
...

I can only speak for myself, as someone who opposes the licence fee. I do
not really understand the reasons that the proponents of the fee are so
vehemently against making it optional via subscription, since the increase
in the fee (given that they say the BBC is considered to be so popular and
good value for money) would be fairly minimal. Anyway, we'll let the
proponents answer for themselves. My reasons a

Because, looking at the subscription channels currently available, there is
no evidence that paying a subscription guarantees both a high standard of
programming and an absence of advertising, *all* the available evidence
contradicts this.

- I do not believe that it provides good value for money. I would much
rather not pay the fee, and not view or listen to any of the BBC's output.
I
would get far more pleasure from an extra pint of beer every week (BTW,
you
can get it much cheaper than that) ;

Ok, that would be your choice, but to be consistent in your approach, you
would probably have to completely overhaul the entire taxation system to
change the way other things not used by a minority of citizens are funded:
education, health, local government services, roads, railways ... the list
would be endless. Thatcher's government of the 80s went quite a long way
down this road, and by the time they were kicked out of office most of these
things I've mentioned were generally agreed to be in a bloody mess.

- the BBC is a political organisation. This does not mean that it
necessarily supports one or the other main parties (though I have some
Conservative-voting friends who believe that it does) but it does have a
political (small p) viewpoint. I do not share the BBC's politics and do
not
wish to contribute to their promotion ;

The BBC is supposed to be apolitical. True, it doesn't always manage it,
but generally it is just about manages to be pro-establishment rather than
pro a particular establishment party.

In other posts, you mention that you have Conservative friends, and hint
that they think the BBC is pro left, so to balance this, let me tell you
about my experiences during the Community Charge (aka Poll Tax) protests of
the 80s:

Incident 1)

I attended an Anti Poll Tax march in Cheltenham during the Tory Party
Conference there. The march was entirely peaceful, with all ages from
children to grandparents winding through the suburbs, and getting a lot of
thumbs ups from the residents. Then there was a rally in the park,
addressed by some speakers, and then we dispersed, got into our transport,
mostly organised coaches, and left. As we were dispersing, a few trouble
makers, whose political persuasions and aspirations we universally doubted,
exhorted us to go and make trouble at the hall where the Party Conference
was, but I didn't see anyone from the rally join them.

When I turned on the news in the evening, the story of the march was about a
minute long, with about 10 seconds of the peaceful march and rally, and 50
on the trouble makers at the town hall. thus conveniently allowing a
follow-up Tory spokesperson to treat the entire march as a red-left plot.

Incident 2)

The citizens of Leominster paraded peacefully through their streets in
protest, filmed by a local cameraman. When he rang the BBC asking whether
they would be interested in the footage, to his disbelief he was asked if
there had been any violence, and when he replied in the negative, the BBC
weren't interested.

Incident 3)

Living out in the sticks at the time, I used to have to roll out of bed at
some ungodly hour, reminiscent of my days in farming, to give my wife a lift
to catch the bus 20 miles into work. I used to go back to bed afterwards
until it was time for me to go to work.

An early morning news bulletin around the time of 'Farming Today' reported
on a *BIG* rally somewhere, I think it may have been Birmingham, thousands
or tens of taking part. I didn't listen carefully, because I thought I
could catch it later. However, by the 8 o'clock news, this item about this
big rally had *completely* disappeared, yet I couldn't see anything sudden
or new in the coverage to have displaced it. I have always believed that
they were leant on, and buckled.

- the flat-rate licence fee is inherently unfair, having no relation to
the
amount or type of television watched in a household. Rather, it is
disproportionate to the amount of television watched in a household. Large
familty households pay the same as a single-person household. Even the
Council Tax has a 25% discount for single people ;

The Council Tax is not a helpful or happy comparison for any tax. It is an
unfair tax, introduced as a last-minute bodge by the Tories, because they
were surprised to find that 6,000,000 people refused to pay the grotesquely
unfair Poll Tax, with which, despite many dire warnings from even within
their own party, they had replaced the slightly unfair Local Rate system.

The TV Licence is also unfair, not for the reasons you give, but because it
bears no relation to income. I view this as the lesser of two evils - I'd
rather see it keep some sort of accountable independence from the
conventional taxation system, because that at least allows the BBC to
maintain some sort of political independence, which it wouldn't be able to
do if they were financed like a government department.

- by and large, I do not think that light entertainment (which constitutes
the vast majority of the BBC's expenditure) should come out of public
funding. Certainly not to the tune of £4 billion pounds every year. That
is
not to say that the government shouldn't provide some aid to the
entertainment industry (or indeed any other industry) every now and again.

I can see your argument, but I can also see the counter argument. You
either have to take the stance that the BBC should provide output to appeal
to a fair cross-section of the population, or that it should cover only
those minority interests inadequately covered by other broadcasters. The
trouble with the former approach is that the BBC is effectively competing
with other broadcasters, which the other broadcasters consider unfair
competition, while the trouble with the latter is that the output will only
appeal to a minority of the population, so the majority will object to
paying for it.

People can pay for their own entertainment, and I'll pay for mine ;

Fine, in principle, but perhaps you could explain in practice just how:
a) You would pay for whatever TV services you watch?
b) How I would I pay for adequate intellectual/scientific/artistic content,
when such output is not available on any subscription channel?

- it can be enforced only by allowing an unacceptable level of harassment
and intrusion into the lives of people who choose not to pay the fee ;

That is an argument about how the tax is levied and collected, rather than
the validity of the tax itself.

- I believe that (at least some of) the money released by people not
having
to pay the licence fee would be spent on other broadcasters, and this
could
help to improve the overall quality of British TV

Again, there is no guarantee or even evidence that spending money on other
broadcasters achieves the desired result of maintaining, let alone
improving, public service broadcasting. In fact, as we seem to be agreed
that PSB has been deteriorating at a time when Ch 4 has beem receiving such
funding, the opposite could be more convincingly argued.

and by goodness it needs
it.

On this, at least, we can agree.

:::Jerry:::: wrote:
"JNugent" wrote in message
...

Pyriform wrote:


JNugent wrote:

John Cartmell wrote:

DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:

It's a lot of money wasted if you don't watch BBC TV or watch

so

little that you wouldn't want to pay the £130 (going up to £180
over the next few years).

Some people won't pay their way for anything if they can get out

of

it. They're freeloading parasites on the rest of us so their

vote on

the matter is not one to seriously consider.

Why haven't you x-posted this to uk.rec.cycling?

Your point being?

Oh, wait - there won't be one. I recognise the name now. You're

the one who

came up with the intellectually compelling argument that

advertising doesn't

cost anyone anything.

Abandon all logic, ye who enter here..

It certainly doesn't cost *you* anything, unless you are a

businessman with

poor commercial judgement.



Oh yes it does moron, unless you are a shoplifter....

Not you as well?

Surely there can't be two of you on here who have same invincible ignorance
of supply and demand?

"Mike Henry" wrote in
message ...
In , "Arfur Million"
wrote:

- in the first place, it is not £2.50 a week, it is £131.50 a
year. The BBC
is very inflexible about the way you can pay the fee, it is not
possible to
do it on a Pay-as-you-go basis (the most "discount" you can get
is complete
quarters of the year if you do not watch any television) ;

False. You can pay monthly.

Indeed, people can pay daily or weekly if they want to, via the TVL
saving (stamp [1]) scheme.

[1] to be replaced by a card saving scheme.

John Cartmell wrote:
In article .com, Arfur
Million wrote:
John Cartmell wrote:
In article om, Arfur
Million wrote:
It's up to those of us with a modicum of intelligence and foresight
to point out what we get for our money and the fact that we would
lose it.

Which you haven't done, in this thread at least - you have just
asserted that you do find it good value for money.

Someone pointed out that half a dozen programmes on BBC 1 tonight weren't
worth the money. I gave a much longer list (but very small extract) from
today's offering from the BBC and no-one has suggested that they don't
give a small indication of the worth of the organisation. Apparently you
seek to simply ignore any evidence against your case.

I had missed that depressing list, to be honest. I went for a quick kip and
the thread size doubled! Yes, I would say that this list is typical of the
worth of the organisation, which is near-zero as far as I'm concerned. The
"Big Cat Week" is typical of the BBC's superficial and popular approach to
naitcher (although wildlife programmes are generally at the better end of
science output), their cricket coverage is second-to-everyone and the rest
is quite missable, or is available in other outlets. I notice that you even
include a cookery programme - is this what the licence fee is for? I'm
going out now, I haven't set the VCR for anything. Enjoy your evening's
viewing.

Great at criticising thngs you don't understand aren't you? Clearly your
parents brought you up on imported USA crap - and probably didn't even let you
watch the one decent import (Sesame Street). Deprived then and making us
suffer for it now...


Well, John, you've progressed from being patronising to insulting. So
you post a list of prgrammes that you like as if that somehow justifies
the licence fee, and get all defensive when someone else says that he
doesn't find them interesting. I am not anti-BBC, if people enjoy it
then let them enjoy it, but without me subsidising it. I asked you
before if you had considered the possibility that our tastes differ,
and you obviously hadn't.

Regards,
Arfur

PS For your information Sesame Street came a *long* time after I was
young enough to enjoy it.

"JNugent" wrote in message
...

It certainly doesn't cost *you* anything, unless you are a businessman
with
poor commercial judgement.

Televison advertising either costs -

a) countless hours of the lives of the people who are persuaded
to watch it, or watch it through inertia

or

b) countless millions of pounds wasted by advertsiers beaming adverts
to those who unlike in a) don't watch TV adverts at all. But go out of
the room make a cup of tea or whatever.

So either the audience are wasting their lives being forced to watch
advetisements, when they'd prefer to watch programmes

Or advertisers are wasting millions on adverts the audience isn't
watching.

Its impossible to argue that advertisers can enjoy economies of
scale*, and thus lower prices accordingly by wasting millions of
pounds on adverts that nobody watches. In which case, to pay for
such advertisements consumers pay in higher prices.

Either you concede that point, or you admit that you're happy for
people to waste their lives being forced to watch adverts - and
possibly be persuaded to buy the odd product, as a price of
watching TV.


michael adams

*the usual apologia for advertising

In message ews.net,
":::Jerry::::" writes

"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
...
:::Jerry:::: wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in
message
...
snip

Logic error: BBC will still exist and make programmes, but it
will be
subscription-funded.


No it won't, the BBC is a PSB service, they make what people
should
or need to watch,


What, like DIY SOS on tonight on BBC1?

Well yes, they have been making dumbed down programmes since they
were told to act more like a commercial broadcaster than a PSB one,
it demonstrates the problem with the BBC becoming a commercial
broadcaster very nicely...



which is why (even in a dumbed down form)
programmes such as Panorama and Horizon


I take it you're taking the **** when you mention the docudrama
dumbed down
to the max ****e that is Horizon?

See above for the reason why it's now dumbed down.



are still made - unlike ITV's
World in Action or Disappearing World and the like. If the BBC
went
over to a subscription service they would have to make only
programmes that people want to watch,


Yes, well done. You've got it in one. Programmes people want to
watch. What
could be better?

Programmes that are not crap, people read the 'Sunday Sport', are you
suggesting that all newspapers should become clones of that
publication?...


TV is dumbed down because we as a nation are dumber.

The viewers are dumber, the programme makers are dumber, the
broadcasters are dumber, the producers, directors, presenters, editors,
are all dumber because we are in the grip of a generation who haven't
been educated.

They've just been taught how to pass exams, and are obsessed with
status, looking "cool", and having lots of "stuff".

Qualifications don't mean you are talented.

More TV means more programmes made by people with no talent, because
there are not enough talented people to fill all the jobs.

It's amateur night.
--
Ian

In article .com, Arfur
Million wrote:
Well, John, you've progressed from being patronising to insulting. So you
post a list of prgrammes

A long list of programmes that happen to be available today (Monday). In
response to a short list of programmes from someone trying to prove that there
was nothing worthwhile on BBC.

that you like

That I think are worthwhile - but then they were only a very small extract
from today's programmes and others would have made quite a different
selection.

as if that somehow justifies the licence fee,

Whilst you suggest that it doesn't ...

and get all defensive when someone else says that he doesn't
find them interesting.

... but don't bother to consider what's available.

I am not anti-BBC, if people enjoy it then let them enjoy it, but without
me subsidising it. I asked you before if you had considered the possibility
that our tastes differ, and you obviously hadn't.

Are you seriously suggesting that there is nothing in today's output of the
BBC that suits your taste? If yes then I'd be much more inclined to question
your taste than the output of the BBC!

--
John Cartmell [email protected] followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
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