TV Licence decriminalization: just how much is it going to cost you?
How much extra is it going to cost me? Photograph: Shutterstock
You can see the appeal of using "civil recovery" for non payment of the TV Licence but it is not going to come without a cost.
- BBC News - Labour set to back TV licence fee powers change
- The BBC will, in effect, be privatised with vast consequences Telegraph Blogs
- Labour will support Commons vote to decriminalise TV licence fee evaders - Media - theguardian.com
In the diagram below the BBC 2013** service costs are shown on the left, and the current and potential income streams on the right.
The cyan arrow is the current Licence Fee income, the blue and green arrows are two possible subscription levels - "80%", "70%" and "60%" refer to the percentage of UK homes taking the BBC subscription.
I have factored in £4.83 a month for the cost of subscription services over what Licence Fee collection currently costs. This is based on BSkyB Annual Report figures. If the BBC had to provide a scramble and payment service for Freeview, this would be the baseline cost for this too.
The magenta arrow shows the total current adverting revenue for ITV and STV and UTV.
The proposed levels of the BBC service subscription are shown in the second graph.
This graph shows the how BBC subscription income would relate to the current Licence Fee levels for take-up levels of 50% (blue), 60% (orange), 70% (green) and 80% (blue).
For example, if there was an 80% take-up of services, the BBC would need to charge £18 per month to maintain the current service level. At 60%, for no cuts to services would require the charge to be £23 a month.
**The Licence Fee is also funding the BBC World Service radio and S4C from 2015 onwards.
Tuesday, 25 March 2014
Basically, it's going to be about £100 extra a year for each home that pays.
About half that money will be going to Sky Subscriber Services Ltd, about 10% to Virgin Media and the rest will be swallowed up creating "Beebview".
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trevorjharris10:31 AM
To put it simply decriminalization is the right thing to do. We do not know what effect it will have on avoidence and everything the BBC says is pure speculation.
The compulsary licence fee means the the BBC's income is not related to it's performance. It does not matter how badly the BBC perform they still can rely on the Licence fee. Reducing services has no effect on BBC income. The BBC still carries on in the same old way. A good example is the massive number of people they sent to the winter olympics. Without a compulsary Licence Fee cost effectiveness comes into play.
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Ian
1:46 PM
1:46 PM
£18 per month.... For the BBC.... Voluntary subscription.... Goodbye BBC
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Ian: Some people have suggested that is exactly the whole point of this exercise.
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This research http://stakeholders.ofcom….pdf says
"Having informed participants of the current situation, they the discussed the issues and debated whether they were willing to pay more to maintain current levels of PSB provision
A majority in the deliberative research were willing to pay more for the same amount of PSB;
A significant minority were not willing to pay more but believed they would get used to a price increase;
A small minority were not prepared to pay more - who were less likely to value PSB in general
Participants' priorities centred on the following key programme types, which were priorities for plurality - UK network news, nations / regions news, current affairs, and high quality UK content (applied to a range of programme genres, including drama, comedy, children's)
When discussing whether the commercial digital channels could be used as a means of delivering 'official' PSB content in the future, participants were reluctant to have to pay a subscription for PSB content which they felt strongly should be available to everyone. Given the social importance placed on PSB, many believed that
restricting access to those that could afford to pay would be against the ethos of PSB. There were also concerns that the commercial imperatives of these channels may be at odds with PSB's aims and it may be
hard to find PSB content within the schedule, as well as raising issues about trust
When discussing whether the commercial digital channels could be used as a means of delivering 'official' PSB content in the future, participants were reluctant to pay a subscription for PSB content which they felt strongly should be available to everyone and this could limit access. Given the social importance placed on PSB, many believed that restricting access to those that could afford to pay would be against the ethos of PSB. There were also concerns that the commercial imperatives of these channels may be at odds with
PSB's aims and it may be hard to find PSB content within the schedule, as well as raising issues about trust
Research into willingness to pay to maintain current provision was undertaken in a deliberative setting in 6 workshops across the UK (approx 180 participants).
* By means of an expert witness presentation from Ofcom, participants were informed about the current funding of PSB on the main 5 channels and the economic pressures on this model due to audience fragmentation. Most participants were unaware of the PSB obligations and funding of the commercial channels and were surprised to discover this as they tended to see them as purely commercial organisations
* Having informed participants of the current situation, they were then asked if they were willing to pay more to maintain current levels of PSB provision
* It was made to clear to participants that there were no current proposals to increase the licence fee and that funding could come from a variety of sources. The objective was to gauge whether we, as a society, were
prepared to pay more to maintain current PSB provision
* Faced with the choice of less PSB or increased costs for the same amount of PSB shown today, many participants initially opted to reduce the level of PSB to ensure no price rise
- This was a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of paying more and should be considered in the light of contextual data (e.g. general perception that cost of living increasing in UK, are broadcasters making most of money available to them, e.g. presenter salaries)
* After discussion, participants fell into three main groups:
- The majority who were willing to pay more for the same amount of PSB
- Those not willing to pay more but believed they would get used to a price increase
- A small minority who were not prepared to pay more - less likely to value PSB in general
These discussions also considered the hard choice of reducing content on either the BBC or on ITV1, Channel 4 or Five, in order that there was no need for an increase in costs for providing PSB. Opinion was mixed. In the initial workshops, for many, the BBC was considered to be the prime provider of PSB and many thought it an international, respected brand and it was important to preserve its role in the provision of PSB as a matter of priority. In the reconvened workshop many participants thought the overriding priority was to maintain plurality for what were considered to be the key programme type
s was believed to be key and there were concerns that were the BBC the main - or only - provider of certain types of PSB programmes then the quality of them might decline due to a lack of competition. Overall, the main conclusion for the majority was that these choices were extremely hard and that people chose to see an increase in costs to maintain current levels of provision. It was generally thought that reducing the amount of PSB could lead to some serious consequences for the future of television generally. , Attitudes towards this are shown in the voting results from the end of the 6 workshops. While three in ten participants agreed that 'as long as the BBC shows PSB programmes, the other main TV channels should be allowed to show what they like', seven in ten thought that at least one of the main TV channels, in addition to the BBC, should show PSB programmes (72%).
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Charles Stuart5:35 PM
Bristol
Sometimes I think that governments have to make decisions that they think are right, regardless of public opinion. I think that as a generalization, the model of TV provision in this country works reasonably well and that it would be wrong to change it, unless it becomes necessary. I think that the current model with the BBC being funded by the licence, together with ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 as commercial PSBs works. However, licence fee evasion is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Maybe the way around the problem is that all UK television services should be encrypted and only licence holders would have a key to unlock them. Perhaps pay-per-view should be available for very light users, but be comparatively expensive if used to watch regularly.
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Charles's: mapC's Freeview map terrainC's terrain plot wavesC's frequency data C's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Charles Stuart: I'm currently reading A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain eBook: Tamasin Cave, Andy Rowell: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store so I'm wondering "who benefits" from this move.
I'm not sure if "licence fee evasion is becoming a bigger and bigger problem", I haven't seen anything to suggest that is the case. If you have some stats...
The problem with encrypted services is that it costs money to provide such a service. Sky's internal charging for this is about £5 a month. So it costs from £60 more a year JUST to stop people who didn't pay.
And, referring to my diagram above, this would mean that to maintain the current level of services, each household would pay £20 a month, rather than £12.
So, this is good for SSSL and Virgin, less good for the Great British Public, unless the really don't use any BBC service, which is about 2% of the population.
It seems that a "principle" is making money for someone...
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MikeP
8:12 PM
8:12 PM
Charles Stuart:
One major problem with ideas that require unlocking an encrypted service is that almost no TV sets nor Freeview PVRs are equipped with the facility to unlock and then decrypt the transmissions. Sky equipment has such systems built-in so they can allow or disallow a particular receiver from decrypting the data stream.
The other problem is that if it became necessary the systems used would have to be agreed in advance by ALL broadcasters (or imposed) and everyone would have to buy new equipment - just putting some 'decoder' box in the signal feed does not resolve the problem as they can easily distribute the output to other users who would normally require a separate licence.
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Ian
10:40 PM
10:40 PM
I cant see how they could ever justify £18 a month when sky only charge £21 a month for more than 3 times the channels, goes to show just how of touch with reality Auntie really is!
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MikeB11:20 PM
Charles Stuart: I was going to write pretty much the same thing as MikeP - although most flat screen TV's have CI slots, no PVR's or set-top boxes do. Your starting from nothing if you want a universal encrypted system. And since few people are going buy new equipment just because its going to have a encryption capacity, you've got to introduce equipment with it built in from the start. Of course you could call it Beebbox!
Brianist: That book looks very interesting - I certainly am dubious that a certain MP thought up the whole idea by himself. BTW - Spinwatch is rather good, but I also find that Sourcewatch and its allied websites are very useful too - much of the spin/lobbying we get has its origins in the US.
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