Charles Stuart: Unfortunately its a totally unreasonable 'deal', as Lord Patten and others have pointed out BBC will have to make cuts due to 'quick and dirty deal', says Lord Patten | Media | The Guardian

However, its a truely dreadful deal even in terms of basic accountacy. OK, so the Iplayer loophole is closed (it could have been closed at any time, but why would a government give up a bargaining chip?). According to the BBC figures (which Brianist has referred to), the loophole costs the BBC 150m a year in lost revenue. Frankly, its unlikely that figure could be recovered, even with the loophole closed, especially since it seems unclear if it only applies to the Iplayer, or all of the terrestial ondemand . For the sake of arguement, lets say they get all of that revenue back.

However. the BBC will almost certainly lose 200m (their figures again) from the decriminalisation of licence fee evasion. Yes, they will be able to pursue people in exactly the same way as before, but its will be a civil matter, and there will be added costs. And of course every person who refuses to pay will be a martyr to the cause, and will be treated as such by the Sun, Daily Mail, etc. Again, for the sake of argument, lets assume they are being too gloomy, and that they lose only half that amount. In theory, being very optimistic, the BBC might be 250m better off. And they are now released from paying for rural broadband, which was costing 12.5m a month (last figure I could find was from 2012).
And they do finally get an increase in the licence fee, but this will be phased in, and it will be calculated using CPI, which is worth less than RPI (a trick the government has used with benifit payments, etc).

On the other hand, they also now have to pay the full cost of the World Service/BBC Monitoring since last year (both of which are possibly of far more value to UK PLC than they are to the average licence fee payer), and now have to pay for S4C and give monies to the failing ventures. That was estimated at an extra 340m a year.

The cost of the over 75's licence fee's seems to vary with the article you read, but anything from around 500m to 700m a year is the current amount, and of course this will rise. In the words of Admiral Ackbar 'Its a trap!'. The BBC gets perhaps 250m a year extra (and thats pretty optimistic), plus a rise in the licence fee for a while (but CPI, not RPI), and stops paying perhaps 150m a year for rural broadband, but has to pay at least 500m a year extra per year for thr over 75's. At very best, they break even, but as the costs of free licence's gets larger, and the amount they get in falls, they are much worse off.

And it gets better. The BBC will ultimately have responsiblity for deciding how the over 75 licence fee is handled. In other words, they have to decide if there is means testing, etc. I imagine that any tightening of the critera will be seen as an attack on the elderly, and the papers will portray the BBC as heartless, etc. They will have no choice but to bear the burden, and thus sink beneath the huge cost of what is a government benefit, but just not paid by government. 'Its a trap!' Or perhaps one of those insect parasites which lies within its host, and then burrows its way out, devouring the poor creature as it does so.

'The BBC is massively bureaucratic and I'm sure that many savings could be made by cutting support staff without too much effect on the front line'. has cut management costs, and PWC gave the BBC a very good report on its cost control. I'm sure there is some more to be found, but simply waving hands in the air and saying they can cut away is wishful thinking. At some point you hit bone.

Does the BBC have too many? Thats a personal view, perhaps bound up in ideology, etc. However, the BBC is different from commercial stations. It plays a vastly large selection than the commercial ones (Radio 6 in particular) and tends to trend new bands http://www.bbc.co.uk/medi…ent.

If you listen to most commercial radio, you quickly discover that most are pretty bland, with a relatively limited playlist (I swear Smooth FM's playlist is about 30 records), and of course they tend to be owned by large media groups, because thats how you get economies of scale and profitablity. This happens in the US as well. There some great indie stations, but for the most part its corporate radio. I'd recommend KRCW and KEXP in Seattle, which are actually both non corporate publically owned or donation based stations!

The idea that a corporate media chain is going to coproduce a programme with the BBC for a limited audience is simply unrealistic. 'Risky' tends to mean 'unprofitable'. Besides, whats in it for the commercial sector? Where are they going to play it?

If you are too young to remember the Home, Light and Third Programmes, how do you know it was at its best?

One thing we now do know (although we suspected it before) - Tony Hall is an awful negotiator. Mark Thompson threated to resign, as did the BBC Trust, if the over 75 licence fee was pushed on them last time. Hall didn't even put the deal to the Trust or tell anyone else about it. If he had, then the government might have backed down, or at least got a much better deal. At least we know he's an idiot at this stuff, so we shouldn't rely on him.

Its going to be awful, so lets start organising now.

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Prepare yourself for Cord Cutting: Where do I watch TV now?
Tuesday 7 July 2015 11:26PM

Rob Smith: To be fair, most TV's are smart these days, and Apple TV, Chromecast or Now TV are not difficult to use. However, if your cutting the cord, you must must must have reliable and fast broadband. Without that, your basically looking at a little circle in the middle of whatever screen you are using.

And it depends what you watch. If your the sort of person who bascially binge watches boxsets and films (pretty much from the US), you might be fine. If you like watching sports, anything live, actual news, documentaries, etc, forget about it. I checked out the Netflix UK website the other day, and its wasn't exactly a huge range of stuff. Plenty there in theory, but if you wanted nature programmes, for instance, there wasn't a huge amount of material, and it wasn't exactly up-to-date. Kids stuff? Lots of cartoons, but decent drama was thin on the ground. There was certainly a lot more on Iplayer in those sort of programming areas. Amazon was better in some ways, but it could be seen as a large amount of material, within a relatively narrow range. And although there are deals, getting the most coverage might turn out to be more expensive than you might think.

On the other hand, a PVR, the Radio Times and even the most basic TV attached to an will put together a pretty good mix for most people. And if you do want more, then there are lots of ways to get it.

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Chancellor George 18% BBC fee cut to lowest level of BBC TV sin
Wednesday 8 July 2015 7:32PM

Richard E: Its not often that you read something thats sounds like a parody of a letter in the Daily mail, but you managed it. I'll address the idea that the BBC is a hotbed of socialism in a moment, but the idea of is simplyeconomically hopeless, as Brianist has pointed out again and again.In fact he pointed this very fact about 16 months ago, on this page: BBC plc, 2017. The new CEO decides between ITV and HBO | UK Free TV
In fact exactly the same exchange took place, where your wrote
' The BBC is anti democratic in, its constant left wing news bias, its just a mouth piece of the Labour Party , Guardian views of the news .A bloody disgrace '
Your 'evidence' for left wing bias at the BBC was
'they are all lefties , a relative of mine works for Chan 4 news , he gives me all the goss , about the BBC , & the politics of most of the reporters , also check there twitter feeds, it gives the whole game away , if you think what I say is BS .'
I pointed out at the time that this was pretty much the ur anecdote, and meant nothing (besides, what does someone who works for C4 know about the politics of people who work at the BBC?).
Charles Stuart: You reply above is not much different to the one you gave in March 2014, but is even more packed with 'I think', 'my view' and 'in my opinion'. Your entitled to your opinion, but not your own facts. We will leave aside the fact that both the current and previous Chairs of the BBC are Tories, that the chief political correspondent was a prominant Tory while at university, that the political editor went to Eton and was a near contemporary of Cameron, and spent a decade on The Times, and that at least one news presenter is married to Camerons press sect.
I cited several bits of research refuting the idea that the BBC was particularly left-wing. I aslo pointed out the idea that people reading the Guardian rather than the Daily Mail did not mean the BBC was part of a left wing conspiracy. In fact I read the other day that this particular bit of 'research' consisted of looking at how much the BBC spent on various papers. Of course once you realise that the Guardian's cover price is a bit higher than the DM or the Sun, you can see that their case starts to crumble. I suspect the DM failed to mention how much the Telegraph or Times cost the BBC as well.
You may feel that BBC radio used to be 'better'. Of course that is totally subjective and relies on memory.
Do people wish to pay more for the licence fee? In many cases, Yes, judging by the published research. True, a lot of people do not, but in a recent phone-in on radio 4, I was struck by just how popular the BBC was, and that the value of the licence fee in relation to what we get was recognised, and people were willing to pay more.
' I think most people would be quite happy with BBC1, BBC2, News Channel, the five national (also in good on ), local radio and World Service'. Have you asked them? You might be happy with a reduced service, but what about the rest of us?
'With zillions of , there's an increasing number of people who never watch or listen to BBC ', Actually 97 percent of licence fee payers use BBC services on a weekly basis, so it seems that we are happy with the range of services they currently provide. Downloading is still only about 5-7 percent of total viewing, and the (fortunate) move to have all catchup services subject to having a licence will make it slightly less likely that people will '' whilst still using these services.
I suspect your list of what the BBC could be shrunk to is pretty much 'what I like and use'. If your a parent like me, then having kids programmes on for two hours a day on BBC1 sounds like a terrible idea, and I suspect the bulk of parents would agree. What I would like is a coherent idea from people as to how the BBC could be 'shrunk', considering that we now have more broadcasting technologies than ever before. If they can come up with something that pleases everyone, I would be amazed.

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Bluebell Hill (Medway, England) Full Freeview transmitter
Friday 10 July 2015 9:34PM

Steve: Can I ask how the TV and the box are connected. The Talk Talk (ok, really a HUmax) manual would probably tell you to put the main feed into the back of the recorder, and then get another lead and 'loop through' into the TV.

If thats how its been done, then you know that your aerial feed is at least working (although more on that in a moment). If its passing fine via the box (and if it wasn't, you'd get nothing at all via the TV), then its worth just changing the aerial lead from the box into the TV. It could well be very loose, damaged, etc, hence the very dodgy .

There is one thing which might point to something else, or a combination of a dodgy aerial lead and something else. Your predicted signal from should be good, your just 9km from it! In fact a Talk Talk box would normally be screaming from too much signal. Now if you've put an attentuator on the feed that makes sense, but 60% is not that high for a transmitter so close with a tuner known to be fairly sensitive. It could be that your main aerial is fine for the Humax/Talk Talk, but the TV tuner is less sensitive, and perhaps compounded by a dodgy aerial lead, your getting very limited signal into the TV. You try swaping the main feed directly into the TV, just to see if that helps.

However, I'd check your main aerial as well as change the extra aerial lead, because your problem might be further up the chain.

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Chancellor George 18% BBC fee cut to lowest level of BBC TV sin
Friday 10 July 2015 10:24PM

Charles Stuart: While anyone is perfectly at liberty to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts. The plural of anecdote is not data.

If Richard E wishes to express his views on a public forum, thats up to him. However, his 'feelings' do not trump actual facts. I'm sick and tired of silly memes, half truths, distorted figures and opinion pretending to be data constantly being churned up and treated as real evidence. That sort of derping leads us to what Jon Stewart called 'bulls**t mountain', which a place where saying something is real, no matter how nonsensical, seemingly makes it real.

And such nonsense annoys (and perhaps harms) people, it confuses, and distracts from a rational discussion. I would enjoy a rational good natured discussion about the BBC and its role. However, if someone makes a statement which is patently untrue, its very difficult - how can you move a discussion forward when someone refuses to take on board even the most basic of evidence? I too want a conversation, but not one where people get to make up their own reality. I might have an academic background, but pretty much everyone would be exasperated by trying to discuss a subject with people who just made stuff up.

The BBC is an important institution, and what it does and how it works has a effect on the wider economy and society of the UK and beyond. So we need a grownup discussion. Brianist has been kind enough to spend a lot of time laying out various scenario's, backed up by data. Its just annoying for someone to then say 'I dont accept that - its wrong' with no attempt to relate to any facts. Why bother?

As for the article you linked to, true Googling 'Aric Sigman' - it turns out he has form in making wild pronouncements based on very little. Ben Goldacre gives hima good kicking on Bad Science http://www.badscience.net…-it/ , and he seems to have a thing about stuff messing with children's brains http://www.badscience.net…red/ . If you read down the page, you'll see Dorothy Bishop basically saying he's little more than a quack (funnily enough she was on a an episodes of Jim Aklalili's The Life Scientific this week). I notice there are very careful quotes from several academics bascially saying' maybe..but.'.

In reality, no one is suggesting that sitting a child down in front of a TV all day is a good thing, but CBBC/Cbeebies are actually fantastic , with excellent programmes, which are advert free and often highly educational.Nina and the Neurons had the best explaination of 'torque' I've ever heard, and my children have an excellent grasp of history, thanks in part to Horrible Histories. That might be anecdotal, but I suspect a large number of parents would agree with me, if only judging by the large number of fans Steve Backshaw has on Mumsnet!

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Bluebell Hill (Medway, England) Full Freeview transmitter
Sunday 12 July 2015 11:39AM

Steve: Yout TV should be fine with direct line of sight - your only 9km away! In fact you night get away with an indoor at that distance.
OK - so the goes via an old box (if the TV has a Freeview tuner, take it out of the circuit -you dont need it), then into the Talk Talk, and then into the TV.

The better cables might, but do some tests first.

a) Put the feed from the directly into the TV and see what you get. If the signal strength is suddenly really high, then you know that the problem is somewhere along the chain (and again, if something doesn't need to be there any more, take it out). And check the aerial cables. The ones you've just ordered will be much better, but you can certainly get duff cables. In fact I was wiring up the 'new to us' TV last night, and one coax was shot, which took a while to work out, since it was looping through.

B) Make sure the TV is tuned to the right - it happens!

c)If the TV is getting a rubbish signal after all that, then it might be the tuner (make/model?), but I suspect the problem might be nearer the aerial, perhaps a dodgy connection in the or something. At least its in the roof, so you can check it more easily than if its on the roof. If the tuner is shot, then you have at least a backup with the Freeview box you've already got (and simply dont bother connecting up the TV tuner at all), plus the Talk Talk. But the extra tuner is really handy, since you can watch one and record two thers all at the same time.

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Seagry Court (Swindon, England) Freeview Light transmitter
Sunday 12 July 2015 11:41AM

Richard: We dont know where you are, so we have no idea as to what you should get. If the signal strength is too high for your TV, then get some attenuators, which cut down the signal strength.

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