All posts by Briantist
Below are all of Briantist's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Aerialman: Phew. I was really worried. I've gone to quite some trouble to make sure comments don't get lost.
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Andrew Way: Thanks. I've got a several different possibilities for the future lined up. The second one is BBC plc, 2017. Radio 4, the last voice. | BBC 2017 | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice
Just for the record, I'm not advocating any of this... I am just trying to gameplay the possibilities.
If you're a subscriber there's an article in Broadcast BBC revenue doesn't add up | Comment | Broadcast
BBC revenue doesn't add up
19 March, 2014 | By John Mair
Whatever happens in 2017, hard times lie ahead, says John Mair
Back in 2010, during the last BBC licence fee settlement, director general Mark Thompson was effectively mugged by Jeremy Hunt in the helter-skelter negotiation. How did the BBC work out the effect of the proposals?
Simple, Thompson told me, they went back to Broadcasting House and put the figures through an Excel spreadsheet. No fancy econometric modelling there. Since then, the BBC has been having to cope with the de facto 16% cuts agreed under some duress.
With a new licence fee period due to start in March 2017, at the same time as the next Charter, and the noise about those negotiations already building, I decided to repeat the exercise (with help from my econometrist son) with one big assumption and two smaller ones.
Earlier this month, I asked BBC Trustee David Liddiment what was the best licence fee the corporation could expect in 2017. He replied firmly: “What we have now.†So, £145.50 per household, plus annual inflation at the historic level of 3.5% and the number of licence fee payers growing by the historic rate of 0.6% annually, formed my base assumptions.
Crunched into that Excel spreadsheet, the results do not make for happy reading for the BBC. To keep up with inflation, the licence fee would have to rise to £177.78 in 2017. That will never happen. The BBC is too soft a target for any government to agree to that.
Kept at £145.50, there will be a very large funding gap of at least 16%, and possibly as high as 18.2% over the 2017-2022 period. In real terms, taking account of inflation, income will fall over that six-year period from £21.3bn to approximately £17.4bn. That’s an annual drop from £3.55bn to £2.9bn. At best, very hard times lie ahead.
But the situation gets even worse if you build in another assumption. If not having a TV licence is decriminalised (which may happen in theory as soon as next week) then by the BBC’s own reckoning, up to 10% of licence fee payers – double the current percentage – will join Noel Edmonds in simply not paying. Real income could fall by 21% from 2017 compared with the previous six years. Not quite a funding Armageddon – but not far off.
Could that missing 16-21% cut in real income mean a licence revenue loss of up to £1 billion per year? Using the BBC’s own 2013 figures from its financial statement, that’s the total spend on BBC2 (£543.1m), BBC Online (£176.6m), BBC4 (£70.2m) and the BBC News Channel (£61.1m), with more than £100m in further savings to find each year. Whatever the final funding solution arrived at, the situation looks grim.
As the political sharks circle the corporation and its commercial media rivals lick their lips, the BBC’s best hope is that the electorate in 2015 does not return a Conservative government where anti-BBC backwoodsmen hold sway. If that scenario plays out, it’s curtains for the BBC as a universal provider of broadcasting on the widest variety of platforms. Ninety years of quality and world-respected public service broadcasting could come to a messy end at the stroke of a ministerial pen.
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Phil: yes, there is a reason. The red button services are not carried on the HD multiplexes at this time.
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kevin smith: What is interesting is that "without the pirates" you would still be listening to live music only on the radio.
The Musician's Union was very powerful back then and severly limited the use of "discs", be they 78s or 45s.
Broadcasting in the Seventies | Digital radio | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice
"Any deficiencies which may be alleged against Radio One arise from ... limitations on the use of records, not from any BBC inhibitions.
Discs are the life blood of any pop network and we will need to negotiate an agreement to use more of them.
On all these proposals we are consulting with the Musicians' Union, and they have asked for an urgent and comps-fete review of their relationships with the BBC, to which we have agreed. We are also consulting with other unions involved in the music field. "
Still, why get the facts in the way of your hated?
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(Of course, being a Press Release, it has rather skirted over dumping of the Regional News and 10pm News from the Premier channel.)
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MikeB: thanks. It's a great shame our favourite satellite broadcaster didn't choose the obvious name for their broadband service.
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KMJ,Derby: The figure's just don't add up if you leave all the regional news services in the equation, as I covered before. The services listed could work for £12 a month for 70% of existing subscribers and Freeview users.
It would have to be nearer £20 for regional news and local radio to be added it. People just won't pay it. IMHO
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Wednesday 12 March 2014 9:14PM
CliveEA: First point: I'm sorry, but you are not correct. Here's "BBC response to Ofcom's Second Public Service Broadcasting Review, Phase 1" http://downloads.bbc.co.u….pdf
Show that Regional News isn't "consistently higher audience figures ACROSS THE NATION than most other programmes." (Also it shows that the weekly, cumaltive 3-minute share is less than 50%, as I stated above).
2. The point of the Charter Renewal process is that things can change.
3. Writing the word "fact" in capital letters has never, as far as I know, transformed opinion into an objective fact.
4. BBC three ONLY cost £80m. For a whole channel. 30 minutes (plus 10 outside peak) of regional news costs OVER £700m.
It's a question of VALUE FOR MONEY.
5. If it comes down to a CHOICE of having over-priced regional news for 30 minutes a day or having really good DRAMA, COMEDY, FILMS, DOCUMENTARIES for the whole week - people might choose the latter.
Just not you, perhaps?