All posts by Trevor Harris
Below are all of Trevor Harris's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
@brianist
Let me explain how weighting works. Take for example a grid for deciding the best printer. You could have three criteria print quality, speed of printing, and cost of the printer. You might decide that print quality was more important than cost and so you would give print quatity a weight of 2 and cost a weight of 1. If speed of printing is less important than than cost you could give speed a weight of 0.5. In order to get a score you would add the results of multiplying the individual scores by thier weight to get a score. In your case you have considered all your criteria equal value so you have given them equal weight.
In real life it would be more complicated than this in that the weighting system would be non linear.
Actually as originally conceived the license fee was fit for purpose. The BBC was the only broadcaster and only those that used the service payed for it. Perfectly fair. The license fee started to become unfit for purpose when ITV started. Why should people pay for the BBC if they only wanted to watch ITV. It is the age of multi media and multi channel which has made the license fee untenable.
I believe that the move to decriminalize license fee evaision has come about because more people are becoming very uncomfortable with license fee.
Another issue is just how big should the BBC be. Should it just be alowed to continuously incease in size for ever. Who decides how big it should be?
The BBC does alot of self advertising on its channels. It already has stakes in subscription/advert base tv channels. It is already parlty funded by subscriptions and adverts. It is also funded by its own buisness ventures.
The only criteria I would use is that only the people who use the service should pay for it. With that principle poorer people will have the choice of over 200 free to air channels for no fee.
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Just to show how bad these funding methods are just take the example of mobile phone contracts surcharge.
On a selfish note all my mobile phones are PAYG so I would not pay anything.
It would be easy for companies like Vodaphone to move UK contracts to another country to avoid the surcharge. By the way not everyone watches BBC services.
Another example is the Electricity bill tax. The Government it desperate to reduce energy prices and applying an extra tax is totally politically unacceptable.
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Not sure Moore Law still applies to video compression. HEVC encoders are becoming available but as far as I can see not reached the its goal yet. There is a new transmision technique call Orbital Angular Momentum Multiplexing which should reduce bandwidth requirements.
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@MikeB
Consensus should never used as if it is a scientific argument. For over 400 years there was a consensus that Newtons Law of Gravity was correct. It was Einstien that proved them wrong. In the 1930's there was a consensus among doctors that smoking was good for you!
If people want the BBC to be advert free the simple answer is a subscription service. It is likely that the BBC would get considerably less money than it gets now and would have to cut back. In my view that would be a good thing.
My own view is the BBC should use a combination of subscription and adverts. They could have a free to air channel payed for by adverts and some premium channels paid for by both subscription and adverts. Like Sky they could have no adverts during Films or Sports events.
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You cannot compare BBC and Sky. The BBC supplies 9 channels (4 of which are not 24h). Sky supplies over 35 Channels in its basic package. So Sky is much better value.
By the way I did not say that the BBC could raise 4 billion from advertising. I did sugest that the BBC could run at leased one free to air channel using adverts. There is no way that people would pay 4 billion to the BBC voluntarily. It can only raise 4 billion under the threat of prison and a criminal record.
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Sky will often give special deals. For instance I get movies for only £4 per month and often get sports half price for 6 months. I also get fibre broadband at half price and multiroom for £2.50 pm.
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Where do you get the 3% figure from ? My guess is that about 40% would like the licence fee to be abolished.
In all you calculations you make the assumption that the BBC will remain at its current size. Many have the view that the BBC is too big and think it should reduce in size. Another assumption is that the BBC should raise the finance by subscription alone. I believe the BBC would best be financed by a combination of adverts and subscription with one or two free to air channels.
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The BBC is now proposing that everyone should be forced to pay the licence fee regardless if they use the service or not. Absolutly outrageous. The BBC is so out of touch with public feeling. A poll in the telegraph is showing 86% are against this. No one seems to have any control over this organisation. They just spend spend our money with no regard to the licence payer. The latest is the sending of hundreds of people on a jolly to the World Cup.They have been hauled before the parlimentrary finance committe on numerous occasions but still they refuse to reform.
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As a matter of interest the BBC already uses encryption for the freeview epg.
As far as I know Sky's encryption has never been cracked and also cards are changed every few years. All encryption system are crackable it is just a question of how much it costs to crack. A good encryption system will be uneconomic to break.
If you investigate I think you will find that the Murdoch family has no financial interest in Sky UK. News International does not even exist. Murdoch is more interested in Newspapers rather than TV.
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Thursday 27 March 2014 5:49PM
Actually this system of scoring is ridiculous. The choice of scoring criteria is arbitary and the same weight is given to each criteria. This expains why the mobile phone surcharge comes out top. I assume this is a surcharge on the mobile phone usage. So why should people be taxed in this way . It is a mad way to fund the BBC.
The only practical way to fund the BBC is advertizing, subscription and business ventures.
As I have said the BBC does not deserve to be funded by tax. There is little to distinguish the output of the BBC from any other television company.
The TV licence is not fit for purpose.