There are those who oppose the licence fee or indeed any subsidy of broadcasting, including the grant-in-aid provided to the BBC World Service and S4C. I disagree. Most European countries (apart from the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal where there is a tax-based state subsidy) have a television licence fee and many other countries such as Canada and New Zealand have decided that without subsidy it would be difficult to maintain the full range of national programme-making that most citizens want.
Indeed, one country that has abolished its licence fee, Australia, now finds it difficult to get any new productions of the country’s favourite genre of programming, namely Australian action dramas, as these are simply too expensive to make for a limited market on a purely commercial basis.
Exactly the same is true of most Welsh programming. The extensive BBC Wales news gathering team – even if it is slimmed down by the recent round of BBC cuts – is expensive. Likewise it is very expensive to produce Wales-specific comedy programmes, drama or history. Moreover, broadcasting is by its very nature prone to the danger of monopoly because it costs a lot to produce an hour of programming, but not much more to broadcast it to 30 million viewers as to 3 million. Hence the dramatic figures for the cost of Welsh programming at £26,000 per hour for the average of all original programming in Wales (including repeats) and £48,884 per hour for S4C original programmes (not including repeats) in Welsh.
However, public money should not be squandered and all welsh broadcasters should be careful of an endemic subsidy mentality. Is it really good value for money to produce Welsh comedy programming that attracts low viewing figures? Is it necessary to produce specifically Welsh natural history programmes? After all there may be a desire for such programmes, but whether there is a real demand for them is unclear. And would not the BBC and ITV Wales be better advised to try and produce programmes of such a level of quality and broad appeal that they are suitable for national network broadcasting rather than focus on merely showing Wales to itself?
I never watch any BBC programmes. I always watch Sky or ITV. I dont expect people who dont watch sky to pay for it. Why should I pay for other people to watch the BBC?
Chris Williams, Cymmer, Rhondda 2007-10-29 14:10:34
I agree that British tv is among the best in the world. I recently returned from a trip to Italy, a country where many of the channels are commercial stations owned by Silvio Berlisconi, and much of it is truely awful. However, I am rather concerned that the BBC, in addition to its television and radio coverage, also provides an extremely substantial internet service - is this funded from the licence fee too? If so, should it be?
chris bryant, 2007-10-29 17:17:15
Chris, I think BBC Online is great - there's no more authoritative online news service in the world, so I'm a big fan and as we move into a fully digital world more and more people will use broadband online to access stuff. Alex, maybe you don't watch BBC TV or listen to BBC radio, but the licence fee guarantees a high quality and a universal access which you wouldn't get from a purely commercial venture.
Blewyn, Oman 2007-10-30 09:53:30
Because the UK is a democracy and its people have decided that you should.
