Re:BBC podcasts on third-party apps
by 0815test on Thursday March 28, 2019 @10:28AM
(#19512509)
They should just fund it out of general revenues, and dispense with the "license fee" entirely. Treat it as a marketing expense for the country as a whole, basically. The argument that they need an exclusive tax base in order to preserve autonomy is bogus - the monarch gets government funding too AIUI, do they have a dedicated tax base?
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Right, but the queen doesn't have to decide how credulously or sceptically to treat claims painted on election campaign busses, dossiers of evidence of Iraqi WMDs, claims of historic sexual abuse, and so on.
The BBC does. Thus giving them plenty of opportunities to upset just about everyone.
I suppose with the monarchy the argument would be that it's technically the Crown's money anyway, and Parliament just gets to administer it with her consent.
If funds aren't ring-fenced in some way, it's way too easy for a political party to threaten that funding in return for favourable news coverage. And it would make the BBC vulnerable to the classic libertarian trick they are trying to play with the NHS:
* Cut funding for a public service
* Wait for the quality of that service to inevitably go down
* Say that it's terrible due to needless government bureaucracy
* Privatise it