I am not a fan of TV shows where one has to phone in and vote. I tend to get cross every time I get a phone bill that shows that the wife and kids have sometimes cost me more than a months licence fee in call charges to Last Choir Standing, Big Brother, X Factor or other subliminal pay per view programmes.
When one pays for these sort of programmes (twice) one hopes that at least the voting is fair and nothing is fixed but there was something very fishy about the latest series of Strictly Come Dancing, something that just doesn't add up.
In week 10 John Sergeant dropped out of the programme voluntarily, he was not voted off. Despite the fact that he had gone a vote was held on November 24th and Jodi Kidd was knocked out of the competition too. With two celebrities leaving in week 10, rather than the expected one, the scheduling should have left the series one episode short. But the series continued on schedule without losing an episode.
In week 13 we are told that an unforeseen difficulty in the way the votes were calculated meant that the vote off was canceled so three contestants made it to the final rather than two.
As there was no change to the schedule and no episode was lost there can only be two possible explanations:
1) The John Sergent controversy was a fix contrived to boost ratings
2) The show intended to have three in the final all along and the excuse for voting difficulties last week was a lie.
Which ever of these two explanations is the correct one the BBC has broken trust with viewers who pay for these phone in programmes yet again. Despite all the controversy and criticism and promises to clean up their act it appears that nothing has changed!
Showing posts with label TV licence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV licence. Show all posts
22/12/2008
29/10/2008
Should the licence fee be abolished?
Glyn Davies asks if the TV licence fee should be abolished in light of the Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand incident. In as much as both should be sacked (saving the licence payers' £25 million quid); I'm not sure that the incident is, in itself, relevant to the licence fee debate.
Since the election of Tony Blair a number of people on the right have suggested that the BBC should lose the licence because of a perceived BBC bias towards the Government. To be balanced and impartial (as this blog always is) its fair to say that some on the left perceive the Beeb to be biased from a different perceptive.
Many of those who are opposed to the licence fee aren't actually opposed to the fee, they want to privatise the BBC. They know that the fee that we all hate is an easier target than the institution which is still loved and respected by many.
Whatever the pros and cons of having a nationalised TV station the idea of paying for it through a licence fee is really old fashioned and inefficient.
When the original Radio Licence was introduced in 1922 it was a fair method of taxation. Very few people owned private radios, it was only fair that those who owned the sets paid the costs of broadcasting. The same can be said for the introduction of the TV element of the licence fee in 1946 and the colour supplementary fee in 1968. Today, however, those who don't own the means of accessing tv services by any means (including computers and mobile phones) are a minuscule minority.
The separate government department, the bureaucracy, the collection fees, the defaulters and tracing unit, the TV warning adverts, the detection vans, the court time and the prison sentences that cost more per day than the cost of a single licence, seem to me to be a huge waste of resources for what would amount to a 0.3p in the pound increase in general taxation.
Whatever the right or wrongs of the BBC itself, funding it through such an antiquated and inefficient form of taxation as an individual licence fee, is clearly past its sell by date.
Since the election of Tony Blair a number of people on the right have suggested that the BBC should lose the licence because of a perceived BBC bias towards the Government. To be balanced and impartial (as this blog always is) its fair to say that some on the left perceive the Beeb to be biased from a different perceptive.
Many of those who are opposed to the licence fee aren't actually opposed to the fee, they want to privatise the BBC. They know that the fee that we all hate is an easier target than the institution which is still loved and respected by many.
Whatever the pros and cons of having a nationalised TV station the idea of paying for it through a licence fee is really old fashioned and inefficient.
When the original Radio Licence was introduced in 1922 it was a fair method of taxation. Very few people owned private radios, it was only fair that those who owned the sets paid the costs of broadcasting. The same can be said for the introduction of the TV element of the licence fee in 1946 and the colour supplementary fee in 1968. Today, however, those who don't own the means of accessing tv services by any means (including computers and mobile phones) are a minuscule minority.
The separate government department, the bureaucracy, the collection fees, the defaulters and tracing unit, the TV warning adverts, the detection vans, the court time and the prison sentences that cost more per day than the cost of a single licence, seem to me to be a huge waste of resources for what would amount to a 0.3p in the pound increase in general taxation.
Whatever the right or wrongs of the BBC itself, funding it through such an antiquated and inefficient form of taxation as an individual licence fee, is clearly past its sell by date.
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