Do they get TV privileges in prison?
Absolutely. In-cell televisions are one of the “earnable incentives” (see page 11) enumerated by the HM Prison & Probation Service. And according to a Freedom of Information Act response by the BBC, neither the prisoner nor the prison needs to pay for a TV licence.
So I guess that if you really want to stick it to TV Licensing, you could flagrantly refuse to pay for your home TV licence, refuse to pay any fines for this, get sent to prison, and then (provided you behave yourself) enjoy all the free TV you want for the duration of your sentence. Sort of like how in the US you have all these impoverished people committing token crimes just so that they can get medical treatment from prison.
BBC iPlayer is not available outside the UK, legally anyway.
I suspect the reason is that the BBC sells programs to TV stations around the world, and they don’t want to endanger those sales or compete with channels who are buying their programs.
But I wonder if they’d do better by charging a fee for anyone around the world to access iPlayer, and move to a mainly streaming model.
I’d be quite happy paying £10 a month or so.
Is this a law or just BBC policy? I’ve noticed when I watch some of the British panel shows online (e.g. Would I Lie To You) if they inadvertently mention a product name the host goes to great pains to point out “the wide variety of alternative biscuit options”, or Lego-alternatives, etc. It felt tongue in cheek but now I can’t help wondering if there’s a half serious legal reason behind it.
It’s just policy I think, part of their Charter, but one they stick to fairly seriously. Obviously panel shows rip the piss out of it, as they do with everything.
The big exception is live coverage of events, mainly sport. If a snooker tournament, say, is rebranded as “Big Joe’s Car Wash, Drugs and Money-Laundering Masters 2020” then the BBC will use that name. They’ll have to as part of the contract to show it.
I should expand on this Royal Charter business - it’s a surprisingly interesting topic - but I’m adjusting to “working from home” and quite frankly, and to use a grand Scottish expression “ma heid’s up ma arse” right now.
There is a half serious side to it. Not clear on the strict legalities, but it’s part of the BBC Charter. Also in the Charter it states that licence-funded programming isn’t allowed for international audiences - hence no access to iplayer. But the BBC is allowed to carry advertising on international programming (like BBC World) to get around this.
The BBC is desperately trying to make more money outside of the licence fee. But there is only so much they are allowed to do as a non-commercial company. For instance it would not be allowed to do a profit-making competition in the middle of a programme. So it created a commercial arm called BBC Worldwide. This is the arm that would sell DVD boxsets, formats, licenses, rights, books etc on behalf of the BBC and feed the money back to the main organisation. This has since been turned in to BBC Studios: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/studios-worldwide (the guy in charge, Time Davie, is the man who tried to shut down radio stations like BBC 6 Music).
BBC Studios is the organisation that owns and operates the international channels. The BBC World Service was funded wholly by the UK Foreign Office until 2014 and then only partly by a grant which will end this year. So you can add this to the list of things the government is asking the BBC to pick up the bill for via the licence fee, further squeezing its budget. This one is actually a bit controversial because the World Service is not of much benefit to license fee payers - except in a more indirect way in which the service is considered to deliver a kind of British influence. However with the loss of the government funding the BBC was forced to cease its foreign language services. I guess it all gets paid by the public one way or the other.
The big growth/competition area for broadcasters now is SVOD (subscription video on demand). Netflix and Disney+are SVOD services. BBC iPlayer is a BVOD (broadcaster VOD that’s free to watch and often funded by advertising). The BBC tried to partner up with the other major UK broadcasters about 15 years ago to launch a joint SVOD service - it was called Project Kangaroo: Kangaroo (video on demand) - Wikipedia
Rather shortsightedly, the UK Competition Commission closed it down. The major broadcasters have since regathered together to launch Britbox. Launching a British SVOD service in 2008 when the market was less crowded with lots of space to quietly grow would have been far less difficult than launching Britbox is today.
The BBC knows it must change or die, but it’s rather restricted in what it can do.
Only some, on the basic rule of thumb: does the target language group now have widespread access to a more localised free press?
Sorry, indeed only some. I don’t know what the criteria has been for deciding whether to shut a service down. There’s a good list of the languages available and their operational dates on Wikipedia: BBC World Service - Wikipedia
Looks to me like the number of listeners and the linguistic universe are factors but what else is considered is anyone’s guess. One of my guesses is that the Foreign Office would want to have a say - although perhaps will have less of an influence after this year when funding totally ceases. I’d have thought there would be a nod towards providing a service where other free media might not exist. Interesting to see a Korean language service exists but only since 2017.
There is an old BBC FAQ that answers some of the questions about why they might shut down a linguistic service: FAQ | World Service
One interesting bit I want to highlight though: “In the developed world where the media environment is increasingly competitive, our strategy is to target opinion formers and decision makers through our English programmes…”
That one has FCO (and, eh, another organisation that reports to the Foreign Secretary) fingerprints all over it. That must be targeted at a rather small and select group of people, surely?
Targeting North Korea, I would guess, and the general public there.
What proportion of the NK general public has a tuneable shortwave/MW radio at home, I wonder.
Back in 2012 there was a survey of North Korean refugees and travellers about their access to and use of media back home. 42% reported access to some sort of radio. Reportedly the front panels of locally produced radios allow you to choose only among channels pre-set to local stations. In theory you can tune them to your liking by opening them up, but the case has a seal which, if broken, may be taken by the authorities as evidence that you were attempting to listen to foreign broadcasts. Alternatively, some people buy contraband tuneable radios from China, though being found in possession of these is just as problematic.
That said, the same survey found that foreign radio was pretty far down on the list of where North Koreans got their unsanctioned information. Only 18% of the respondents reported getting their news from foreign radio, whereas 84% got it via word of mouth. Of those who owned a radio, 77% had one that was (or was modified to be) tuneable across the dial.