I know people think liberals control the media in the U.S. (something I disagree with–but I digress). But in reality it is independent corporatios. But my question is simply this: who controls the content of the news on the BBC in Britain? Is it whatever party is in power in the government? Or is it an independent body (I know they are owned by the state, of course). I watch the BBC sometimes on their American version of the nightly news that appears on U.S. public television. And they do seem pretty fair and balanced, most of the time at least. So who controls their content? And what side (conservative/liberal) do they normally take?
Regardless of what people say, people are controlled by whoever pays their bills. Mark Twain called it ‘corn pone opinions’: He could tell you a man’s opinions based on who bought him his corn pone.
It is an independent body - it is funded in fact by user licensing fees (and some merchandise sales), not by the government at all. It used to be run by a Board of Governors, but since 2007 there are two bodies now, the BBS Trust and the BBC Executive Board.
Who controls the content of the news? Well, the producers of the respective news programs do. The boards have no say in what actually goes to air.
Although the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is the paymaster of the BBC World Service it does not control editorial content. What it does do is suggest the languages to use and the countries to target. Hence the change from broadcasts to the old Iron Curtain countries onto the Middle East area in the last few years.
The international TV news service is now called BBC World News. Until a few months ago it was called BBC World. That’s funded by commercials and subscriptions. I’m not sure that it’s particularly controversial.
I think there is plenty of overlap on the TV side too. One night I was able to find and watch an “unofficial” online stream of BBC News 24 (the UK news channel) and BBC World News at the same time. The news at the top of the hour was literally the same broadcast for the international part until News 24 broke off into local UK news.
You’re right that it must get complicated. I wonder sometimes about how they sort out who’s paying for the correspondents around the world who report for multiple BBC commercial and non-commercial services.
They have plenty of non-news programs that I assume they sell overseas for big money. I wonder about Top Gear. They seem to have big budget but presumably they don’t earn anything at all in the UK so is it all funded from overseas revenue? I guess the same question applies to Doctor Who and numerous other shows.
A little OT but, outside the US, the best way to watch BBC World News online is through LiveStation. Unfortunately they haven’t been able to secure permission to stream BBC in the US.
As GorillaMan says, all BBC programmes are payed for from the central BBC fund, which is mostly made up of money raised from the licence fee. Programmes are sold abroad (and to satellite and cable channels in the UK) by BBC Worldwide, and a proportion of the profits go back into the BBC. Crucially, though, the profits from sales go into the central fund, rather than directly to the budget of the programme sold, or even the department within the BBC that produced it.
No, the fee is imposed and enforced by the BBC, under its charter from the Government. The idea being that the BBC should provide a service to the people of Britain, independent of political or commercial pressure.
In fact, since the Government sets the amount of the fee that the BBC is allowed to charge, it does have a certain amount of control over the way the Corporation operates, in a broad, long-term planning way, though not in a day-to-day programme content sense.
The only way to opt out of the licence fee is to opt out of watching TV – it’s a licence to operate a television receiver, what you do with it is up to you.
[My bolding.] So, if they are providing a public service, why isn’t that included with the rest of the taxes a person pays? Why should this group be able to insist on a fee, even if you don’t want to watch their programs? And why should we have to pay for a receiver if they want an informed public? Shouldn’t the tv makers be paying for our receivers, if they want us to watch them?
Why isn’t road tax or VAT included in the rest of the taxes you pay? Because it was easier to enforce this way.
TV licensing is a vestige of a Britain in which many people did opt out of watching TV. Obviously, getting 50% of the public to pay for something only the other 50% is using is a lot harder than getting only the users to pay for it.
The group is able to insist on a fee even if you don’t want to watch for the same reason as any other non-critical public service: it’s for your own good, at least in the eyes of the government. Some of your taxes pay for your local library, repertory theatre, museums, swimming pools, parks, beaches and listed buildings.
You may not use any of these facilities; in fact, you probably don’t use most of them- but you’re still paying for them.
Caveat: as any journalist knows, it’s virtually impossible to be truly objective.
The fee is a guarantee that the goverment won’t interfere with the daily newscast. In countries that have public TV, funded by tax, television has become a travesty. The way RAI reported news during the Berlusconi era would indeed make Fox News not only seem fair and ballanced, but even impartial and objective.
We’ve had this discussion before and Americans can’t seem to grasp that the people in countries with license fee actually like it that way, at least to the point that there’s no serious try to change things. We have a conservative goverment in Sweden right now (slightly to the left of DNC) and there has been almost no noise about changing the status quo.
It’s actually a comfort knowing that the news on television will actually be about as objective as one could wish for, knowing that no corporation is leaning on the company and that the government can’t threaten funding after the latest scandal exposing a major figure in parliament.
If staying in a hotel, or private house, they’re covered by the licence for that property. Assuming it has one! Theoretically, yes, they might be in a place without a licence, in which case they would be breaking the law, but nobody’s going to be chasing down fugitive tourists over this.
Also the BBC, in the shape of its TV Licencing Authority, discourage use of a television sans licence by putting the frighteners* on people who (a) have a television but no licence or (b) are thinking of not renewing their existing licence.
When I was a wee tot, I always thought it would be great to see a TV licence detector van.
When I hadn’t seen any after ten years, I began thinking that maybe they were a mythical boogeyvan to frighten the unwary into forking over their licence fees.
This company say they’ve produced a recent fleet (click on ‘broadcast projects’). I would expect that unlike the early propaganda days, they’re intended to work covertly, more to do with gathering evidence about an address which is under suspicion e.g. of a fraudulent declaration of not having a TV, rather than randomly patrolling streets.
This has sort of already been answered but a question I have is how accepting of the license fee are the British public? It seems like most people pay it happily without grumbling much about it but perhaps that’s just the type of people I tend to connect with.
How do the other broadcasters feel about it? It seems strange that Top Gear and Dr Who get public funds but a drama produced by or for a privately owned channel does not.
We had a similar thing in New Zealand although it’s been abolished since I left eight years ago. The difference in NZ is that our TV channels are commercial, including the government owned TVNZ, so the fee was helping pay for local productions regardless of who made them and which broadcaster would show them. I guess it also paid for the non-commercial national radio which is our version of BBC radio.
All the BBC radio stations are freely streamed online. I frequently listen to Radio 4 and Five Live on my bedside Wi-Fi radio. I feel a little guilty sometimes since it doesn’t cost me anything. After midnight, if I want to listen to the World Service I could listen to a semi-local NPR station WBUR in Boston and be frequently interrupted with pseudo commercials, “brought to you by …” and polite pleas for donations or I can listen directly online to the BBC. I have nothing against NPR or WBUR but I have to say it’s more pleasant listening to BBC directly so thank you from me to the British license holders
Other broadcasters can advertize and the Beeb can’t. This is a much larger revenue stream than licensing fees, or at least it was ten years ago before most Britons had cable (or even satellite). I have no idea if it still holds true.
