To answer a couple of points raised by Ianzin. Of course there are spin-offs and other merchandising. If it wasn’t for the income raised by this, the licence fee would be even higher. As for not having advert breaks during Sky Movies , also true but that is a subscription service . If you don’t pay the money , you don’t see the film. In fact I have heard people complain about this very fact. You to subscribe to this service and you still are bombarded by commercials between the films.
Perhaps I should have worded it “I don’t think there’s anything special about the BBC’s setup that allows it to be less ratings-driven than HBO”. I thought that you were saying that the licence fee system insulates the BBC from ratings more than other advert-free services, like HBO (because you said “not only are” etc.).
I think there is. HBO has to keep appealing to their subscribers; if they don’t, people will stop subscribing and HBO will go out of business. The BBC doesn’t have to worry about losing individual subscription fees, because everyone who owns a TV has to pay them. They only have to worry about a majority of voters getting so fed up with BBC programming that they repeal the license fee.
Yes, but that is a big threat to the BBC, and consequently they do worry about ratings, very much. Their mainstream network, BBC1, is in direct competition with the commercial networks, and the content is pretty similar.