OT Rant BBC license any alternative?

As the BBC have now discovered a £800 million hole in their pension fund and want the license payer to pay for it I'm seriously considering throwing the TV out. The majority or their programmes are very poor quality now imho and News 24 is riddled with political bias and what I call "news creation".

Is it any wonder when expenses include such things as paying newsreaders £80k p.a. - just to read out the same A4 pages over and over all day long - and why does it take two of them to do it. Hordes of reporters and crew jetting off all over the place on what in many cases are little more than junkets.

I could easil;y do without the once-great BBC. RT seems to be more unbiassed that any other news channel just now.

Is there any legal way to rx TV stations that do not need pay the BBC for the privilege? Sat. dish decoder to usb to PC maybe? Probably not but just to ask. I would happily donate the licence fee to charity. I just don't want the fat-cats at the Beeb getting it.

Rant off. Thanks for reading.

Reply to
dave
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I'm not surprised they have a hole in their fund. For many years they were persuading staff to retire early on enhanced terms - then replacing them with freelance. That way seemed to reduce operational budgets while shifting the deficit elsewhere. All down to their totally unrealistic internal costing.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Could you do it by a satellite system with multiple LNBs but that does not have an LNB for Astra 28.2E. i think you would then you would not get any of the BBC ITV, C4 channels (freesat) that the licence fee covers.

there are some good news channels in English - France 24, AlJazeera to name but two, that do not require a licence and many good entertainment channels (all free)

Robert

Reply to
RobertL

Could you do it by a satellite system with multiple LNBs but that does not have an LNB for Astra 28.2E. i think you would then you would not get any of the BBC ITV, C4 channels (freesat) that the licence fee covers.

AFAIK the licence fee is only for BBC channels.

Reply to
Wesley

Reply to
S Viemeister

Not so - see

Reply to
S Viemeister

All completely standard in any large organisation with devolved cost controls and pressure on cost centre managers to reduce spend. Get stuff off the books, no matter how and where; just so long as it's gone.

Reply to
Huge

I suspect you'll find it's for "the reception and decoding (i.e., viewing) of television signals. I think you have to be able to demonstrate to the licence droid that you don't have any sort of tuner.

Reply to
Tim Streater

I was working for the BBC when this 'total costing' bollocks came in. Maybe the early '70s or so.

They first discovered it was cheaper to make a soap type drama on film than in a normal TV studio (which goes against sense) so they moved a prog normally made in TV Centre to their Ealing Film studios. The result was the TVC studio empty and dark with the crews on standby, while Ealing was on overtime. Next they discovered freelance was cheaper so the same prog went to external production leaving the TVC and Ealing Crews on standby...

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

There's no requirement to let them in, or demonstrate anything. You are requierd to show them your receiving equipment if demanded, but that does not imply letting them in, you can take it to the door, or simply say you don't have any. To gain entry without permission they need police accompaniment and some sort of evidence.

So in principle you could fit a big aerial and 2 dishes, not have a tv and wait for the fun & games.

NT

Reply to
Tabby

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

About par for the course. At a local hospital the accountants discovered that a job could be cheaper contracted out. But they overlooked the fact that their own staff then were sitting around with nothing to do and were still being paid;!...

Reply to
tony sayer

If required they will do just that come back "armed" ...

Reply to
tony sayer

They seldom do in practice. Masses of people (that dont have tvs of course) simply say no tv at the door, and that's that.

NT

Reply to
Tabby

Yes more evidence that the running of pension schemes by non-pension companies should be banned by law.

Reply to
Tim Streater

It's sad but I have noticed far more in depth reporting from RT and Al- Jazeera.

RT is certainly what I would call a "serious news" channel - has some interesting mini-documentries without the silly jokes or the "let me say that again because we know our viewers are all retards".

BBC has had its day as a premier content producer - though I do value a channel with no ads - but that is becoming less of an issue since I got an old Topfield PVR and jump right over the ads anyway now - and I can download TV recordings to my laptop and watch on my 90 minute train journey to London

- definately the TV viewing habit of my next few years!

Reply to
Tim Watts

So you then have a lightbulb moment and dump the TVC studio and the Ealing Film studio. Seems a no-brainer to me.

Reply to
Tim Streater

Shows how crappily organised the NHS must be if you can't reassign staff somewhere else.

Reply to
Tim Streater

Another option might be a black and white licence. Depends what the definition of a b&w 'receiver' is. One where the colour saturation knob is glued at zero (if there's such a thing)? Or if you have to start messing with cutting chroma signals inside?

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

No ads? There's vast chunks of them between programs advertising other programs and channels. It's the same on the radio now too.

Reply to
tinnews

You don't even need to bother with the aerial. If their database shows that there's no licence for your address they start harassing you.

This happened to us a few years ago when we moved house, we didn't manage to sell the old place (which didn't have any external aerial) for about a year after buying the new one and ended up spending some time in each. We didn't spend enough time in the old one to bother about watching TV so kept just the one licence and changed the address to the new house. It didn't take long for them to send the threatening letters (which I ignored) to the old house, implying that we were illegally operating a TV set. Eventually the sent their investigator round asking if we had a TV in the house, I refused to answer the question and told him it was irrelevant (you need a licence to operate a TV, not to own one). He went away and we never heard any more from them. I was rather disappointed that they never sent a detector van round on a wild goose chase but I did warn the guy who bought the house from us to make sure he got his TV licence updated sharpish after moving in just in case they turned up.

Reply to
Mike Clarke

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