Radio, that’s the 5 National analogue channels and the 5 digital channels, BBC World Service and BBC Local Radio, the vital training ground and news generation service that feeds National newsrooms –consisting of 8 regional stations and 40 local stations, costs £2.11 per household per month. That’s £2.11!That’s not even per individual – but per household. So if there are 4 of you in the house that’s just 52p per person or £6.33 a year. I don’t know anything else you can buy for £6.33 that lasts all year. Even that all-consuming monster Television only costs each household £7.96 per month. It’s criminal even complaining about it.
Even more criminal is freezing the BBC’s licence fee until 2017. In current economic conditions, that represents a major reduction in funding, as fuel and energy costs rise even if salaries don’t. The fact that politicians demand it, yet will happily spend billions on troops and missiles in countries and on wars that we can never win, is absurd. The BBC World Service was just as vital in educating the population of Kabul as British troops were, but the freeze will threaten and reduce its output significantly. World Service will soon be funded from the Licence fee, previously paid for by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Almost every other BBC Service is sustaining cuts as a result.
And to those people who claim it’s another tax that they don’t have a choice in paying? Try taking your shopping basket to the supermarket checkout, and asking for £10 off your bill because you don’t watch ITV. Ask the car dealership for £500 off your new executive saloon, because you always switch channels when the adverts come on. ITV, Channel 5 and every other commercial TV channel costs you significantly more than £8 a month, every time you go shopping.
The cuts need politicians to be visionary and BBC Management to stand their ground and shout about the restrictions that the world’s leading broadcaster is about to find itself facing. Watch this space though; I suspect that the level of coverage of politician’s activities will begin to contract during Party conferences and via BBC parliament. The only thing that might make Westminster’s members understand the short-sightedness of the funding cuts, is the withdrawal of their own publicity by the organisation that provides them with a mouthpiece.
