I’ve got that email and I have a TV licence.
For me it says at the bottom: “You’re receiving this service email because you signed up for a BBC account.”
This would be the account I use to watch iPlayer.
If it says the same at the bottom of yours, it might be worth deleting your iPlayer account rather than simply not using it.
Taking it with a pinch of salt as he has a financial interest in the BBC.
I don’t care about the news and never watch TV so I don’t see the point in the license fee. (I only watch anime)
Why can’t they have adverts or have to have paid subscribers like any other business, they don’t make anything or show anything imported that i’d want to watch. Never heard of half the stuff people go on about TV at work.
See they quoted Philip Davies at the end of the article, for balance.
I have wonder if he’s being deliberately obtuse, though, given he’s quoted as saying:
"If the BBC is such wonderful value for money, why does it continue to insist on the criminal law being in place to force people to pay for it? If they really believed that, the BBC would be happy to join Netflix and move to a voluntary subscription.
Surely he has to realise here that it is impossible to watch Netflix without a subscription, but with the BBC you can simply turn your TV on. It is not in any way, shape or form a fair and valid comparison.
I dont’t own a TV
I got you
We went through this earlier in the topic. It’s not entirely about programs they make or whether you own a TV.
This article covers some of that they’re involved in that you might not even be aware you’re using:
Yeah I probably like to live disconnected from mainstream society but there’s nothing wrong with that.
My mental health problems along with the poor support I’ve had from the NHS probably contributes to this.
I’ve never heard of any actor or celeb when one dies and it gets brought up at work.
My few friends irl are pretty into the anime emo subculture so I don’t even get it off them.
Can you explain that a bit, please
“Because I only watch anime and not the BBC, and I don’t read any news, when a workmate says ‘Did you hear? Bobby Ball died!’, I’ve no idea who they’re talking about because I’ve never watched the BBC and he’s not in any anime.”
I presume is the intended meaning.
Ah… now I get it 
I would watch a Bobby Ball anime.
Would people really mind if the BBC had maybe one or two adverts totaling a minute max or something?.. It doesn’t have to be like ITV where the adverts have their own ad-breaks.
I doubt people would mind necessarily but one or two minutes of advertising wouldn’t fund too much I would imagine; it would likely eventually need to be increased.
It starts as one or two minutes… it’ll quickly become the same as the other commercial channels - but once it has advertising it’s very hard to justify the license fee so you’d likely lose a bunch of the less ‘commercial’ stuff as they wouldn’t have the same budget.
I think they should just pay it out of general taxation instead of constantly reinterpreting the law as viewing habits change to make everyone liable for it, which basically achieves the same thing anyway.
I occasionally find even the one or two minutes we already get to be intrusive, and that is purely the bbc promoting its own shows, channels and services. It’s fine to be reminded that a new series of Line of Duty is on the way, but between every other programme for up to a month before the series starts, then when it does it just switches to trailers for upcoming episodes or such drives me up the wall… which is an example of just how difficult this area is for the bbc already. As you say, 1 or 2 minutes of ads on top of trailers becomes 4 or 5 minutes in total, which can easily then become 6 or 7 minutes, which can then easily become 9 or 10 minutes and before you know it they’re not far off from some of the commercial broadcasters.
I live out of my Sky planner so everything is pre-recorded and I thankfully can fast forward through all the adverts. I can’t remember the last time I planned anything around a TV schedule so I had to watch “live” and put up with adverts.
I’d never really thought it like that. I know it’s a shorter advertising window on BBC, but ITV mix adverts for commercial partners and BBC just plug their own things.
Is there much of a difference in 35 seconds in plugging the next Line of Duty vs Compare the Market? If you’re interested in neither of them, then probably not.
If I’ve recorded it, I’m fast forwarding and if I haven’t, I’m probably on my phone.
The advantage I do like is that I don’t get 3 interruptions to Line of Duty, but if t was between programs, it wouldn’t be much different to now.
The problem with advertising is not that viewers don’t want to watch a couple of mins of ads. The problem is that advertising pushes broadcasters away from less commercial programming and towards more commercial programming.
Channel 4 became more populist from 1990 onwards, when it was allowed to keep its advertising revenue for the first time. (The Big Breakfast launched in 1992, Big Brother in 2000 etc)
The second argument is that a viewer-funded service is justified when there’s no other source of income. But once you put ad money in to the mix, suddenly you start asking - well why are viewers paying 50%, why can’t we reduce that to 10%?
I know these discussions ultimately end up going round and round but can I just say that I don’t watch Sky News because it isn’t impartial enough for me. It smacks of Murdoch™️ sensationalism. A bit like that free paper you used to get on the Tube.
I have mentioned this just to point out that impartiality is REALLY hard to achieve and even harder to spot. We all have our own biases and will gravitate towards media that resonates with us and reassures us.
I used to think the same, but after watching a lot of Sky News I don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as the Murdoch-owned press. (Also Murdoch doesn’t own a majority of Sky).
The reason that Sky News is acceptable is because of Ofcom. UK broadcasting is highly regulated, which is why there’s no Fox News UK.
I think all three major UK news broadcasters (BBC, Sky and ITN) are impartial, but Sky and ITN’s newsgathering capabilities are a tiny tiny tiny tiny fraction of the BBC’s. There’s no news org in the world that covers the world as comprehensively as the BBC.