Comments on: A little off the top

By: Glenn Aylett

Glenn Aylett — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:42:26 +0000

It should never have come to do this. Channel 4 in particular went so far down the populist route with rubbish like Hollyoaks, which makes Neighbours look like Shakespeare, and Big Borether that they seemed to lose sight of what the station was set up to be: a commercial version of BBC 2. OK I don’t expect them to show four hours of experimental jazz every night, but nor do I expect Channel 4 to be like a more teen oriented ITV1. If they are asking for a slice of the BBC licence fee, it is their own fault for watering down their public service and minorities remit so much. Also, how popular are their populist programmes now: Big Brother struggles to attract 2 million viewers( down from a peak of 7 million) and Hollyoaks attracts fewer viewers at times than Neighbours on Channel 5.

By: Murray C Park

Murray C Park — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:47:17 +0000

I’m with the BBC on this one. The government may swear blind that they only want a couple of percent for the ITV News and they may even mean it, but once the principal is established that the license fee can be spent on things other than the BBC then successive governments will no doubt find excuses to dip into it for all sorts of other things that have previously been government funded or subsidised – theatre, ballet, opera, art galleries, museums, Offcom, Diamond Jubilee celebrations, something toward the Olympics, etc, etc, etc.

At the moment the BBC just has to argue the size of the license fee increase every few years and the government will normally find it tough to stray too far from inflation plus or minus a few percent. It seems entirely possible to me that the object of this top-slicing exercise is to get to a position where the BBC has to bid for a share of the license fee each year or every few years, which would then give the politicians much greater control over the BBC than they’ve had for decades.

By: Graham Kibble-White

Graham Kibble-White — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:10:34 +0000

"...very little of my online output is written in the spirit of anger. That doesn't preclude people from reading tone that isn't there (one of the perils of communicating in ASCII) but it's something a user might find worth keeping in mind when interacting with me -- I may be being firm at the time, but it doesn't mean I'm shouting at you." - Mark H Wilkinson's Wikipedia profile page.

By: Jack Kibble-White

Jack Kibble-White — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:41:13 +0000

Well I still think it’s stupid.

By: Mark H Wilkinson

Mark H Wilkinson — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:40:09 +0000

And anyway, where did that stupid expression come from?

The 18th century.