As someone who doesn’t own a television the BBC iPlayer has had an interesting effect on my viewing habits. Normally if I fancy watching an hour of so of moving pictures I’ll hit the torrents. Now I have a quick glance at the BBC4 page and see if anything catches my eye. Tonight, over dinner, it was Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press which was highly enjoyable as most things with Mr Fry are. (Do check out his podcasts, especially the odd-numbered ones which consist of him rambling about whatever takes his fancy - bliss!)
When you become someone without a TV license you enter into a strange world of moral grey areas as the TV license also funds BBC radio, online and a host of other minor services many of which we, by dint of not having a TV, use a fair bit. Radio 4 is always on when I’m in the kitchen and news.bbc.co.uk is my first port of call for breaking news. I like that these don’t carry advertising and would feel obliged to pay for them were it not that they cost but a tiny fraction of the BBC’s television bill.
But now, with the iPlayer, I’m watching BBC television for the first time in a long time, which might seem somewhat hypocritical to those of you who’ve experienced my rants against TV over the years. In my defense I’d clarify that I object to broadcast TV which dictates when one should watch a program and the context for that viewing. I find ambient television watching to be abhorrent but focussed, deliberate viewing on my terms, well, that’s okay.
Andy Pryke had a similar dilemma recently when watching something on the iPlayer. He said:
Given that I don’t have a TV licence I’d be quite happy to pay to watch good quality stuff like this, but how much? Maybe 50p? Is that too cheapskate of me? I think a TV licence is around £140(?) so that would be the equivalent of 280 hours at my rate, or about 45 mins of TV a day.
50p per program seems about right to me. Go to the prices usually banded around for TV downloads and I’d want to own the damn thing forever but 50p for 7 days access (with the average number of views probably being 1) to a Flash video file is reasonable. The trick would be making sure the system is as simple as it currently is. Any more steps and a HD torrent will make more sense.
So here’s an idea for how the iPlayer might evolve. Let me set up a fund on the BBC site, pay as you go style. I credit this with £10 and after each program I can decide whether or not I want to pay for it and how much with the suggested fee varying depending on the program (£1 for a costume drama, 10p for a gameshow). And, of course, I can just not pay anything at all, which keeps the system nice and simple for those with licenses. And, if it turns out that I might as well just pay for a license fee, I can do so using my BBC iPlayer money as credit.
Of course this would never be implemented because to even acknowledge that there are people without license fees who are not criminals would give out completely the wrong message. Better to just let us carry on watching stuff for free and feeling mildly guilty about it.
Oh, and I’d also like a system like this for stuff I torrent. I’m never going to watch Lost on Sky but I’ll happily throw $1 or so to ABC or whoever for each download if they give me somewhere to send it.
(When I broached this on Twitter @gezd suggested donating to a BBC charity which a nice idea in the interim but I’d rather be contributing to the production of BBC stuff like license fee payers do.)
How long do we give the BBC to survive, with its ‘unique’ funding model (ie the one that uses my money to compete directly with my business)?
Has the Beeb twigged yet that i-player is bringing forward the day when the licence fee becomes unsustainable? I was talking to a TV ‘high-up’ the other day who cheerfully told me how great it was to get rid of his telly - and therefore the licence fee - because his pc didn’t need a licence.
I’m getting me a broadband connection for my garrett.
Heh, this “BBC using public money to compete with my business” thing you newspaper types come out with always amuses me. I went on about it at some length in this typically scrappy Stirrer thread last year but in essence, the BBC is kicking your ass because they’ve been investing in online journalism for over a decade now. You, to be frank, haven’t. See also: The Guardian.
The fact that the BBC is investing in something that will make its future uncertain is surely to be applauded and a reason to make sure it continues to be funded in the future by whatever means possible. The TV License was a best fit solution. We just need to find another one.
I was having just that same internal conversation while watching just that same programme last night. And I’m someone who held onto paying the licence for quite a few months after I stopped owning a telly. I felt I was paying for programmes, but then decided that paying for owning a TV when I didn’t own a TV was a bit silly.
So we’re off the books, and the telly inspector man has been around to make sure we’re legit.
But I do think of it almost as a privelege to support something as great as this was. I’d happily throw 50p in the tip jar for that one.
But my next thought was ‘my Dad would love that programme’. He’s a Scottish-born typesetter and he used to make and set type - the sort that you fashion out of hot metal - before going through all of the changes to the typesetting business in the past 50 years (and there have been a few), finally becoming a bit of a Quark expert - until the trade became pretty much obsolete in time for his retirement.
And he lives in New Zealand where the iPlayer don’t go.
Anyone got a torrent link?
I stopped paying the license fee a few years back (I disconnected the aerial from my TV) and eventually they stopped sending me threatening letters (having finally realised that I was complying with the rules).
And now the BBC put all their own content online via the iPlayer and I can watch as much as I like for free, which at the moment is ‘Moto GP’ every other weekend and ‘Adventures in Architecture’ each week.
How much would I be willing to pay for iPlayer content? I’m really not sure. It would have to be quite low because, having got rid of my TV some years back, I don’t place a very high value on TV content.
Pete, understand your point - and the swipes at the newspaper industry’s lamentable under-investment in online development are well made. However, transpose the licence fee argument to any other area of industry, and it simply doesn’t stand up. It’s called the ‘distortion of the market’ effect. For instance, if the government decided it wanted to create a chain of city centre pubs funded by the taxpayer, where all the food and beer was free, no business - whether an independent or a chain - would contemplate competing in the same area. It simply wouldn’t risk its money where someone else could ‘buy the market’ with public subsidy.
In this way (while not defending the typical incumbent behavious of the newspaper trade), the BBC’s claim to be blazing a trail in digital media - particularly its local endeavours - has had the effect of dissuading others to enter the market.
Having said all that, if someone held a gun to the head of Radio Four, I would willingly cough up a hundred quid a year to preserve it.
I too have been thinking about this quite a bit recently, though my experiments with the iPlayer haven’t been totally smooth anyway (I find on various trials that it’s been very prone to big pauses and buffering - and of course on a Mac I can’t just download it and watch it all in one go).
* I am a license fee payer and expect to continue to be so - it’s a real shame therefore that I can’t somehow validate my status and then watch a show I’ve essentially already paid for when I happen to be in the US or Europe.
* Maybe the license fee should / could move to some sort of subscription fee? The Beeb would lose out on quite a few UK subs I should think, but a) they might be able to get rid of all the detector van / chasing malarky, and b) they might get a lot of overseas subs. Hmm, would need careful modelling financially.
My situation is different but then again it probably represents the variety of exceptions that fall under the license fee umbrella. Although I spend most of my time working abroad I do own a TV and do pay the license fee (at least my wife does and she is the main benefactor of the BBC’s programming). But what galls me is that on a Saturday (or Sunday as it was yesterday) afternoon I would like to listen to the latest internet commentary from St. Andrews (or Villa Park as it was yesterday) on Live 5. Guess what, no transmission outside the UK. Yet as Jenni says above, I have paid for something I cannot receive.
As to buying TV programs, I do that with my US iTunes account. Not a lot but one series that cost me about $25 was the first season of The Riches with Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver. Mine to watch as many times as I like for as long as I like. Given where I work and what little there is to do, such programs are a life line. I did read somewhere that the BBC was considering putting content on iTunes. PBS already does just that in the States.
I’d pay for a sort of all you can eat TV/Movie thing on iTunes, stream what you want, download and keep for a week.
iTunes currently does £1.99 download and own forever, but I’d say that most of us just want to watch it for a bit, which is where a nice subscriber model would work nicely.
Its a good idea Pete but I seriously doubt the mass populations inclination to “return to the scene of the crime” and pay for a programme.
I think the idea of a low cost, short term rental service would be better. I often just wanna watch a film, or watch a TV show once, not pay to own it, and I am more than happy to pay a small fee for that.
I do agree that the current BBC model, the idea of a license fee is outdated and out of place. Originally it was to pay for our TV programmes. What I don’t understand is why we have to pay for it for commercial channels, of which there are so many now thanks to digital transmissions. Basically the license is paying for the BBC, and nothing else, and why do they continue to pretend that there is any other reason for it. I can’t own a TV unless i pay the BBC £140 a year for programming I may not actually watch.
Regarding iTunes purchases, if more shows were on there, that I like and want to watch, like Lost, then I would be happy to pay and keep those programmes,(yes I know Lost is on there). If they did a pay per season format as well, like the US, then it would be a better deal than paying £1.89 for each episode in a season.
Perhaps some sort of cost per programme system, that associates your watching to an account, and then charges you each month for what you watch, They could have an upper limit perhaps, so if you accrued more than £12 per month, then you don’t pay any more, i.e. the monthly cost of a TV license, so you’ll never pay more than a standard license cost. This could be done through digital receivers, or over the internet for programmes watched online/downloaded.
Just an idea
It really is an interesting point. I suspect that the move towards IP delivered television and radio will be the driving force behind any kind of licence fee review, rather than any political motives.
But for now, I wouldn’t worry about it too much, they seem to have enough money.
The thing which is always overlooked in arguments against the licence which go along the lines of “I only watch commercial / subscription television, why should I pay for the BBC which I don’t watch”, is that ultimately we all do have a choice on whether or not to fund the BBC - we have a choice on whether or not to have a television & thus a licence. We as individuals have no such choice on whether or not to fund commercial television, since unless we’re hermits living off berries & mushrooms in the forest, we all have to buy the products from the shops which advertise on commercial television - the cost of which is passed on to us. & in the case of Sky, the purpose of the basic subscription is not to generate income, but to ensure that only people in Britain & Ireland become subscribers so they don’t have to negotiate international broadcast rights.
(I’ve always been intrigued by the reports I hear from non-licence-holders about the belligerence of the licencing agency; whenever I’ve not had a licence due to not having a telly they’ve always accepted my explanation without argument, never even visiting let alone demanding entry)
Thank you Simon! I’ve banged on about the invisible tax for commercial television before and no-one ever seems to get it. If I could get a discount on my shopping for not having a television then I’d have some sympathy with the BBC haters but I can’t so I don’t.
(Having moved around a lot I think the belligerence of the licensing agency depends on the local contractor. Some are very lax, some are very aggressive.)