[EnderMB]

Which is a crazy argument because iPlayer was ahead of the times for years before Netflix became a mainstream choice in UK households. Hell, the 2012 coverage of the London Olympics was still some of the best coverage I ever remember seeing of a sporting event.

[thu2111]

It's a bad argument for another reason. In 2009 there was a totally different government in power. It's weird to blame politicians today for decisions made by the opposing party over a decade ago.

The BBC's problem is not iPlayer vs Netflix. It's that they aren't producing enough compelling content anymore to justify the tax that funds them. Additionally they keep angering ministers, who think they're biased and out of touch.

[EnderMB]

While I largely agree, I would attribute most of the BBC's issues down to simple budget cuts. A world-leading organisation had its funding reduced, and was eaten from the inside by those put in charge by the government.

The government has always wanted to control the state broadcaster, and a decade ago people would've fought tooth and nail to keep the BBÇ alive. The decline in quality has been slow, but obvious from all sides, from sport coverage, to factual output, and most notably from the news and political front. Those people that would've fought for the BBC years ago are now those that want its funding removed entirely, and in my opinion it's a master-class in control from the Tories. The left have been played hard by the BBC.

You're absolutely right in that it's not an iPlayer vs Netflix debate. It's an output issue, and that output has been eroded over 5-10 years.

[thu2111]

Maybe. I'd argue the funding has barely been cut at all. In 2010 excluding the over 75s it was 2.93 billion, in 2018 it was 3.17 billion:

https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/...

The over 75s grant has been cut a little bit but the actual gross revenues are higher now than they used to be. Funding isn't the BBCs problem. It is able to tax a growing population - that's the definition of increasing revenues. With billions of pounds to splash around it's really hard for them to plead poverty.

The bigger issue is they produce a lot of content but it's increasingly narrowly targeted to, basically, the sort of thing Lib Dem voters in London like (and think other people should like). That's a small minority of the population.

[IanCal]

I think this needs to be considered in more detail, because those numbers are different than the accounts published by the BBC, and one of the ways there were cuts was having more things added to the responsibilities. For example, the BBC wasn't paying £75M/year for S4C before, but it is now.

I'm also not quite sure on the over 75s licenses being marked as "cut a little bit"

> The compensation paid to the BBC by government for the current 4.55 million free TV licences (introduced in 2000) is being phased out in three steps – falling from £655m in 2017-18 to £468m in 2018-19 and a final £247m payment in 2019-20. At that point, the value of the free licences could be £725m.

https://rts.org.uk/article/tony-hall-calls-increased-funding...

That's huge drop unless those numbers have changed, but even the plan of charging some for the license put the figure at near £250M. Combined with the S4C change that's, what, over 10% of your figure as a cut without converting to real terms.

[thu2111]

Alright. I didn't know about S4C. I agree that moving things around between different budgets can result in what feels like 'cuts' to the BBC although, normally departments don't consider enlargement to be a cut exactly :)

I had a bit of a rant on HN the other day about this practice in the UK of describing the public sector as being 'cut' when graphs of their budget are going up and to the right. People do it a lot with the NHS and it distorts the political debate, in my mind, because of course people hear the word "cut" and think the amount of available money is going down when it's actually going up.

The loss of the money for the over-75s is a real cut. But so far it hasn't counter-balanced the increase in revenue from general population growth, or at least that's how I interpret the graphs on the page I linked to, which are going up and to the right. Additionally the BBC spends considerably more than it gets in license fee, I assume that's based on commercial revenues as (AFAIK) the BBC doesn't take out loans or get into debt. When those revenues are also considered its expenditure has been growing steadily since 2011.

Tony Hall's argument is basically that Amazon/Netflix can outspend them. Well yeah, but Netflix is a temporary phenomenon given their enormous burn rates and the spending of Amazon/Apple is somewhat calibrated towards matching it. I'm not convinced those levels of spending on content will last forever, myself. But also the BBC is allowed to sell its programs internationally, just like Netflix and Amazon do. It generates significant revenues from that as the graphs show. What stops them competing with these firms, exactly? They play in the same league.

Part of the justification the BBC gives for its existence is that it does not have to simply duplicate what commercial providers do. It feels like they try to argue both sides of the issue: the license fee is good because it frees them from the need to do populist stuff and lets them focus on worthy but expensive programming like documentaries and news, but it's also bad because it means they can't compete (anymore) with commercial outlets on producing populist dramas.

Rather than demand more money, maybe they should consider their focus. Apple/Amazon/Netflix don't attempt to fund worldwide journalism or radio. If the BBC is finding itself faced with better competitors, perhaps it should re-allocate resources towards the stuff it does that's unique.

[IanCal]

I'm on a phone so I'll try and respond more in depth later but the total income based on the yearly accounts was £4993M in year end 2011, and £4889M in year end 2019. That's not adjusting for anything, just total income.