[sdunwoody]

Not read the article, but as a political aside, the licence fee is a big subject of debate here at the moment.

It was designed so that the BBC essentially had independence from the government, and as such, they could more easily be politically neutral (if they were funded directly by the government, there would be more pressure for them to cover the government favourably in news programs etc.).

Problem is that these days the licence fee is outdated with lots of people just watching Netflix/Amazon etc.

A lot of the "right wing" here also think the BBC has a left wing bias, which I think is a bit ridiculous really, as a lot of the "left wing" also think it has a right wing bias. But the consequence of this is that a lot in the current government want to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee. This would basically mean that there is no consequence to not paying the licence fee, and assuming the government didn't come up with an alternative way of funding it, it would amount to death by a thousand cuts for the BBC (which a lot of right wingers are actually quite open about wanting).

It's quite a tough problem in my opinion. Direct funding from the government would solve a lot of problems, but also make political impartiality a lot more difficult to achieve. A direct subscription like for Netflix would likely result in a significant drop in revenue.

Hard to see a good solution here.

[callamdelaney]

The solution is to let people who want to watch and consume bbc content pay for it, and let everybody else not pay for it. It's very simple.

[sdunwoody]

The BBC would face significant cuts if that was the case. It would likely end up at a point where the quantity and quality of content was reduced due to less revenue, which then would cause additional people to cancel subscriptions.

This would be quite damaging for the UK as the BBC is a great way of projecting soft power, plus it provides quite a lot of great resources (as has been pointed out in other comments).

I'd be more in favour of a system like Germany has to be honest.

[callamdelaney]

So I should pay the license fee to keep the quality of content I don't watch high? If the BBC's value proposition is so good, it will have no issue convincing the public of that.

[sdunwoody]

You could hold a similar debate on every service the government currently provides, and you would essentially end up with toll roads everywhere and parents having to pay exorbitant amounts to educate their children properly.

The BBC is similar to these things in the sense that it provides good value for the taxpayer, and contributes quite significantly to society (even if it doesn't directly effect you in the sense of you consuming their content regularly).