[bartread]

No, I do too, and I’m happy to do so. I’ve always felt it’s a useful brake on over-commercialisation of other channels, although perhaps less effective now than it once was. I do enjoy quite a bit of the BBC’s output as well.

[permo-w]

I feel there's a huge problem in this debate, which is that the people who don't like it are extremely vocal, and the people who do like it and quietly use and enjoy it without necessarily adoring it, perhaps like you, who I suspect are a majority, are just not really represented in the conversation, and the people who love it, like me, do not really have a central reference point from which to draw power from unlike the people who don't like it, who have the entire right-wing media crowing about it at every opportunity

[bartread]

You might be underrating my ardour on this as I've said my piece at greater length before.

I've always been in favour of (something like) the license fee to fund a non-commercial national public service broadcaster. Public service broadcasting is incredibly important otherwise it's all just commercial interests and you end up with the kind of nonsense you get in the TV landscape in the USA: low quality content, far too many ads, dominance of hyper-partisan "news", etc.

And if you look at what the BBC does - the TV channels, iPlayer, the national radio stations, local radio, news, the world service, the ground-breaking content they've created over the decades, and of course licensing/reselling content - it's incredibly impressive and, to me at any rate, represents incredibly good value for money as compared to other providers.

The TV license costs about the same as an annual Netflix subscription but the BBC is able to do so much more with that money than Netflix are. Doesn't even compare in my mind.

[andriesm]

If you believe in it, then pay. Just leave the rest alone that want no part of it.

[permo-w]

agreed on every point

[notahacker]

Not to mention the people who are extremely vocal about how horrible and woke it is for having too many minorities and that Mr Lineker also overlaps heavily with people who have watched it continuously for 50 years, wouldn't dream of switching over to newfangled channels like Channel 4 and don't know what an Amazon is...

[GlacierFox]

I think I'm one of those, minus the last bit about channel 4 and Amazon.