[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