The Economist is currently carrying an article on one of the most irritating features of modern British life as far as I'm concerned, namely the question of the BBC's dependence on general taxation and what the future portends for this situation. The article doesn't really say anything that isn't already obvious - pointing out that the ever-multiplying number of media outlets and emergence of more compelliing technological alternatives to TV watching have been undermining the case for public broadcasting - but what struck a nerve with me in the piece wasn't so much the rehashing of such well-known arguments, as the following paragraph:
Ditching the licence fee would be tricky politically: people care about the BBC, and meddling with it can be dangerous. Government-commissioned research released in September found that a majority of licence-fee payers would be prepared to pay more for current services than they do now, and far more for new offerings.Now, let us assume for the moment that it really is true that "a majority of licence-fee payers would be prepared to pay more for current services than they do now": if this is the case, why on Earth should they be expected to get angry at being made to live up to their words? If the majority loves the BBC so much, why not make those who watch its offerings pay for the privilege, rather than forcibly drafting the rest of us into funding their Dear Auntie Beeb? Could it be that all that talk of being willing to shell out more for the BBC is just a lot of hot air? But if we accept that it might be, on what grounds must we believe that the British masses really would rise up in anger at the cancellation of the BBC licence fee and a move to a subscription-based service?
I am for the most part a fan of the writing in the Economist, but when it comes to topics like this one I find its approach excessively clouded by the self-benefiting socialistic assumptions of the British upper-middle class from which most of its writers are drawn. The reality of the BBC is that, as the article itself states,
The rich and the old are keener on it than the poor and the young, who in effect subsidise the viewing and listening of more prosperous householdsand all that talk about the sacred light in which "the public" views the Beeb is just a fancy way of saying "we simply can't (or rather, don't want to) imagine a world in which our "high quality" programming isn't subsidized by the uncultured lower classes, and what is more, it'll be good for them."
Frankly, I don't believe that a reasonable case can be made for subsidizing the BBC today, and I don't think such a thing has been possible for the last 10 years at the very least: to the extent that the BBC's foreign presence really does buy the British government a worthwhile modicum of prestige abroad, then that branch alone should be subsidized, not the ever growing domestic empire which is crowding out private-sector offerings. Unfortunately, I don't forsee any future British government showing the will to come to terms with this reality, as the Conservative leadership is drawn from the self-same class for which the supposedly "educational" and "high quality" BBC provides a handy vessel for getting everyone to pay for viewing material only that self-deluding class really cares about: the willingness of the general public to pay for the BBC's offerings will never be put to the test precisely because this well-off class is afraid of the answer it might receive.
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