Non-Payment Is A Tactic, Not A Strategy

The clip is valuable for the information and perspective it offers, and we must credit the BBC with allowing such a debate on its own airtime.  Nick Ross is quite knowledgeable and articulate on the subject.  He argues against the TV licence, calling it "anachronistic", "increasingly archaic" and heading for redundancy, and assumes that the BBC want to keep it.

Ross is right on the first point (with the caveat that the TV licence is already redundant), but we think he is wrong on the latter point – the BBC’s senior management want to get rid of the TV licence, if anything more than the non-payers and protesters/campaigners do.  They are not afraid of competition.  Why would they be?  They have eight decades of public investment in a world-class brand behind them and (generally-speaking) world-class journalistic and broadcasting talent at their immediate disposal.  Really, the idea that the BBC is afraid to lose the TV licence is completely ridiculous.  Commercialisation?  Subscriptions? Privatisation?  These don't scare the top people at the BBC, whatever they may say in their press releases.  There is no lack of vision and no "risk aversion".

The real reason we still have the TV licence is, oddly enough, down to politics: it gives the government political control over the BBC, without the downside of accountability and answerability for its output that there would be if the BBC were funded out of general taxation.  That, in one sentence, is what this is all about.  The BBC is, properly-understood, a state broadcaster, and the TV licence is the perfect arrangement for politicians. 

The solution is abolition and closure of the BBC for good.  Anything less plays into their hands and will just leave us stuck with a hybrid Channel Four/LBC-style left-wing media conglomerate with a super-dominant market position.  In that scenario, the BBC will go on forever. 

Bring down the BBC by not paying for your licence?  We can almost hear the laughter at Broadcasting House.  “Go ahead!” will be the response.  Myoptic personal tactics like non-payment are fine as far as they go, but not enough.  On its own, that will drag us into a scenario similar to Australia, which ended its TV licence, only to continue with state broadcasting but funded out of general taxation - a much worse system.  Or it will lead to commercialisation, which will put the BBC in an unassailable position, free to continue with its campaign to undermine and destroy Britain under the guise of a prestigious brand with a "public service remit".

We need a political strategy for complete abolition, and it needs to start now, not 10 or 15 years down the line – otherwise the end of the BBC will be like Brexit: another stitch-up.  As Ross says in the clip, the private sector providers, ITV and Channel Four, are quite able to fulfil the necessary public service obligations, so far as they are commercially practicable.  We have no need for the BBC.  It has completed its mission and should now be dismantled.