Re: tv license rant /the bastards | Forum

tv license rant /the bastards

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Merrick Mar 11, 2003 22:22:12

Replying to FourWinds

A few stray things I'd like to chuck in here, most of them things I remember hearing but can't verify.

Firstly, I *love* the World Service, but I'd heard that it's not funded from the license fee but by the Foreign Office. If so, it's not part of this discussion.

Although many of us don't have BBC3 and all those yet, we will soon. They've brought out the 'freeview' boxes for £100 which give a range of digital channels. When the number of people in the UK without any digital TV gets low enough (around 200,000 households or so, I think), they'll give these boxes away so that non-digital broadcasts can stop. Then the newly cleared airwaves will be licensed off to the mobile phone companies.

And of course, we do all pay for watching commercial TV. Not only do we pay with our time spent watching fucking adverts, but the adverts are financially paid for out of the revenue from people buying the products.

I once saw a study of how much advertising adds on to the price of stuff, and it reckoned that an 'average' family of four spent more per year on adverts than on their TV license.

Whilst I don't buy cars or Maybelline mascara (despite any rumours you may have heard to the contrary), like everyone else I do use products that are advertised. I buy stamps, electricity, food; some of that money goes to produce adverts for me to get riled by on TV.

If not watching the BBC should qualify for a rebate on the TV license, shouldn't not watching TV qualify for a rebate on your groceries?

FourWinds Mar 12, 2003 09:02:45

Replying to Merrick

A damned fine point sir!

grufty jim Mar 12, 2003 12:01:46

Replying to Merrick

>
> If not watching the BBC should qualify for a > rebate on the TV license, shouldn't not
> watching TV qualify for a rebate on your
> groceries?
>
I don't see this at all.

The adverts are paid for by advertisers, not by the public. You can argue that consumers pay for them indirectly; but that's so abstract as to be meaningless. Advertising budgets are seen as a necessary evil by corporations. They are there to increase awareness of their product. They are not a revenue stream in any way, shape or form.

To talk about them as a revenue stream is to engage in the sort of Enron-thinking that's one of the things that sickens me about capitalism.

The BBC directly charges people for access to its service in exactly the same way as Sky TV does. Except individuals have the choice as to whether or not to subscribe to Sky, or just stick with terrestrial. That most channels generate a source of income through advertising is a deal between advertisers and TV channels. I just don't see the comparison to be honest, between a direct levy and advertising revenue.

I'm never going to buy tampax (for obvious reasons). Does this mean that advertisers owe me a little bit of money whenever i sit through a tampax ad? Or do i owe them a little bit of money? It doesn't make sense. The contract is not between me and the advertiser.

I'm about as anti-advertising as a person can get. I think of ads as an obscene form of psychological manipulation that are generating a massive collective neurosis within the human psyche. However, even i wouldn't go so far as to consider them a direct charge in the way that a subscription fee or a taxation is. It seems to me that's taking it *way* too far, and implies that the viewer has no ability at all to withstand the power of the ad.

And that's a very pessimistic assessment of human psychology.

necropolist Mar 12, 2003 12:43:00

Replying to Merrick

is indeed fully funded by the foreign office.

it is the official voice of the UK ruling-class, and definitely a legitimate target in times of war.

still better than any of the alternatives tho