WHO RUNS TODAY’S LEFTIST BBC AMERICA CABLE TV?
Finances
The BBC has the second largest budget of any UK-based broadcaster with an operating expenditure of £4.722 billion in 2013/14[93] compared with £6.471 billion for British Sky Broadcasting in 2013/14[94] and £1.843 billion for ITV in the calendar year 2013.[95]
Revenue
The principal means of funding the BBC is through the television licence, costing £147 per year per household since April 2017. Such a licence is required to legally receive broadcast television across the UK, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. No licence is required to own a television used for other means, or for sound only radio sets (though a separate licence for these was also required for non-TV households until 1971). The cost of a television licence is set by the government and enforced by the criminal law. A discount is available for households with only black-and-white television sets. A 50% discount is also offered to people who are registered blind or severely visually impaired,[96]and the licence is completely free for any household containing anyone aged 75 or over. As a result of the UK Government’s recent spending review, an agreement has been reached between the government and the corporation in which the current licence fee will remain frozen at the current level until the Royal Charter is renewed at the beginning of 2017.[97]
The BBC pursues its licence fee collection and enforcement under the trading name “TV Licensing”. The revenue is collected privately by Capita, an outside agency, and is paid into the central government Consolidated Fund, a process defined in the Communications Act 2003. Funds are then allocated by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Treasury and approved by Parliament via legislation. Additional revenues are paid by the Department for Work and Pensions to compensate for subsidised licences for eligible over-75-year-olds.
The licence fee is classified as a tax,[98] and its evasion is a criminal offence. Since 1991, collection and enforcement of the licence fee has been the responsibility of the BBC in its role as TV Licensing Authority.[99] Thus, the BBC is a major prosecuting authority in England and Wales and an investigating authority in the UK as a whole. The BBC carries out surveillance (mostly using subcontractors) on properties (under the auspices of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000) and may conduct searches of a property using a search warrant.[100] According to the BBC, “more than 204,000 people in the UK were caught watching TV without a licence during the first six months of 2012.”[101] Licence fee evasion makes up around one-tenth of all cases prosecuted in magistrates’ courts.[102]
Income from commercial enterprises and from overseas sales of its catalogue of programmes has substantially increased over recent years,[103] with BBC Worldwide contributing some £145 million to the BBC’s core public service business.
According to the BBC’s 2013/14 Annual Report, its total income was £5 billion (£5.066 billion),[104] which can be broken down as follows:
- £3.726 billion in licence fees collected from householders;
- £1.023 billion from the BBC’s commercial businesses;
- £244.6 million from government grants, of which £238.5 million is from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the BBC World Service;
- £72.1 million from other income, such as rental collections and royalties from overseas broadcasts of programming.[104]
The licence fee has, however, attracted criticism. It has been argued that in an age of multi-stream, multi-channel availability, an obligation to pay a licence fee is no longer appropriate. The BBC’s use of private sector company Capita Group to send letters to premises not paying the licence fee has been criticised, especially as there have been cases where such letters have been sent to premises which are up to date with their payments, or do not require a TV licence.[105]
The BBC uses advertising campaigns to inform customers of the requirement to pay the licence fee. Past campaigns have been criticised by Conservative MP Boris Johnson and former MP Ann Widdecombe for having a threatening nature and language used to scare evaders into paying.[106][107] Audio clips and television broadcasts are used to inform listeners of the BBC’s comprehensive database.[108] There are a number of pressure groups campaigning on the issue of the licence fee.[109]
The majority of the BBC’s commercial output comes from its commercial arm BBC Worldwide who sell programmes abroad and exploit key brands for merchandise. Of their 2012/13 sales, 27% were centred on the five key “superbrands” of Doctor Who, Top Gear, Strictly Come Dancing (known as Dancing with the Stars internationally), the BBC’s archive of natural history programming (collected under the umbrella of BBC Earth) and the (now sold) travel guide brand Lonely Planet.[110]
Comment: I have followed the collapse of English freedoms as a hobby very closely since the end of World War II. I became a devoted fan of Winston Churchill and his adages before the end of the war. My favorite governs my memory:
“The most exhilarating moment in life is to be shot at, AND………….to have been missed!”
I spent about ten months of my life during the 1990s snooping around England and Scotland to absorb the beauty of their grounds and landscape gardens…..and discovered the beginning of the disappearance of common worker British citizens being replaced by the Middle East labor, wealth and ‘culture’, not too dissimilar to the financial and cultural collapse of our American midwestern labor towns caused by Democrat President, William Jefferson Clinton’s touch of the pen causing NAFTA!
The most beautiful of all English languages I have ever heard spoken over the past 80 years use to be uttered by one and all members, educators, and learners in and from the Brit upper classes and their BBC.
Surely, today, the ugliest, most repulsive of any noises made by uttered language anywhere in the world cannot surpass the “homespun” nasal screeches rising from the mouths of the Peoples’ programmed lefty snots!
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