From Conservative Home. I particularly liked number 3:
There is an attraction for free-marketeers in making the BBC compete with others for licence fee money… However we rejected it because we believe it would make all broadcasters focus not on attracting viewers but on attracting subsidies. We need a BBC that uses the licence fee to produce programmes of the highest quality – and commercial broadcasters to keep it on its toes. The danger of the top-slicing model is that broadcasters would focus their energies more on lobbying Westminster than producing programmes that viewers want to watch.
I suspect this will be the last in the series.
September 22, 2009 at 3:56 pm
That’s an excellent reason not to top-slice.
I also liked your point in the post you made last week:
‘Once the licence fee is top-sliced for one purpose the inevitable temptation for any government will be to keep top-slicing it to pay for… well whatever it fancies.’
It all reminds me of a toll road near Washington DC. When they built it (to connect Dulles airport to the city center) the authorities said the toll would be temporary until the road paid for itself. Years later, it is just too tempting for the government to stop collecting that toll.
So I agree with you — once the top-slicing knife is wielded, it will likely remain unsheathed.
October 1, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Thanks Russ and my apologies for not responding to your comment before.
I think that one of the reasons the BBC works is that is has sufficient scale to provide quality. Chopping the licence fee into little bits is likely to lower quality.