Hello.

It’s a disgrace, you know, that the state funds the BBC to provide consumers with free online journalism. And other news organisations? They don’t charge either.

So the consumer has the choice of (a) free state-funded websites or (b) free commercially funded websites.

Whatever happened to a free market that actually gives people what they want at a price they can afford?

I’m happy to confirm, therefore, that News Corp is introducing a third option for internet users:

(c) the same stuff you can get free, only you pay for it.

Thank you.

Comments:

The thing is, this is the real current situation:

You want to watch the BBC? You pay for it.
You don’t want to watch the BBC? You pay for it.

A better, common sense idea would be:

You want to watch the BBC? You pay for it.
You don’t want to watch the BBC? You don’t pay for it.

Damian, I’m sure we all look forward to, in a recession, paying for something we can get for free just a couple of mouse clicks away.
Joking aside, Murdoch senior’s belief that he can beat the internet and turn the clock back to the days when we had to pay to read journalism is surely a sign of the his advance into confused old age.
Newspapers will continue to decline in sales and relevance over the coming years, and attempting to replicate the same business model online – outside of niche markets – is doomed to failure.

The thing that really impresses me is that he thinks he can charge money for Murdoch-style content (I hesitate to call it ‘news’).

There is an excess of right wing fantasies, sleazy gossip items and bare-breasted women on the internet for free already.

Murdoch would say that, wouldn’t he?

He seems particularly miffed by the BBC’s presence on the internet. The BBC happens to be doing that rather well. I am happy to pay my licence fee for the BBC’s services. However, that does not mean that some ways in which the BBC is managed cannot be improved.

Murdoch has subscription TV tied up and should be content. Nobody owes big business a living. It would be foolish of this government or the next to heed Murdoch and come to the aid of an organisation that already has too much influence on the printed media.

Murdoch would say that, wouldn’t he?

He seems particularly miffed by the BBC’s presence on the internet. The BBC happens to be doing that rather well. I am happy to pay my licence fee for the BBC’s services. However, that does not mean that some ways in which the BBC is managed cannot be improved.

Murdoch has subscription TV tied up and should be content. Nobody owes big business a living. It would be foolish of this government or the next to heed Murdoch and come to the aid of an organisation that already has too much influence on the printed media.

BBC is not State funded, it is funded out of public subscription, its on-line service is paid for out of that – it is therefore not “free”. (International on-line access carries advertising to pay for it.)

Sky News is free to air and its news website has free access. Clearly these are paid for by Sky subscribers and advertisers, yet non-subscribers can benefit.

Strange then the Dirty Digger takes a different view about his print media.

@jamika you are paying for the option to watch/not watch the BBC – up to you whether you exercise it. Of course you have no option but to have the option, and pay for it.

However I do think your proposal has some merit if applied to the WeHeartTheNHS.

Yes, yes I know… the poor and the poor pensioner, but they watch the BBC too… or not.

I had to check the calendar and was surprised that it wasn’t April 1st. Clearly Murdoch is moving beyond satire. ‘News journalism’, ‘quality’ from the purveyors of Fox? Poor deprived News Corp calling a state funded organisation ‘greedy’. And still praying at the altar of PROFIT after the crunch. I’m stumped.

thingy – My God, you’re right. Imagine any business wanting to make a PROFIT during a recession.

I don’t think anything would change for newspapers if they were to reimpose subscription walls and even if there were no longer a BBC website.

I buy papers because they’re easier to read in print than on the web. I mostly don’t read them online: they’re awkward to read that way. Nothing would change for me if subscription walls were introduced. I wouldn’t pay – just as people who are not newspaper readers won’t pay.

What I might pay for (a little like paying for Itunes) isan article of exceptional interest to me in the New Yorker, The NY Review of Books, even The Catholic Herald. But I would not sign up to individual websites for cash. I might, though, sign up to an online syndication service for £100 a year allowing me to graze through many sources.

As to the BBC, it’s a distraction in all of this. There’s no BBC equivalent in North America; yet the situation for newspapers there is the same.

My own take on this. I resent the licence fee of course but…… for the licence fee I get to watch the BBC (sometimes bad, often good, sometimes excellent) and other free to air channels (the odd gem in the rubbish). I also pay a cable subscription which is four times the licence fee and gives access to about 80 channels – mainly dross – plus all the Sky channels. I justify this on the grounds that I want to watch the sport (less and less these days) and the movie channels (rarely). Sky One is just US shows plus domestic rubbish. My wife is beating me about the head to dump the expensive cable channels and I think she is right.

We live in France We watch quite a few news channels.
The BBC News (TV)is the least informative. It is very parochial and sometimes so trivial that it could hardly be called a national service.
With the Net I can wonder around sites reading anything that is there. A half an hour news programme on TV is truthfully a waste of time. I think the BBC should withdraw from News programmes altogether.

“…free state-funded websites…”

Firstly, it isn’t “free”. It costs me £147.50 per year [including what the BBC calls "the small charge of £5" to pay by Direct Debit].

Secondly, it isn’t “state-funded” either. It is funded by a specific, mandatory tax which is called the Licence Fee and which is levied on all people who own TVs whether they watch, listen to or read the BBC’s output or not.

Perhaps ‘Licence Fee payer-funded’ would be a better way of putting it.

I have found the perfect way to avoid paying the licence fee: I won’t have a television in the house.

This has the added benefit that I don’t waste my life watching the utter dross that constitutes televised content (I also find myself blissfully unable to fathom out who half of the micro-celebrities that seem to take up so much space in the Telegraph are).

BBC is cheaper than sky,but since it lost its independence,ie Some shop keepers daughter did not like its intelligent broadcasting she clipped her wings,so bbc has to become like the other moronric news channels,ie english ones the itv’s sky ,and ofcourse the other moronic news channel CNN london,so everybody is happy all round ,they supply the garbage ,the people are happy listening to crap,and the govt and people at the top are happy.

The BBC does not have a newspaper, so why does it need a website competing with those of the newspapers?

However, an attack on the very concept of the BBC is simply un-British, like an attack on the very concept of the NHS, or an attack on the very concept of the monarchy. It just sounds wrong, like mispronouncing a word. As, to British ears, Americans such as James Murdoch are wont to do from time to time.

The license fee should be made optional, with as many adults as wished to pay it at any given address free to do so, including those who did not own a television set but who greatly valued, for example, Radio Four.

The Trustees would then be elected by and from among the license-payers. Candidates would have to be sufficiently independent to qualify in principle for the remuneration panels of their local authorities. Each license-payer would vote for one, with the top two elected.

The electoral areas would be Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and each of the nine English regions. The Chairman would be appointed by the relevant Secretary of State, with the approval of the relevant Select Committee. And the term of office would be four years.

You would not need to be a member of the Trust (i.e., a license-payer) to listen to or watch the BBC, just as you do not need to be a member of the National Trust to visit its properties, or a member of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to be rescued by its boats.

At the same time, we need to ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national daily newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national weekly newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one television station. To re-regionalise ITV under a combination of municipal and mutual ownership. And to apply that same model (but with central government replacing local government, subject to very strict parliamentary scrutiny) to Channel Four.

davidaslindsay@hotmail.com; http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com

As much as anything, Murdoch’s point is that the BBC is not subject to any commercial disciplines and can effectively predate on anyone it chooses supported by a virtually unlimited supply of money.
Along with the government and local authorities it is the only body that can dip its hand into the public pocket and demand money without any guarantee of any particular service in return.
If BSkyB produces rubbish I stop paying for it; at the present time I think my £20 a month is (on balance) a reasonable deal for what I get (especially as if I want decent drama on ITV I have to use the satellite since STV decided to opt out of the national network stuff). If the BBC produces rubbish — which it does a lot of the time — and pays indecent sums of money to 50-year-old adolescents simply to be “edgy” whatever that means, I still have to keep on paying for it.
And though there is nothing on commercial radio to compare with Radio Four there is a lot that compares with Radio One while it is hard to work out why the BBC needs four television channels (excluding its two children channels + 24-hour news) when it fills its daytime schedule with wall-to-wall stuff from the afore-mentioned children’s channels + voyeurism (which is what sniffing round other people’s houses and their possessions is)and the evenings with soaps and more voyeurism (which is what the fly-on-the-wall and (un)reality programmes are).
If you want it, have it; but why should the rest of us pay for it.
David Lindsay has a point. I would happily subscribe to Radio Four and to the News and Parliament Channels; beyond that I will pay for one-offs like Crimewatch or University Challenge or some of the better documentaries that the Beeb used to do so well.
Others would have different priorities and good luck to them.

The simple answer is to abolish the licence fee and introduce payment for each channel or service. Not blocks arbitrarily chosen, as with Sky, but each individual item. Equally Sky should be forced not to inflict moronic advertising on those who have already paid for its services.

In other words, a level playing field, which would soon sort out what people really do want to watch, with complete control over what we pay for.

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/sweden.html

From Alison Weir:

Israeli Organ Harvesting

The New “Blood Libel”?

Alison Weir
Last week Sweden’s largest daily newspaper published an article containing shocking material: testimony and circumstantial evidence indicating that Israelis may have been harvesting internal organs from Palestinian prisoners without consent for many years….

Yeh, this town’s not big enough for two Labour party supporting media mouthpieces!

The problem is much deeper than Murdoch. http://tinyurl.com/dx67kc See also: http://tinyurl.com/mzbmdl,   http://tinyurl.com/nune4d

Murdoch and Hannan, seling anything with a hint of Britishness to the highest bidder. Usually an American corportaion.

James Murdoch would interrupt Test Match Special with adverts for pile cream and debt consolidation loans. That’s all you need to know about this ‘British’ citizen..

Peter51 wrote ‘My wife is beating me about the head …..’ Perhaps those Catholic priests who believe in celibacy and remaining single are right.

beaton – “probably the most intelligent and considered comment…” : as a high priest of socialism, deigning to trawl the sewers of Conservatism for even the slightest hint of higher life form must be so trying for you.
Perhaps the Grauniad is more suited to your elevated sense of intellectual omnipotence.
Wot Londiniensis wrote is claptrap and the word “snicker” is a red flag if ever there was one. I choose what to buy, and the market therefore determines the relationship between marketing expenditure and consumption.
The Licence is a Broadcasting tax and has absolutely no bearing on the consumer’s selection of content received. Websites are Narrow-casting and should be funded separately.
Londiniensis: To offer the choice of BBC vs Murdoch, Turner et al is a distraction: if the BBC can’t be influenced by it’s actual and potential audience, then its funding mechanism is in need of re-engineering. That’s not too complex for most DT readers, but probably too real-world for you.
And yes, many people don’t give a fig for the BBC. It is anachronistic, self-serving and an agent of social engineering.
You may not mind other peoples’ money being spent on giving the world a free internet “resource”, and you may not mind other peoples’ money being spent on a socialist spin machine, but if you had to pay personally and directly for said resource, you would soon discover Opportunity Cost.