Is the BBC and the licence fee value for money?

I was watching the TV one night and started to watch a program that I liked, but found out that it was an episode I'd already seen. This annoyed me and while I'm not the licence payer in my house, that person has experienced the same problem too. That got me thinking - exactly how many repeats are there at the moment and that ended up progressing to me thinking about the licence's value for money.

Lets start with the repeat problem. As the licence fee covers BBC channels (a point I'll mention later), I decided to look at the two most watched BBC channels - 1 and 2. One of the reasons they are the most watched is because they are the two terrestrial BBC channels and everyone has that, whereas not everyone has satellite/cable. I also took the figures from two days of scheduling and not one (if all the repeats are on one day and I just happen to pick that one, I'll get an unfair result).

Here are my findings:

Date	Channel	Programmes	Repeats	% repeats
August 13th	BBC 1	30	7	23.3
August 13th	BBC 2	33	20	60.6
August 14th	BBC 1	29	12	41.4
August 14th	BBC 2	31	22	71

The percentages for each day were:

Date	% repeats on both channels
August 13th	42.9
August 14th	56.7

It seems there are many more repeats on BBC 2 compared to BBC 1, but the figures for both channels are awful. It's even worse when you look at the second table. The BBC get plenty of money from the licence fee - you would think they could stop showing repeats and only show original programming. However, their funds aren't just going into developing and broadcasting on the two terrestrial channels - they have a set of additional digital channels too. Those are BBC 3, BBC 4, BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, CBBC and CBeebies. That's quite a lot, but lets see if they are worth the cost by looking at the viewing figures (the following are the average weekly figures - if you click on the link you can also find out average monthly data):

Channel	Weekly reach - 000s	Weekly reach - %
BBC 1	35,947	77.5
BBC 2	26,750	57.7
BBC 3	11,905	25.7
BBC 4	5,542	11.9
BBC News 24	6,589	14.2
BBC Parliament	278	0.6
CBBC	3,875	8.4
CBeebies	4,428	9.5

It seems the only BBC network channels to go past 10m are BBC 1, BBC 2 and BBC 3. I'm sure the corporation could save a lot of money if the removed the other five channels and placed their original content on the three that are more successful. Having BBC 3 would still mean they have a digital presence pre-switchover aswell. For instance, in the morning on BBC2 they show repeats of childrens programmes. If they were to remove CBBC and CBeebies, they could put their original content onto BBC 2 in the mornings and solve that part of the repeat problem.

The worst digital channel in that table has to be BBC Parliament. It doesn't even break into the millions for average weekly reach and the first two BBC channels already have current affairs and political content (although they could have a bit more). The one problem is that there would be very little room in the schedule for things like select committee coverage. However, that could always be streamed on the BBC website and is therefore accessible for those who want it.

It is important to remember that people occasionally miss programmes that they want to see though - that one of the reasons why repeats are broadcast. Instead of putting the repeats on the BBC channels, why not offer them to the likes of UKTV who already show a lot of old BBC programming. Another possibility would be to make them available on the BBC website.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier I was think about if the TV licence is value for money. It shouldn't really be called a TV licence because it only funds BBC channels. What if you don't watch any BBC content? You still have to pay the licence fee but you aren't getting much value for money.

My next point is about students. I used to be one and I know several other students who had money issues. According to this page on the TV Licence authority's website, they provide several ways for students to pay, but they still have to pay the full amount. I think it would be better if students had a discounted rate to pay - other groups of people such as those in residential care who might not have a huge amount of money are charged a reduced fee. The one good thing if you're a student is that you can apply for a refund if you're not in student accommodation for 12 months (licences are renewed annually).

Then there is an issue for the blind people. According to the TV licence website, they are charged 50% of the full fee. Which fee is that though? Is it the full colour licence (£135.50) or the full black and white licence (£45.50)? It would be unfair if it was 50% of the colour licence because they would still get charged more than the full cost of the black and white version and they don't benefit from having the colour (especially if they're totally blind - which is obvious). It would be better if the charges were made a bit clearer.

According to this article, TV licences cover TVs, VCR, set-top boxes and PC-tuner cards that receive broadcasts. Notice how that list doesn't include radio. I'm sure you could understand that as it's called a TV licence. So why, when I like at the most recent edition of the BBC's Annual Report, do I find that a portion of the licence fee money goes towards radio stations (page 4)? According to this article, just over 22% of the licence fee income goes towards radio. You definitely have to pay less every year if that portion of the fee was removed.

Finally, I'd like to mention the pay of executives. On page 86 of the Annual report, I notice a table which states that no executive director who is still at the BBC got paid less than £100,000. They also get a healthy pension and other remuneration. The total basic pay for the Executive Directors in 2006/2007 was £3,422,000 and the total of the executive board was £3,477,000. Trustees are only supposed to be paid expenses, but the total figure that they got is suspiciously large (I suppose it depends how many trustees there are though). If the rates of pay for people like the directors were more sensible, costs would be cut dramatically and the BBC could put more into things like developing television and radio, as well as discovering new talent.

Overall, I would say that the BBC doesn't always use the money from the the licence fee well (or properly e.g. my point about the radio) and the directors get paid way too much. I also think that there are significant problems with the licence fee charging structure.

So, what do you think?

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