Timothy Garton Ash on the BBC Licence Fee

Today’s Comment is Free has an interesting piece by Timothy Garton Ash on the License Fee. Read it — very illuminating. I thought some of the comments were also of a high calibre.

Here are my comments on a few of the nuggets contained in his article:

TGA: ‘Remarkably, an independent survey commissioned by the government has found that most of those asked say they are prepared to pay even more, around £160 a year, when the full range of services which the BBC is mandated to provide under its new 10-year charter is explained to them.’

RT: Great. Then make it voluntary instead of compulsory. Why force people to do something most say they would do anyway? Ah, there’s the rub — people answer the question in a hypothetical manner, but if given the option in real life — they might spend the money on something else, like a DVD…

TGA: ‘It’s actually very difficult to decide what is the right level for the BBC licence fee.’

RT: It’s only difficult because it is not a real market. Sky has no trouble pricing its services; neither does Virgin Mobile. It’s only when you distort the market badly that the pricing mechanism we use in the rest of society does not function.

TGA: ‘In a hotel in Tehran, a waiter was trying to find something nice to say to me. “You German!” he exclaimed. “Mercedes-Benz!” No, I replied, I was English. Long pause. (Iranians often have a little difficulty finding something positive to say about the English.) Then his face broke into a broad smile. “BBC!” he cried. And soon he will have BBC Persian-language television to watch.’

RT: err… how to respond to this… first, the World Service is paid for by the Foreign Office and second … well … if the waiter said ‘David Beckham!’ would that mean we are supposed to pay a David Beckham license fee?