Web : Future TV 3 – The Death of BBC’s Licence Fee Funding?

If you’ve been watching carefully, one of PSFK’s favorite rants is how the web may be the future of TV. Today we read about how the web could put the way the BBC is financed at risk.

The BBC, who has had an online presence for ten years, is funded in the main through British television viewers: anyone who has a TV in the UK must pay a ‘licence fee’ of a couple of hundred pounds each year – and this pays for the majority of the TV/Radio channels and other ‘public’ programming (and as PSFK knows, it’s a right pain in the backside if you get caught without a licence when you’re a starving student).

So the risk? Well as the UK Times puts it,

"The BBC faces losing hundreds of thousands of pounds in licence fees because of a legal loophole that allows viewers to watch television on the internet for free.  Soaring take-up of broadband and technological developments are making internet-streamed television a reality."

Surprise!

The "licensing authorities" maintain that anyone watching television on their computer would need a television licence but OFCOM, the communications regulator, and the Department for Culture question that claim. OFCOM says that there is a grey area as to whether a licence is required for watching television on the internet.

The British are already leading the way in downloading TV content from the web. 18% of TV programs downloaded around the world is by Brits through systems such as BitTorrent. What happens when they download all their BBC content via the web rather than through ‘the box’ in the corner?

Very soon, a Green Paper will be presented at the Houses of Parliament that will outline the Government’s position on how the BBC will be funded after 2007. PSFK wonders whether it will go far enough to protect the BBC: surely the whole funding of the BBC will have to be rethought of?

If we consider the factors that are fueling TV download – the mix of peer to peer, the plethora of digital media devices, wireless cities, youth attitude towards copyright piracy, the capacity of new recording devices, the expansion of free bandwidth and the boom of home producers – how can the BBC maintain a revenue stream from licences?

The web really can become the future of TV – and with the speed it’s taking, it’s likely to happen before the politicians and bureaucrats realize it.

The revolution will be televised. Via the web.

UK Times: BBC Fears New Licence Loophole

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