There’s an interesting take in Australian Policy Online from my QUT Creative Industries Faculty colleague, Terry Flew, on the whole question of business models for online news, which has had quite the airing of late. My own view is that the reports that competition regulators were concerned about Rupert Murdoch’s attempts to corral a number of American news corporations into an “alliance” might constitute a cartel are telling. It’s redolent of a certain mindset which goes far beyond the nuts and bolts considerations of revenues and costs.
Flew riffs off an argument made by Shaun Carney in The Age:
What Shaun Carney points to – as does Rupert Murdoch – is that the business of getting news is not free. As economist Tyler Cowen puts it, all of the major news providers have found that their revenues are falling below their average costs curves, and they are not prepared to make losses indefinitely. The problems are that no-one knows what the price should be, what is the best approach to charging (subscriptions, pay-per-view, freemiums, or what?), or whether enough consumers will pay to offset the losses arising from those who will inevitably opt out once some form of charging for news is introduced.
At this point, two further complications emerge. One is the possibility that new opportunities may emerge for commercially viable free news services that capture the convenience users who opt out of pay models. This may be a new provider who also captures the imaginations of those who are now vocally critical of what they term the “mainstream media”, and who access sites such as The Huffington Post in the U.S.
The second is that it is unlikely that the public service media providers – ABC, BBC, SBS, NPR etc. – will charge for news, as it is contrary to their Charter obligations of providing universal access. At any rate, I doubt that Shaun Carney is right that consumers will simply accept paying for what they are currently getting for free simply because they recognise the costs that exist for the established news providers.
It’s also worth considering the value readers receive from particular types of news. Rupert Murdoch, according to Wired UK, had his thinking shaped by the propensity of Wall Street Journal subscribers to pay a premium for online news. But there’s a fundamental category error here.
It’s unlikely that these readers are prepared to pay for the paper’s commentary on public affairs, or for that matter for “news”, but rather for up to date information which materially affects their investment and business decisions. There’s always been a market for such information – legal publishers exploit something similar when they charge companies for updates and guides to domains such as employment law, where that information is crucial to organisational success. Celebrity gossip, or political speculation, or crime reports, are just not the same category of product.
Update: Robert Gottliebson on the role of the public broadcasters.
Update: Bronwen Clune.
No
I can’t believe people are still asking this question in 2009, when people have been paying for online news in various formats for about a decade.
It’s sad that Terry has to act like there’s a debate here. As you say Mark, people will pay for information, as opposed to op-ed bloviating. Though this said, people pay for Crikey, which – whether you like it or not – is op-ed, albeit a bit more informed than what you get in papers.
And that’s the rub, and the real question: Will people pay for the shit we’ve become used to putting up with in mainstream papers for the last couple of decades at least? The answer to that, I opine, is an emphatic no.
But to describe this as the death of news, or reportage, or the triumph of ignorance is so both naive and wilfully myopic.
Update: Robert Gottliebson on the role of the public broadcasters.
Not solely op/ed, patrickg.
I suspect some of the stuff in Crikey – ie informed takes on health policy and Indigenous affairs, for example, media news, business commentary, etc. produces a lot of the value.
Yeah. I think I’ve said before that the question never asked is whether what people are being served up is a huge part of the problem – never mind teh intertubes, changes in the advertising market, etc.
I’d like to think so with regards to Crikey Mark – but I would qualify by saying that a) a lot of that is effectively still op-ed, except by people with relevant expertise, and b) is this were the case, why would Crikey seem to be moving more towards op-ed? Perhaps it’s a cheaper thing, not a hits thing.
Are they moving towards more op/ed though, patrickg? On the website itself, they’re certainly moving towards being an aggregator.
This ties in nicely with the shitstorm that’s been created in the UK by one of the younger Murdoch’s (James?) comments criticising the BBC. Seems that poor News Ltd is faced with unfair competition from the evil state-sponsored broadcaster, and that the only guarantee of a free independent media is, you guessed it, the profit motive. Who would have thought.
No doubt we’ll get a simiilar version aimed at the ABC over here from the usual suspects, although sometimes I think that the ABC news depertment sees itself as a branch of News Ltd anyway.
Adrian – yep. It’s pretty transparent special pleading from Murdoch the younger.
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If we are going to get high quality journalism from ABC online, we might need more than a rededication.
ABC online news long ago deteriorated into straight regurgitation of press releases and door stops, interspersed with occasional opinion pieces masquerading as breaking news. Balance becomes trying to get the same number of door stops from each side. An immature and meaningless rant from an opposition politician has the same weight as a ministerial announcement, and truth is irrelevant.
I think that the fact that almost no-one is going to pay for the on-line content from Limited News is an indication that Rupert has been wrong about what we wanted to read all along.
Murdoch & Son have got it wrong. No-one is going to pay for online Limited News, any more than they are paying for the garbage served up in print media right now.
The category error you point to with respect to the WSJ is spot on. People will pay for raw information, if it can not be got anywhere else, but they are not going to pay for “opinion”. There is an infinity of fine quality, free opinion all over the web, so who would choose to pay for the likes of Milne, Sheridan, Kelly, Shanahan et al. What a joke!
News Ltd will go the way of fossil fuels, and young Murdoch is riding a wave to financial destruction, good riddance.
Governments should invest heavily in public broadcasting and related net services to shore up the future, as people increasingly turn to the ABC/SBS/BBC etc for their news, as newspapers collapse and Murdoch sails off to his doom. The Rudd Government investment in national broadband is a good start. Rudd should also give Scott the boot, so the ABC can start developing the next generation of educated and informed political journalists, and make room for the refugee print journalists who will soon be coming their way.
The only thing I would be interested in buying from Murdoch is access to his archives – there is a wealth of wonderful history there, a fascinating record of the past, but I doubt the old fool knows what he is sitting on.
An example of this pay for specialist news and information is a daily bulletin to which I subscribe, ‘Screenhub’, which specialises in screen media. It comes out 5 days per week. Three days are news stories and op-ed pieces which combine both their own journos doing stories and aggregating other news sources. Two days per week are job ads and other classified ads. I pay a yearly fee for this, which is $89.00. It’s now the go-too place for film and tv news and seems to do quite well. I assume there’s other industry bulletins that work in the same way.
ArtsHub, which you no doubt know too, Fine, is another one. Pretty reasonable value for $99 a year… also because a lot of specialised jobs are only listed there. Even the convenience of having all jobs in one sector easily accessible is worth paying for – job site search engines can be quite difficult to refine. Plus info on funding changes, who’s doing what, etc.
I had to laugh when I read James Murdoch’s comments on the BBC under the headline that was something like “Murdoch defends independent news” or something like that.
Where do you start with this?
First, I have to disagree with Gottliebsen on this.
Bullshit. This happens everyday outside the gaze of the MSM, folks are influenced in many ways, other than what happens in the ‘news’. Lived experiences etc.
Now to the question. Yes. people will pay, the question is will that amount to a number that adequately compensates for the drop in ad revenue?
Right now that looks like a no.
It’s interesting too Mark that whenever I read the latest missive from the Murdochites, paying for celebrity news is always at the forefront of what they envisage.
The loss of real and relevant investigative journalism, I’d argue, is something they hold as a cudgel over everyone as an excuse to monopolise the media marketplace.
Finally, name a niche in reportage, from celebutard news to other forms and I’ll bet that this will be filled quickly by specialist sites looking to capitalise.
Paradoxically, the best thing to happen to media diversity – or ‘plurality’ as the Gordon Geckko like James Murdoch called it in his self serving greed is good anti public broadcasting lecture – is for the bigs to hide their businesses behind a paywall.
I happily pay my taxes for the ABC, so I am paying for online news. 95% of what Murdoch publishes is rubbish and I can’t wait for its demise.
Isn’t celebrity news effectively a loss-leader for Murdoch’s other media properties, anyway? Forcing people to pay for it seems like a self-defeating move.
People who like to see their news on dead trees are willing to pay hundreds of dollars/yr for this privlege. Others are willing to pay for specialized and organized information. So there is no fundemental reason why people won’t pay for a good product.
What I like about newspapers is that they take little time to skim and have articles pop up that help maintain a broad picture including odd items that I would otherwise never bothered with. So far I haven’t found anything on the web that matches this. On the other hand, the web gives me rapid answers to specific questions as well as blogs that provide interesting links that help when I want to follow something in depth as well as bits and pieces that help with broadening.
What I don’t like about newspapers is that someone else is deciding what I read, articles are compressed to fit the available space and that there is not enough about some of the topics and places I am interested in. What I don’t like about the web is that I have to look at a number of sites to get the same breadth of articles. (Sure I visit breakfastpolitics most days but only have time to link through to one or two commentries.)
All of his is a longwinded way of saying that there are a number of business models that may allow pay to view to work:
1. “Specialized sites” that have information that is valuable to some people.
2. “High quality sites” that offer a broad range of topics/information written by people who produce really good stuff.
3. “Personalized sites” that allow people to organize/filter the information they get, particularly the summary that may take a few minutes to read first thing in the morning.
At the moment the ABC and newspaper sites don’t meet any of these criteria so the first challenge for Murdoch is to convince anyone that he can produce a site people would think of as must visit. He has got to come up with something that really takes advantage of the differences between the dead tree option and the web.
Murdoch would also have to deal with some of the disadvatages of erecting paywalls. Fewer people looking at adds and a loss of influence if people start ignoring links to his sites. (I don’t bother with AFR links because I hit the paywall before the site has said anything interesting – which puts AFR thinking out odf sight.)
The function – the business – of commercial media is to sell audiences to advertisers. As those proposing charges for online content are not suggesting that media outlets should cease taking money from advertisers, and so advertisers would stay the customers of the media industry, I wonder why they imagine readers should be willing to pay for the privilege of being the product in that particular transaction.
Yes, I do recall we used to pay for printed newspapers in the past. But at least then you’d get some dead tree to put under the budgie for your money.
This makes the assumption that people aren’t buying paper because they’re being undermined by the Internet. I suspect many would contend that it’s more about quality and relevance of the content that matters to people.
A newspaper full of crud gossip, trivia and faux news might’ve worked some years ago – but I suspect people are growing tired of it all and are looking for better sources of news. The problem traditional media now has is trying to win back punters who’ve found alternatives.
I know many also cringe at having to pay for a paper with 60% of the content being stuff that’s going straight into the bin (Car Liftout, Jobs Liftout, Real Estate, Turf Guide, etc).
I don’t buy newspapers. Either read them for free in coffee shops, libraries or at friends’ places. So the cgances of me paying for on line news, especially Murdoch News, are nil.
I find that my local newspaper meets 95% of my info needs; pictures of people I know, sports results, hatches/matches/dispatches, local issues and brief snippets of national and international news. The rest I can get from blogs. So I worry about the future of News Limited. And I worry about who’s going to watch out for the next Mr Haneef. We do need investigative journalism, but is there an effective funding model for it?
Yes if they need it. This is already happening in certain ways. The Economist makes money off it’s back catalogue because they know people with money will pay for it.
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Will they pay for crapola? Interesting question. Wouldn’t it be great if they didn’t. The media start charging for their sludge river of info pollution and no-one gives a shit about Angelina Jolie’s sex life anymore? Except presumably Ms Jolie who I’m sire won’t miss the perverse attention.
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Thing is that adversing hasn’t yet worked out how to deal with a medium wherein people can ignore ads. But advertising is what makes the whole thing free. People like Murdoch have been playing the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it game with the MSM for too long and now find themselves in the same position as the American car industry in the 1970s. Will we be bailing out Murdoch in a few decades? C’arn you don’t want Andrew Bolt to have to go on the dole do ya?
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Just inserting my British oar here… the BBC works on a user-pays system. You pay £142.50 per year for an annual tv license (which also funds radio and the BBC website). It is a flat rate, with no discounts for the poor and a discount for the elderly that only cuts in at age 75. Although there is a system of enforcement (I’m currently looking at a ‘this address is unlicensed’ notice sent to my college from the tv licensing body here), most people pay because the BBC is worth it. The only reason I don’t have a television (and therefore don’t pay) is I find it a distraction when I’m studying, otherwise I’d happily pay it. The virtue of the British system is that it exposes the bones of what maintaining a decent media organisation really costs. I have now come to the view that funding the ABC out of central taxation revenue and abolishing tv licensing was foolishness, but that is by the by.
For Murdoch to complain that the BBC is funded by some sort of compulsory ‘tax’ is an utter furphy. It is paid for voluntarily on the best libertarian principles by members of the British public. We all know exactly how much it costs and that — yes — relative to an annual newspaper subscription, it is expensive. We pay for it — by and large — because we think it is worth it. There is no compulsion involved — I have not paid a license fee since coming up to Oxford and one telephone call was enough to stop the tv licensing body from sending me letters (they do — I think fairly — assume that most people own a telly).
Just to second what other people have said, people will pay for the FT/AFR/WSJ because they are very good at what they do. The same principle does not apply to other media outlets.
I think its complete conjecture that the public will be less informed if Murdoch, Fairfax etc close up shop. Its been observed here by Rob @ 18, that the business is about selling an audience to advertisers, news just happens to define and attract the audience. So how exactly will western civilisation collapse if the people who currently control the flow of news decide to make windmills instead? Maybe a highly atomised news scene with lots of newsletter type online subscription services for a few years will be a good thing
news just happens to define and attract the audience.
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From my observation, and I think I’m far from alone here, news doesn’t define or attract an audience. The audience doesn’t want news. They want distraction.
Will people pay for crapola? I very much doubt it. There’s already a tonne of more interesting, more up to date, closer to the scene and horses’ mouths, free celebrity gossip etc style sites out there.
I’d guess a certain amount of content, whether articles or blog posts, from high-profile Andrew Bolt types etc will have to stay outside the paywall just to maintain net presence. I’ve been trying to think how they’d then seek to incentivise a lead-in through the paywall to the rest?
Regarding advertising, I find the most noticeable, and notable, absence from the internet are the half to full-page ‘Coles weekly specials’, liquor specials etc that must represent some kind of major bread and butter for the printed press. Add to that just about any and all city or region-specific advertising, that isn’t suited a banner ad campaign/branding exercise (‘Spring Racing Carnival’ etc).
Internet advertising would seem to only really be for brands, products and services that exist nationally or internationally, or on the internet itself, or both (Apple, Saab, Flight Centre, Trading Post etc).
There’s no way they could consider putting Jobs, Real Estate etc database driven content behind a paywall (nor could they justify it), as they’re already competing with several other players on those fronts. Likewise, weather, currency rates, stocks, tv guides.
Likewise, Cars, Lifestyle bonus lift-out sections etc.
It really is just ‘the news’, this can only be about – and any other website, including an increasingly high-profile ABC, that can afford to subscribe to Reuters, AP etc wire services can duplicate some 60-80% of their news content anyway.
What are they left with then? The x amount of content from those high-profile columnists, and the others, which won’t exist outside the paywall, and a small amount of investigative journalism.
Maybe 10% of an entire paper you can buy for $1 or so anyway. I’d have another guess and say most people wouldn’t even consider paying 10c for a single article or column, let alone subscribing.
I think they’re seriously stuffed.
Nevertheless, it’s going to be fun to watch them go down with a fight. Flailing every which way at anyone and everyone in desperation (ala James Murdoch) can only turn you into a laughing stock whom no-one wants to help.
Internet advertising would seem to only really be for brands, products and services that exist nationally or internationally, or on the internet itself, or both (Apple, Saab, Flight Centre, Trading Post etc).
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That’s an interesting problem for smart marketing dickheads to wrap their heads around. Because of the interpersonal, low outlay character of the ‘Net it’s a cynch for small and local business but of course the ‘Net is global and that’s the problem.
I forgot sports reporting and sports columnists – which for a few reasons, might possibly be a niche they could do ok from…
Whether they want it or not, it pretty much all that’s served up these days. Perhaps I should have said that “News” is a characteristic of the product that attracts an audience which is then offered to advertisers. From my perspective it doesn’t really matter if some charming news about bracelets or news about oppositional defiant disorder, its pretty much gone to the dogs.
I used to get The Australian home delivered. I also have at times got The Advertiser. I did consider subscribing to Crikey at one time.
I got sick of the neocon bias, evident particularly in the oped area in The Australian, and cancelled my subscription. The Advertiser doesn’t have the depth and now has Andrew Bolt regularly.
Crikey was OK but Christian Kerr with his anti-Green rants and their preciousness regarding anything to do with sex (do they still spell it s_x?) did not seem to provide enough value to justify subscribing.
What would I pay for? The AFR if I had need for their financial and economic analysis and data. Maybe a BBC type service if necessary.
(if Rupert and James don’t like the BBC they must hate the ABC).
Update: Bronwen Clune.
Would you good money to read the Telegraph or Telecrap as it is known,I get the OZ home delivered the West Australian I don,t bother with,I have pay so I get a good choice of news and docos.
How Murdock snr and junior can have a go at the BBC and ABC when they produce what is the worst joke for a news channel in the world Faux News I don,t know
“For Murdoch to complain that the BBC is funded by some sort of compulsory ‘tax’ is an utter furphy…There is no compulsion involved — I have not paid a license fee since coming up to Oxford and one telephone call was enough to stop the tv licensing body from sending me letters (they do — I think fairly — assume that most people own a telly).”
Sorry, but this is simply wrong. You pay for a TV licence whether or not you use your TV to watch the BBC. Thus you can opt out of paying for the BBC, but only by opting not to watch any TV at all. If that is libertariansim then it is worse than I thought.
Anyway, it seems obvious that in the longer term media organisations that rely purely on public subsidy will increasingly dominate the landscape (and it will be interesting to see whether those who are ordinarily serious about media diversity have a problem with that). Their business models are rock solid. So the question is: to what extent are we going to expand the public subsidy? Federal government funds for The Australian, anyone? My own, admittedly pie-in-the-sky, preference is for the creation of a series of very-well-funded independent organisations, established by trust and therefore more likely to remain beyond the reach of Government. Think 5 ABCs without the ongoing influence of the state. Probably fatal issues: (i) incredible and therefore politically difficult up-front costs (to be truly independent, they need to be able to rely on earnings from investments ), (ii) push-back from current media proprietors, whose businesses will be utterly destroyed, (iii) political meddling in the governing trust documents, and (iv) slight reluctance of politicians to creating, and then unleashing, organisations whose job it is to hold them to account.
BBB
Never watch the BBC? Never listen to BBC 1-4? Never use the website? No-one is making you pay the TV license. I live here, I haven’t paid it since I commenced living here. Is doing without television (especially when one considers the alternatives to the BBC, and that Channel 4 is now partly state funded, also via the license fee) so very difficult?
I enjoy all of the above, and happily pay the TV licence. It’s good value from my perspective. But you must see that none of that is relevant. The claim is that there is no compulsion so far as BBC funding is concerned. That is plainly not so.
You need actually to follow through on the principle. You are happy to opt out of paying for the BBC; you don’t watch TV. And yet you appear to begrudge those who would have a system in which opting out meant exercising a real choice, as opposed to the false choice of ‘TV or no TV’ which is imposed when the state assumes that all TV owners will watch the BBC in equal shares. The current system says: you cannot watch any Channel 5 unless you pay for the BBC, for which you will pay to the same degree as someone who watches the BBC relentlessly. I cannot believe that is in keeping with libertarianism.
BBB
BBB – The British license fee is another name for a tax pure and simple (thanks James) targeted towards one recipient, the BBC. The compulsory nature of it it is a bit irksome and the inconsistencies that arise are also worrying enough to question the idea along libertarian lines. I think these concerns explain in part the ABC funding model which does not include the compulsory licence.
But shifting to the US, there are a few commentators like Cockburn who are quite happy to see the Big Media take a dive.
The trouble with asking people to pay for news is that it will shatter the monolith that is the traditional newspaper. We may pay for news but only the bits we want. The froth and bubble of news.com.au and smh.com.au is something we can do without. So one columnist or one service such as finance or a bit of sport may attract a few buyers . That leaves the rest sitting unloved and unwanted behind the firewall. Advertisers aren’t going to want to pay big dollars to hit a small audience so will go elsewhere. The Financial Review is an example of what happens when you build the wall and one wonders why it is ignored as News and Fairfax consider committing corporate suicide.
The newspapers have to face up to the fact that they have been providing free content and will have to go on providing it. They will have to make it palatable and bring in high traffic numbers with people staying longer than a nano second on each viewing. Then the advertisers will see a benefit. Going behind the wall will just speed up the demise of the traditional news organisations.
As many have noted, newspapers have traditionally been little more than a vehicle to deliver advertisements to consumers.
They were able to do this relatively successfully because they had a high degree of credibility, little competition for detailed news and analysis, and provided information that people wanted to read.
Now they have lots of competition, little credibility, and provide less and less information that I, for one, wish to read.
Of course they have no control over the rise in competition, but they alone are responsible for the other factors, particularly their spectacular own goal that is the destruction of credibility.
It’s unlikely that these readers are prepared to pay for the paper’s commentary on public affairs, or for that matter for “news”, but rather for up to date information which materially affects their investment and business decisions.
I have a slightly different interpretation of why people pay for business news services like the WSJ, and the AFR, and those of a plethora of smaller news services.
Couple of things:
I don’t agree that it’s the information they’re chasing – that info is usually available direct to investors through the various stock exchanges, and through information broking services like IRESS. Serious investors will have the basics at their fingertips often even before the wire services get stuff out, let alone the bigger mastheads.
I think that people are prepared to pay, because the business pages are one of the few areas of journalism that are doing analysis, rather than opinion and/or speculation. Good quality business journalism is successful when it’s based on a solid knowledge of the company/sector, and can give people with an interest some context to the company’s results/announcements/business decisions. Ditto for their reporting on broader issues. Too often that kind of analytical piece is missing from the general press, as it’s been replaced by a succession of talking heads saying, essentially “X is a wally because I think so”.
Similarly, people have been prepared to pay good money for subscriptions to smaller specialist publications on specific industry sectors, when it’s clear the publisher and its journos know the sector well, and are able to convert the technical talk into good journalism.
Second point – business news services can get subscription revenue in more easily as it’s mostly corporate accounts paying for them. Dropping $250 – $500 a year isn’t a big ask for a company to give access for its staff, if they see value in it, but that’s a much bigger ask for individual subscribers.
I’d bet a fair amount of money that the bulk of the subscription revenue coming into the WSJ and AFR is from corporate accounts – not home readers.
Will companies pay for access to the SMH and the Herald Sun, with their mix of often irrelevant local and celebrity driven news? Buckleys, I reckon, to the same extent – particularly if there’s a free alternative out there.
Good article Bronwen linked to from her blog post:
Umair Haque: The Nichepaper Manifesto
I’ve been reading a few of his others, and though the “insane awesomeness” of innovation becomes a bit tiresome, there are many ideas relevant to the demise we’re witnessing of News Ltd style big media and their printed presses.
This can be sharply contrasted with many excellent, and hugely successful/popular with the public, BBC initiatives of recent years – whether or not they were largely state-subsidised is a much lesser issue in the minds of anyone but the Murdochs and co, who are surely irked they can’t just buy in/out as usual, and, horror of horrors, actually have to compete.
Umair Haque: The Best Business Model in the World
Umair Haque: Four Rules for Constructive Competition
Can I assume that mobs like New Matilda, Overland, Crikey [which I read but don't pay for, don't ask], the ABC and SBS [which of course I pay for, willingly, via taxes]and all those lovely blog sites that frequently link to all sorts of important and interesting information [eg the link to Gottliebson above which fortunately/unfortunately doesn't give me access] will continue to exist in much the same fashion as now, perhaps even enhanced, if Murdoch and mates carry through with their hissy fit threat?
If so, then I’m on a winner.
And if Rupert and Jimmy and their mates fall flat on their faces then my win is even more dramatic.
The danger I see is that our governments will capitulate to the powers-that-be and eviscerate the ABC/BBC et al.
More than they already have that is.
BBB – The current system says: you cannot watch any Channel 5 unless you pay for the BBC, for which you will pay to the same degree as someone who watches the BBC relentlessly. I cannot believe that is in keeping with libertarianism.
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I don’t think Skeptic said it was libertaraian altho’ it’s more libertarian than Oz public TV because you can decide not to pay. She said that the News Ltd press kept within such principles.
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SL- Is doing without television… so very difficult?
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As I’ve said I killed TV 3 years ago. I took an IQ test a week after I did it and another 6 months later; bumped up 8 points! The quality of my concentration has markedly improved. I don’t take as much time doing things and have a much easier time of it when making decisions.
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But it isn’t worth it. I really miss tuning into Big Brother Up Late. The absence of Bogan D&Ms has impoverished me spiritually and intellectually.
@39 – crankynick, we’re not actually disagreeing. I was thinking about the analysis of business data, trends, etc. rather than the lists of stock prices etc. per se.
In the UK, the licence fee goes to the BBC not only for BBC content, but also for the provision of the broadcast infrastructure to places where frankly, a privatised provider would just not take it (example: cable tv, where the privately funded infrastructure only provides 35% coverage). That licence fee at the moment is what is paying for the conversion over from analogue to digital broadcasting, including all that expensive upgrading of transmitters, which benefits ALL broadcasters and not just the BBC.
Where there is a universal service (within natural geographic limitations, there are some places you just can’t get a signal) then you are likely to find a monopoly in charge of running the infrastructure. You can now subscribe to one of numerous companies for your landline telephony but you will still be paying “line rental” to BT, who manage the infrastructure (having been originally spun out of the Post Office).
These days you can watch television online and avoid the licence fee completely – almost all the major channels have their version of the BBCs iPlayer – but then you’ll just whinge about being forced to give your money to BT in order to access the internet.
Because the technology isn’t available to thread out those people who never watch the BBC (although if one confined one’s viewing to channel 5, one would rapidly be in IQ deficit) and who should (theoretically) be able to avoid paying the license fee, I’m quite happy to say that the British system is far more libertarian than that which pertains in Australia, and also guarantees a better quality broadcaster. I used to loathe the lefty bias of the ABC back in the days of Keating and the early days of Howard. That said, the Howard government’s attempts to fix it (by eviscerating the national broadcaster) were just as bad. Every time I encounter bias on the BBC (mainly anti-Israel, but there are some other examples) I am reminded that I don’t pay a penny for it, and I don’t have to, either.
And, as DEM points out, it is possible to use iPlayer to watch pretty much whatever you want. Channel 4 (which, as I neglected to mention, is also a public broadcaster, albeit largely funded by advertising) has a similar system.
{their preciousness regarding anything to do with sex (do they still spell it s_x?)
Offtopic – but that’s to get round internet/e-mail filters. Ensuring your content doesn’t contain trigger words allows your readers to access the site, especially from work, without being blocked by a net nanny.}