[Gllug] BBC Open Source: OT

[Bernard Peek]

In message <Marcel-1.53-0717125223-ab5hjSf at riscpc.localdomain>, Chris 
Bell <chrisbell at overview.demon.co.uk> writes
>On Sun 17 Jul, Liam Smit wrote:
>>
>
>>
>> Maybe the government should be forced to give better accounts of just
>> what it spends the money on, i.e not just by sector but by how much
>> each sector provides so we can see if they are wasting money anywhere.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Liam
>
>   There has to be a middle way.
>   Some years ago the BBC was required to start justifying expenditure to
>external audits.

The main justification for the BBC is one that you won't see mentioned 
in the press, or any other part of the advertising industry and I 
haven't seen it mentioned here.

By spending the amount of money it does on TV and radio programming the 
BBC forces all of its competitors to spend similar amounts, or lose 
their audience. Without the BBC as competition we would have a similar 
free-to-air market as exists in the US, and would have a similar quality 
of TV. To my mind that's sufficient justification for maintaining it.

There's also the hidden advantage behind the BBC's R&D expenditure. The 
money spent on research in the UK trains engineers who go on to work in 
other British companies. It's one way around the free-trade regulations 
that allow the USA to subsidise its engineering industry through defence 
spending, something we stopped doing in the mid 1970s.



-- 
Bernard Peek
London, UK. DBA, Manager, Trainer & Author.

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