[Sussex] BBC Video Downloads

[Mark Harrison]

Nic,

I'm half-way persuaded by that last message of yours. The comments about
developing a creative "hacker video" culture in which, say, the Blue Planet,
could be mashed into something different is a strong one indeed.

I'm happy for you to describe the licence fee as a tax. I agree :-)

However, given that over £600m of the BBC's revenue comes from "Commercial
Activities", we mustn't ignore the fact that a lot of its income comes "NOT
FROM TAX" but from "SALE OF PROGRAMMES".

If the material currently sold is made available Free Of Charge, then it
will inevitably reduce that income... dramatically.

What would you prefer the BBC to do?

1: Reduce its output to live within the 80% of the budget funded by taxation

OR

2: Increase the tax per household to support the current level of production

OR

3: If you do not like either of these alternatives, then feel free to
suggest a third option...



I have to say, Option 1 doesn't feel entirely bad... Having only 85% of the
current production output, but having ALL of that 85% available under an
Open licence does strike me as a good compromise.

My fear, however, is that the 15% cut would overlap heavily with the
material I choose to watch, and that we'd see a race to the bottom :-)

M.