[kirklancaster]

There was a time when the BBC made programs of utter excellence and the licence fee was justified. Sadly, those days are - for the most part - gone, and it is time for the licence fee to follow.

The 'Beeb' cannot even continue to try to justify its need of licence revenue by maintaining its refusal to accept advertising and the revenue from it, because increasingly there are blatant excamples of highly lucrative 'Product Placement' in a lot of its programs - including factual, variety, and drama - so its time for the hypocrisy to stop. In addition; where does the money raised from this Product Placement go? Is it in the accounts? If it is, then it totally negates any argument for still maintaining a 'No Advertising' policy. If it isn't, then'Hey Diddle Diddle, Some Fat Cat's On The Fiddle' - or perhaps it all just coincidental?

My own theory is - and it's bound to be unpopular on here, but is my genuine belief nonetheless - is that the powers that be at the BBC are no fools; in a cut throat, free market ecoconomy, where companies are competative and deliver or go to the wall, the BBC is one of the last true 'Nationalised Industries' and a bastion of old fashioned Socialism -- where performance does not matter, where efficiency does not matter, where executive pay checks and bonuses are not performance related and where a job is 'for life' irrespective of true ability to carry it out, and where profitability does not really matter because losses are not critical and extra revenue can always be raised by soaking the tax-paying public for more, via a deft raising of the licence costs.

If the licence is scrapped and in effect the BEEB 'privatised, the fat cats entrenched there will suddenly have to work for their money, will actually have to compete with market rivals to secure advertising revenue, and to produce high caliber programs which are also popular to ensure the kind of viewing figures which attract advertisers.

The Beeb fatcats know this only too well, and having to actually work to keep themselves in cream is not a prospect they relish.

Scrap the licence and have the rest of us purring with delight.