[Denver]

If – and it's a humongous 'if' – UKIP were to triumph in next month's general election, one thing you could kiss goodbye to would be the BBC's licence fee.

Announcing the policy yesterday (May 3), the party's economics and media spokesman Patrick O'Flynn said that the licence fee would be scrapped and replaced with a subscription model and advertising under UKIP.

So what's their reasoning?

Slamming the licence fee as a "television tax" (via The Telegraph), Patrick argued that if the idea people had to pay to watch telly was introduced today, it would be 'laughed off' as a policy that has more "in common with the politics of North Korea than a modern liberal democracy".

Erm, we're not quite sure that's a fair comparison, Patrick.

Insisting that the policy was "not particularly about money", Patrick added that it was about giving consumers the choice to pay a licence fee – which they already have.

The licence fee, which is sometimes a source of contention among viewers, was raised for the first time in seven years last month – not by much, though.

The price to pay for wanting to watch BBC channels on both your TV and online increased from £145.50 to £147.00 on April 1.

The price hike (if we can call it that) came months after the BBC closed a licence fee loophole that allowed anyone, even those without a licence, to watch programmes on iPlayer after they'd aired.

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a8...ed-under-ukip/