Consider the following:
A) The BBC have pledged to make cuts to its schedule and trim back programming to create a better example of quality public service broadcasting. One of its primary areas of development will now be its COMEDY output.
B) The culmination of the farcical BBC Charter Review was to change NOTHING about the way the BBC is funded, and to renew a commitment to funding it by a forceful act of law, requiring even those who do NOT wish to watch its output to pay for it by means of the annual license fee.
Would someone please explain to me WHY it is necessary to provide COMEDY by force? A public service broadcaster is said to exist in order to provide something that the free market is implied to be unable to provide by itself. Yet the free market is already providing a lot of quality comedy which happens to be very popular. I’ll finish this brief post by asking a question that I posed directly to the BBC Charter Review many months ago. Please bear in mind two things: 1) that I do not intend to suggest a possible answer, I simply do not know the answer; and, 2) that this is only an instance of a much bigger issue.
WHAT POSSIBLE MOTIVATION, considering the above, could there be behind an initiative to FORCE the collective public, across the board, to pay for PURE ENTERTAINMENT, whether they want it or not?
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John Wright