UKHamlet's Blog

BBC Broadcasting House - turned into apartments for the wealthy?

There’s an idea being floated in the ranks of power that the BBC should be made to pay its own way. The concept is that through its own endeavours, the BBC should fund its activities and perform as a commercial organisation would have to. I disagree and I’ll tell you why.

If the BBC had its 40p a day public funding removed, it would have to fight for revenues in the shrinking market of advertising, it would have to ramp up its commercial output, it would have to cut costs and it would have to change its output to meet the demands of a commerce. Not such a bad thing you might think. You would be wrong.

According the BBC’s 2008-2009 annual report its income is derived from the following sources:

• £3493.8 million in licence fees
• £775.9 million from commercial business
• £294.6 million from government grants
• £41.1 million from other sources such as overseas sales

Recently, it was reported that Internet Advertising had overtaken television advertising, with a record of £1.75 billion spent in the first six months of 2009. So, we’re talking about a comparable period. Extrapolating from that, making the assumption that advertising spend remains constant at this record level, we can assume that the Internet will generate £3.5 billion in advertising revenues in year. This is roughly the same as the cost of the licence fee and more than the total spend on television advertising. So, for the BBC to replace its licence fee with advertising, it would have to take ALL the advertising revenue from the ITV companies and then find some more.

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Lovely bones

I’m not thin. In fact I’m what some would call a BHB – big handsome bloke. That doesn’t include me, because I don’t like being big. My bigness is more to do with genetics than diet – I eat moderately and do a certain amount of exercise, including visting the gym twice a week. Still, I can’t shed those midriff pounds.

The reason for this is I convert more of my calories to fat than thin people – it’s a simple fact. The equation is easy to understand (even for skinny people) – everyone has a daily calorie burn off rate and it varies from day to day and person to person – if you consume more calories than you burn off, you will get fatter. FACT.

So, I could eat exactly the same number of calories and do exactly the same amount of exercise as a naturally skinny person, but I would burn fewer calories, therefore put on more weight, or lose less. This, of course, is a simplification, but it is in the area of accuracy and for the purposes of this article, it will suffice.

The thing is, I’m not complaining about the unfairness of this, or desirablility of being skinny, or even making excuses about my own inability to lose weight. No, I’m complaining about the sage like posturing of naturally skinny people, who want to tell me how to join their ranks. Why? Because they don’t know. They are there, they have always been there and they have no idea why or how I’m going to make that journey.

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She sat there; eyes resting on him, their warmth a whisper from being a caress, the occasional frozen pane swirl of silver scattered through her hair evidencing the passing of time, her soft, clever words, spoken in a soft, clever voice, which, but for the silence of the morning air, would be lost to him. She sat there; sipping on coffee that flavoured the air with its distinctive aroma, but detracted not at all from her familiar, welcome scent, mingling as it did with the honeysuckle’s surrender to the day. She sat there; still lovely, still good to be with, still missed, happily still her.