BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster, headquartered at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff. Its main responsibility is to provide public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. The BBC is an autonomous public service broadcaster that operates under a Royal Charter and a License and Agreement from the Home Secretary. Within the United Kingdom its work is funded principally by an annual television license fee, which is charged to all British households, companies and organizations using any type of equipment to record and/or receive live television broadcasts; the level of the fee is set annually by the British Government and agreed by Parliament.
The BBC is the largest broadcasting organisation in the world. Its mission is to enrich people's lives with programmes that inform, educate and entertain. It is a public service broadcaster, established by a Royal Charter and funded by the licence fee that is paid by UK households. The BBC uses the income from the licence fee to provide services including 8 national TV channels plus regional programming, 10 national radio stations, 40 local radio stations and an extensive website. BBC World Service broadcasts to the world on radio, on TV and online, providing news and information in 32 languages. It is funded by a government grant, not from the licence fee. The BBC also has a commercial arm, BBC Worldwide. Its profits are returned to the BBC for investment in new programming and services. What BBC Does
Most of the BBC's services in the UK are funded from income from the licence fee:
BBC Services on Television: - BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC News, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC Parliament, BBC Red Button, BBC HD.
- BBC One BBC One's remit is to be the BBC's most popular mixed-genre television service across the UK, offering a wide range of high-quality programmes. It should be the BBC's primary outlet for major UK and international events and it should reflect the whole of the UK in its output. A very high proportion of its programmes should be original productions.
- BBC Two
BBC Two's remit is to be a mixed-genre channel appealing to a broad adult audience with programmes of depth and substance. It should carry the greatest amount and range of knowledge-building programming of any BBC television channel, complemented by distinctive comedy, drama and arts programming. - BBC Three
The remit of BBC Three is to bring younger audiences to high-quality public service broadcasting through a mixed-genre schedule of innovative UK content featuring new UK talent. The channel should use the full range of digital platforms to deliver its content and to build an interactive relationship with its audience. - BBC Four
The remit of BBC Four is to be a mixed-genre television channel for all adults, offering an ambitious range of innovative, high-quality output that is intellectually and culturally enriching. Its focus should be on the provision of factual and arts programming. - CBBC
The remit of CBBC is to provide a wide range of high-quality, distinctive content for 6–12 year olds, including drama, entertainment, comedy, animation, news and factual. The great majority of this content should be produced in the UK.
The remit of CBBC is to provide a wide range of high-quality, distinctive content for 6–12 year olds, including drama, entertainment, comedy, animation, news and factual. The great majority of this content should be produced in the UK. - CBeebies
The remit of CBeebies is to offer high-quality, mostly UK-produced programmes to educate and entertain the BBC's youngest audience. The service should provide a range of programming designed to encourage learning through play in a consistently safe environment for children under six years old. - BBC News
BBC News Channel should deliver up-to-the-minute, accurate, impartial and independent news, analysis and insight. It should provide fast and comprehensive coverage of local, UK and international events as they unfold and specialist analysis to put the news in context. - BBC Parliament
The remit of BBC Parliament is to make accessible to all the work of the UK's parliamentary and legislative bodies and the European Parliament. The service should also analyse and set in context the issues and politics behind parliamentary debates. - BBC Red Button
The remit of BBC Red Button is to offer continuous and constantly updated news, information, education and entertainment to digital television audiences in the form of interactive video, audio, pictures and text. BBC Red Button should offer content which supports and enhances some linear television programmes. It should be an access and navigation point for BBC non-linear television and radio content, offering supporting material and enhancements for linear broadcast output. - BBC HD
The remit of the BBC HD channel is to offer a mixed-genre schedule of programming in high-definition (HD) format, most of which has been originated by the BBC's other television channels.
- Community Channel (TV) is supported by the BBC through a partnership agreement.
- BBC World Service (radio) is funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
- Around the world, there are separate commercial ventures whose profits help fund BBC public services, including BBC America, BBC Prime, BBC World News and BBC Worldwide on YouTube.
History of BBC Television
1932 to 1939
Mechanically scanned, 30-line television broadcasts by John Logie Baird began in 1929, using the BBC transmitter in London, and by 1930 a regular schedule of programmes was transmitted from the BBC antenna in Brookmans Park. Television production was switched from Baird's company to what is now known as BBC one on 2 August 1932, and continued until September 1935. Regularly scheduled electronically scanned television began from Alexandra Palace in London on 2 November 1936, to just a few hundred viewers in the immediate area. It was reaching an estimated 25,000-40,000 homes before the outbreak of World War II caused the service to be suspended in September 1939. The VHF broadcasts would have provided an ideal radio beacon for German bombers homing in on London, and the engineers and technicians of the service would be needed for the war effort, in particular the RADAR programme.
1946 to 1964
Television transmissions resumed from Alexandra Palace in 1946. The BBC Television Service (renamed "BBC tv" in 1960) showed popular programming, including drama, comedies, documentaries, game shows, and soap operas, covering a wide range of genres and regularly competed with ITV to become the channel with the highest ratings for that week.
1964 to 1967
BBC TV was renamed BBC1 in 1964, after the launch of BBC2 (now BBC Two), the third television station (ITV was the second) for the UK; its remit, to provide more niche programming. The channel was due to launch on 20 April 1964, but was put off the air by a massive power failure that affected much of London, caused by a fire at Battersea Power Station. A videotape made on the opening night was rediscovered in 2003 by a BBC technician. In the end the launch went ahead the following night, hosted by Denis Tuohy holding a candle. BBC2 was the first British channel to use UHF and 625-line pictures, giving higher definition than the existing VHF 405-line system.
1967 to 2003
On 1 July 1967, BBC Two became the first television channel in Europe to broadcast regularly in colour, using the West German PAL system that is still in use today although being gradually superseded by digital systems. (BBC One and ITV began 625-line colour broadcasts simultaneously on 15 November 1969). Unlike other terrestrial channels, BBC Two does not have soap opera or standard news programming, but a range of programmes intended to be eclectic and diverse (although if a programme has high audience ratings it is often eventually repositioned to BBC One). The different remit of BBC2 allowed its first controller, Sir David Attenborough to commission the first heavyweight documentaries and documentary series such as Civilisation, The Ascent of Man and Horizon.
In 1967 Tom and Jerry cartoons first aired on BBC One, with around 2 episodes shown every evening at 5pm, with occasional morning showings on CBBC. The BBC stopped airing the famous cartoon duo in 2000.David Attenborough was later granted sabbatical leave from his job as Controller to work with the BBC Natural History Unit which had existed since the 1950s. This unit is now famed throughout the world for producing high quality programmes with Attenborough such as Life On Earth, The Private Life of Plants, The Blue Planet and Planet Earth.
2004 onwards
On 5 July 2004, the BBC celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its television news bulletins (although it had produced the Television Newsreel for several years before 1954). This event was marked by the release of a DVD, which showed highlights of the BBC's television coverage of significant events over the half-century, as well as changes in the format of the BBC television news; from the newsreel format of the first BBC Television News bulletins, to the 24-hour, worldwide news coverage available in 2004. A special edition of Radio Times was also produced, as well as a special section of the BBC News Online website.
The BBC Television department headed by Jana Bennett was absorbed into a new, much larger group; BBC Vision, in late 2006. The new group is part of larger restructuring within the BBC with the onset of new media outlets and technology.
In 2008, the BBC began experimenting with live streaming of certain channels in the UK, and in November 2008, all standard BBC television channels were made available to watch online.
The License Fee
The annual cost of a colour TV licence is £145.50 (as from 1 April 2010). A black and white TV licence is £49.
How the license fee was in 2010/11
Between 1 April 2010 and 31 March 2011 the cost was £145.50 – the equivalent of £12.13 per month or just under 40p per day.
The BBC used its income from the licence fee to pay for its TV, radio and online services, plus other costs, as shown below.
About the License Fee
Everyone in the UK who watches or records TV as it is broadcast needs to be covered by a TV licence. This includes TV on computers, mobile phones, DVD/video recorders and other devices.
The Government sets the level of the licence fee. In January 2007 the licence fee was agreed for a six-year period with the amount being approved each year by Parliament. More recently the Government decided to freeze the licence fee at its 2010 level of £145.50 until the end of the current BBC Charter period in 2016.
Advertising
The BBC is not permitted to carry advertising or sponsorship on its public services. This keeps them independent of commercial interests and ensures that they can be run instead to serve the general public interest.
If the BBC sold airtime either wholly or partially, advertisers and other commercial pressures would dictate its programme and schedule priorities. There would also be far less revenue for other broadcasters.
The BBC is financed instead by a TV licence fee paid by households. This guarantees that a wide range of high-quality programmes can be made available, unrestricted, to everyone.
The licence fee also helps support production skills, training, local or minority programmes and other services which might not otherwise be financed by the economics of pay-TV or advertising.
The BBC runs additional commercial services around the world. These are not financed by the licence fee but are kept quite separate from the BBC's public services. Profits are used to help keep the licence fee low so that UK licence fee payers can benefit commercially from their investment in programmes.
Political bias
BBC News forms a major department of the BBC, and regularly receives complaints of bias, mostly of being overly left-wing, while some on the left criticise the BBC of being a part of the establishment. The Centre for Policy Studies - founded and run by prominent members of the centre-right Conservative Party says that, "Since at least the mid-1980s, the BBC has often been criticised for a perceived bias against those on the centre-right of politics. Similar allegations have been made by past and present employees such as Antony Jay, former political editor Andrew Marr, North American editor Justin Webb, former editor of the Today Programme Rod Liddle, former correspondent Robin Aitken and Peter Sissons, a veteran news anchor.Mark Thompson, the current BBC Director General, has recently admitted: "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left.Accusations of a left-wing bias were often made against the BBC by members of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in the 1980s. Norman Tebbit called the BBC the “Stateless Person’s Broadcasting Corporation” because of what he regarded as its unpatriotic and neutral coverage of the Falklands War and Conservative MP Peter Bruinvels called it the “Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation”. Thatcher did not agree with the Television licence, she wanted to deregulate British broadcasting and she regarded the BBC as over-manned and uncompetitive, as well as biased against her. Throughout the 1980s her government appointed more and more Conservatives to the Board of Governors of the BBC. Steve Barnett noted in The Observer that "back in 1980, George Howard, the hunting, shooting and fishing aristocratic pal of Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw, was appointed [BBC chairman] because Margaret Thatcher couldn't abide the thought of distinguished Liberal Mark Bonham-Carter being promoted from vice-chairman. "Then there was Stuart Young, accountant and brother of one of Thatcher's staunchest cabinet allies, who succeeded Howard in 1983. He was followed in 1986 by Marmaduke Hussey, brother-in-law of another Cabinet Minister who was plucked from the obscurity of a directorship at Rupert Murdoch's Times Newspapers. According to Norman Tebbit, then Tory party chairman, Hussey was appointed 'to get in there and sort the place out, and in days not months. But controversies continued with the likes of the Nationwide general election special with Thatcher in 1983, a Panorama documentary called Maggie's Militant Tendency, the Real Lives interview with Martin McGuinness, the BBC’s coverage of the United States’ 1986 Bombing of Libya and the Zircon affair. In 1987 the Director-General of the BBC, Alasdair Milne, was forced to resign. Thatcher later said: “I have fought three elections against the BBC and don’t want to fight another against it. In 2006 Tebbit said: "The BBC was always against Lady Thatcher.
In my opinion, BBC is a huge media company, and is well known around the world. I think BBC is something the world needs as many people would be disapointed if BBC wasnt here as what it has to offer is something, alot of people need. For example people need BBC for there jobs, and for socializing and watching TV, movies, alot of programmes on television. So in my opinion BBC is need for day to day life. But my opinion on trhe price you have to pay for you TV license is that it keeps going up each year and thats not going to stop for up to another century.
