Opinion
Oh dear. How very tragic. How will we ever cope? The mainstream media are going broke. No matter how much money they leech off the taxpayer.
It’s not just Newshub and TVNZ: even the fattest, greediest media bloodsuckers are getting a good dose of salt.
The BBC is set to announce a litany of cuts and changes this week in an effort to get its finances back on track as the broadcaster faces a multi-million-pound funding slump – and the end of the licence fee.
Oh, weep! Woe! Pass me the popcorn!
Always remember what Robert Heinlein said: A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! These second-rate old slappers have been figuratively milking the British taxpayer for nearly a century. Now, that enforced subsidisation is coming to an end.
The existing fee agreement expires at the end of 2027 – and the Conservative government has pledged to replace it with a new funding model, which could spell the end of the licence fee altogether […]
But the announcements sit before a grim backdrop for the Beeb – licence fee income dropped to £3.47 billion in 2023, though the BBC is set to counter this by bumping the fee up to £169.50 from next month.
When all else fails, socialists can always demand more of other peoples’ money.
Tomorrow, BBC Director-General Tim Davie will tell staff about his pledge to “secure the future of the BBC” via measures including a drive for more profitable partnerships like the broadcaster’s recent coupling with Disney on Doctor Who.
Oh, boy, that’s gonna work out well. As if Doctor Who wasn’t already woke enough.
He is also set to warn staff of the societal effect of losing ‘shared cultural moments’ and hit British dramas offered by non-on-demand TV to “US and Chinese algorithms”, which increasingly shape what Britons consume.
Davie will say: “We are in danger of allowing the UK’s world-class creative industries to be undermined, and diminishing our unique cultural identity and its remarkable influence worldwide.”
Too late, old son: the Beeb’s been assiduously doing that for the last couple of decades. But, as wokesters will, they’re blaming everyone but themselves.
But the broadcaster has blamed 14 years of Conservative leadership for its woes; it argues funding cuts made under the party have led to a 30 per cent budget drop in real terms.
GB News
I mean, it couldn’t possibly be that Brits are simply fed up with a tiny, incestuous clique of Oxbridge leftist snobs beating them over the head with a bunch of woke bollocks.
Nor that the BBC was exposed as enabling and covering up decades of unchecked predation by some of its biggest stars, none more egregiously than Jimmy Savile.
Or that the BBC journalists have been repeatedly caught out lying, whether directly or by omission, about too many news stories it didn’t want the plebs to know.
In 2007, former BBC journalist Robin Aitken summed up what many Brits had long suspected: the BBC sees itself as a “hidden persuader”. “In the guise of impartiality… its real intention is to change the society it serves.”
The BBC’s biggest problem is that its crude efforts to “persuade” — in reality, to browbeat, finger-wag and lecture — are not even hidden, any more. The British public are on to them, and even less inclined than ever to keep funding a broadcaster that holds them, and the truth, in contempt.
Take note, Australia’s ABC.