Perhaps it should just be added to general taxation and funded by the government. Unless you reckon that might affect impartiality of the service; impose constraints, produce murmurings of government tampering.
If you watch television, why not pay towards funding it? I mean, pay more than you do already for commercial channels by paying through marketing and advertising budgets added to the cost of products and services you purchase. Perhaps they could levy a tax on TV advertising... that way a non-commercial channel can be funded by the people who only watch commercial channels! They wouldn't have to pay a license fee then, would they? Although, now I come to think of it... can any way of funding non-commercial channels be really said to be fair? People who don't consume it, don't have to pay towards it. Hm... well, I hardly go to the GP now, and my kids are all grown up, so I guess I shouldn't pay for those either. I mean I *might* need the GP, I suppose, then again I *might* want to watch Dr Who, or Horizon. Or that ballet version of 1984, that was OK. So was that Planet Earth series, that was pretty good. And when the storms were wrecking the UK travel system and the power went, it was handy to turn on my battery powered radio and find a local channel with news and travel and weather on it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
