Free the Airwaves
Last night marked the launch of another great campaign from The Freedom Association: Free the Airwaves. It was last night that I first heard the BBC license fee referred to as a poll tax, and there is no better description of it.
I am not in the position that the BBC should be dismantled and abolished. I stand by Alex Deane’s position that if people want to watch left-wing Liberal services (as I’m sure a great number do), then they should be free to but I do not feel that I should be obliged to pay for them to have that pleasure.
If at some point there was a need for genuine public service broadcasting, then that era is surely over.
I believe in the complete privatisation of the BBC; to open television up to the free market. I imagine the license fee would, for the first time in its history, drop in cost to reflect its market value. I imagine the number of channels it offered would be reduced and a lot of its repetitive programming cut.
A privatised BBC would be the fairest possible solution. At the moment those who wish to purchase the digital services of Sky or Virgin are entirely free to do so, we are not however free to opt-out the purchase of the BBC.
One of the other concerns I have for broadcasting in general is the excessive regulations that prevent a free press.
In my ideal post fee-abolition world, television broadcasters should be free to offer the services that they want to offer. This summer we saw the politicised takedown of the BSkyB bid; so fearful were the left that success organisations may gain more success. Sky News is not, and was entirely prevented from being, a British Fox News. And so even with the license fee gone, if we do not remove the regulations that are strapped onto our broadcasting, we will never have a free press.
Free the Airwaves is a fantastic campaign. Despite my desires for less regulation, the abolition of the license fee is a necessity that stretches far beyond the needs of a free press. The license fee is wholly illiberal and I welcome The Freedom Association for launching this campaign to fight it.
