h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you have sky or digital you will know that the BBC has launched a load of new channels also loads of digital radio stations.

How come the license fee has hardly gone up any yet the number of tv channels has gone from 2 to about 20?

Wheres the extra money come from or what were they wasting the money on before?

I have no idea, but I'm not going to complain!

One explanation could be the sheer number of licences nowadays as the population increases. It's also possible of course that the BBC have other sources of funding.

Well it *does* have a lot of money to begin with. The licence fee is £120 pounds a year per person. There are 60,000,000 million people in Britain. So even if as few as two-thirds of them pat their full licence fee, the BBC is still in reciept of some £4,800,000,000. Count those naughts. That's just shy of five billion a year. So the question isn't really "where have they got the money for all those new stations from?" but in fact "What the f*uck have they been doing with all that cash up until now?!?!"

just found this..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/report2002/facts/index.shtml

..so what were they doing with it before?

There may be 60,000,000 people in Great Britiain Frogbit, but you only need one licence per household. I don't know what the official figures are, but I would reckon on there being 20 - 25,000,000 households, which gives a figure (if everyone paid their licence fee ) of more like £2,400,000,000-£3,000,000,000

Take into consideration that they own UK-Gold and other UK-*add thing here* programming that has advertising as well. Not to mention the cash they must get paid for the blatent product placements in progs. like Eastenders. And I suspect they get government funding too. Oh...and cash for hosting the Lottery.


Still doesn't seem right...

What about overseas channels? They have advertising too...

the revenues about £3,400,000,000
but before all the satelite stuff it was still around this amount as its only gone up a few quid in the last few years
i suppose this amount is plently to run all the new channels but what were they spending it on before?

Stupidity and themselves.

In the past, they bought rounds of drinks at the h2g2 Party! Now we have to pay for ourselves. So that should be enough to fund all those extra channels.

From the

From the financial statement linked to in the post above:

(snipped here and there to make for light reading)

The income from licenses is set by Parliament each year, not by how many people pay. The BBC is given a set amount depending on the number of people who should be paying.

BBC Worldwide Limited gets money from: licensing programs overseas - The Weakest Link, anything by David Attenborough, etc.
Income from joint venture channels - UK Gold, etc.
Sale of goods - magazines, books, videos, CDs, tapes, DVDs and other merchandise.

BBC Resources Limited and BBC Technology Holdings Limited get money from hiring out equipment and facilities to other areas in the BBC as well as external companies.

BBC World Service is primarily derived from Grant-in-Aid from the Foreign and Commenwealth Office.

Tada!

Liam.

Oh and £22m from investment banking.

Liam.

Well the digital tv channels all have adverts on them and they're very focused channels (food, style, retro etc etc) so the adverts can be targetted, plus I *think* they get a small amount of the subscription charges from sky/cable, not sure on that though.

I thought they got the money from the pond at Shepard's bush?You know, the one they found a few years back, in the basement, where liquid gold seeped through the walls into the basement? or was someone pulling my leg's? well, what with that, and them selling their souls to the devil..... I don't have a TV licence.
BBut, I don't have a TV, so I guess that's fairly reasonable

None of us here in Hell have anything to do with BBC. Try the other department...

I get so confussed so many peoples we have dealings with

I wonder if enforcing rules onto h2g2 involves much funding

I thought they had got rid of the modrators, in place for self moderation by the community? or maybe not.... probably didn't/doesn't cost htat much, seeing as how goo dit is and all the stuff that gets through

I don't think h2g2 have quite won the beeb over yet But its close to that point, I think