[1] I actually don't think it makes a blind bit of difference if people sell a pound of jam instead of 454g or whatever. I don't think pubs need to stop selling Pints either. Hard to be outraged here.
[2] TV stations are dead. Sell them all.
[2] TV stations are dead. Sell them all.
(Free depends whether you view the license fee as a tax, and whether the free license for pensioners is costed).
The main reason to sell it is simply a question of "is it fulfilling a societal good unavailable via a private enterprise". If not, the Government has no place owning it imo.
I can twist my logic to argue charging for the channel with requirement for Public Service Content costs money etc, but would be dishonest xD
They use a public resource (the radio spectrum) to broadcast television, in exchange for access to this spectrum the government sets requirements on what they can broadcast and so they are not simply ordinary for-profit companies.
If you think back to the last time you heard about the Eurovision Song Contest, the reason Eurovision exists is PSBs. The right to broadcast TV in European countries is held by a large number of distinct PSBs. The reason the ESC has weird breaks in it, if you watch it as a pristine video rather than from a source which makes that obvious, is that it's intended to be broken up with lots of commercials in most countries where - just like a US network, the PSBs are actually for-profit entities just under constraint of law because they use this scarce public resource.
Most of the Eurovision members have requirements on proportion of local content (no trouble in the US, but a for-profit Greek company may find English language sitcoms bought from North America, Britain or Australia are cheaper than making their own), news or current affairs coverage (the actual news isn't profitable since you can get that anywhere, so a profit seeking entity would rather not have a nightly hour-long news show), and children's programming (not very profitable in most European countries since advertising to children is very heavily constrained as kids are easy to manipulate).
"As of 2022, it breaks even in much the same way as most privately run commercial stations through the sale of on-air advertising, programme sponsorship, and the sale of any programme content and merchandising rights it owns, such as overseas broadcasting rights and domestic video sales. For example, as of 2012 its total revenues were £925 million with 91 per cent derived from sale of advertising."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_4
They get no money from the license fee, from taxes, nor from the government. Except when the government chooses to spend tax money buying and spaces on TV, which would be no different to private companies selling ads to government.
The danger is they're not dead, they're alive and well with a large part of a voting population.
Terrible idea.
As is [1]. Let's spend money for no reason, and also it makes it harder to integrate with the outside world, where the money London needs to launder is