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Comment by martin_ | Hacker News Reader

Note that the BBC is funded primarily by what's known as a "TV License"[0] in the UK - I think it's entirely possible they could probably increase ads or something for international viewers but understand why it isn't their area of focus

[0] https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/licencefee

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People - including politicians - have said for many years that the BBC should sell iPlayer subscriptions to international viewers, but they just...don't. They also have a massive archive of beloved content, enough to be a first-class streaming platform, but that stuff's not available even to UK residents.

Probably because with their current scheme they liscens the material for other markets and thus would be in violation of these kind of deals? As well as their co-funding/producing of foreign material. The question I would as as a liscense payer is what they earn through this.

Not saying it's not possible but why it is quite the hard thing to get out of, and not spend liscens money while doing so, makes sense. I would guess someone has made these calculations once or twice too.

Pretty sure it's not that they "just don't" though.

liscens the material for other markets and thus would be in violation of these kind of deals?

Except that the BBC does it all the time.

You can watch lots of BBC content - even current stuff - in other countries.

ABC in Australia, and Acorn streaming or PBS OTA in the US.

Those are the licensed deals.

BBC should put its entire archive free online ad supported for international users and ad free for UK viewers. Then the popular items could migrate behind a premium paywall over time.

Grandparent poster just responded why it's not that easy, and your demand is to ask for the thing s/he just explained is hard to do..?

I know I should just leave these sort of replies alone rather than say "WTF?", but WTF, dude?

The car show Top Gear had (maybe still has?) great music because the BBC has a license to almost any piece of music (since they have several radio channels in the UK, a musician would be insane to refuse a license to the BBC), but the DVD version sold internationally would replace the music with something generic, I'm guessing it's the same with the version broadcast internationally.

When the trio that made Too Gear a huge show moved to Amazon's Grand Tour, one of the things that suffered was the music, because I guess Amazon didn't want to bother getting licenses to broadcast music in many many countries.

Isn’t that what Britbox is?

> Note that the BBC is funded primarily by what's known as a "TV License"[0] in the UK

Well, as 'TV Licence', since that's the spelling of the noun outside the US ;)

Oi m8 U got a loicense for that tv?

I believe the bbc provides its shows internationally via other channels, for e.g. https://www.bbcselect.com/watch/take-me-to-titanic/

BBC Select is only in US and Canada, not in rest of world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Select_(streaming_service)

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