(02-06-2022, 01:27 PM)natashajacobs Wrote: As the licence fee stands then yes of course you have to be doing a specific thing to pay it. But my point was that, in the future, this might not be so. If it was funded from a levy on general taxation then it would be just like all the other public services that we don’t use personally.
Public Services are those provided to everyone by the State, regardless of contribution, or ability to pay. Welfare, defence, policing, health and education etc are core services for a society, so they are funded from general taxation. Nobody has ever suffered from a lack of media!
PSBs simply have a remit to provide some elements to the public in order to have a licence to broadcast, whether that's the BBC or the commercially funded organisations.
You'd struggle to claim that Strictly was an 'essential public service' that required funding from general taxation.