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    BBC boss confirms all channels will cease transmitting, moving to online only
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    BBC boss confirms all channels will cease transmitting, moving to online only

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    1. newnortherner21 on

      It may be the plan, but I doubt it will happen, as there will be people who have a tv and wish to continue using it. No political party will want to deny older people their fix of daytime tv.

    2. MultiMidden on

      This will make it impossible to have any form of licence fee to fund it, it’s either advertising or subscription. As we’ve seen with youtube and adverts, streaming services cracking down on account sharing and piracy people are rather keen on getting stuff for free.

      Then there is a danger that the likes of the Daily Mail and the Murdoch empire will fill the void.

      I’m maybe more concerned about what it’ll do to BBC Radio and local news reporting, anyone whose local newspaper is owned by Reach will have seen how bad the advertising needs to be to make a profit.

      Edit: I don’t know what subscriptions people have but I stop subscribing to Amazon Prime / Netflix / Sky I stop getting the services provided by that subscription, that’s not the case with the BBC you might get letters but you still get the service.

    3. Thredded on

      I know this makes sense on so many levels but I just hate that this inevitably brings an end to the principle for free-to-air TV. It means that in order to receive any television, you will have to subscribe to some form of internet access – which of course I know we all do anyway, but still. It’s the principle – the fact that it introduces a mandatory middle man (in the form of the internet provider) that somebody has to pay for.

      I also have doubts about capacity… when it comes to streaming big live events, if say England are in a World Cup final or the next time we have a coronation or a royal wedding and the whole country tunes in – how soon till it all falls over? The beauty of broadcasting is in the name – currently it doesn’t matter if one person is watching or one billion, there’s enough signal for everyone.

    5. DAZBCN on

      Fantastic idea so in 10 years everyone will have an electric car because you won’t be able to buy anything else even though there is nowhere to charge it on top of that everybody including pensioners will need to have Internet even though there is hardly any Internet in many places. Yet again, another way to make money without any reason.

    6. Hungry_Horace on

      He talks about Freely, which I’ve never heard of, so I thought I’d check it out.

      It’s a service which seems to combine iPlayer, ITVX, and the C4 and C5 VOD apps. Seems like a good idea, especially if it means only one “account” to access all the free-to-air tv with on demand.

      Finally some smart thinking! Went to my TV to download the app. But wait – it’s NOT an app like the entire rest of the TV eco-system, it’s something that is ONLY available through new TVs with Freely built in.

      So close to a good plan, just to swerve at the last moment into unwieldy proprietary tech. Sigh.

      Edit: just reading more, and it’s not even a replacement for all those apps, you STILL need them all, each with an account, to access the on-demand bit of Freely. FFS.

    7. OrangeFlavoredPenis on

      What the actual fuck

      This sucks shit I for one am happy to pay my TV license and the service it provides and the available channels whenever! Nan

    8. jeremybeadleshand on

      Genuine question isn’t streaming worse for the environment? I’ve seen that said before but I’m not sure if the comparison was done Vs there being no transmitters, if that makes sense?

    10. bateau_du_gateau on

      Great without the cost of the infrastructure they can make a big cut in the licence fee. And it paves the way to going subscription and binning the licence altogether.

    11. guerrios45 on

      How much does it cost to have a spot on the TV?
      Like how much does it cost to appear when people push 1 on their remote control? Genuine question

    13. SmugPolyamorist on

      They’ve wanted to kill off FM radio broadcasting and swap to DAB only (not even internet) for decades, and it doesn’t seem much closer now than it did in 2010. I’m incredibly skeptical this will happen within 15 years. The edge cases of old people, remote cottages and technophobes will get in the way.

    14. Lawdie123 on

      Does that then mean Broadband is going to be a basic right and an absoulte minimum service has to be provided by the government for pepole who can’t afford it? Not every ISP has opt’d into the scheme where they offer cheap packages for people on UC.

      What happens when Virgin media goes offline for the 50th time this month?

    15. Iamoggierock on

      Cool. Let the infrastructure rot and in the future when Russia fancies it we can try to get an information outlet back up and running with cut internet cables. Sounds about right

    16. JoJoeyJoJo on

      Makes sense to free up the spectrum.

      Around the time of ‘going HD’ there was a plan to make 30 TV channels HD, before they realised giving that spectrum to mobile internet would lead to many more times the economic growth than showing ITV3 barely-a-celeb faces in higher resolution. That showed the direction of travel 20 years ago.

    17. SchoolForSedition on

      Really? So the whole system can go down at once? Can be taken down at once?

      What about the shipping forecast?

    18. Any-Swing-3518 on

      By the time this happens you will only be allowed to access four websites though, in order to ensure “Britain’s social cohesion.”

    21. No_Nose2819 on

      Just remove the licence fee and turn it all off please. Or have a go like ITV or channel 4 and 5.

    22. Tubbygit-2 on

      My mother in law would definitely not cope with this.
      She can’t fathom how the on-screen TV guide works
      (Insists on the Daily Mail tv magazine so she can find her repeats of Heartbeat and Downton bloody Abbey).
      The level of panic that sets in if you tell her she has to navigate iPlayer is as if you’d just asked her to defuse a nuke.
      There are a lot of old people out there who cannot and will not adapt

    23. Careful-Work-8209 on

      Good idea but TV licence fees should be reduced accordingly, since we are paying for the transmission now (broadband fees).

    24. saxbophone on

      ☹️ But I like switching the television on and being at the mercy of what the schedulers have decided to show! Force me to choose all the time and I won’t know what to pick! ☹️

    25. Legendofvader on

      cool can the license fee then be abolished as they can now completely control access via login .

    26. Broccoli--Enthusiast on

      ITT: everyone in Britain is apparently still using a 15 year old TV and plan to still have it in 10 years time

    27. spank_monkey_83 on

      They tried it with BBC3. What a disaster. Noone could be bothered to hunt for it online. Besides, who wants to only be able to watch the BBC in a device. Not everyone has a smart t v connected to the internet

    29. HerewardHawarde on

      In that case, they can be incripted and locked
      Great, enter code to watch BBC
      If you don’t watch you shouldn’t pay , I don’t want it

    30. Careful-Swimmer-2658 on

      Before everyone gets excited, just remember how long analogue TV and Long Wave radio lasted after they were obsolete.

    31. P3rs0m on

      Nope.

      Online is so garbage everything breaks, it’s annoying to use and often is under cared for. This is their way of saving money while lowering service quality and then eventually charging more.

      I hate that everything moves online. Let’s hope this is talk and not actually going to happen.

    32. OldLondon on

      That’s not at all what he said.  He said they’re planning to.. in the 2030s… but they need to support everyone in that switchover including super simple free view type devices etc.

    33. Routine-Aerie-6361 on

      Conspiracy Theory: They’ll use this as an excuse to make all streaming require a TV licence somehow.

    34. Panda_hat on

      Make it an online service with a login like netflix, end all the license enforcement operations and save on the costs. Make it international and charge people around the world to watch it, then make it cheaper for everyone involved with that new income. People around the world go crazy for british kitsch content – we should be monopolising on that.

      Done.

    35. karlosfandango40 on

      So, we dont need to pay for a license if they are not broadcasting anymore

    37. Fukthisite on

      So to watch TV you have to have an Internet subscription.

      So they are scrapping the TV “licence” then?

    38. Opening_Succotash_95 on

      This seems like a very silly idea to me. You’re killing off the last advantage the big channels have 

    39. WishboneDelicious816 on

      Cool so no bbc iplayer no absurd forced subscription?
      I heard him say that he thinks the license fee “works”, more of the same public shafting

    40. PoloniumPaladin on

      Get rid of the TV license and have an independent body decide what the BBC’s budget should be every year, and then the government is legally required to fund it to that level. That way you do away with all the TV license enforcement nonsense and just have guaranteed money available, but that amount of money isn’t in the government’s hands so they can’t cut it if they don’t like what the BBC is reporting.