(Untitled)

[cbackson]

Top Gear is strangely mesmerizing, isn't it?

ETA:  Seriously, what I can't believe, British people, is that your government PAYS for this.  Taxpayer-funded media in the US is so horribly edifying.

Comments

[myfirstkitchen]

Ah, the government don't pay for it, but we do - it goes via the government, but straight to the BBC. TV licences are different from normal taxation. I mean, it's functionally similar in that most people have to pay for it, but the relationship between the BBC and the government is...odd. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom

Our current government would quite like the BBC to disappear altogether, or at least cut back to the bone and only offer things that no other broadcaster would. So no entertainment shows, no news, no drama, no politics, no music etc etc etc. Market-driven loonies.

[cbackson]

It may amuse you to know that when our local (fantastic) public radio station is doing its fundraising drive, it always mentions British television licensing. Like "In other countries, the government would make you fund us! But here they don't! SEND US MONEY PLEASE." Because even our public stations receive only a tiny bit of their funding from the Feds (stations that don't air NPR content aren't govt-funded at all; "public" in this context means non-commercial).

Seriously, even if the gov't was just in a conduit role for private funds, you couldn't air half the stuff on a US public station that BBC shows! Even the attenuate federal relationship to public radio is enough to prompt kerfuffles over content from time to time...