I like to think of it as buying a journalist a pint once a month.
Also, when I had Netflix I found it to have a pretty terrible selection after I'd finished the two or three series I liked. Maybe that's just me though.
Finally, at £145 a year, the BBC costs quite a bit more.
Sorry, since this is Hacker News, I assumed people would have a basic understanding of how the iplayer knows your location and how trivial a matter it is to circumvent?
Since I spend 9 months of the year in Spain I use a vpn by default and I access iplayer just the same way I would back home.
The not free aspect amounts to a tick box to say you have a licence. To most people on the internet today this does mean it is free.
The point was to explain why the bbc is expensive compared to netflix since it is a lot less convenient to get content for nothing.
Yes, I do have a licence and subscribe to netflix as well as prime. The point was theoretical.
Full disclosure: I pay nothing for the BBC (I don't live in the UK).
However, the BBC news I use does appear to be funded by licence-fee payers, among other sources.
"The World Service is funded by the United Kingdom's television licence fee, limited advertising[6] and the profits of BBC Worldwide Ltd.[7] The service also gets £289 million each year (agreed up to 2020) from the UK government.[8]"
do they have additional expenses to produce news for foreign readers compared to British paying for this service? they would need to produce those news anyway, so no need to feel guilty about reading something paid by others, anyway these news agencies cooperate and I guess almost anyone in Europe pay for their national TV/radio/news agency which is sharing their news with other countries
Sure, more users and more languages will definitely mean more expenses. The BBC World Service's origins are visible in its original name as the Empire Service. I'm not sure they would still form the world service if the BBC were created today. It is, in my view at least, a great form of soft power for the UK and in some cases one of the only decent reporting options.
everyone i know read English site, so no need to produce anything additional for these users, it cost them just little bit if bandwidth and processing time, but zero human resources
Also, when I had Netflix I found it to have a pretty terrible selection after I'd finished the two or three series I liked. Maybe that's just me though.
Finally, at £145 a year, the BBC costs quite a bit more.