Need an research paper on the case of bbc and tv licensing fee. Needs to be 14 pages. Please no plagiarism. The license fee is set by the British government and agreed by the parliament, which makes everything about it controlled by the government, which could be determined as a form of censorship or capitalistic move (Petley, 2009, p.1).

Today, the issue of whether a TV license that is associated with BBC’s funding is tenable or not is one of the potential concerns that require critical understanding. It is also important to understand why the current system of funding the BBC is controversial in the first place.

The convergence of technologies has a remarkable impact on the media (Collins and Murroni, 1996, p.36). Before, in the absence of independent television in 1955, and prior to the existence of cable and satellite in 1973, funding the BBC through a TV license fee was considered highly tenable (BBC, 2012). In other words, the very reason why it was then reasonable at that time to pay for a license fee could be due to the fact that people in the first place did not have any other choice or alternative for them to receive a live broadcast on TV. Just for the BBC to continue to air a live broadcast, substantial costs should be met on a regular basis through special funding that has to be coming from the people. Today, the TV license fee paid by the people goes to BBC’s TV, radio, online services, and other costs. As a result, every household should pay per month £7.96 per for TV, £2.11 for radio, £0.66 for online, and £1.40 for other costs (BBC, 2012).

People when faced with various alternatives have to decide based on various choices or options. The same thing happened in the case of the BBC. In modern times, the existence of other independent televisions and live cable and satellites for free made it to a point that TV licensing became a controversial issue in the UK. There was the fragmentation of political communications and even the rise of globalization aggravates the said situation (Curran and Gurevitch, 2000, p.1. Curran, 2002, p.6). Before, in the absence of these alternatives a license fee should not come to be a controversial issue, but in the case of modern time and the highly globalized world when people have various options to enjoy the media even for free, TV licensing seems to be an issue that needs amendment and critical assessment.