I want my, I want my, I want my MTV...

Recently, there has been no small amount of furore over here in Britain surrounding the news that the BBC wish to increase the television license fee to one hundred and eighty pounds.

Now, the obvious reaction is that of shock & horror. After all, there are few concessions for the elderly or those on income support, who are often the ones to benefit the most from such a service.

A few years ago, some guy got so fed up with the license fee, he doodled with his telly and fixed it in such a way that there was no way for him to receive BBC broadcasts, and instead only received those from the commercial channels.

This seemed like a good idea and had the potential to open the floodgates to similar schemes, maybe even backed by the manufacturers.

With that in mind, the government whisked through legislation to close that particular loophole in the law and now the license is charged for the reception of any signal, not just that of the men from Auntie.

So over here in Britain, if you want to listen to the radio or watch television, you must pay a license fee for the privilege.

All of this must seem hilarious to Johnny Foreigner, specifically the Americans who will no doubt see all of this as some antiquated, pre-war hold-over that should have been given the heave-ho a long time ago.

In fact, there's a few people over here who think the same thing, and to an extent, I'm one of them.

But you have to consider the alternatives. Most people will just think: “Well, blow that for a load of old shit. I'm putting my money in Rupert Murdoch's back pocket from now on. I'm going to Sky!”

And I say: “Good luck to you, ‘coz you're going to be paying a damn lot more than one ‘undred an' eighty quid every year if you don't want to be watching repeats, shit films and low budget, low-brow documentaries.”

So, after going through the various options on the Sky website, having to choose at least six packages, the grand monthly fee total came to £41.50, which works out at £498.00 per year.

Hmm. Maybe £180.00 isn't all that bad, then?

So as my dad might say, you're as bad burnt as you are scolded.

We have a free view box and we can choose from about twenty channels, most of which are utter crap. So it's just as well that we're not paying for these channels in addition to what we're already paying for.

That said, if there was a fee attached to them, we wouldn't be watching them in the first place.

So all of this circuitous background brings us to the question of what you get for one hundred and eighty pounds. Well, from the BBC at least, you get quite a lot, actually!

Starting with BBC Radio, you get no less than eleven main stations, then there's all of the digital radio, live broadcasts, education, science, entertainment .. well, just go to the website and see for yourself.

And if we then go to the regular BBC Television stuff, you get four main channels, two of which are on free view, plus the 24-hour news channel, kids stuff and politics. Again, go to the website and see for yourself.

That's a point, isn't it?

Almost each and every single program that the BBC put out is backed up with a website. There can't be a single person alive who's sat down in front of a television and not seen Sir David Attenborough presenting some natural history of wildlife program.

For example, BBC Science & Nature is often tied into all of the Learning stuff.

Anyway, that's all well & cozy, but why the price hike? What's that all about?

The government has decided that all terrestrial television broadcasts must be digital by 2012, as dictated by OFCOM.

Thing is, someone has to pay for all of this, and seeing as though the BBC have been the target men for a few years, it seems to make sense that they should pay for this.

Problem is, digital television isn't something that people have been exactly crying out for. So by forcing this change through -- which would effectively kill off ‘old-fashioned' analogue broadcasts in the process -- and making the public foot the bill hasn't exactly endeared the government towards its public.

I suppose a lot of people think that when we pay our license fee, that money goes towards paying for just BBC content, but that's just not the case.

Compared to the likes of America, we have a much smaller population, so there's no way for us to use commercial broadcasting as a means to absorb the full cost of the creation of content and the broadcasting thereof.

I remember going to Los Angeles when I was at college in the mid nineties. I spent eight weeks in Northridge on the college campus.

I remember going into one of the many communal rooms to watch some television. After just ten minutes I had to walk out and find entertainment elsewhere.

The sheer volume of commercial slots was just so thoroughly annoying and distracting, I simply couldn't ‘get into' what I was trying to watch.

It was then that I discovered what all of those little fade-out moments are in American shows that we watch over here.

Even on commercial channels over here, all of those fade-out moments aren't used for advertising.

For the uninitiated, there are adverts before, during and after the opening credits .. which is just mind-blowing.

So it's not hard to see how commercial television in America makes advertising pay.

Over here is Britain, advertising is a barely-tolerated interruption that can on occasion coincide with a toilet break or a chance to grab a drink or something to eat.

So obviously, advertising has a vastly different treatment depending on where you come from. So for me, watching American television was a huge, huge culture shock.

But in saying all of this, who was it that come up with the idea of subsidized viewing in the first place? Why it was the Americans, of course.

And out of this commercialization of the airwaves comes choice and a democratization of content, which is what it's all about in the end.

So clearly with the BBC being at one end of the broadcasting spectrum and American broadcasting being at the other, some balance has to be found that doesn't drive the British public daft in the process.

I think that the time has come to make the BBC bite the bullet and move towards commercial broadcasting as a way of bringing the license fee down.

I think the time has come to call time on a non-commercial BBC...