BritBox, already dubbed Shitbox, is set to launch in the Autumn of 2019.
For the princely sum of £5.99 a month viewers can enjoy a selection of the BBC and ITV's most dated programming at the push of a button (just as they currently can by tuning to BBC Two or ITV3). The plan, certainly from the BBC's point of view, is to relocate vast swathes of archive content from the iPlayer and distribute it, at a price, via the new platform.
New programmes will also be made specially for BritBox, with the first arriving next year. Other existing series to be made available will include Victoria, Happy Valley, Les Miserables, The Office and Benidorm.
Social media users have been quick to criticise the new service. Twitter user Phil McGrath tweeted: "I have paid the BBC licence fee for 41 years, I calculate over £4,000 cost. And now they think I'll pay £72 a year to see programmes I paid for in 1978?"
There seems to be widespread agreement with Phil's sentiment, with another Twitter user, Lee-Mc, adding: "Genius idea from the BBC - force an entire country to pay a yearly licence that they have no choice about, then charge them £5.99 a month to watch the shows that should be included within the price."
Asked why viewers should pay an extra charge to watch shows originally funded by the TV licence fee the BBC Director General, Tony Hall, compared BritBox with releasing a programme on DVD.
"That was the BBC saying, there's a secondary market - you pay for content after we've shown it," he said. "This is just a modern-day version of that, and an even better version of that, because it used to be infuriating when you'd seen a programme on the BBC and you couldn't get hold of the DVD."
Hall added that any profit made by the new service will be reinvested into BBC programming.
"I think this is wins all round for the licence fee payers," he said deludedly.
Please refer to our earlier article for some suggested alternatives to paying the TV licence fee and BritBox.
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1 comment:
Britbox could be very useful as long as you don't need to have a TV Licence, otherwise it's pointless. Allowing the LLF to access content currently unavailable.
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