[Neil Jones]

If the licence fee is meant to be £207.38 but it's currently £159 then the difference is £48.38.  It's between 25 and 26 million people that pay their tv licence.  If you work on 25 and half million then the shortfall would be £1,209,500,000.  And you wonder why so many people have left and the news channel and local radio shows are being axed.  Criminal in my view.  I'm not saying put the cost on the people but there must be something they can do.  Tax breaks or something.

Commercially-funded broadcasting is produced on a fraction of the cost.

For those of us who aren't up on things like this, how does that work exactly?

Surely "broadcasting" in this sense is a relatively fixed cost that doesn't matter whether its done by the BBC, ITV Studios, Endemol or Lord Lucan? How can it be it is cheaper on the commercial side than at the BBC?