Ending The TV Licence Fee Ends Local Radio 

A chance for private enterprise, yes scrap the BBC.

If enough people wanted local radio they'd survive with advertising, otherwise it's not worth saving.

Dont speak to them, dont pay, simple. What can they do!? They are not the police!

I don't listen to local woke either

We already have independent local radio stations. They are perfectly good alternatives to the BBC.

they ended radio licence years back i watch no live tv and i got no tv licence

Don't think I've ever listened to BBC local radio in my life. And I'm over 40! I catch it now and again when channel hopping through poor reception in the car. When I realise it's BBC, I immediately switch!

All the radio stations they have are complete shite.

That's funny as BBC radio is rubbish anyway!

Not listened to woke bbc radio since the 80's. These days I listen to GB news, Talk TV, Absolute 80s, Heart 80s & gold.

We don’t have BBC local radio here in Scotland it’s just BBC radio Scotland, unless you count BBC radio Alba the virtually no one listens to

I’m nearly 70. I’ve never heard BBC Local Radio. What is it? Pop music? There are countless commercial radio stations and phone Apps (Spotify, Apple Music, You Tube Music etc) providing pop music. We certainly do not need the BBC to provide music.

Don't remember the last time I listened to local radio. Even longer since I listened to the BBC

Since they've practically closed down alot of the BBC Local Radio services anyway or slimmed them down to regional-national services that talk about the same things anyway, then it's a 'threat' with no teeth left. Maybe their radio services division should be a re-constituted British Broadcasting Company like it was between 1922 and 1926, operating purely on advertisement & commercial revenue anyway. That way also, the remaining Corporation wouldn't have any excuse to keep a licence fee, as they wouldn't be funding anything but their TV output. Of course it's all just dreams, but one can dream

We haven’t had a license for 5 years now, have had the scare letter through as we usually opt out online but have gone back online to opt out again and it’s saying we are ineligible too do that 😂

I'm still waiting for my knock at the door after all the threatening letters.

Good afternoon Chilli 🍻 Had my first threat - o - gram of the year on Saturday and this time it was stamped and signed by someone by the name of Ross McTaggart 😳 Maybe good old Scott Robson has been promoted or perhaps even embarked on a new career elsewhere!?

The BBC out competed commercial local radio, maybe it will recover if they leave a void.

I’ve not even considered radio since i found podcasts.

Must be 30 years since I last listened to BBC local radio….

They don't understand that we don't need the BBC in its current form, there are other providers. I haven't listened to radio for years, let alone BBC radio, so for me if it goes it goes, someone may pick up the slack if viable, if not well...(BBC Brighton, in its current form went a long time ago)

Have never listened to BBC local radio and am happy to listen to commercial local radio even with the ads.

Don't listen to any radio either. They are scared to go sub as they would lose out but if they charged a reasonable charge for iPlayer £5.99 and put commercials on over the air broadcasts it surely would pay and give a chance for users with poor internet to still watch broadcasts. BBC need to stop wasting money.

I can seriously see cancellations coming the the hundreds of thousands from the end of Feb 2024 or the person cancelling their monthly DD and taking out a yearly licence in March 2024 and deciding whether or not to pay £169.50 in March 2025 or cancel the licence altogether. My local BBC radio does football commentary for the two local teams, I watch the football commentary of one team every Saturday and Tuesday. If I want to listen to the radio any other time then I listen to Planet Rock or Absolute Classic Rock as it's far better than anything the BBC puts out. At one time you didn't have to login to the BBC website to listen to BBC radio but now you do so I listen to the local football through Alexa, If the BBC charged for radio then that would be a big nail in the coffin for the BBC.

The bbc fails to recognise how loathed and despised it is by the majority of the British population.

They only get over 3 Billion a year God knows why people are still paying for this Shite is beyond me

BBC Radio is now full of so-called comedians who need work, and the remainder are Z list celebrities.

I used to listen to radio (local and national) years ago for the music but over time, they've cut the music down and there's way too much talking these days. I now use YT or free streaming services for music, when I'm not listening to my own collection.

Fantastic news

I only listen to my local football team on a Saturday

Someone should whisper SPOTIFY in their shell like 👂 or PRIME playlist 😂😂😂

I cannot remember the last time I tuned into a radio station even in my car. Oh yes I can it was SLAM FM in a hire car in The Netherlands about 7 years ago!

Bbc radio is just like bbc TV bloody rubbish

They should put BBC sounds behind a paywall and charge 4.99 a month for people to subscribe, I'm sure they'd get plenty of takers...

7,000 on line radio stations! So very local must be 10 in Manchester +.

Lots of other great local radio stations out there besides the ones run by the BBC most of which are crap.

BBC Local Radio is going just like the old local commercial stations. My local is BBC Radio Derby, in the afternoons it's now linked with Nottingham and Leicester. In the mornings, they have their own programmes, but the music playlist is the same for all three. My mum use to listen to BBC Radio Derby, but these days, she finds RU-vid more interesting on her tablet, she is 93.

Here's a better headline: "Gary Lineker to go if licence fee ended"

I don't know anyone under the age of 70 that listens to BBC Radio Norfolk!

Radio has lived longer than it would have normally anyway the thing that has different now is that people don't have to listen to it, if you want a noise in the background you just have Spotify or some form of audio.

I feel so much better after ditching the tv licence. For me it’s been eight years. I ended mine 13.12.16 Mainly due to BBC news parroting government propaganda. However when you stop watching live tv, you begin to wonder why you ever watched it. It’s so bad.. I’m sorry, but I don’t care about BBC radio. There are plenty of commercial stations. 😏

Haven't had a licence in 15 years, never watch the Brutal Beast Community, who cares about their radio? Much better stations all over the world

Time was when BBC local radio was worth listening to for extensive coverage of local news. This disappeared decades ago, however, and now it is just pop and prattle interspersed with a few traffic reports and weather forecasts, increasingly non-local in nature. Forget the main BBC channels carrying adverts, by the way. The BBC don't want to. They much prefer to be handed their funding on a plate and no government would ever allow it anyway.

..... and the problem with that is? have you heard BBC local radio recently????

Local radio was ended 20+ years ago - by mp3 players

I have never listened to BBC local radio EVER. They should stop buying costa and cook more home cooked food if they want to keep things the rest of us don't

Of course there'll be enough commercial funding to support the cost per hour. How can other local stations exist without it?

NMFP. LEGALLY TV LICENSE FREE SINCE 2007.

i stoped listening to local radio, when my dad moved 2 counties over, i could not stand the patchy nature of signal and having to find diferent stations to tune into. i never enjoyed most of the chat either. in the end i just lisened to CD's

BBC local radio is and always has been pretty dreadful. I doubt there'd be much more than 1% of the population listening to it. Put it out of our misery.

Most radio is now broadcast from the DJs home anyway in their garage.

Paywall, If you have an old Freesat receiver it won't have HD and now the BBC have moved all Satellite transmissions to HD effectively removing the BBC service yet I still require a licence to view TV.🤔

I've paid the same for over 15 years now of £0.0p.

I don't watch TV or use the radio, and I won't pay for services I do not use.

That would be no great loss. These parochial stations are not worth listening to.

The irony is that while i often listen to radio stations (though not generally BBC as the music to chatter ratio is too heavily skewed toward the latter) i do so via an antenna on Freeview or Freesat, for which i technically need a licence as the set is 'installed' (even though it only ever shows the station's static logo card...)

Hi Chilli Jon, if the BBC cannot detect if you are watching live broadcast TV, how do they know that over 20 years ago 30.15 million people viewed BBC1 Eastenders (Angie & Den divorce papers) and last week 9 people viewed BBC2 International Crown Green Bowling?

Commercial radio in my view especially at peak listening times has WAY to many adverts I just end up turning it off. As for the BBC local radio its mostly pushing some woke message. Radio 4, even on FM radio seems to always be talking about things that have very little to do with the UK, or trying to push a personal BBC view point they have, which incidently I thought that was against Ofcom rules. Anyway I use to turn the radio on all the time, but now, Nope 😕

Who cares, never listened to radio for 40 years.

I’m from Cambridgeshire our local radio station it’s pathetic so it won’t worry me

I was in a cab this morning.Driver had a 'BBC local' station on. The presenter could barely string a coherent sentence together, never mind a fluent conversation.

I feel like local radio is suffering from an aging audience, ‎do many people under 30 even listen to local radio? ‎even those over 30 are listening less and less. ‎like local newspapers, ‎regional radio is suffering from competition from social media. ‎a couple of years ago, ‎there was a fire in the block of flats where I was living at the time. ‎my friend s found out about it not from local radio or local TV news but from Facebook. ‎someone posted a video of it on a local news group.

The National Commercial Station "Greatest Hits Radio" now has these once BBC presenters; Ken Bruce Simon Mayo Kate Thornton Paul Gambaccini Richard Allinson Mark Goodier Simon Mayo Andy Crane Alex Lester Heidi Secker Jackie Brambles Martin Starke Debbie Mac Simon Ross (Jenny Powell) (Martin Kemp) Probably many more in the pipeline.

Radio Cumbria has been devastated by the loss of all the decent DJs due to cuts and putting together different areas so I no longer listen to

The sickening greed of the bbc and its employees is truly nauseating.

BBC local radio will soon become BBC regional radio. I love in Leicester where local radio was first introduced. We have seen our local programme either reduced, withdrawn or co linked with other stations such as BBC radio, Nottingham, Lincoln and Derby. So we will undoubtedly become BBC east Midlands radio. In your area it will either be BBC south east radio or you could be linked to BBC radio east Anglia . Likewise Kent and Sussex will join up the the greater London and Buckinghamshire to become BBC home counties radio or Buckinghamshire might link with Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire to become BBC radio boringham😂😂😂. But that is definitely the way it is going. The next step after that just a few years down the line will be to just have maybe three or four national BBC radio stations behind the paywall will an inbuilt local news segment maybe every three or four hours. I wonder what the bookies are offering on this??? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 The BBC shot itself squarely between the eyes when the got rid of their best presenters such as Alex Lester, Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo. Thus losing nearly seventy five percent of its listeners(BBC radio 2). A figure that they try desperately to hide and just another reason why so many people gave up on the BBC last year. I wonder if Steve Wright is still eating his way through every burger joint in the greater London area?,🤔🤔🤔🤔 Well like the old saying says,,,:- "Go woke to go broke"

No one would miss "local radio" except the mini-luvies profiteering from it. Its as redundant as a steam engine in the 1960s. Anyway, what has local radio got to do with controlling accessing to television receiving installations?

The BBC sit on, and occupy, a large proportion of the FM radio band spectrum just for their local radio Chanel’s alone. They should surrender most of it, if not all, to allow newer stations to transmit on FM. FM is the most easily accessible, and most used, transmission medium. There are many newer stations forced to broadcast on DAB only because of lack of available FM Spectrum. DAB has not attracted the great enthusiasm of listeners because it’s technically inferior in quality to good FM. A reluctance to buy new DAB radios is not helped by the current upgrading to DAB +. We now have a situation where existing listeners to newer stations on DAB are now being forced to buy yet more expensive DAB + sets just ti continue listening. Their old DAB sets being made redundant. SCALA RADIO is one such example. The BBC should get out of the way, and let others access the FM channels they’re wasting.

Shouldn't even be a question there praying on people with disabilities they need to be closed down and refund all of thr money theyve wasted back to the while county and have goons at their doors demanding money be payed back to us all

Pretty much all local radio stations are poop. Plus internet. Gave me so maaaaany radio stations from around the world...

Meanwhile in Australia local radio from the ABC is going gangbusters, they get huge ratings and music station Triple J doesn't do too bad either

I’m willing to restart paying my TV license ( albeit I legally don’t need to) if they sack Gay Lineker.

Desperation is the word that sprung to mind. I’ve never listened to BBC local radio and certainly won’t miss it. TBH most radio is pretty crap anyway. Planet Rock will do me all day long.

Thanks to digital radio and streaming I don't need the bbc.

Thank the Gods for that! Ronan O'Rahilly would be turning in his grave listening to the utter drivel BBC Local Radio in particular, is doling out in the name of 'entertainment'

Offshore radio was the best when I was a young man radio Caroline, and radio Luxembourg, not around anymore because of you know WHO that's a regular word these day I think the bbc has something to do with it I bet 😮

R I P all BBC woke crap

I don't listen to BBC local radio, it isn't local enough to where I live. I prefer the truly local independent stations. If BBC radios close then I'm sure some others will pop up to take their place.

Have plenty of other local radio stations Bbc radio is not the powerhouse it once was

Let's see how those £300k+ salaries can be paid on subscriptions

BBC radio was my goto channel for years at work.Local radio sadly has always been pretty naf with over excited presenters and not good broadcasters .However radio in general is dying because the youth dont use radio at all now.Radio 2 has itself collapsed into itself and has no purpose anymore .Jeremy Vine cant last forever on it .John Peel would turn in his grave if he knew how crap BBC radio was now.

Mostly old people are the only listeners of BBC local radio, they're dying out, like the BBC.

Never listened to bbc radio in my life boring 😴

Nothing “ dies” if enough people want it. Commercial local radio would compete just fine if ALL BBC radio went and allowed all radio to be competed for, on the Heart model, as you say. This Boom bloke sounds decidedly dodgy: so he is supporting the licence in the hope that it leaves more ads for him to scrap for? Clearly he is not the person to compete on a truly open market.

We have a good vlocal radio station in Plymouth not BBC and hope to go DAB soon.

i never listen to radio. so dont care if all radio stations stop. i dont watch tv no licence. watch only pre- taped films programmes.

Millions of British households no longer pay the bbc poll tax, why not join them?

Yes paywall it, they will see their true woth to the public then. Give the pensioner's a discount and be done with it. I can get my news elsewhere anyway and have done for the last 15 years

Why should there be so many local BBC radio stations anyway?

How much does it cost to run a radio station? Angel Radio have no adverts whatsoever, but they still have to find a lot of money to keep it going. I guess through donations is how they make their money? Please don't quote me on that though? The BBC is too big, they do too much now. They have to surely come to a compromise, either get rid of the radio and stick with TV, with adverts, or radio with adverts. What exactly is the problem of going with adverts? Is it because they will be paying advertisers, every time an advert gets played?

Just a FYI I just was on there website side no to all there things and they said I still need a licence wtf haha I think they disable you telling them you don't want it, so they can trap people

Good. BBC radio is as bad or worse than the TV output.... No shortage of special interest BAME themed and World Service stations: I'm more shocked that they've not got regional stations (yet) for the new illegal immigrant listeners giving benefits advice and high tide information

I’m Gona loose something I hate. No please. STOP 😂

Boom

who the hell listens to radio??? if your at work and its on its just an irritating background noise and i havent see or heard anyone i know listen to a radio in there house so who does???

If local radio is dying, it's dying for a reason. Obviously fewer and fewer people are interested. I've just cancelled my BBC licence tax and I hope the woke organisation goes to the wall.

Great; happy with no radio. It's all cr*p anyway

one born every second November 99 was the last time i had a radio😅 du du du😂

cancelled my direct debit yesterday 💪

There's plenty of internet radio to choose from, and wavelength broadcasting for television is going to be turned off by 2030 anyway, so probably for radio too.