I've been living outside the UK for over a decade now, and I don't miss the BBC at all - not the TV, the radio or the website, which I gave up on many years ago. If I were still living there, I'd be indignant at having to stump up for a TV licence.
BBC TV used to be great - something you could look up to, an innovator in comedy, documentaries and current affairs programming. For me, I think the decline started at the beginning of the 2000s, when reality TV was starting to get its hold in the schedules, and the Beeb started to more obviously compete with its commercial rivals by producing the same kind of lowest common denominator shite, instead of thoughtful, intelligent or just original stuff. As a bit of a science nut, I used to love Horizon and Tomorrow's World: the former ended up a vehicle for vacuous celebs-of-the-day with a recap for the hard-of-thinking every ten minutes on what was just said; the latter was canned for no particularly obvious reason.
And then there's the bias aspect. The Beeb goes out of its way to present itself as an impartial commentator, but from the photoshopped "comrade Corbyn in the Russian hat" picture to the way they afford some marginal views a disproportionate amount of time compared to others (in the supposed interests of "balance"), it's clear that it's anything but balanced.
Perhaps it's still the best we've got. That's sad. To be positive for a moment though, the last time I was in the UK, I was happy to see that the old BBC 2 idents from the 90s had come back. So at least there's that.
