I think the BBC is great value for money, but I do have some sympathy with bernie6969. Paying for something you do not use/want cannot be right. The television marketplace will change rapidly in the next few years, so this 5 year deal may well be redundant before 2112. Downloads, internet and pay-per-view will hit the BBC. However, he BBC do make a lot of good programmes which people would buy, so that will be a source of revenue plus some kind of government top-up so that pensioners get their programmes for free and the beeb gets some guaranteed income. ITV will be hit harder than the BBC though and may well get gobbled up by Murdoch.