“Detector” vans do not exist and never have. And they would almost certainly be illegal if they did. The technological limit of any detectoring is a little man peering through your front room window to try and catch you watching Eastenders.

With cathode ray tube TVs its quite easy to pick up if someone is watching TV from a van outside, the CRT is very noisy and you can easily detect the fly back frequency with a narrow band receiver.

When I used to work on MoD stuff we have massive Faraday screen on all the walls / windows to stop anyone outside being able to pick up anything from the CRT monitors.

In the modern LCD world, I suspect its much harder to detect someone watching TV.

Erm… that really wasn’t a serious topic of conversation 😆

Quite. Remind me, how much do (some) people get paid for kicking a ball about for an hour and a half?

Not an analog.

Footballers earn a market rate as the product they produce is paid for voluntarily through tickets and subscriptions. It’s also deeply meritocratic, if they fail, they don’t get their next contract. If it’s easy money, why not go and be a footballer? Exactly.

BBC presenters are funded by public money. They succeed because people just switch on BBC Radio 2 in the morning regardless. Innovation and talent aren’t top of their list. Low risk and established are. This low risk and low meritocratic worth shouldn’t be rewarded as highly. They wouldn’t earn it at ITV or Sky so they shouldn’t at the BBC.

I’m pro BBC. Having a state broadcaster that can have guaranteed access without having to kowtow to politicians is fantastic. Without this you end up with partisan or establishment friendly news where people only agree to go on if the interview will suit them otherwise they’ll cut them out.

Also, it gives a huge platform to undiscovered talent where they can commission series that would be a risk commercially. Things like Detectorists, The Office and This Country are good examples here.

Spend the money on this not Steve Wright. Find the next Steve Wright every 5 years then they can leave if they want.

Footballers earn a market rate as the product they produce is paid for voluntarily through tickets and subscriptions

Footballers in the Premiership are no longer paid by the people who attend the game, by a very long way.
The average entrance fee is £32. Round that up to £40. And the average gate is below 30k, but we’ll use 30k. That’s £1.2 million income from gate money, for a home game. Half that figure, as half the games are away, then we have a fan ticket income of £600k a week, which is the figure for an above average club. Sheff Utd et al will be a lot lower.
And of course, there are only 38 games, so the weekly figure can be reduced by roughly a third, as players will be on all year round Contracts, not just Season contract,
Squad size is typically of 18+ players, 2 may be on £50k+, many will be on £30-40k a week, add that up, and it soon shows that Clubs can only pay 10-15 players from gate income alone.
Then they have all the other overheads to pay like ground/training ground managers and assistants, and it shows how indebted to TV that football is.
And the BBC are funding, partly, this profligacy.

Footballers in the Premiership are no longer paid by the people who attend the game, by a very long way.The numbers are pretty easy to search.

You’ve simply ignored part of my reasoning.

Footballers are paid by people who attend games AND those who who pay for subscription TV.

Gate receipts:

“English Premier League clubs generated €723m in gate receipts in 2018 at an average of €36.2m per club”

TV:

£43.2m each from overseas TV rights.equal share of £31.8m from the domestic TV market.

This doesn’t include prize money funded by the TV deals and commercial sales of merchandise bought by the fans.

The only part that is funded publicly is the BBC deal of £70m a year for their highlights and FA Cup coverage, etc.

This is a minor part and I’d be up for it not happening. Football doesn’t need the exposure.

Football certainly is funded 99% by fans. Who else?!

Radio 2 is the station for listeners who are past their best before date.

I like to think of it as a music radio station for people who aren’t interested in music.

It’s effin depressing hearing the same Michael McDonald carp on rotation…..still…..since forever. Of course you have the obligatory Toto every forth song too.

Steve Wright is absolutely shameful listening. Makes me cringe.

They wouldn’t earn it at ITV or Sky so they shouldn’t at the BBC.

Have we not had examples earlier in the thread of BBC stars earning below market rate?