iPlayer tip jar please

But now, with the iPlayer, I'm watching BBC television for the first time in a long time, which might seem somewhat hypocritical to those of you who've experienced my rants against TV over the years. In my defense I'd clarify that I object to broadcast TV which dictates when one should watch a program and the context for that viewing. I find ambient television watching to be abhorrent but focussed, deliberate viewing on my terms, well, that's okay.

Andy Pryke had a similar dilemma recently when watching something on the iPlayer. He said:

Given that I don't have a TV licence I'd be quite happy to pay to watch good quality stuff like this, but how much? Maybe 50p? Is that too cheapskate of me? I think a TV licence is around £140(?) so that would be the equivalent of 280 hours at my rate, or about 45 mins of TV a day.

50p per program seems about right to me. Go to the prices usually banded around for TV downloads and I'd want to own the damn thing forever but 50p for 7 days access (with the average number of views probably being 1) to a Flash video file is reasonable. The trick would be making sure the system is as simple as it currently is. Any more steps and a HD torrent will make more sense.

So here's an idea for how the iPlayer might evolve. Let me set up a fund on the BBC site, pay as you go style. I credit this with £10 and after each program I can decide whether or not I want to pay for it and how much with the suggested fee varying depending on the program (£1 for a costume drama, 10p for a gameshow). And, of course, I can just not pay anything at all, which keeps the system nice and simple for those with licenses. And, if it turns out that I might as well just pay for a license fee, I can do so using my BBC iPlayer money as credit.

Of course this would never be implemented because to even acknowledge that there are people without license fees who are not criminals would give out completely the wrong message. Better to just let us carry on watching stuff for free and feeling mildly guilty about it.

Oh, and I'd also like a system like this for stuff I torrent. I'm never going to watch Lost on Sky but I'll happily throw $1 or so to ABC or whoever for each download if they give me somewhere to send it.

(When I broached this on Twitter @gezd suggested donating to a BBC charity which a nice idea in the interim but I'd rather be contributing to the production of BBC stuff like license fee payers do.)

Cross-posted to my personal blog