TV The BBC Store has finally launched there's plenty to visually engorge on if you have the funds. I'm personally inclined to wait until it's available on the TV version of the iPlayer app unless something really remarkable crops up that I'm desperate to see.
One of the criticisms, as has always been the case even when Doctor Who was being released on VHS, is why people should have to pay to see something they've already paid for through the license fee. The rule is that what we're actually paying for is the initial broadcast of the programme. Any ancillary version sometimes requires further payments to participants either when it's repeated or in future merchandising or cross-media releases.
In his Guardian article about the Store, Mark Lawson offers an alternative and equally valid philosophical explanation:
"To me, this argument seems akin to a home-owner refusing to pay the water rates on the basis that the liquid has almost certainly been through the house before. Can contributing a fraction of your licence fee to the cost of a programme at the time of its first transmission really be thought to have bought a right to view the show in perpetuity? And, even if that case could be made, what about products in which we were never personally a shareholder? My first purchases from Store – Potter’s Double Dare (1971) and an episode of the sitcom The Likely Lads (1963) – come from a time when I didn’t pay a licence fee. Can I really contend that, when my dad handed over the cash at the post office for his licence fee, he was securing unlimited viewing rights for his heirs?"It's never cross my mind that I wouldn't have to pay to see something again. Anything repeated on television is essentially a freebie.
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