1. BBC considers using veteran stars to front over-75s licence fee campaign
- Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Terry Wogan could be among names drafted in as corporation battles to offset £700m cost of deal imposed by the government
- The BBC is considering signing up stars such as Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Terry Wogan and Sir Michael Parkinson and to persuade TV viewers aged over 75 to give up their free TV licences.
- It is exploring ways to encourage elderly viewers and listeners to consider paying the annual £145.50 charge on a voluntary basis.
- In July, the BBC struck a deal with the government to shoulder the costs of providing free TV licences to the over-75s which will cost it more than £700mfrom 2020, almost a fifth of the corporation’s current income.
- The corporation is now loooking to draft in big name stars, such as Lord Bragg, Mirren, Wogan and Parkinson, although none have yet been signed up.
- In December, the BBC hired Frontier Economics, a consultancy firm chaired by the former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell, to advise the corporation on “the best approach to asking people for contributions”.
- A report on ways to appeal for voluntary contributions is due to be published later this year, which means a campaign is not likely to run until 2017.
- “If the BBC were to run a campaign then why wouldn’t they use the people who are most associated with that age group and are loved by the public?” said one source. Frontier Economics will also investigate how to potentially reduce the £700m-plus annual cost to the BBC.
- A judge ruled that Gregory Alan Elliott’s ‘incessant and obsessive’ tweets to two female activists were ‘obscene and homophobic’ but not threatening
- The case is believed to be the first example of Canadian courts weighing in on issues of harassment on the social media platform, according to the National Post.
- Gregory Alan Elliott was arrested by Toronto police in November 2012 on allegations that he harassed two feminist activists, Stephanie Guthrie and Heather Reilly, over the course of several months through Twitter.
- Though the two women had blocked Elliott’s account – preventing him from viewing their tweets or directing tweets at their accounts – the prosecution charged that Elliott sent an “incessant and obsessive amount of tweets” referring to the women obliquely and on hashtags where he believed they might come across his messages.
- In his ruling, Judge Brent Knazan discussed the nature of communication on Twitter, the right to freedom of expression in Canada’s Charter of Rights, and what kind of expectations of private communication Twitter users might have. Knazan also drilled into the nature of hashtags, ruling that the use of a particular hashtag in a tweet should not be considered communications covered by laws against harassment.
No comments:
Post a Comment