I know there’s rights issues and all but if they made a real BBC streaming service with their back catalog and every David Attenborough special in 4K, it’d be one thing but Americans are inundated with news and streaming services. I pay for my local newspaper’s digital site — mostly because if I don’t, who will? But even The NY Times has to have recipes and word games to keep people subscribed. Why would anyone pay more than a dollar a month or something for BBC News?

The U.S. seems like an odd place to trial this. It’s the most competitive media market in the world and we’re all already sick of being asked to pay for 40 different services. In conclusion:‍️

Exactly this. Isn't the point of the BBC world service to communicate/propagandise the British view of what's happening in the world to other countries? Imagine Russia Today adding a paywall? It's counter to the entire point! I think you may be on to something about this being a concession to Trump.

i mean they basically have that with britbox

BBC is Israeli propaganda so no loss.

Seems fair enough, these things cost money and the #BBC is in a race to diversify it's income in preparation for the license fee going away. The dynamic description sounds like they want to preserve the casual visitors experience of an open site.

I get ads on my BBC podcasts when I'm abroad. I assume that's all part of it.

Given that I'm stateside, this makes me sad. But given that they are funded by UK taxpayers, this is probably the right move.

Of course, that's just one less outlet for USA citizens to get accurate journalism (better than here, anyway) about what's happening in our country. Hope Al Jazeera doesn't follow suit.

Awesome thanks!

It does actually seem like it's only the US for now

Unless I've misunderstood your comment

BBC article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vgkn7w10o

Would not be surprised if it was not Thiel and gang ensuring only the billionaires newspapers are read by all us plebes by paying BBC to go paywall.

Al Bawaba used to do well also ...

$25 a month for the NYT.

What's the defaultism here?

The original title just said something like “BBC is now paywalled” making it sound like it applied to more than 1 of the 195 (worldometers.info recognised) countries in the world.

I’m not British but it’d be pretty alarming to hear that the BBC was adding a paywall that applied to the British if I was British

I asked OP to update the title in another comment which they did (and appreciate) but it made this comment of mine confusing . The original title didn’t have any mention of which country. It just said they were adding a paywall

Guess I’ll be using VPN

Makes sense, we pay our licence fee for our public service, why should people abroad get for free what we have to pay for?

I was happy with the current arrangement of adverts supporting the service use abroad, but if it has to migrate to a subscription model to meet modern demands then that's the way it is.

I wouldn't go to another country and ask them to make one of their government's national public services free for me to use, after all.

The world service was always free because it’s a propaganda platform that promotes Britain and British values abroad. I guess they are content just to push Reform propaganda to a domestic audience from now on.

Honestly this sucks balls for the US. One more credible news source made less accessible.

Although, you could also argue that those taxes pay for informing and influencing citizens of foreign nations.

America’s media ecosystem is dominated by Fox, Sinclair, and other state party media players. There is a strategic benefit to having a media outlet that doesn’t run through the state media filter.

Actually, the World Service will remain accessible, but that’s also not where most people go these days.