I've just sent this email to my MP, Bob Russell, after reading an article on the BBC website that, quite simply, pissed me off!

I’m writing to you regarding something which has caught my attention on the BBC website regarding Ofcom’s decision to initiate a great sell-off of the UHF band, without portioning some of it out for the use of freeview.

I am a fan of the BBC – and am greatly annoyed about the fact that my license fee has been diverted away from programme making etc into funding the digital switchover in the first place; in my opinion this should have been funded directly out of the government’s purse, especially given that the recent license fee increase was capped by the government and as a result will probably have an even further a negative impact on the output of the BBC.

However one of things I have been looking forward to is that when the digital switchover occurs, we might start getting higher quality (in terms of visuals and audio) broadcasts across the airwaves – especially HD broadcasting – and more channels.  I was also looking forward to more digital bandwidth being allocated to those channels that are particularly sensitive to poor reception at the moment – channel4 etc – because often I am unable to watch them to an adequate level of quality.

After reading this article today on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7241395.stm I, and other people who are similarly minded, am now incensed.  The 30% of the UHF band that will be freed up by switching off the wasteful analogue broadcasting appears to have been lined up for commercial interests only (well, at least, the highest bidder – which will always, by definition, be a commercial organisation) by Ofcom with absolutely no new bandwidth being given over to freeview.  Presumably the only way freeview will be able to get hold of it will be to pour more license-payers money into the bidding process!  Isn’t this a little like charging oneself to use one’s own front door! 

I should have thought at least half of this bandwidth should have been given over to digital content delivery, and the rest, fair enough, could be sold off.

But where exactly will the money go?  By rights it should be pushed back into the BBC – since it was they, with my (and everybody else’s) money, who were charged with funding the process of clearing the airwaves in the first place…  That would be the common-sense result, but I don’t suppose that’s the case.

I would be very grateful if you could raise this issue or pursue it (along with a great many others I’m sure!), as I feel that as a license fee payer with no interest in fattening the coffers of Rupert Murdoch I have been duped.

I understand that many people see no point in the license fee, but the fact is we have to have a publicly funded broadcaster because, without it, we would have no chance of independent programme and news-making.