
SESC Pompeia, São Paulo
The end of my trip to São Paulo this month was inflected with thoughts about a simultaneous big news item back home: a controversy involving the BBC and sports commentator Gary Lineker. In between my wanderings (from which one impression is related below), I began wondering if any recent data was available about public views on the BBC, and its funding model.
For those who don’t know, any UK household wanting to watch or record any TV programmes, whether on BBC channels or others, is required to buy an annual TV licence – currently £159, though free if you are over 75. Along with some commercial income, licence fees pay for BBC TV and radio to operate. No BBC television or radio channel plays advertisements – in the UK at least.
I immediately found a YouGov tracking poll on the funding mechanism. When asked to choose between various approaches (via licence fee, as at present; subscription; advertising; general taxation; ‘something else’; or ‘don’t know’), the licence fee is preferred by just under a quarter of adults at the moment – in second place to advertising (chosen by a third). Subscription-based funding is less popular (chosen by 15%).
It seemed a little surprising that adverts were preferred overall – though there are differences across the population. London stands out as the region most favourable to the licence. Liberal Democrat voters support it most strongly; Labour voters also prefer it by a narrow margin; Conservatives much more often favoured adverts. C2DEs are less keen on the licence than the middle classes. There’s also a noticeable difference between those who voted for the UK to leave the EU. Unsurprisingly, given the populist suspicion of ‘elites’ and the ‘mainstream media’, support for the compulsory licence fee is particularly low among leavers (at only 15%). Meanwhile, only around three in ten overall see the licence fee as ‘good value for money’ overall. Again, this rises in London, but is lower among Conservative voters and leavers.
I think you could interpret all the above in various ways. But what interests me is the existence of services which are neither simply provided by the state, nor by consumer preferences alone, but which nevertheless broadly ‘work quite well’. As well as being potentially very irritating to those who fetishise markets as efficient providers of public goods, their governance philosophy obviates the argument that popularity data such as the above show that they don’t work well. I don’t want to sound as if I have an entirely positive view of the BBC’s output or direction – I’m making the obvious point that justifying its existence need not rely primarily on the criterion of popularity. Something like the BBC is also, then, an irritant to populist notions of ‘the people having their say’, where the preferences of ‘the people’ might straightforwardly be read off an opinion poll or legitimised by some kind of single-choice referendum.
Anyway, in São Paulo, I ended up trying to draw some parallels between the BBC and the SESC (Serviço Social do Comércio) organisation, which operates across Brazil, including 24 centres across the city of São Paulo itself. These are open to the public, and provide a wide variety of sporting facilities, cultural venues, advice for citizens, community development initiatives, and so on. SESC is a non-profit organisation, funded by a compulsory corporation tax. Like the BBC, SESC is in the odd position of being independent of, but still regulated by, the government. Also like the BBC, it seems every so often to attract heavy criticism in the media and by some politicians (in the case of SESC, for being overly bureaucratic, unaccountable, etc).
And yet, as far as I could see – and in rejection of market thinking – it works rather well. I only visited two of its centres: Pompeia and Avenida Paulista. Admittedly, these are probably flagship examples. But they were clean and friendly spaces, with welcoming entrances in an often securitised city (I’m sure the security guards would filter out homeless people, apparent trouble-makers, and so on – but this didn’t result in a shopping mall ambience), smart interior décor, and no corporate logos in sight. They offer comfortable sofas with free newspapers and magazines; they have very reasonably priced canteens and cafes offering unpretentious food – as well as libraries, varied art exhibitions, performance venues, meeting rooms, sports facilities, and dentistry (!). They were busy and sociable when I was there, with people of all ages milling about.
Overall, a very democratic, non-consumerist atmosphere (and rather more inviting than your average ‘Civic Centre’ – the nearest equivalent in the UK). In their own way, I see them as constructively blurring perceived boundaries between elite and popular culture, performatively resisting the fragmentation of society, or a sense of fragmentation, and subtly reminding us that all sorts of alternative ways of organising things are possible. We should have places like those dotted across every city.


São Paulo, March 2023