S4C: It's all Welsh to me...

I decided some time ago that I was not going to link to any article printed in the Daily Mail, because I had grown to dislike their brand of sensationalist, rabble rousing and ultimately irresponsible journalism.

So it is with that caveat that I link to this story from today's paper, albeit supported by this one in the much more reliable Daily Telegraph.

Why on earth is the taxpayer, 84% of whom are English, remember, subsidising a Welsh language television channel to the tune of £100,000,000 a year, which is all but ignored in Wales itself?

And on any reading of the viewing figures, it is largely ignored; because as much as 22% of its output (196 out of 890 programmes, or nearly a quarter of it) receives so few viewers that they are officially zero rated. More than that, though, only 16% of its programmes receive over ten thousand viewers (139 out of 890), meaning that the remaining 62% of its output is watched by between 1,001 and 9,999 people; or to put it another way, the population of one small village.

What justification can there be for continuing to subsidise this utter failure to the tune of £100m per year?

The channel should either be closed, or required to find its funding through advertising or subscription; the English taxpayer should not be forced to subsidise an unwanted failure for the benefit of a tiny minority of Welsh-speakers any longer, threatened hunger strikes, or no threatened hunger strikes.