Just imagine what BBC schedules might look like in Christmas Future

Is it time to scrap the licence fee? That’s a question we’re going to hear more and more about in the next couple of years. Why should the BBC retain its archaic monopoly over the airwaves? Why not abolish the royal charter that grants the BBC the right to collect the fee (worth £3.6 billion a year) when it comes up for renewal in 2017? A change is long overdue, throwing open the broadcasting market, giving the independent production companies more opportunities to succeed and enabling the new digital online stations to expand, build audiences, create more original audio experiences. Or is it?

Just imagine what would happen to radio in the UK if the BBC could no longer guarantee its funding. At the moment, ‘For 40p a day you get a news service, on radio, online… oh, and by the way, you get drama, and local radio…’ declared the BBC’s director-general Tony Hall in a conference speech last month organised by the Voice of the Listener. You’re unlikely to have time or opportunity to take advantage of that 40p entrance fee amid the hustle of Christmas Present, with its demanding agenda of shopping, house-decorating and fine-dining. But cast your mind back to Christmas Past and make a reckoning of what you’ve happened upon as you fumble through breakfast, motor through the day, wind down with the washing up. Has it been worth that £145.50 fee?

Hugh Sykes’s reports from Egypt and Syria would be high up on my list of listening that’s worth every penny, along with Ritula Shah on The World Tonight, taking the politicking out of the news agenda and giving us the facts without the bluster beloved of other current affairs programmes. We take so much for granted, just assuming it will always be there.