The BBC’s real problem is nothing to do with the licence fee

Lord Hall, the outgoing director general of the BBC, used his valedictory interview on Radio 4’s Media Show this week to ruminate on the question of what funding mechanism should replace the licence fee. But to my mind, this was like listening to a man whose house is perched precariously on the lip of a crumbling cliff talking about whether he should plant an orchard. Somehow one feels it’d be a better use of Hall’s time to address the immediate problems rather than worrying about long-term issues. In the BBC’s case, the next Great Leap Forward might well be over the edge of the cliff.

It is undeniable that the licence fee – and the question of its viability in a digital age which offers consumers myriad ways of receiving news and entertainment – is beginning to look like a relic and is no longer fit for purpose. Arguments about what might replace it are thus both inevitable and justified.