The BBC’s reputation is in shreds – again. Its Hamas propaganda film, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, had to be withdrawn after it was revealed that its protagonist and narrator was the son of a Hamas minister. The BBC has announced it will investigate itself following the broadcast of the documentary last month, but what is to be done about the accident-prone public broadcaster? Unfortunately, every indication is that the government will continue to stuff the BBC’s undeserving pockets with money.
Kemi Badenoch has threatened to reconsider the Conservative party’s support for the licence fee, now £169.50 and due to increase to £174.50 in April. What a feeble response. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has proposed mutualising the BBC, turning viewers into the corporation’s owners. But the regressive licence fee is the fundamental problem, the root of everything that’s wrong with the broadcaster. It has produced an ideologically-driven media apparatus that is utterly unaccountable to its customers. Viewers can cancel Sky and Amazon Prime, but not the BBC. No reform of the broadcaster is conceivable while this continues.
Supporters of the licence fee acknowledge the problems but claim it is the ‘least worst’ method of financing the BBC – a statement that doesn’t pass the most cursory interrogation. Lord Thomson of Fleet, the first chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, said decades ago that the licence fee was a criminalisation of female poverty. Nothing has changed.
The BBC’s contracted TV licence ‘inspectors,’ who cosplay policemen, have their happiest hunting grounds on poor council estates, preying on single mothers. These women have no legal representation, are quickly fined, and a few even end up in jail, after defaulting on fines. It’s a hideous mockery of justice. At Croydon magistrates’ court I once observed more than 100 undefended women get summarily convicted.
From the day I started covering the BBC in 1987 as media correspondent of the Times, my instincts told me that this was a deeply flawed organisation: endlessly self-regarding, dissembling in its own defence, terrible value for money, peddling its own hidden agendas, and zero direct accountability to its captive customers. Yet then, as now, it was worshipped by many as the best of British, on a pedestal with the NHS.
Disgusted by what I saw in Croydon, I refused to pay the licence fee myself and was convicted. Charles Moore also refused and was also convicted. This was years ago. The perversion of justice continues.
The BBC claims to be beloved and good value for money but there’s an easy way to test this. If it was really good value, and its services so admired, millions would surely subscribe voluntarily. In 2024, Netflix had roughly 17 million subscribers in Britain, paying as little as £5.99 for the ad-supported version of the service. YouTube, Amazon and Apple all have millions of UK subscribers and all are cheaper than the BBC.
New technology has made the BBC less relevant with every passing month. In 2022, only one in 20 young adults watched BBC TV live daily. In 2023, fewer than half of 16-24-year-olds in the UK regularly watched it. The yoof are spending more time with video-sharing platforms. Half a million people cancelled their licence fees in 2023, taking their chances with the inspectors.
The BBC’s response? It speaks in babble, because it has a captive audience and does not have to reform. ‘We want everyone to get value for money from the BBC, which is why we are focused on delivering what audiences want from us – trusted news, the best home-grown storytelling and the moments that bring us together,’ it boasts. The BBC is delivering on none of this. The BBC has not created a new TV hit for five years, according to the National Audit Office. Its commercial division makes most of its money from old shows that were first released decades ago. Of the BBC’s ten most profitable shows last year, only one – a ‘soft drama’ series from 2019 – was created by BBC Studios, while three were bought from rival producers.
There is a magic bullet
The corporation now promises to launch ‘our biggest ever public engagement exercise so audiences can help drive and shape what they want from a universal and independent BBC in the future.’ This is code for a massively expensive information campaign to persuade us of its virtues. ‘We look forward to engaging with government on the next charter and securing the long-term future of the BBC,’ says the BBC, knowing it is knocking at an open door in Whitehall.
Nothing emerging from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport gives grounds for optimism. Retention of public finance in some form looks certain, perhaps by replacing the fee with direct government subsidy through income tax. A horrific prospect, because despite whatever window dressing is in place it puts the supposedly independent BBC under direct government control. The BBC wants the licence fee moved onto council tax, with higher-rated properties paying more, its chairman Samir Shah hinted to the Sunday Times.
Unusually for a public policy question of such importance, there is a magic bullet. The solution to all this is subscription, and to let the public pay for what they want. Scrap the licence fee – and let viewers decide if the BBC is as wonderful as it claims.
Comments