BBC: Public share their views on TV licence fee
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Rows erupted over future funding for the broadcaster since Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries suggested the next licence fee announcement would be the last. Boris Johnson is reported to have told Cabinet he was “right behind” her ideas. Reducing the levy or axing it altogether have been touted as possible solutions to frustrations over funding and whether the BBC lives up to the impartiality rules while taking money from anyone who watches a TV.
But one BBC grandee has now suggested the cost of accessing its services should actually be increased – even if only on a voluntary basis.
Mark Oliver argued a “top-up” subscription model should be introduced to lessen the broadcaster’s reliance on taxpayer money.
He was the BBC’s Head of Strategy from 1989 to 1995.
Talking to the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, Mr Oliver suggested occasional “extra quality” programming was favourable to regular “mediocre” content.
But this, he stressed, would cost the broadcaster, which he urged to fill its purse from other sources, along with the licence fee.
Ms Dorries announced in January the levy would be frozen at £159 for two years.
BBC Director-General Tim Davie stressed this would “inevitably” result in programmes and services being cut.
Radio 4 could be among those services to be axed, with Mr Davie noting “everything’s on the agenda”.
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Amid the threat of reduced programming, Mr Oliver said the BBC, as it stands, is looking at a “stagnant future and less relevance”.
At worst, he added, “it’s looking at a gradual but relentless decline and irrelevance”.
To turn the tide on this decline, the former broadcasting chief told Lords a separate service funded by a subscription fee was “necessary”.
He told the Committee: “The BBC as an institution needs a source of income, I think, that’s growing and the problem about the licence fee, it’s still here, but resistance to its growth has been enormous, which leaves the BBC as a stagnating organisation funding itself through efficiencies forever…
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“I think there are a number of people who would pay for a top-up service if it was sold in the right way.”
While Mr Oliver suggested the BBC’s audience “should pay extra” for more quality content, he did note a possible split between “what I think” the funding structure should look like and what is “politically acceptable” to licence fee payers.
Others with close former ties to the broadcaster have argued in the opposite direction, that the corporation should look to reduce its financial burden on the taxpayer.
Former BBC Question Time host David Dimbleby earlier this year branded the licence fee, as it stands, “manifestly unfair”, suggesting it should be replaced by a system based on the council tax rate bands.
He told the Times in this system, “those in band [D] would pay the most for possession of a TV set and those in band [A] the least”.
Andrew Marr, who spent 21 years at the BBC, went one step further, arguing the licence fee “might have to” be replaced by a subscription model “in the long term”.
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