Will the BBC licence fee be scrapped?
Culture Secretary to consider replacing it with a Netflix-style subscription Many people are asking why they have to pay £154.50 a year for a service they’re watching less often
How we watch TV has changed, and it might lead to the end of the BBC as we know it.
According to Ofcom research, nearly half of UK households (13.3 million) now subscribe to a Tv-streaming service, such as Netflix or Amazon Prime. Almost 40 per cent can imagine watching no terrestrial TV - that’s no BBC, no ITV, no Channel 4, no Channel 5 - in five years’ time.
Significantly, 18 to 34-yearolds already watch twice as much content on Netflix and Youtube as on the BBC, while one in eight don’t watch any BBC programmes at all. Unlike previous generations, they’ve grown up without the BBC playing a large role in their lives.
It’s not surprising then that as viewing habits change, many people are asking why they have to pay £154.50 a year for a service they’re watching less often. Anyone who watches live TV on any device has to pay the fee, even if they never watch the BBC.
You also have to pay if you watch BBC iplayer (live or on-demand), but not if you only watch non-bbc on-demand services, such as ITV Hub and All 4.
Now, for the first time, the Government has indicated it may consider whether the licence fee is out of date.
Speaking to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan said she would be “open-minded” about replacing it with a Netflixstyle subscription scheme.
This could work in several ways, but fundamentally it means paying only for the channels you watch. It might mean paying a single monthly fee to access every BBC channel, or differently priced packages for particular channels, similar to Sky, BT or Virgin’s TV services.
She said that the “broadcasting sector is changing”, referring especially to how younger people watch TV. But she added that she’d listen to evidence from all sides, and called the BBC “a very important institution for this country”, claiming it’s an important part of the UK’S “soft power” throughout the world.
In particular, Morgan wants to consider the impact that changing to a subscription model would have on the BBC’S finances. Last year the licence fee raised £3.7 billion for the BBC.
How much should we read into Morgan’s comments? For those arguing that the BBC must modernise, it will feel significant that for the first time the Government minister tasked with overseeing negotiations for the BBC’S charter is - at the very least - open to the idea of axing the licence fee.
One person pleased was Tory MP Julian Knight, the committee member who asked Morgan about the BBC’S future. He said afterwards: “This is the furthest I have seen a Culture Secretary go on
this – her predecessor [Jeremy Wright] was a real fan of the licence fee”.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport quickly tried to douse speculation, saying the Government is committed to maintaining the licence fee until the end of 2027, when the BBC’S 10-year charter is up for renewal.
The BBC took a similar line, saying any debate about its funding is “a long way off”. It added: “The licence fee ensures a universal BBC which serves everyone, and is the most popular funding system among the public”.
That may be true now, but for how much longer? Mr Knight, Conservative MP for Solihull, claimed that the success of Netflix and Amazon Prime has “conditioned” people to the idea of paying for subscriptions. If that’s true, calls for the fee to be abolished are likely to grow louder as we head towards 2027.