Can we still save our BBC?
Treasure the Tories want to kill
Well, for a start, it would involve finding investors with very deep pockets who were willing to cough up for decades before seeing any return – Netflix is currently in debt by $12billion (£9.2billion).
And where would that leave all the programming which serves those niche audiences? The best guess is: nowhere.
As a brand, the BBC is right up there with the NHS in terms of institutions that make us the envy of the world. But one of the first things Boris Johnson’s Government has done is to launch a public consultation on whether evasion of the TV licence fee should be de-criminalised.
Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan insisted her motivation was to protect “those most in need in society” by consulting on whether
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non-payers should still be fined and potentially imprisoned.
If the answer is no, it will inevitably spark mass licence fee evasion, resulting in a loss of income, which the BBC estimates could add up to £200million.
And this comes just as the Corporation has been hit with the
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£250million cost of providing free licences to 1.5 million over-75s on pension credit. This is thanks to former Chancellor George Osborne, who off-loaded the welfare policy brought in by Labour on to the BBC.
It is no secret that the Prime Minster loathes the BBC. He has already banned ministers from appearing on Radio 4’s Today and his hatred is fuelled by that of his chief adviser Dominic Cummings, who has branded the BBC a “mortal enemy” of the Tory Party and is firmly pushing for the licence fee to be scrapped.
But the BBC is not Netflix, or Amazon Prime Video, or Disney Plus or YouTube because in providing public service broadcasting it has a remit to cater for everyone, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, religion or location.
It aims to be universal and to be independent. Comparing the BBC to the now-defunct video rental outlet Blockbuster, Nicky Morgan said the Corporation needed to move with the times or risk becoming a “relic” of the past.
The BBC, which has just launched streaming service Britbox in a venture with ITV and has turned iPlayer into a huge success, quickly pointed out that an attempt to set up a Netflix-style service a decade ago, while Blockbuster was “still sending DVDs in the post”, was kiboshed by the regulators.
Another criticism regularly levelled at the BBC is that it is hugely “bloated” with too many staff and management and, while that may be true to a certain extent, it is at least being addressed.
In 2016, the BBC announced a plan to save £800million by 2022, and last month’s cuts at BBC News – where £80million of those savings must come from – show that big, painful changes are happening.
A further argument is that the BBC should focus on broadcasting and leave the websites to other companies which specialise in local news.
It’s all become too much for Director General Tony Hall, who resigned earlier than expected last month, saying his successor needed a good run up to the next renewal of the charter in 2027 if they were to make a go of it.
Make no mistake – the Tories are gunning for the BBC.
And let’s not kid ourselves that this is about stopping the more vulnerable members of society from going to prison for watching TV without a licence.
This is motivated by pure spite.