Licence fee here to stay – despite streaming rivals

Lord Hall defends corporation’s record

THE BBC’S Director General has maintained that he believes the licence fee is here to stay even though the corporation is coming under intense competition with the arrival of the next generation of broadcasters.

The end of the licence fee has been mooted by the Government, with a threat to turn the BBC into a subscription service. But Director General Lord Hall yesterday launched a staunch defence of the BBC amid suggestions that the corporation is redundant following the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.

The licence fee model means that “you’ve got to give something to everybody – I think that is a fantastic creative challenge”, he told a conference.

He said: “I hope we are developing and continuing to develop a much warmer relationship with the British public which is less the ‘Auntie’ of two or three decades ago and much more something which is interwoven in people’s lives.

“We are there in people’s lives.” Lord Hall, who announced in January he will step down in the summer from the role which he has held since 2012, added: “People say things like ‘What’s the point of the BBC when you’ve got the streamers?’

“The BBC is not Netflix, it really isn’t...Netflix don’t do sport, they don’t do news, they don’t do a whole raft of things.

“It’s really important...to see what the BBC does in the round. The licence fee, I think, beyond 2027 (when the BBC’s charter comes up for renewal) will still matter and will still be phenomenally important for the BBC.”

Lord Hall, Director General of the BBC.

The broadcaster, which celebrates its centenary in 2022, is believed to have got its “Auntie” nickname because of an “Auntie knows best” image in previous decades.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden yesterday told the Media And Telecoms 2020 And Beyond conference that the BBC had “missed” or been slow to pick up on many of the key political changes and trends in recent years.

He called for “genuine diversity of thought and experience”, and added: “The BBC needs to be closer to, and understand the perspectives of, the whole of the United Kingdom and avoid providing a narrow urban outlook.”

But Lord Hall was adamant that the BBC had “constantly reformed itself ” from radio, to television, 24-hour news, online, as well as launching the iPlayer and BBC Sounds app, and that reform would be “continuous”.

Lord Hall, who claimed the BBC is still “the most trusted news source”, said: “Constant reform is what the BBC is about.”

But he added: “We should always listen to what people say to us about our impartiality and we should be open to people criticising what we do.

“There is more of a need for the BBC today than at any point in our history ... It’s the best antidote to fake news.”

Lord Hall said the BBC’s culture had changed dramatically since he first joined as a trainee in 1973, when “on my first day I was asked to sign that I’d read the Official Secrets Act”.

The BBC is not Netflix... They don’t do sport, they don’t do news.