CRUDE THREATS LIKE THIS SHOW AUNTIE’S TRULY GOT HER HEAD IN THE SAND

The outgoing director general of the BBC, Tony hall, wrote a piece in this newspaper last week in which he claimed the Corporation was eager to have a public debate about its future.

To those of us who cherish the best parts of the Beeb, but believe it needs fundamental reform if it is to prosper in the new multi-media world, Lord hall’s apparent open-mindedness was welcome.

Unfortunately, his idea of an open debate seems to envisage tinkering at the edges while the great bloated behemoth that is the BBC sails on unchallenged for the rest of eternity, funded by a mandatory licence fee.

Yesterday, appearing in front of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee, Lord hall let slip something that was breathtakingly maladroit. The BBC is evidently as set in its ways as ever.

he agreed that people in their 80s and 90s could be hauled through the courts for not paying their TV licences when the free concession is withdrawn in June for everyone over 75 except those on pension credit.

Lord hall added that he didn’t want ‘to see people going to court’. Well, that is very generous of him. Who does? The fact is that he can conceive of such an eventuality. Auntie – or Capita, the company that runs TV licensing enforcement – will prosecute very old people.

What is so odd about the director general’s heavy-footed intervention is that it comes only weeks after the Government announced a formal review into the possible decriminalisation of non-payment of the licence fee.

You might have thought Lord hall would have shown greater sensitivity to the new political climate. he knows the very future of the fee is in doubt after the current charter agreement ends in 2027.

And yet here he was issuing a threat – admittedly in a soft-spoken way because he is a polite sort of chap – which seems to belong to the old world in which the BBC could rely on the permanence of its funding arrangements.

It’s said that Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, dreams of killing off the Beeb or at any rate so neutering it that there is nothing much left to be taken seriously. Not so much reform as evisceration.

That would be wrong. But when I hear Lord hall talking about the possible hounding of old and vulnerable people (some of whom may simply have forgotten to pay the annual fee – £157.50 from next month) I can’t help wondering whether Mr Cummings has a point.

FOR all his talk of open debate, Lord hall is as hidebound as the organisation he has served as director general for seven years. The principle of the licence fee is for him so sacrosanct that he will defend it even to the point of accepting the persecution of the elderly.

he is due to stand down in the summer. The strong likelihood is that his replacement will be a long- serving BBC apparatchik equally wedded to the licence fee.

Meanwhile, chairman of the Corporation Sir David Clementi – a former banker who has gone native in his current role – misses no opportunity to dwell on what he claims would be the disastrous consequences of getting rid of the fee.

In short, the top brass at the Beeb have their heads in the sand and seem both incapable of adjusting to the new political realities and stubbornly resistant to exploring imaginative alternatives.

It has long been hard to justify making those who watch TV – but seldom or never look at BBC programmes – pay a sizeable yearly sum to Auntie. Now there is a growing number of people who never look at television but watch online.

The media watchdog ofcom has just published the results of a fiveyear review of public sector broadcasting. In the 16 to 24 age group, there was a 53-minute drop in daily live TV viewing between 2014 and 2018 as the young increasingly turned to streaming sites such as Netflix and YouTube.

EVEN if Dominic Cummings wasn’t threatening it, the BBC would have to face the fact that the number of people prepared to pay the licence fee is slowly but inexorably dwindling.

The BBC should also ask itself whether it is necessary for every jot and tittle of the organisation to be lovingly preserved – its ten national TV channels, it huge free website which drags readers from commercial online publications, its ten national radio stations and 40 local radio stations.

So irrepressibly expansionist is the Corporation that it is reportedly thinking of reviving littlewatched BBC3 as a television channel, having moved it online four years ago.

Maybe savings would be found elsewhere to fund this move. But why not bank the money – and keep the unloved BBC3 where it is? Because that is not how resolutely uncommercial (and usually grossly overpaid) Corporation bosses think.

The sad truth is that there probably isn’t going to be much creative thinking about the BBC’s future with a younger clone of Tony hall running the show and the backward-looking Sir David Clementi as chairman.

Sir David’s tenure runs out next February, and his successor will be appointed by the Government. I hope it will be someone who does not blindly follow Mr Cummings’ agenda and combines a zest for reform with respect for the institution.

The alternative is a bare-knuckle fight with No10, which Auntie will lose. Where on earth is the inspired person who can save the best of the BBC?