Auntie, don’t hurt hard-pressed OAPs

THE BBC is a behemoth, dominating broadcasting on television and radio to the extent that it seems to have more channels than it knows what to do with.

Increasingly, it is outmuscling local papers with a website that is nothing to do with broadcasting at all.

All this is wrapped in feel-good ‘inform, educate, entertain’ language.

There are strong hints that commercial channels simply cannot produce the highend programmes the BBC creates with its £4.95billion budget, of which £3.7billion is raised via the compulsory licence fee.

Quite where the dross – a blokey game show with a former wrestler, a show for an obscure rapper – about to be foisted on us by BBC Scotland’s new channel fits in with that is for another day. But now the youth-obsessed BBC is considering axing the licence-fee waiver for over-75s, a group who spend considerably more time looking and listening to its output than the 18-35s who seem to hold the Corporation in thrall.

As Stephen Glover argues on this page, a change in the law means the bill for the over-75s’ exemption now goes through the gold-plated letterbox of Broadcasting House.

The £150.50 annual licence fee may be small change to executives (Donalda MacKinnon, head of BBC Scotland, is on £177,800, more than Theresa May) but it is a rare treat for hard-pressed pensioners.

Rather than make savings by trimming the obscene salaries of some of its ‘talent’, or trimming bloated middle-management, the BBC is preparing to claw back a modest boon for senior citizens.

No wonder the clamour for reform of the entire BBC funding model – where cash rolls in from the public with little regard for efficiency or quality – grows daily.