The licence fee should be kept
The BBC does many things badly and is not what it could be. But changes to funding could make reform impossible.
Many were pleased to hear news that the BBC licence fee had been frozen and is to be placed at risk as a funding model when the royal charter is next due for renewal in 2027 (that is, if the Conservative Party still form a parliamentary majority at the time). The announcement made by the Culture Secretary on Twitter has been especially popular with the political right, both amongst free-market advocates, and social conservatives.
Given the centrality of the BBC in the national consciousness, it is vital to have a conversation about how to adapt it to the realities of 2020s broadcasting, rather than leave it stuck in the reality of the 1920s. Gone are the days of fifteen million people sharing a cultural experience of an evening, and then talking about it the next day. Clearly the landscape has changed significantly and benefits from diversity and plurality. But these changes have applied a cacophony of commercial pressures onto a valuable national asset, that should not be automatically welcomed.
I find myself wishing to defend the BBC in the face of a questionably motivated government. It best serves the country by remaining a mainstream, well-funded broadcaster, without annoying advertisements, and free of government interference. The funding mechanism used to achieve that is not worth fetishizing. There is no particular reason to be dogmatically wedded to the licence fee as such, but is there a better way of funding it?
The government has hinted that its preferred alternative model is a subscription service. Despite the many valid criticisms of the BBC, it is a trusted institution, with perhaps the richest back catalogue of content imaginable. The mass entertainment side of the BBC would have a good shot at being a streaming success, and I suspect commercial rivals would be very nervous about a well-regarded national institution entering the market and wearing their clothes. Don’t be surprised to find competitors lobbying in the future for the licence fee to be retained or restored. They are all themselves loss-making, and either rack up colossal debt like Netflix, or survive based on the cross-subsidies of their parent groups, like Amazon Prime’s dependence on their online retail profits and Apple TV on their technology business.
But is the government trying to push the BBC to a subscription model because it thinks it will be a success, or because they wish to weaken it? This government has repeatedly shown itself to be arrogant and reckless. They seek to restrain the traditional avenues of scrutiny wherever possible (Thatcher’s Tories and Blair’s Labour both had extremely tempestuous episodes with the BBC, who have a habit of putting politician’s noses out of joint). Do not be fooled by a philistine Culture Secretary. The motives are more than questionable. This cadre of politicians do not like parliament, they do not like protests, and they do not like critical media. If they intend to reform the BBC, then it is reasonable to attribute that desire to self-interest.
There seem to be two broad sets of opinion which support the proposed changes. Firstly, there are those who do not consume much, or any, BBC programming or other content, and prefer alternative commercial providers. Naturally some of that constituency will object to having to pay a licence fee, especially when it is backed up by threats of fines and imprisonment. It is not an unreasonable stance. The value for money argument is clearly flawed (43p per day apparently). It does not really matter how cheap it is if you do not want the product in the first place and have been given little choice but to pay for it.
It is also the case that the BBC performs badly in many ways. Whilst there are plenty who are impressed by their nature documentaries, classic sitcoms, and some recent blockbuster dramas, the BBC produces an endless catalogue of low-quality programming as well, that sometimes does not even offer you the silver lining of being forgettable.
And for those who object to the harassment of people who elect not to pay for a licence fee, I am absolutely in favour of decriminalising non-payment. Criminal penalties and the manner of their enforcement (as can be seen on home-video recordings on YouTube of the arrogant presumptuousness of the TV Licencing Company field agents) are outdated and disproportionate. We do not treat people who fail to pay for other services in this way. However, we must still prevent increased evasion, otherwise the funding would be undermined anyway. But this can be done easily by introducing access controls for television services, like any other log-in process.
It is also worth adding that simply because it receives quasi-public funding, and some people do not need or want to make use of its output, that does not automatically make it bad. Many things deserve public funding, some of which we do not often use. Libraries, museums, and galleries spring to mind. We benefit from their presence as a collective, regardless of any individual’s personal engagement with them. We pick and choose public services depending on our individual needs, whilst understanding things we do not use can provide a public social value to others that may not be served by the market.
The second opinion base that enjoyed the announcement is that which believes the BBC demonstrates an irredeemable political bias. Usually, the accusation is made by the political right that a left-liberal partiality is evident, but this is not exclusive as plenty of left-leaning voices accuse it of have biases that are badged under the various right-wing political strains. It was, for instance, contemptuous of both Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, whilst being generally kind and sympathetic to David Cameron. Though it could accurately be described as having solidly socially liberal attitudes, a point which has been conceded by numerous on and off-screen figures at the BBC.
However, this just seems to be representative of the fact that whilst the left has been poor at winning elections in Britain, or getting a foothold in the press, it has done a good job across decades of getting people into other kinds of key positions, such as important roles in education and academia, the civil service, and broadcasting. It was referred to by the West German student movement leader, Rudi Dutschke as the ‘long march through the institutions’, a concept later fleshed out by the Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci. However, this is true of many institutions, not just the BBC.
Commercial broadcasters are clearly just as susceptible to received wisdom. Sky News has arguably been the most pro-restrictions when it comes to the Covid-19 pandemic. Are the offerings on Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, or Netflix, in some way not stuffed with the same conventional wisdoms and fashionable opinions as the BBC? I cannot say I have seen so. The privately run networks in America and elsewhere are hopelessly biased. Is CNN any less left-liberal than the BBC? Conservative media, such as Fox News, heartily threw itself behind the War on Terror and became its cheerleader, so the great hope of a commercial conservative broadcaster is unlikely to achieve the balancing results small c conservatives hope for.
And anyway, how does changing the funding model make it less likely to be left-liberal? Who listens to Radio One or Six Music? Young people. Who are likely to have left-liberal social attitudes, voted Remain, or would have done had they been of voting age, and are more likely to be Labour than Tory? Without the restraining force of charter obligations, why would the new offerings that appear on these stations not become more biased and simply tailor their reports to their audiences’ assumptions and preferences?
The licence fee gives a faint, but real, chance to make the BBC behave in a certain way. Responsibilities can be impressed on them. All we can make a commercial broadcaster do is produce more ratings winning programmes. We cannot make them behave better, be less biased, or provide content that is not commercially viable, but is valuable to a minority audience. The proms, niche documentaries, arts and history programming, symphony orchestras, a network of local news providers, and so on. They are done well by the BBC, and not done well, or in some cases even bothered with at all, by commercial broadcasters. Netflix is unlikely to offer news in your region each evening. Some of these things would cease to exist with a subscription model. They may not be popular. But they are important to a minority of people who otherwise will not be served.
Changes to BBC funding should be reviewed independently, with cross-party scrutiny. The BBC does many things badly and is not what it could be. But changes to funding could make reform impossible, and it could be lost forever. And the proposals are being pressed upon it by a government of short-term opportunists who are not capable of properly considering the problems of modern-day public service broadcasting.
