Cuts to the BBC’s budget by successive Conservative governments have been “shortsighted” and risked undermining its future, the director general said in a speech on Tuesday.
Announcing a further £200m of cuts to the corporation, Tim Davie said 14 years of cuts had reduced its budget by 30% in real terms and had “chipped away at our income over many years and have put serious pressure on our finances”.
Speaking at the Royal Television Society in central London, Davie suggested cuts between 2010 and 2020 plus “a tough couple of years of flat funding” had undermined its ability to future-proof the broadcaster during a period of digital transformation.
The cuts are “particularly problematic as a strong balance sheet and the ability to deploy capital strategically is essential if we are to navigate the digital transition”, he said. In a series of pointed criticisms about government-imposed funding cuts, he added: “To strip money from the BBC during this period has been particularly shortsighted.”
The BBC has already made swingeing cuts to programming – including limiting Newsnight to “interview and debate” and reducing its running time to 30 minutes – as part of £500m of annual savings needed because of inflation and a two-year freeze of the licence fee.
He also highlighted the fragility of BBC World Service, which has faced deep reductions, including the loss of hundreds of jobs and radio output in 10 languages – including Chinese, Hindi and Arabic.
Davie said the service was “uniquely valuable and globally important” but said the corporation could not “keep asking UK licence fee payers to invest in it when we face cuts to UK services” and said its long-term funding should come from central government budgets.
The licence fee agreement expires at the end of 2027 and ministers have vowed to replace it with a new funding model. In March, the government appointed a nine-person advisory panel to look at alternatives to the licence fee, including a number of longstanding BBC critics. It was described by one member of staff at the BBC as a “panel of gravediggers”.
Davie promised the BBC’s “biggest-ever consultation process” on overhaul of the licence fee – which will rise by £10.50 to £169.50 on 1 April – including looking at the way it is enforced and how the cost could be more progressive.
But in a week where the US and UK accused hackers backed by China’s government spy agency of conducting a years-long cyber-attack campaign, the director general also warned that the UK risked losing its “soft power” on the global stage. “Russia and China are investing hard, and not properly funding one of the UK’s most valuable soft power assets makes no sense economically or culturally,” he said.
The BBC will sign more deals with commercial partners – akin to the recent partnership with Disney to produce Doctor Who – and will relaunch bbc.com and the BBC app internationally, with Davie adding that it was necessary to “radically transform and renew” the corporation.
The youth channel BBC Three – which was reinstated as a linear channel three years ago, having been axed in 2016 – will lose its commissioning power, with programmes instead commissioned by iPlayer in a “digital first” approach.
Setting out a plan for the future in which the BBC would “pursue truth with no agenda, back British storytelling and bring people together”, he argued that the corporation could act as a ballast against increasing polarisation exacerbated by social media.
Davie ruled out the use of artificial intelligence in the broadcaster’s journalism but said it planned to “proactively deploy AI on our terms” to create “tools that help us build relevance”.
The BBC was already working with big tech companies to develop “unique ethical algorithms” to increase personalisation for users, but stressed they were “not simply driven by the narrowing of an individual’s recommendations” and would avoid the “deep polarisation” created by commercial algorithms.
Content would also be curated using “serendipity, curiosity” and “what […] BBC editors may judge to be important stories”, he said.
