All BBC roads, including the impartiality one, lead back to the licence fee in the end. And now, standing near the crossroads, is the ubiquitous Whittingdale, informing the culture select committee that the simplest and best replacement in his view would be a household levy paid “at the same time as another bill, such as your council tax”. No great sensation there. The committee recommended just this earlier this year (when Whittingdale was chairman). It’s the system used in Germany, and Greece.
It’s easy, evasion-proof and cheap, though interfering politicians could well see an opportunity for fiddling, wriggling and threatening. (After all, it’s a tax, isn’t it?) Now we need Broadcasting House to say straight out what alternative it can support.
Perhaps, as I say in my chapter of The BBC Today: Future Uncertain, the BBC needs to look at US trends. Network TV viewing down 9% year on year. Netflix growth accounting for 43% of that decline. Pay-TV down 31,000. Ad revenue up to 7% off 2014 levels. Digital media ad revenue up 19% on one authoritative estimate, and reckoned to finish about equal with TV ad revenue at around $67bn by the end of 2016. “We’re at the tipping point now where the very role of TV in our mix is under consideration,” a Coca-Cola marketing chief declares.
So just pottering along isn’t any solution. But there is still a huge appetite for television: some 83% of US TV-set owners subscribe to one or more cable and streaming networks. There’s a present and future relationship fit for purpose – and for keeping interfering politicians off your back.
