on media


We risk sleepwalking into BBC’s destruction


Inquiry vital into its role and financing, says Raymond Snoddy B


oris Johnson would like Lord Charles Moore, his old boss at the Daily Telegraph, to become the next


chairman of the BBC but Lord Moore has ruled himself out.. Even by the standards of this


government, it would have been an appalling choice.


The former editor of the Daily


Telegraph and biographer of Margaret Thatcher has been an unremitting critic of the corporation and has waged a war against the licence fee for more than a decade. In 2010, he was fined for refusing to


pay the licence fee because the BBC did not sack Jonathan Ross over obscene messages left on actor Andrew Sachs’ phone answering machine. There is supposed to be an open and transparent process to find a successor to Sir David Clementi, who will leave in February. But while Johnson is prime minister, if the new BBC chairman is not Lord Moore, it will be someone similar, perhaps Lady Nicky Morgan, briefly culture secretary, who warned the BBC would end up like Blockbuster if it did not reform. Whoever chairs the BBC, it is likely


that they will be put in place to oversee the end of the licence fee which is guaranteed only until 2027. Already the political mood music is running against the BBC and the licence fee. Julian Knight, the Conservative MP


who chairs the culture select committee, said recently that the licence fee was “morally on the way out”. In future, the corporation would have to make much of its money


through optional subscription. In fact, a financial crisis has already


arrived at the BBC, with hundreds if not thousands of posts – many of them journalists’ jobs – on the line. Continuing free licences for over-75s on income support will cost £150 million a year and that same amount will be lost if the government goes ahead with decriminalising the refusal to pay licence fee. This seems like a decent thing


to do. Alas, the consequences – intended or otherwise – would be to destroy the BBC as a national public service broadcaster funded by everyone in return for providing services for everyone. A loss of £150 million a year might


only be the start of it. With the BBC unable cost-effectively to exclude people who do not pay, it is difficult to know how great the free-rider problem would become. Many might decide they simply will


not pay and the BBC would find it almost impossible to pursue millions of citizens through the civil courts. The pressing problem can be simply


stated: out of either political malice or ignorance, we are in danger of sleepwalking into the piecemeal destruction of the BBC – an important UK institution. Before any of this happens –


especially decriminalisation – there is an urgent need for an overarching independent inquiry into the role and financing of the BBC, with particular reference to the licence fee. Is a compulsory licence fee still


relevant and the least bad funding mechanism as the BBC prepares to enter its second century after 2022?


‘


Are there better alternatives? Such an inquiry could look at the BBC’s role in training and sustaining large sections of the creative industries, which could once again, after Covid-19, be among the UK’s fastest growing sectors. Carping about the licence fee has been increasing, as has the bile and antagonism from a self-interested right-wing press. Yet there has been no vigorous, independent look at the issue since 1986 when Mrs Thatcher appointed Sir Alan Peacock to look at the future of the licence fee. The free market economist was


“ ”


supposed to find that the licence fee could be replaced by advertising. Sir Alan came up with the ‘wrong’ answer and ended up strengthening the licence fee arrangement while talking about the future on-demand world to come. It hardly needs to be emphasised


Out of either political malice or ignorance, we are in danger of sleepwalking into the piecemeal destruction of the BBC


how fundamentally the media landscape has changed since then. It may seem crazy to argue for an inquiry now into the future of the BBC when the media and everyone else are in the depths of the Covid and Brexit crises. It is, however, a necessary first step towards informing the debate about a new BBC royal charter later in the decade. It would also provide hope that the


importance of broadcast journalism and other forms of programme- making in the public interest can be properly assessed.The alternative is to watch the BBC being slowly beaten into a rump of its former self, more akin to PBS America than the current institution that, sadly, seems more valued abroad than it is in the UK.


theJournalist | 09


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