The BBC licence fee
W
ITH the feel of a placed leak, a
Sunday Times
front page write-off from a
Culture
magazine piece revealed on 12 January that culture secretary Lisa Nandy was considering replacing the BBC licence fee with funding from general taxation. Bizarrely, though, the pieces also contained a quote from a government spokesperson insisting that this is not government policy. So what’s going on?
Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) mandarins have concluded that the licence fee is doomed (the current deal ends in 2027), due to an irreversible decline in revenue since the prospect of prosecution for not having a TV licence was removed. The obvious alternative is a subscription system – probably with a free basic public service slate and then stepped add-ons – that BBC iPlayer would be well placed to provide.