In the run-up to the renewal of the BBC charter in January 2028, the corporation is facing perhaps its greatest ever funding crisis. It is staring down cost hyper-inflation across most programme genres and, unlike online-only streamers such as Netflix, it will still have to fund traditional broadcast networks until at least 2034. And of course, it will also have to pay for new digital services to keep pace with trends, especially among younger audiences.

But the biggest driver of the BBC crisis is the cut in real-terms funding for its national, regional and local UK services. These are the services that largely account for licence payers’ willingness to pay the fee.

The reduction in the real-terms funding of these services has been building up since 2010 and is now deeper than most people realise.

In 2010-11, TV licence fee revenue was £3.1 billion. The cost of collecting the licence fee was £124 million. The BBC also received £579 million of government funding from the Department for Work and Pensions for free TV licences for the over-75s.

So the total public funding from licence fees, after collection costs, and the DWP payment, was £3.5 billion. But not all of this went to the BBC:........

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