The BBC has described itself as being set to enter ‘managed decline’. The government is currently reviewing the broadcaster’s charter, and yesterday the BBC issued a response to its green paper saying that if the status quo remains, public service broadcasting will die. ‘Huge changes in the media market, audience behaviours, and an outdated funding model’, have apparently caused the BBC’s licence fee income to drop by a quarter.

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What the BBC didn’t acknowledge was that these ‘audience behaviours’ amounted to people concluding it was no longer worth paying for. That isn’t because ‘huge changes in the media market’ mean people feel paying for broadcasting is ‘an outdated funding model’. Instead, they’re choosing to pay for something else. One of the BBC’s proposed solutions is to charge them anyway. Want to watch Netflix or Apple TV? You’ll pay the BBC for the privilege. 

If you stream any live TV, you already have to. The Beeb is outraged that often people don’t pay up, but we should be outraged that they’re meant to. Funding the BBC via mandatory contributions from people trying to watch something else is absurd, and missing the point. Last year, 23.8 million........

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