The Stage

Report claims BBC should lose licence fee

Published Wednesday 22 July 2009 at 12:34 by Michael Quinn

Income from the television licence fee should be shared by the BBC with other broadcasters and the Corporation’s flagship BBC1 and digital BBC3 channels should be sold off, a new report claims.

Auntie’s Dying: Long Live Public Service Broadcasting also suggests the sale of Radios 1 and 2. Changes to BBC Worldwide would depend on its ability to demonstrate that it “promoted public service broadcasting”.

The report’s authors, Frank Field MP and his researcher David Rees, argue that the budgetary demands of entertainment programmes dilute the BBC’s public service obligations.

“Unless decisive reform is taken to protect [the BBC’s] identity,” they argue, the Corporation’s distinctive “DNA may be destroyed.”

Their proposals, which include the setting up a new independent commissioning body to distribute funding from the £3.65 billion television licence income, would enable the BBC to “return to a more focussed and enhanced Reithian conception. BBC2 and BBC4, Radio 3 and 4 and the World Service would gain probably all their funding from public service broadcasting awards”.