flickr.Paul Brannan. Some rights reservedOn Tuesday morning, Radio 4 broadcast a Media Show debate, before an invited audience, on the future of the BBC. In a typical display of BBC “balance”, the panel constituted four present and former senior BBC executives, and the former political editor of The Sun. Not surprisingly with Radio 4, the audience was strongly and vocally in favour of the BBC and the licence fee.
This is fair enough. Most people approve of the BBC at some level, and most support the compulsory licence fee, even if that means turning a blind eye to the consequent criminal prosecution of hundreds of thousands of non-payers, the great majority of whom are impoverished and female.
The BBC panel members were insistent that replacing the licence fee with a voluntary subscription system would have the undesirable side effect of diminishing the BBC’s near-universal reach, insofar as people might choose to exercise the right not to pay for the BBC. What for some people is a rather Orwellian all-pervasive forced penetration of our homes, allowing the BBC to claim a 60% share of all news consumption in the UK, is for a BBC executive both natural and necessary.
