Blog: The BBC – cut the umbilical cord

Debate about the BBC has been bubbling up recently.

In an interview on the Andrew Marr show last month, the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt said the BBC needed “clearer red lines” around its website.

Then earlier this month the Adam Smith Institute published a report entitled ‘Player or Subsidy Junkie?  Decision time for the BBC’, which argued the TV Licence Fee should be abolished, and the BBC should instead become a subscription service.

The BBC has been something of a hobby horse of mine for over ten years.  Fundamentally, the justification for having a ‘taxed’ TV licence is redundant in an age where there are thousands of TV channels and with broadband blurring the lines between the Internet and TV; and at the same time reducing the barriers to content providers of all shapes & sizes.  And the fact that it’s called a TV Licence (actually a ‘Colour’ TV Licence), when in reality it's a subscription to the BBC’s TV channels is another bugbear.

Furthermore, what many people don’t appreciate is the fact that even if you never watch a BBC channel, you still need to pay the licence.  I quote from the TV Licensing site: “What you might not know is that television licensing law still applies to you no matter what you use to watch television programmes as they're being shown on TV.  Whether it's a laptop, mobile phone or any other device that receives television programmes, you need to be covered by a TV Licence.  It's the law.”

I was with a prospective client only last week who said he wanted everything the BBC online site had.  The answer was, “Well to a point, but do remember that the BBC spent £199m on their online activities in the last financial year”  Incidentally, it costs £119m just to collect the licence fee every year.

At the Guardian’s Changing Media Summit in March this year, I watched amazed as Erik Huggers the BBC’s Director of Future Media & Technology outlined the BBC’s vision for the future.

It is truly a grandiose vision that would see BBC online become the front door to the whole of the BBC’s creative output, archive and energies.  Of course it’s the right approach – it would be ridiculous not to put the Internet first.

What I found quite unbelievable though, was that not once in 30 minutes did Erik mention business models.  Is it going to be a tax on Internet-enabled devices?  Or just a straight-forward government subsidy?  One thing that won’t wash for long though is the Colour TV Licence!

Personally I think we’ve been lily-livered as a nation with the BBC.  Yes, it represents part of our culture.  Yes, it produces good quality programmes (or actually these days it is often only the conduit for programmes made by independent agencies).  Yes, its websites are good.  But, exactly what now differentiates it from any other purveyor of engagement/entertainment/content in a digital arena?

Some personal speculations:

• without Radio 4, perhaps there might be a decent business radio channel;
• without BBC 1 & 2, perhaps some of the output from ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 wouldn’t be so bad; and
• without the BBC business web site, all the B2B publishers would have a level playing field on which to compete for business audiences.

In my view, it’s an encouraging sign of the times that it’s being debated properly; and perhaps someone will finally have the courage to cut the umbilical cord!