On 22nd January 2025, VLV President Lord Tony Hall CBE is due to give a lecture to the Francis Crick Institute. Here is the full transcript:
I want to start by saying something very personal about why the BBC matters to me. I left it in 2001 to go and run the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. It was a job I absolutely loved. It’s an organisation of a scale that you can put your arms around. Like all theatres, It’s an emotional place. So, when I was approached to go back to the BBC as Director-General to sort out the crisis caused by the response to Jimmy Savill and that scandal, I had to think quite hard about whether to say yes or not.
As often happens when big decisions are being made, small things can matter. A number of things weighed on my mind. First was a Nepalese friend of mine who lives in this country and is an exceptionally talented doctor. He is here because the BBC taught his father English and the love of this country. He wanted his son to come to Britain to be trained. An example of soft power that I’ve heard repeated so many times. The second point was about the power of the BBC to deliver great things to all people.
I saw this at the ROH when in my first few months, we broadcast Rigoletto live on BBC Two. It started in the Duke of Mantua’s castle with an Orgy scene. I’d totally forgotten the rules of broadcasting in the short time I’d been away. There was a complaint upheld by OFCOM of nudity before the watershed at 9 o’clock. Still a few million people watched something really good that would’ve been seen by a few thousand in the Opera house if it hadn’t been televised. That power to take the best to everyone was something I believed in and something I felt that the BBC could do more of.
And finally, of course, I don’t come from London – I was born in Birkenhead on the Wirral. I remember the excitement of the first days in broadcasting by Radio Merseyside. This wasn’t a voice from London talking – it was us! And that power of the BBC to be out there, around the country, has always been important to me. So it was inevitable really – in late, 2012 it was announced I was going back to the BBC.
What I want to argue today is that the BBC and public service broadcasting matter more now than it did back then over a decade ago. And I want to argue that the BBC should be seen not just as a media organisation – of course it’s that. But it should be seen as one of the great creative organisations in the world… as a cultural organisation. And that we need to see the corporation afresh – through a different lens – the concept of broadcasting not being just a commodity… but also a public good.
When I ran the BBC, I would start the day roundabout 6:30 with a text or a WhatsApp message giving me the headlines of what the press was saying about the BBC. This was a rather masochistic way of the beginning of the day. Because if you look across the press, you’d think that the detractors who don’t believe in the BBC, were winning the argument.
The constant themes were – the licence fee is an outdated method of paying for the BBC belonging to a statist era long gone. The streamers show the power of subscription to deliver just what you want to pay for – if you don’t like it, you don’t pay. In addition, they deliver drama, comedy, films in just about every genre you could want. The market provides a world of plenty where everyone’s needs can be met – so again why a BBC.
It’s also an organisation – it was alleged – that’s a citadel of wokedom…and because the corporation is held to a level of transparency and accountability – rightly – we see inside it in a detail and depth we see in no other media organisation. Which means the difficulties of running a large complex, noisy organisation are always on view. Sometimes those things are serious and important – sometimes not.
But there was another characteristic of the debate about the BBC in the last decade or so – and that was the large amount of time spent arguing about the licence fee – whether it has a future… and its cost. At the last review of the BBC’s charter, we sorted out the quantum of the licence fee – and then over the following year or so, worked out what we wanted the organisation to do. And this is how the debate has continued. I’ve been consistently arguing that’s the wrong way round. We need FIRST to decide what we want a BBC to do -for all of us – for our country – for the world – and then work out how we fund it and to what level.
The BBC is lucky to have had a founder whose mission carries to this day and cannot be bettered. Lord Reith said the role of the BBC was to inform, to educate and to entertain. He saw the BBC as an independent public service broadcaster, free from political or commercial influence, aiming to provide high-quality programming for all.
Reith didn’t like the commercially driven approach that he saw in the United States or the state-run version in the former USSR and instead wanted to prioritise what now seems rather patrician – serving the public interest over catering to popular demand. And the public interest in his view was programming that was culturally enriching.
The other great principal underpinning this mission was the idea of universality. In your and my speak – that means that everyone, whoever they are, wherever they live, rich or poor, old or young – should have access to and should consume great programming that could inform, educate or entertain. I would add one other word – that could inspire them.
The United Kingdom is lucky to have a number of institutions founded on this idea of universal access to great things. Think of how the British Museum was founded on similar principles in the middle of the 18th century. Or the National Gallery. The National Trust was another such organisation founded in the late 19th century by three visionaries including Octavia Hill. Their vision was rooted in the belief that nature, beauty and history should be preserved for everyone, forever. These organisations – and there are many more – are a fundamental part of what makes Britain, Britain. And the BBC is one of them.
They’re a part of what Andy Haldane, the Chief Executive of the Royal Society for Arts and the former Chief Economist of the Bank of England, calls our social infrastructure. He said recently ‘let’s put front and centre the sort of social infrastructures that are crucial to people’s everyday experiences, to how much they enjoy the place that they live”. Cultural Institutions provide “a sense of joy and a sense of pride, a sense of belonging and if you under invest in them, you find communities falling apart. These are also the community glue that enable communities to stick together rather than fall apart. Nothing is more important in the UK now than that.” In My view, the BBC is a vital part of that social infrastructure, and we should see it as such.
In media, it’s not the only part. The BBC is also at the heart of a wider network of public service broadcasting in the UK. This is something unique to us here in this country and a real asset. The Public service broadcasters include ITV, Channel 4, channel 5 and S4C in Wales and BBC Alba in Scotland. These networks all have the obligation to provide certain types of socially valuable content – but all of them have slightly different funding models. I’d argue the competition between these broadcasters has driven up quality, has fostered innovation and driven economic growth and exports. The BBC is at the cornerstone of the system. No other country has anything like it. And I can tell you from my time at the BBC and as President of the European Broadcasting Union – this system is admired around the world.
The growth of this system or ecology is no accident. There’s been a consensus since the 1920s that UK broadcasting should be regulated to benefit society as a whole, rather than being driven purely by consumer forces. Broadcasting has been seen as going beyond the choices of private individuals, to provide broad benefits to democracy, culture, identity, learning, participation and engagement. It benefits those who do not even make direct use of it, in much the same as schools help create an educated society. It’s clear from Ofcom’s research that there is still widespread public service public support for this approach.
This idea of the public value the BBC provides ran strongly in the debates before the last charter – the document that sets out what the BBC is there to do. One paper from the BBC argued, “the BBC’s founders believed that broadcasting could make the world a better place. Public intervention would ensure that its astonishing creative power – to enrich individuals with knowledge, culture and information about their world, to build more cohesive communities, to engage the people of the UK and the whole globe in a new conversation about who we are and where we are going – would be put to work to the sole benefit of the public.”
These arguments still have great force now. In fact – I would argue – even greater force. We have seen in the last two decades an explosion of channels and platforms. That has mostly been to the advantage of all – I have no doubt about that. Although these changes have enabled the rise of misinformation on online platforms which is a real problem. I’ve been a huge admirer of what Reed Hastings achieved when he took a video lending company and converted it into Netflix. That has brought us all access to a range of content we could only dream of before. Interestingly Reed always said that BBC’s iPlayer and what it did had led the way to the streaming world we all now enjoy. And that world is one in which the TV and screen sector in this country has flourished. Think of the delicious Slow Horses on Apple – and so many other examples. This is something at which we are genuinely world class. But that explosion has not guaranteed the full range or diversity of content for audiences here. Or guaranteed its accuracy in factual content. The sort of content you would have if you’re thinking about broadcasting’s societal impact. Ask yourself another question. Do you want your culture, our culture, to be determined here – or solely on the West Coast of America? Or like me do you want the best of it all – yes to the amazing things we can see and enjoy through the streamers. But also, yes to the best of our culture – programmes that reflect who we are – our stories – things that matter to us and reflect who we are in all its diversity and richness.
It’s interesting that audiences continue to spend more time watching BBC TV/iPlayer on average per week per person than they spend with Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime combined. In 2023 the BBC had seven out of ten of the most watched programmes in the UK across all broadcasters and streamers. ITV and Channel 4 had the others. And that’s why the idea of public service broadcasting still matters.
This year will see the beginning of the process for deciding the BBC’s charter from 2028 onwards. This means will be debating what the BBC is here to do. Let me outline three particular areas in which the mission should be taken forward.
First of all, the BBC’s mission to inform. We live – and I quote – “in scoundrel times; more squalid, reckless and poisonous than any I can remember. When the nobility of journalism, the unvarnished truth, in black and white, has been discoloured by the lurid saturation of falsehood, fantasy and the endlessly oncoming tide of celebrity trivia.” Not my words but the thoughts of the great historian Simon Schama talking about a legendary British newspaper editor Sir Harry Evans who died a couple of years ago. And those words show how easy it is to be pessimistic about the future reach of good quality journalism. Will our public discourse be increasingly poisoned by social media, made even more toxic by the use of artificial intelligence? Last summer we saw the consequences of mistruths being peddled online in the aftermath of the dreadful murders in Southport. Ofcom wrote to the Government identifying a clear link between what happened and online disinformation.
We should also be concerned about whether good quality accurate information and news become increasingly something for a minority – like vinyl records for those of us who love music. In other words, for those that can afford subscriptions the future for getting a high-quality news service is assured – but what about the service for those who cannot afford the subscriptions necessary to leap a pay wall. That fear came out of the recent report on News from the Lords Select committee which I’m on.
And of course, already there are large numbers of people who are backing off watching or reading about news in its entirety. You’ll have heard it – too many bad things going on – I don’t want to hear about it. Last year‘s report on news by Reuters said that the percentage of people in the UK who are extremely or very interested in the news has nearly halved– to just 38% of the population. The regulator, OFCOM warned of the consequences for democracy.
Because we all know why this matters. The bedrock of any democracy is an active and informed citizenship. The threats to this are clear. People can now get news from anyone, anywhere, reliable or not. Distinguishing truth from lies is getting harder. Bad news, and fake news travels faster than the truth.
The very nature of what is real becomes even more open to question. In some respects, it already has. What will happen to trust in our politics, in our business, in our society?
I profoundly believe that trusted and impartial news services are far more needed now in the era of the Internet and social media, then they ever were in the past. Every person, rich, or poor, wherever they live, whatever age they are, has a fundamental right to information on which they can base their lives. They should have somewhere in the noise and mayhem of the world, where they go to find out what is actually happening. The pool of information that people should have access to, should be rich and varied, and should be free for everyone, not shrouded behind a Paywall.
That’s also why the leitmotif of public service broadcasting is impartiality. Basically put – they’re seekers of truth on behalf of us as citizens. To quote Ofcom’s latest report on public service broadcasting. ‘Our research has found that those using PSB news output are more likely to correctly identify important factual information, have higher levels of trust in institutions, and are less polarised than respondents who did not use PSB‘s.’ Go back to how we all were during Covid – that’s why the percentage of people who said they trusted information from public service channels was over 80%.
And that’s why we need a strong BBC. It is the most widely used and trusted news source in the UK – and that’s by a country mile. Three quarters of adults use BBC news each week. And 45 per cent trust it the most, with the next nearest at around 6%. It’s also the most popular news source with 12 to 15 year olds.
I take my hat off to the BBC news operation – to the Bowen’s, the Doucett’s and the Mason’s and all those working with them in Front of the camera or microphone or those behind. And as I know, it’s a tough, relentless, but highly professional business. But boy does it matter.
Of course, the other two enormous journalistic strengths of the BBC, are that it’s both local and global. No other organisation can offer this. Local radio is an important part of what the BBC offers. In my time as Director General, I visited almost all of them and loved what they did because they all were closely embedded into their communities. Each represented and celebrated the special characteristics of the places they served. And we all know that local identity and how it’s expressed is becoming more and more important. Increasingly I fear, this may be an area where the market fails us. Again, the Lords Select committee I’m serving on, took evidence on this. There are places still well served by commercial news services – as well as new innovatory services like for example the Manchester Mill. But there are also large areas of the UK which are in effect, news deserts.
That’s why the Local Democracy reporters scheme I established a few years ago is so important. The BBC pays for journalists who would work for any local news outlet as well as the BBC. At present, the scheme has 165 journalists with 1100 individual news outlets signed up. This sort of scheme working in partnership with other local media and community groups is also going to be more important in the future, not less.
It’s good to see the BBC expanding its coverage of local news to places like Wolverhampton, Bradford and Peterborough. Good too to see that their move to build local stories online is leading to greater audiences for what local radio can offer. I wonder whether a future role of the BBC here might be to offer up its content to local organisations offering community news services – the BBC as an enabler of oases in news deserts.
And then there’s the global. The former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, described the world service as “quite possibly Britain’s greatest gift to the world in the 20th century”. The BBC is – according to the Reuter’s Institute – ‘one of the most trusted news services in the world’. According to the BBC, it is the most trusted! The global audience numbers are big – 450 million each week of which the largest share is to the world service. In the four years from 2016 to 2020 the world service grew by 42%. That was in no small measure due to increased funding we won from George Osborne when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Somewhere in a drawer in the Foreign, Commonwealth and development office, is a report commissioned by the then Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. He saw the benefit to the UK of the BBC’s soft power. He asked us to work out how we could go even further and get to a billion people each week. Sadly, he left office before anything could happen. But as the charter comes up for renewal that’s the sort of big thinking we should be encouraging. More especially when you know that in three quarters of countries globally, free journalism is completely or partially blocked. 75%. And when it’s reported that China and Russia are spending between £6 billion and £8 billion in expanding their global media activities. The last reported budget for the world service was £334 million. The case for growth is clear. So the BBC has a major and continuing role to play as the source for news and information you can trust.
But the BBC also has another, vital role to play and that’s in telling OUR stories – in our way – to each other – defining who we are – reflecting ourselves back to ourselves. After all, a basic human need is to tell stories. Who else but the BBC would have commissioned Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials in its entirety as a mainstream TV series? And by the way, when I went on set, everybody I spoke to was passionate about why they were there. Hollywood had failed to deliver the novels as films. They on the other hand, wanted to tell this great story triumphantly – and they did.
One of my more bizarre and wonderful occasions in my time as DG was sitting having lunch on location where Wolf Hall was being filmed. My lunchtime companion was Thomas Cromwell. Well actually, the brilliant Mark Rylance in full Tudor costume – another great commission that – from a British author and an outstanding British Director Peter Kosminski. I saw this passion in other areas too. For that great British Past time of gardening – Monty Don’s latest series is on British gardens is helping me through the dark days of January. Or archaeology – Alice Robert’s terrific series on what digs have been showing us about the past is another favourite of mine. I could go on.
The point is that these are programmes that the big international streamers aren’t going to make. Their focus is global. So that’s why we need to make sure that the BBC is adequately funded to make these programmes. On this, we should be concerned that Ofcom has reported a fall in the hours transmitted of the more specialist genres like the arts, classical music history and science. I’m certain a lot of this is down to resources – of which more anon. During Covid, the BBC showed what could be done. In The arts for example, working with artists and individuals to get their work out to audiences stuck indoors. Or with education, where the BBC stepped up to the plate to deliver content that would help children and young people carry on learning. Bitesize is the most popular online education website for schoolchildren in the UK. And as for CBeebies – I can’t tell you how many young mums and dads told me that it had been a lifeline for them – British content they could trust. Isn’t that worth paying for?
The public service broadcasters – PSBs – by the way, still have the ability to bring the nation together for key events. Gavin and Stacey’s wonderful farewell on Christmas Day brought together 19 million people when you include catch-up. The finale on ITV of Mr Bates vs the Post Office was watched by just under 14 million. The King’s Coronation, by over 25 million. And so many of us come together maybe in lesser numbers to see Strictly, Traitors or Race across the World. They’ve become part of our national conversation.
But another important function is to reflect our differences. What makes these isles so culturally, regionally, nationally so rich? I’ve always loved this quotation from Professor Jean Seaton – a historian of the BBC. She wrote that the BBC has “a duty to represent all of us, to ourselves and to each other; not the richest nor the most powerful, those who have the capacity to leverage advertising revenue or direct power, not the loudest nor even the nicest. It has a duty to include in the national conversation, the weak and the passed over, the apparently Batty and those at an angle to conventional views.”
Making sure that the BBC reflected the nation, was a strong part of what I wanted to achieve in my time as Director General. As well as the Network of 39 local radio stations in England that I mentioned earlier, the BBC also delivers separate Radio 4 style stations for Northern Ireland Scotland and Wales as well as two Welsh speaking services and a Gallic radio station Radio Nan Gadheal. On TV each region and nation has its own evening programme – in fact the regional news at 6:30 was always one of the most popular strands on BBC One – and Scotland has its own channel – something we set up in my time – as well as BBC Alba, a Gallic TV service.
But the BBC is doing a whole lot more for the different parts of the UK. The BBC is the largest single investor in British programmes. And 60 % of the network television budget is spent outside London – and that’s created about 50,000 jobs. Take the tram from Manchester Piccadilly station to Media City in Salford, and you’ll find a thriving cluster of creative businesses. That’s largely due to the BBC moving there and then attracting others. It’s what the Secretary of State, Lisa Nandy called one of the best examples of levelling up this country has seen. Channel 4 is now headquartered in Leeds. And if you’d said to me 25 years ago that Cardiff would be a centre of expertise in drama and high-end TV, I simply wouldn’t have got it. But that’s exactly what it is – an astonishing centre of creativity – another great creative cluster.
To coincide with the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, it was calculated that the series, since its reinvention in 2004, had contributed nearly £135 million in GVA to the Welsh economy. Forgive me if I take what Lisa Nandy said one stage further – this is levelling up in action before levelling up was invented. And you can see similar examples of growth in Bristol, Glasgow, Birmingham and Belfast. It’s great when you see sport being presented from Salford, or Breakfast or Radio 3 or Five Live. Or know that Bristol is home to the best natural history broadcasters in the world. Or that Birmingham is Ambridge, where the Archers comes from. This not only creates jobs. It creates local pride. I was much taken when on a final visit to Salford before I left, one young producer said to me – “I don’t have to move to London anymore – I can make my career here”.
Giving people a chance is so important. Who knows where talent lies. The BBC has given so many opportunities to artists, directors, producers, musicians, actors, comedians also all sorts of talented people behind the camera and microphone, as well as in front of it.
My favourite story was always Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Her Fleabag – which she wrote and starred in, went from the Edinburgh fringe in 2013 to BBC 3, where it was so successful it transferred to BBC 2. That and her second series won so many awards – with good reason. As they say, her career has not looked back since. You can say the same about so many people. That’s perhaps why the late Tessa Jowell, a former Secretary of State for Culture, used to talk of BBC spending as an innovation fund. That’s why I set BBC Studios – to give the brilliant programme makers in the BBC the chance take their ideas to wherever they could sell them.
Remember that the creative industries and the TV and screen sector in particular, are of one of the UK’s great success stories. I hope that when the government’s industrial strategy is revealed, they will loom very large indeed. It’s brilliant that the streamers are investing here, growing the work for our increasing number of studios, using our talent and benefitting from the tax regime. But the BBC at the core of the creative industries remains as important as ever. There is no bigger commissioner of TV or radio in this country. Invest in the license fee and you’re investing in UK production. In evidence to the House of Lords select committee I mentioned earlier, the Council for science and technology said that “the government should look to grow our creative industries companies on a similar scale to the way France has grown it’s luxury goods market.” Which is an opinion of course, I endorse.
So, it strikes me as a huge error for successive governments to have reduced the money we pay for all the services the BBC offers. Research by the voice of the Listener and Viewer – an excellent organisation of which I’m honoured to be President – demonstrates that public funding has declined in real terms by 38% since 2010. This has happened in two ways: either by funding settlements below the rate of inflation, which is what the last Government did – the licence fee was frozen for two years during a period of very high inflation. Or by raids, using the licence fee to do other things rather than fund programmes and services – making the BBC responsible for the funding of the world service for example – or handing over responsibility for free television licenses for the over 75s.
To repeat – a decline of 38% in real terms since 2010. This has meant that BBC has been in retreat – pulling back across the board in terms of programming and services. And I believe that – now more than ever – runs counter to what we as a country need.
A couple of years ago, the House of Lords select committee that I’m on, produced a report which casts light – forensically – on the long-term viability of the license fee and the big question about how to fund the BBC. The committee took a lot of evidence from a broad range of opinion, both in this country and importantly from across Europe. The result was a careful analysis of the options laid out in a way I’ve not seen before. The pluses and minuses of every conceivable way of funding the BBC.
Rightly advertising is ruled out. There’s not enough revenue to go round. So is a model based wholly on subscription. That wouldn’t deliver on the important principle of universality – in other words that broadcasting should deliver good things that everyone should have access to equally. That principle is as important now as ever it was in my view – and defining what that means for the next charter period is going to be crucial. There were some distracting Will’o the wisps like a two-tier license fee. In my view that would be difficult and costly.
Direct government funding was also rejected as compromising the independence of the organisation. But What I drew from this work was that the key objective from now until the renewal of the charter in 2027, should be to find a way to pay that is fairer. Poorer people should pay less, the better-off more. Which to my mind points to a reformed licence fee or some form of household levy. And another objective should be to look at what we pay the license fee for. At present, it’s for live television and use of the iPlayer – and that resulted in a 2% decline in the number of licences last year as people’s behaviour changes. Could that be extended to cover other ways that people consume content?
And again, I turned to the Voice of the Listeners and Viewers for an idea which I think has much merit. In 2012 they commissioned a QC – now KC – to draft a bill that would create a new body – the license fee body which would oversee the level of funding provided to the BBC. The idea was that this would bring hard data to play, in deciding the level of the licence fee and would thereby help to depoliticise negotiations with the government of the day. It had support from committees in the Lords and the Commons, and I think it’s worth looking at again.
It would be one way of trying to get more informed decisions about this great cultural asset. I think it would also strengthen the independence of the BBC. This matters too. I used to get very annoyed when people would say the BBC is the state broadcaster. It’s the national broadcaster. And that’s different. The BBC is independent of Government and trust in the organisation and all it does depends on that. That’s why I’m concerned about the fact that the BBC is established by Royal Charter.
This may see an arcane point but let me explain. I won a Charter for eleven years at the end of which time the BBC technically ceased to exist. But every time the Charter is renewed everything is thrown up in the air and what lands is determined more or less by the government of the day.
The new chair Samir Shah is right to raise this as an issue. He’s dug around and can’t find another organisation where there’s a Royal Charter which has to be renewed. All others are permanent. As he said – when you add to the fact that the charter renewal process takes around two years and the BBC is also subject to mid-charter assessment, the reality is an almost perpetual government review over the BBC.’ Of course he’s right. This is the time to consider whether the BBC should have a permanent charter like others do. Or even ask a question as to whether the BBC’s independence would be stronger if the organisation was set up through legislation and directly answerable to Parliament.
I would add one other issue which as Chairman Samir might want to make. At present the Chair is chosen after a long process by the Prime Minister. So are four members of the Board. It seems to me that the independence the organisation would be strengthened if the Chair had the right to choose every member of the Board– as most chairs do.
What often gets lost in the arguments about the BBC is that it’s still very popular. 95% of people in this country consume BBC services monthly. In polling, it’s the number one media brand. With young people it’s the only British media brand to make it into their top five. Of course, as with all legacy media organisations, the BBC has to change, to match the needs of its audiences whilst also recognising that not every licence fee payer wants that change.
In my time and under my successor Tim Davie, that means confronting some hard choices particularly with younger audiences. I took BBC 3 – the channel for young people – online, because we believed that was the future for those audiences. Interestingly, most of the attacks on that move in fact came from the industry. But the online channel went on to win awards and make some amazing programmes. We introduced Sounds – a way of bringing all the brilliant content of radio into one place on-demand. Again a lot of noise. And Tim is right now to stress that digital first is where the BBC has to be.
We used to carefully watch the data that showed usage of our traditional linear channels going down against the rise in people using our own demand services through the iPlayer. Looking at what’s happening now I would say that that strategy is absolutely working. The iPlayer is the fastest growing video on demand service in the UK. It’s growing twice as fast as Netflix.
The BBC’s mission is to bring something of quality to everyone. If I might end on my own version of what have the Romans ever done for us? What has the BBC ever done for us? Well, there’s BBC1, BBC 2, BBC3, BBC4, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC Scotland, BBC News, BBC Parliament, BBC Alba, Radio 1, Radio 1 Anthems, Radio 1 Dance, Radio 1 Extra, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 3 Unwind, Radio 4, Radio 4 Extra, Radio 5, Radio 5 Extra, Radio 6 Music, the Asian Network, BBC World Service, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Scotland Extra, BBC Opening, BBC Shetland, BBC nan Gaidheal, BBC Ulster, BBC Wales, BBC Wales Extra, BBC Cymru, BBC Cymru 2, CBeebies Radio and BBC Local radio.
Then access to the iPlayer to BBC Sounds. And then Wimbledon, the Proms, Glastonbury. I could go on. All of this costs around £13 per household per month – think of what you pay for a Netflix subscription or what you pay to watch every Premier League game live. An equivalent household bundle to the BBC’s offer of advertising-free video, audio, and news premium family media subscriptions is now more than £580 a year, compared to the current licence fee cost of £169.50.
The BBC and the other public service broadcasters are unique. I hope in the coming debate about the BBC’s charter, we can get our decisions right. And although by the very nature of this talk, I’ve concentrated on the BBC…together The BBC, ITV Channel 4, S4C and Channel 5, all have the ability to do things in the future that will inform, educate and entertain us. Only they can and will do that.
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