THE BBC have been urged to axe the ‘anachronistic’ TV licence fee by the Government’s financial watchdog, the National Audit Office. You may have seen the newspaper headlines responding to it, from the Express‘s ‘BBC BOMBSHELL: Corporation’s falling figures pose risk to licence fee’ to the BBC’s own muted comment: ‘BBC faces “financial risk” over licence fee income, watchdog says’.
The startling news was the dramatic drop in TV licence sales, by 250,000 in the past year alone. The NAO charitably put this down to ‘evasion and younger viewers’ preference for streaming services’. It would be interesting to know whether they considered another more significant reason for the once-loyal BBC audience dropping away – amongst the older age groups it is surely also due to viewers’ dismay at both its bias and determined #woke culture. I wonder how many have switched off and walked away in disgust, preferring to get their information, education and entertainment from elsewhere, while the BBC persist in pandering to a youth audience that in this social media age they have no chance at all of capturing.
Now they really have nowhere to hide. Falling licence fee revenue on top of a falling audience share means their financial model is no longer feasible. The NAO’s report criticises the BBC for being ‘slow to change’ and adjures them to adapt to changing viewer behaviour.
I would have thought that adapting to the views and values of the demographic who do still want to watch a national broadcaster was far more to the point.
