Facing an exodus of licence fee payers and calls for a boycott, the BBC is teetering on the brink of an existential crisis, says James Warrington in the Telegraph. Here’s how his article begins:
Tim Davie, the BBC Director General, was candid this week about the scale of the financial challenges facing the public service broadcaster.
Speaking ahead of the publication of the BBC’s annual report on Tuesday, Davie said: “We have been working extremely hard to get a budget that balances. The market for content is inflating rapidly … We’ve got all kinds of cost pressures.”
Those pressures were evident in the BBC’s latest financial results, which showed an £80 million drop in licence fee revenues – the broadcaster’s main source of income – to £3.7 billion.
This was driven in part by a Government-imposed freeze on the licence fee. More worryingly for the BBC, though, the number of households paying the levy dropped by half a million to 23.9 million – an acceleration from the previous year’s decline.
For executives in W1A, the exodus of paying viewers is nothing short of an existential crisis.
The decline has been fuelled by calls for a boycott of the licence fee, with campaign groups such as the Taxpayers’ Alliance branding the household levy “archaic and unfair”.
Another campaign, calling itself Defund the BBC, has raised concerns about wasteful spending and alleged bias in the broadcaster’s output, as well as its aggressive prosecution of licence fee non-payment, which disproportionately affects women and poorer people.
Patrick Barwise, author of The War Against the BBC, compares the increase in licence fee dodgers to the epidemic of middle-class shoplifting. “This is people freeriding on the basis that they think they can get away with it,” he says.
Yet there is a more fundamental shift that the corporation must contend with. Audiences – especially younger ones – increasingly feel they can do without the BBC’s output.
The BBC is used by 69% of Britons under 16 each week. That’s down from 72% the previous year and puts the broadcaster behind YouTube and Netflix. The declines for children under seven are even more acute.
Even BBC Sounds – a cornerstone of the corporation’s efforts to reach younger audiences – is struggling to gain traction. The number of 16 to 34 year-olds using the streaming service slipped to 585,000 last year, behind a target of at least 600,000.
Instead, younger viewers are turning to video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. The BBC’s research found more under-35s watched global streaming services on average per week than U.K. broadcasters.
Worth reading in full.
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Much as I would like this to be true, the BBC can survive on donations from the EU and all the usual globalist suspects to spread their propaganda across the World not the licence payers.
Then it would be impossible to claim any kind of impartiality without attracting the most unwelcome mockery and even more people refusing to pay the propaganda tax.
“Tim Davie, the BBC Director General, was candid this week about the scale of the financial challenges facing the public service broadcaster.”
It isn’t that big of a problem because he still sanctioned inflation busting pay rises for the roster of already grossly overpaid “talent” headed by chief turd, Gravy Lineker.
The perv Huw Edwards, who thankfully was dismissed, was given a £40k pay rise on top of his £445k salary despite only working three out of his last twelve months on contract. If that isn’t shitting on the captive client base I don’t know what is.
Tim Davie is a traitor, with a psychopathic contempt for his viewers no ifs, no buts.
I like the growing practice of putting an italicized quote at the head of a comment. Actually, I think it was me that started it.
I have always used quotation marks and italisation when using the words of others. Rest assured I have not copied from you. I have my own way of posting and am unlikely to be influenced by fellow posters.
Love this! Well put, especially reference to the chief turd…Gravy Lineker
Many thanks Vax Free.
“…epidemic of middle-class shoplifting. “This is people freeriding on the basis that they think they can get away with it,” he says.”
Clarification: it is a ‘licence’ not a subscription – BBC Licence fee… clue in the name.
It always was and is a licence to own and operate a receiver of broadcasts via the radio spectrum, no matter the emitter, whether BBC, ITV or any other.
It has recently been expanded to cover any live broadcasts via internet or cellular network.
Therefore even if you do not watch any BBC output, you still have to pay the BBC. This is an uncontestable monopoly. Politicians rage against monopolies unless it is they who are running them, like the BBC and NHS for example.
When no other third party supplier can compete with another market dominating enterprise for your money, then that other enterprise is an incontestable monopoly. Normally in the private sector market dominant enterprises are susceptible to competitors, but Government run or protected market dominators cannot face competition. At least with private companies you can decide not to buy their product, but with Government monopolies even if you don’t use them, you still have to pay them. That’s extortion.
To call those who don’t want to watch BBC output and don’t think they should pay, ‘free-riders’ is disingenuous and grossly misleading.
The solution is obvious. Either the BBC should accept advertising to raise revenue, or if that is not to Aunty’s taste, encrypt the broadcasts and introduce subscriptions like other broadcasters and streaming companies.
Those operating the BBC don’t want this because then they will have to broadcast what consumers want to watch, not what they themselves want to broadcast, and won’t get their fabulous wages.
A quality post.👍
“Therefore even if you do not watch any BBC output, you still have to pay the BBC”
No you don’t. Just stop watching live TV. Simple.
Sadly, is it not the case that if you have a device capable of receiving BBC then you must have a licence irrespective of whether or not you actually watch it?
No, it’s only if you watch or record live TV or use iPlayer that you need a licence.
If you don’t have a licence and don’t tell them you don’t need one, expect a monthly letter which escalates in threat each month then….relax as it resets and starts escalating again using the same wording. If they send someone round, photograph them: they leave quick enough.
If you sent letters like this to an MP, the police would give you a visit.
I ignore all correspondence from them, as it then costs them even more money to chase someone who has no intention of ever paying the TV licence again…and it speeds their hopeful long term destruction. To be honest, I don’t miss live TV at all anyway but it is a ridiculous situation that people need to pay for something they don’t even use or actively dislike. When they started charging over 75s was the last straw for me.
Absolutely agree.
Well said.
And if it were the case, where is the justification for THAT?
Or, simply don’t pay the fee, carry on as normal and donate the monies saved to your favourite libertarian organisation. Don’t pay, don’t tell!
The BBC does advertising abroad and on UKTV – it owns Dave, etc. It does internet subscriptions via BritBox. You don’t need a licence to watch catch-up over the internet. They apparently opposed adding encryption to the Freeview standard to preserve the licence fee.
Well summed up sir…they know much of what they broadcast is left wing woke drivel that nobody is interested in, so if they went subscription, much of their revenue would be lost. They are a broken institution that robs our poor and elderly to feed their activist gravy train – I defunded them 4 years ago and now give most of that to X to help protect free speech, the polar opposite of what the BBC promotes – I sleep well at night.
“The BBC should accept advertising” but that would only be from advertisers signed up to ESG. The woke activists would kick up the usual almighty stink if adverts from any company or source had any connection to anything the woke’s didn’t like eg fossil fuels. —–Pretty much like what happens with GB News where anyone daring to advertise on the channel is attacked so that it is mostly not worth the bother. On the other hand the BBC might find it very useful to accept advertising as they can fill the advert spaces up with ads for heat pumps, solar panels, EV’s etc etc.
Whitehall and all establishment political parties appear to regard the BBC as an integral part of the governance of the UK and as such will never willingly remove the licence fee – only the non-payment by millions of people can do that.
Not only is the comparison with shoplifters ‘disingenuous & grossly misleading’, it is a scandalous insult to people who hate the BBC Leftist liars & propagandists and would not watch this channel if it were the sole remaining one available.
Why, in a sane country, should people be FORCED to pay through the nose for something they choose not to watch for reasons of distaste and/or strong disapproval? It’s like living in the former communist East Germany.
I hope everyone who learns of this egregious man’s comments comparing refuseniks to criminals stops paying the TV robbery tax and lands him with an even bigger shortfall in the loadsa money he needs to shower ridiculous salaries on turds such as Leftard Lineker & Sex Creep Huw Edwards.
One problem with the BBC (there are too many to enumerate) is that it USED to be the only TV channel in the UK until ITV appeared on the scene circa 1955. They have never got over the sense of self-importance this imbued in their collective psyche, and actually believe that they are indispensable to the nation.
I cannot wait for the day on which this outdated and ANTI-British organisation collapses like a house of cards.
Off-T
Phoebe and Anna, the two ugly bints guilty of throwing paint over Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ have been told to expect jail time when sentenced.
Fifteen to twenty should cover it.
Marvellous news. 😀😀😀👍
https://www.upday.com/uk/two-just-stop-oil-activists-guilty-of-criminal-damage-after-throwing-soup-on-van-goghs-sunflowers?utm_source=upday&utm_medium=referral
I wouldn’t pay £15-£20 for van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’.
Er. What constitutes ‘bundling’ in this context? Did they have to be lifted in? Were they resisting arrest? My guess is they were actually just told to get in and sit down.
Maybe they needed a shove in the back to move them along, just as the wimpy police SHOULD have done when they were illegally blocking the monarch’s highway. Instead, the fuzz brought them hot drinks until members of the public started weighing in and doing their job for them. Pathetic.
Why are we waiting 2 months to sentence them? I smell a rat.
Perhaps Kneel hasn’t made enough space within the prison “community”🤔
I take your point though. Mind you it should keep their bottoms twitching as the big day looms.
Ugly bints, yes. Very well put.
Not forgetting the ones who tried to damage the Magna Carta.
They were silly old bints. Dementia?
Dear Mr Davie,
If you’re reading this…
How about a return to journalism?
Yours sincerely,
MAk
PS If you need to be told what the BBC has been doing in the meantime, then you’ve already lost.
Those pressures were evident in the BBC’s latest financial results, which showed an £80 million drop in licence fee revenues – the broadcaster’s main source of income – to £3.7 billion.‘This was driven in part by a Government-imposed freeze on the licence fee.’
Keeping the fee unchanged cannot, obviously, result in lower revenues. Grade E for maths then.
£3.7bn / £169.50 ~= 21.8m licences
So ~6.6m households don’t receive broadcast media. Shouldn’t take too long to check 🙂
Anyone who works for the BBC can’t help talking bollox.
Surely Mr Barwise is not suggesting that these people are doing something illegal? That sounds like defamation to me. I find it upsetting that he has assumed a whole group are criminals – it’s the sort of violence in words comment that makes me feel unsafe.
If they don’t receive live broadcast then they don’t need the licence. If he can prove they are receiving live broadcast media illegally then he should present the evidence – for each one of the extra half million people who have stopped paying in the last year.
No one should pay the BBC license fee.
The BBC’s right to levy this universal tax is conditional on its compliance with its charter obligation of impartiality. It is required by law to be an even-handed national broadcaster not a partisan state broadcaster.
The BBC for 20 years now has operated flagrantly in breach of its charter obligation about the issue of climate change. The BBC has simply not allowed the non-alarmist case to be aired.
It has offended and repulsed the majority of the British public with its promotion of and proselytizing for homosexuality.
During the so-called pandemic the BBC functioned as a propaganda arm for the government, and a mafia-heavy for the jab scammers. It brazenly lied to the British public about the dangers of the rebranded flu known as covid.
Spot on sir – I defunded them 4 years ago, one of my best decisions…I spend most of the savings on an X account and a membership of the free speech union – the polar opposite of what the broken BBC promote.
Yes great points that they are not keeping in line with their remit to be impartial, therefore just as we would have the right to cancel a piece of furniture if it was broken when it was delivered, so too we should have the right to cancel the broken BBC. What used to be “Auntie” has morphed into the “Ugly Sisters”.
The BBC is a dinosaur of public broadcasting. The diversity, success and quality of youtube “amateur ” productions is obvious to all except those managing the BBC. Attenborough is paid £3000 / minute is a classic illustration of the outdated mentality that exists within this organisation.
No surprises here. The BBC is well past its sell by date. I nor any of my friends pay the TV tax. My fear is that government will do away with the licence and fund the BBC from general taxation, making the BBC an organ of the state, not that it isn’t already.
The BBC should:
With its current funding stream, it doesn’t have to compete with other channels, it should do less, but do it well.
Good points, BUT it should be defunded from every source until it agrees to drop ‘British’ from its name. The overprivileged, self-regarding mob who now run the channel are like an overblown balloon that needs a good pricking to lower its high level of unearned self-esteem.
‘British’ it is NOT and using that name breaches the Trades Description Act. They still venerate the EU and take its filthy money as they did while propagandising for Remain.
Another reason why so many are turning away from the BBC is their shameful pushing of the Government narrative during the Scamdemic and the pushing of vaccines. Its clear ‘Cherry-picking’ biased journalism during that time alerted people to their lies.
Now we have the constant pushing of the ‘climate crisis’ and the lurid recolouring of the weather maps. Even the most loyal listeners are smelling a rat. And it’s pretty clear to anyone listening which side of politics they are on…. My eyes have been opened since 2020 and beloved “Auntie” is revealed as just another greedy corporate willing to do whatever the Government dictates.
We stopped paying the BBC tax several years ago, we don’t watch live TV and don’t miss it at all. I’m surprised the BBC has lasted this long to be honest – its no longer an entertainment media but has become a propaganda media!