The BBC cannot afford any more scandals
Patience is wearing thin with the BBC’s funding model and self-regarding editorial preciousness.
Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Huw Edwards, Stuart Hall, Greg Wallace, Tim Westwood, Russell Brand, Jermaine Jenas, bullies and gropers on Strictly Come Dancing.
Every organisation has its rotten apples. Show business is sometimes dirty business. The BBC is the oldest and largest national broadcaster in the world – with some 22,000 employees.
All the same that is an exceptionally long roll of dishonour of on-screen talent associated with unacceptable behaviour or worse. You do begin to wonder… can the licence fee-funded BBC go on like this?
The BBC was eventually stung into action when its chief TV news anchor Huw Edwards was accused of misconduct and subsequently convicted and placed on the sex offenders register. Grahame Russell of Change Associates was called in to investigate what kept going wrong.
The management consultant has concluded: move along, not much to see here. In a 62-page report he declares, in BOLD type, The BBC does not have a toxic culture.
Russell says there are just “a minority of people who behave unacceptably and whose behaviour is not addressed”. Well yes, that was rather what he was supposed to be looking into. Still Samir Shah, the BBC Chairman, was satisfied. He drew “a line in the sand” and promised those who step over it in future will be dealt with firmly.
It is a very-BBC, very-W1A, way of dealing with a crisis. Spend over a million pounds worth of licence fees on a bland report. Russell’s report may be underwhelming but nobody can accuse him of not being thorough. His team spoke to an incredible 2,500 people who work at the BBC.
Predictably, and quite rightly in the first instance, he points the finger of blame at the best-known malefactors or, as he puts it, “what we used to call 'talent'”. Singling out this allegedly “highly paid” elite for attack will strike a popular chord.
It is not an explanation of why so many offenders have been harboured so often in the same organisation. The BBC should look deeper into itself as an institution - could there be something rotten at its organisational heart which has nurtured so much errant “talent”?
On a day-to-day basis, the BBC is accountable only to itself – not to its audience, to the licence payers, to the markets or to the government. That has helped it grow into perhaps the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world. It is has also left it prone to arrogance and self-exculpation. When crisis strikes Auntie finds she has few real friends left.
The BBC is not a business. Its guaranteed income relieves it from commercial pressure. This allows it to take creative risks. It also means that it does not respond rapidly when something goes wrong. Its reflex action is defensive, outraged at supposedly politically motivated attacks on its stars rather than dumping them. Edwards, for example, was paid for months after he was suspended.
To do its job properly, the BBC needs to be independent of the government. But every so often parliament has to approve and facilitate the funding system on which it depends. The licence fee brings in some £3.76 billion annually, two thirds of the corporation’s total revenue.
The licence fee is not a tax, controlled directly by the Treasury. Inevitably this rankles with politicians of all colours, who accuse the BBC of partisanship and who mostly think they should be shown more respect because they hold the purse strings and potentially an axe - every ten years when the BBC’s Royal Charter must be renewed.
Samir Shah complains that it is “really odd” that the BBC should face the existential challenge of charter renewal once a decade. He would like the corporations to be established on a permanent basis. That would require politicians either to abandon forever what sway they have over the BBC or to take total control of it. It is not going to happen. In the UK, the whole ecology of broadcasting has been set by acts of parliament, starting with the creation of the original BBC monopoly.
So Chairman Shah, BBC Director General Tim Davie and their teams of executives instead face the inconvenience of negotiating a new charter to keep going after the present one expires on 31 December 2027.
The Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has fired the first shot from the government side, telling The Daily Telegraph that the licence fee, the BBC’s life blood, is “problematic” and “unenforceable”. She chose her audience well. In an online straw poll, 86% of Telegraph readers wanted the licence fee abolished.
Nandy’s Labour principles are offended because it is a regressive “flat tax” of £174.50 for all TV households including the poorest – except those which only have a black and white "set" and pay less.
Worse, the law enforces the licence fee. Women account for three quarters of the 114,000 people prosecuted for non-payment in a typical year – and consequently, and absurdly, licenced non-payers make up almost a third of the female prison population.
An estimated 80% of homes pay the licence fee. The previous Conservative government toyed with de-criminalising non-payment before rejecting it. Ministers reckoned civil penalties would ultimately cost offenders more. Revenues would also slump because many more people might decide to risk it.
Sir Keir Starmer’s government is committed to the present licence system, and even approved annual increases in line with inflation. Renewal after 2027 is another matter.
Digital technology makes it a harder sell. Fewer people are accessing BBC content on the TV sets for which a licence is required.
The BBC is unique but, as a programme maker, it gets less so every day. There is much more competition from other providers including Netflix, Disney +, Sky and Apple TV. They mostly charge subscriptions.
Nandy has said subscription could be a possible model for funding the BBC. It would destroy its “something for everyone”, free-to-air Public Service Broadcaster model – and most likely result in significant reductions in total revenue and programming.
The minister says there is no question of the BBC being funded directly from taxation. BBC chiefs have already ruled out subscription and turning to advertising. That is also vehemently opposed by the other “public service” broadcasters – ITV, Channel 4 and 5 – who depend on adverts for their income.
Of the options laid out for MPs by House of Commons researchers, that leaves three: replacing the licence with an automatic levy on every household, levies on the private sector in the digital and audio-visual spheres or funding through donations.
A levy on every household would be vulnerable to political manipulation. Everyone would have to pay whether they consumed the BBC or not.
Getting the BBC’s competitors to pay for the BBC might be popular with the public but it would lead to consumers paying higher prices and could be seen as unfair and anti-competitive.
Private and corporate donations are essential to National Public Radio the Public Broadcasting System in the US. NPR and PBS are small-time operators compared to the BBC and still need government support - though not for much longer if the Trump administration gets its way.
Whenever the BBC is short of money, it foolishly acts out the famous MAD Magazine cover: “If you don’t buy this magazine, we will shoot this dog”. The trouble is that when extra cash is not forthcoming it pulls the trigger, slashing the world service or regional and news coverage – which many consider their most important and exceptional activities.
Patience is wearing thin with the BBC’s funding model and its self-regarding editorial preciousness. Lines in the sand are washed away by the next incoming tide. With its future in the balance the corporation cannot afford any more scandals.
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