BBC says ‘irreversible’ trends mean it will not survive without major overhaul

[Michael Savage in the Guardian]

I hold three potentially-conflicting opinions about the BBC at once:

• The license fee is a regressive tax that is punitive for lower-income people and needs to be overhauled
• While it’s supposed to be independent and representative, its news coverage has sometimes fallen short of this standard
• It is a treasure and must be protected at all costs

Every British household that watches live content is supposed to pay £169.50 (around $225) a year. That’s more than many streaming services — although you arguably get a lot more for your money, considering the plethora of local coverage, stations, and other programs that the BBC supports. It doesn’t represent all of its income, but it accounts for most of it.

“In its opening response to government talks over its future, the corporation said 94% of people in the UK continued to use the BBC each month, but fewer than 80% of households contributed to the license fee.”

Because more households are moving to on-demand instead of live — except, perhaps, for sports and some rare but high-profile events — license fee revenue has fallen. It’s interesting to think about what it would take to reform this funding structure to preserve public service broadcasting in the UK.

There’s also an elephant in the room, which is the intentional gutting of public service broadcasting here in the US. How could the British ecosystem be inoculated — or at least strengthened — against that kind of threat from a future government?

I’m not sure that turning it into a “Netflix for British TV” is the right answer. What might it look like to take a more open approach and turn the BBC into something that doesn’t copy any private company’s business model but is something truly new that meets public service media needs in the 21st century? Could it be more of an operating system that supports new experimentation and different kinds of media? How might it be more radically collaborative and representative in ways that private broadcasters aren’t able to achieve? There’s a lot to talk about.

[Link]