Will Holly take the top spot from Gary?

Sources at the BBC have told The Mail on Sunday that the corporation is offering ITV star Holly Willoughby “a seven-figure pay packet” to present a reality show, plus other Saturday night programmes “of a Generation Game nature”, for the BBC.

The public will doubtless be all agog - if this comes to pass - to see if her “seven-figure pay packet” is bigger than Gary Lineker's “seven-figure pay packet”. For if there's one thing the British public loves it's BBC profligacy with their money.

Anyhow, were I a tabloid journalist I'd already have my headline 'Didn't she do well?' squirreled away for future use, just in case.

“Jesus, these letters! A loan shark would be more polite”

Charlotte Gill, a producer at GB News, isn't happy with the BBC:

• I’m not anti-Beeb. But why do I need to call them before their investigation escalates? (For a flat I moved out of). I don’t have a TV. Why do I have to waste 20 minutes telling them that? And getting written warnings. The default should be leave people alone.

• Jesus, these letters! A loan shark would be more polite.

• The tone is just utterly inappropriate. Someone who doesn’t even watch tv will be threatened every time they open post! I will collect them to sell to future historians.

"This licence fee announcement will be the last. The days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors are over"

Shippers & Co. at The Sunday Times tell us that Boris is trying to "save his tottering premiership" through "a series of populist announcements", including:

•Freeze the BBC licence fee for two years to help the cost of living.

And this morning Nadine Dorries has indeed announced a two-year freeze on the licence fee that the Mail on Sunday says, "with anticipated inflation rises, means the BBC will need to find savings of circa £2billion". And the Culture Secretary has  just tweeted:

This licence fee announcement will be the last. The days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors are over. Time now to discuss and debate new ways of funding, supporting and selling great British content.

Blog favourite Rob Burley, ex of the BBC, probably sums up the BBC supporter's view today:

• Part of “operation red meat” - distract from partygate by effectively cutting BBC funding again. This will mean services will have to be cut, staff in news and elsewhere will be lost, more mistakes will be made. Short-sighted doesn’t cover it.
• Also in the Times today, I post to pre-empt the defunders who will pointlessly clog up my timeline. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean the public don’t support the BBC.

And in response to Nadine's tweet, Rob simply wrote:

• Oh great.

Things are moving. Pro-BBC Twitter is already up in arms.

Whither [or wither] the licence fee?

It was always one of the arguments in favour of the BBC being uniquely funded by the licence fee that only the BBC could produce in quantity the kind of high-quality arts programmes and documentaries that that their crowd-pleasing commercial rivals were reluctant to make. It was called 'public service broadcasting'.

 

The decision to turn BBC Four into repeats channel was just one sign that this argument has been breaking down, and it was reported a week ago, that Mark Bell, arts commissioning editor for the BBC, has explicitly rejected such esoteric programmes in favour of “TV that people want to watch” and “find things that will play at 8pm and appeal to all sorts of broader audiences”.

Now, as Charlie notes on the open thread, Ofcom is reporting that the BBC has cut its original arts programming by half in the past decade [from 305 hours ten years ago to 154 hours last year], its history programmes by more than a quarter [from 814 hours to 595 hours], its music programmes by three-fifths [from 239 to 93 hours], and its original children's programming by two-fifths [from 705 hours to 437 hours]. 

In other words, the BBC has become dramatically less of a public service broadcaster over the last decade. So what's the justification for the licence fee now - especially when many of their commercial rivals are producing superb arts programmes and documentaries?

Sir David Clementi's Last Stand

Nebuchadnezzar (Blake)

The outgoing BBC chairman Sir David Clementi has risked ridicule by using a very small-scale internal BBC study of 70 households carried out 6 years ago - before Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services had become fixtures in so many British homes - to allege that most people "cannot cope" without the BBC, whatever people he calls "professional detractors" and "right-wing thinkers" may say. 

After just 9 days of BBC deprivation two-thirds of the BBC licence fee sceptics in the study underwent a 180° change of heart, saying they couldn't live without the wonderful BBC and expressing the belief that the licence fee is worth every last penny. 

H'm. 

I wonder how that ever-growing number of people who have rejected the wonders of the BBC and cancelled their licence fees are faring. 

Are they all at their wit's end and eating grass? I very much doubt it. 

Shades of 2009....

According to The Mail on Sunday, Labour's shadow business secretary Lucy Powell claimed her BBC TV licence on parliamentary expenses, thus charging it to us taxpayers. 

I think the very words Ms Powell began a tweet with yesterday might be appropriate here: This will, rightly, anger many. 

A mass revolt against the BBC licence fee?

It was always going to be interesting to see how many over-75s would willingly pay for the BBC licence fee after the corporation welched on its deal with the Government to maintain the universal exception, and it turns out that more than a million people aged over 75 still haven't done so, “indicating a mass revolt against the compulsory charge" according to Matthew Moore of The Times. 

Though 2.7 million licences have been bought, on top of the 'more than a million people' who haven't take it up a further 750,000 on lower incomes have applied to continue receiving it free. 

Though the BBC must have breathed a sigh of relief this week at the Government's sharp pulling-back over decriminalising the licence fee, people are clearly taking matters into their own hands, and it's still not looking good for the BBC. 

Offski

 

“To lose one licence-fee-paying household, Mr. Davie, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose 450,000 looks like carelessness.” 

So said Oscar Wilde on reading the latest from the National Audit Office. 

Between 2017-18 and 2019-20 almost 450,000 fewer non-over-75 households bought TV licences and TV licence sales as a whole have fallen by 250,000 in the past year alone due to evasion and younger viewers’ preference for streaming services. 

It's not looking good for the BBC. 

Sources

Don't open the champagne yet!

Andrew Neil sums up today's lead story in The Times as, "Hilarious! PM moves to protect BBC from his own government". 

It's all about those "sources" again. There are two of them in this latest article. One says, “The PM is not as gung ho on the licence fee as Dom. With Dom it’s ideological — he believes the licence fee should be scrapped. With the PM it’s more reform than revolution,” while the other one says that Boris is personally “cool” on the idea of scrapping the licence fee. 

Much less confusing is John Whittingdale telling The Critic: “There are large parts of the country that haven’t got broadband or indeed choose not to pay for it. You are turning round to all those households that don’t have fast broadband and saying, ‘You can’t get the BBC any more.’ Politically that would be utterly impossible. It is just not possible to make the BBC a voluntary subscription service for as long as it is broadcast on Freeview. We are some way off being able to switch off Freeview and put it all online.”

Meanwhile, the BBC and its allies, including The Guardian and plenty of celebrities, are on manoeuvres. From Labour to the Conservatives, the various posses of the corporation's political friends are also riding to its rescue, all guns blazing. As you've been noting in the comments, even its supposed political critics - Lord Adonis, Alastair Campbell & Co. - have given up their cynical pretence of being anti-BBC and are manning the barricades for 'the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation'. The war is far from over.

"Mission: attack"

It looks as if Dominic Cummings is "not bluffing". 

Tim Shipman of The Sunday Times has been told by "senior aides" to the Prime Minister that Downing Street is determined that the licence fee will be scrapped and the BBC turned into a subscription service. The BBC will be "pruned" and forced to sell off most of its 61 radio stations, with Radio 3 and Radio 4 preserved and protected. The BBC website will be scaled back, the BBC's TV channels reduced in number from the present ten, more money invested in the World Service, and BBC stars banned from "cashing in with lucrative second jobs". 

John Whittingdale will return to the Government to lead the charge, which "one source" described as "Mission: attack". 

"The PM is firmly of the view that there needs to be serious reform. He is really strident on this", a "source" says. 

Batten down the hatches, BBC!

129,446

Also from that Daily Telegraph piece: 

129,446 people were prosecuted for not having a licence in 2018, and over 18,000 people under the age of 20 have been prosecuted in the past five years.

Happy Brexit! (Open Thread)

Lord Hall departing; 450 BBC journalists being cut; the Government apparently beginning a consulation on decriminalising the BBC licence fee as early as next week; Sarah Sands exiting Today, pursued by a bear; Conservative MP Julian Knight (who opposes the BBC licence and wants a review of the BBC's impartiality rules) replacing pro-BBC Damian Collins at chairman of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee; Rupert Murdoch planning a rival to Radio 4 - it's been quite a January for the BBC!

BBC licence fee rises

The BBC is going up by £3 in April, rising to £157.50 - just in time for all those over-75-year-olds to start paying it in June.

Update - And some thoughts thereon:

Patrick O'Flynn: OK, which one of you has got a double agent into the Beeb? Better tell them to tone it down as they are going to get uncovered very quickly by punting self-harming ideas like this.

Allison Pearson: Slightly Kamikaze timing?

Patrick O'Flynn: Yes, they seem to have no idea what non-bubble dwellers are thinking at the moment.

Is the BBC licence fee a sinking ship?

Blimey! Old Twinkle Toes himself, John Sergeant, has come out against the BBC licence fee:

The case for the licence fee, a form of poll tax, has been steadily eroded by the arrival of a multitude of competitors. It’s hard to see how the BBC can last in its present form for much longer. It is time to think of different ways of paying for BBC programmes, whether it be some form of payment by subscription, as well as programme sponsorship, if not a move towards advertising in general.

Even more astonishingly, so has Gary Lineker: 

The licence fee is our fundamental problem. You’re forced to pay it if you want a TV, and therefore it’s a tax. The public pay our salaries, so everyone is a target. I would make the licence fee voluntary. I’ve always said for a long time, I would make it voluntary. I don’t know the logistics of how it would work. You would lose some people, but at the same time you’d up the price a bit. It’s the price of a cup of coffee a week at the moment. If you put it up you could help older people, or those that can’t afford it.

Breathing Toryscepticism

The Daily Mail is accusing the BBC of "bullying" in pursuit of "its licence-fee billions". 

We already knew (though it's still a startling figure) that the BBC's legal actions over non-payment of the licence fee account for one in ten of all magistrate hearings, but the Mail says it also accounts for a third of criminal cases brought against women. (One for Woman's Hour?)

Meanwhile, in The Times, an admirer of the BBC, Trevor Phillips, is now calling for licence fee reform.

He thinks the BBC is "digging its own grave" as "it breathes Toryscepticism".

He's also deeply concerned about the corporation's "increasingly “woke” behaviour". He thinks that's "endangering the central justification for special treatment, which is its universal reach".

I suspect the BBC won't have enjoyed being criticised by Trevor Phillips. 

Iain's concluding paragraph

Finally:

The BBC cannot afford to continue the way it is. The media landscape is shifting beneath its feet, and viewers and listeners will not put up with this behaviour indefinitely. Will it adapt to the times and realise the scale of its failures? Might it even be proactive and put forward its own proposals to replace the outdated licence fee, before the Government gets there first? I won’t hold my breath.

There's much more in the article too, so please read it in full.

Interesting times

The Sunday Telegraph's political editor Edward Malnick writes that "Downing Street has decided to impose an effective boycott of Radio 4's flagship news programme" - i.e. Today - "over allegations of pro-Remain bias". If enforced, that would be quite something.

His report also says that "Boris Johnson has ordered his aides to launch an urgent review into decriminalising the BBC licence fee". That would also be quite something.

Interesting times for the BBC.

A burning issue

Anti-Brexit/Anti-Boris academic Imke Henkel of the University of Lincoln tweeted the following a few hours ago: 

Just a reminder - after threats this morning were repeated by members of incoming government party to scrap the license fee - because they didn't like how the BBC reported the election campaign. Will this government attack media freedom?

Guess who replied to that? Yes, the BBC's John Simpson: 

I suspect Channel 4 and the BBC will now be in for a very tough time. 

And he's continued this evening by demonstrating the very kind of flawed impartiality that's got Channel 4 and the BBC into such hot water this election: 

In 1979, as she entered No 10, Mrs Thatcher prayed that she would bring harmony. In 2019 Johnson says he wants to be PM of all the people. The difference between them? Mrs T had a burning ideology; BJ has a burning ambition. 

Bitter, John? 

Source says

According to Buzzfeed's Alex Wickham:

Dominic Cummings and senior No10 aides have drawn up plans over the last few weeks re BBC licence fee. They are looking either abolishing it entirely or decriminalising non payment. Source says they want to relieve burden on justice system of chasing people who don’t pay. Tories pointing to the famous statistic that around 1 in 10 cases at magistrates courts are re the TV licence: 

— in 2013 nearly 200,000 were prosecuted. 

— 7 in 10 of those prosecuted were women. 

— 30 people a year jailed.

 — Tories say time/money better spent on more serious crimes.

Paul T Horgan of The Conservative Woman added:

All the prosecutions are private prosecutions conducted by Capita, paid for by the BBC. About 30 people a year are jailed for non-payment of the fines for not having a licence. The BBC refuses to disclose how much these private prosecutions actually cost.

Also sprach John Simpson

The licence fee IS the BBC. Scrap it, and the BBC as it has always existed will disappear. Every opinion poll shows that’s not what the majority of people want.

— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) December 10, 2019