Theme: Society & Culture | Content Type: Journal article

BBC Funding: Much Ado about the Cost of a Coffee a Week

Patrick Barwise

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Nathan Dumlao

| 1 min read

BBC funding (the licence fee model and the funding level) has been turned into a big issue out of all proportion to the low financial stakes—equivalent to the cost of one takeaway coffee a week for the whole household, excluding those with free TV licences. This article first proposes and explores three possible reasons for all the fuss: that licence payers take the BBC for granted, underestimating the value they get from it; that the attacks on BBC funding are part of a wider ‘war’ against it, driven by commercial or political vested interests; and that at least some of the criticisms of the licence fee reflect genuine, although much exaggerated, disadvantages. The article then evaluates four alternative funding models: advertising, subscriptions, general taxation and a universal household levy. It argues that the best long-term model would be a flat, universal household levy, with exemptions for those least able to pay, as in Germany, with the funding level set by an independent body organised by Ofcom; and that, because the licence fee is becoming harder to sustain, this new funding model should be introduced at the start of the next BBC Charter in January 2028.

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    Patrick Barwise

    Patrick Barwise is Emeritus Professor of Management and Marketing at London Business School and Chairman of the Archive of Market and Social Research.

    Articles by Patrick Barwise
Volume 96, Issue 3

Latest Journal Issue

Volume 96, Issue 3

This issue features a collection titled 'The Intellectual and Political Legacy of David Marquand', who died in April 2024, edited by Colin Crouch, Ben Jackson and Peter Sloman. In this collection, authors including Jean Seaton, Will Hutton and Hilary Wainwright consider Marquand's legacy as a great progressive thinker, his biography of Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first prime minister, and the role of socialism for Marquand. Other articles include a commentary by Deborah Mabbett titled 'Welfare reform by numbers'; Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams on 'The Vices of Values: Matthew Goodwin and the Politics of Motivation'; Helen McCarthy on 'Why the WASPI has no Sting: Gender, Generation and Pension Inequalities'; and Sam Taylor Hill, Tariq Modood and John Denham on 'Multicultural Nationalism: Saving the White Working Class from Blue Labour?' A selection of book reviews feature Edmund Fawcett's review of 'Nationalism: A World History' by Eric Storm and Samuel Cohn's review of 'Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from the Black Death to Covid' by Sheilagh Ogilvie.

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