The Death of Public Broadcasting

By Nicholas Ward

With Boris Johnson’s (unrepresentative) landslide election victory the UK is preparing for Brexit celebration and despair, and in this jubilation, Johnson is moving ahead with plans to scrap TV licencing fees.

TV licencing fees are a controversial tax in the United Kingdom. If you own a television, you are supposed to pay it. But as it is a ‘fee’ rather than part of income tax it is deeply unpopular.

The BBC has never helped its popularity with heavy handed enforcement of the fee including Orwellian monitoring vans prowling the streets able to detect people dodging their fees and issuing them with heavy fines.

British tabloids and Murdoch owned papers have long had headlines decrying when poverty stricken single mothers and pensioners are sued for non-payment.

Murdoch has never hidden his absolute hatred for the BBC. His age has done little to soften his stance and his various papers and tabloids still regularly rail against the BBC as leftist with whatever colourful adjectives his editors can come up with.

While the licencing fee is long overdue for an overhaul (or scrapping). It exists for a simple reason. To fund the BBC.

Unlike in Australia the BBC is not funded by tax revenue instead it receives much of its funding from this fee.

When the fee was first introduced it was a means of maintaining editorial independence. And as Television were a luxury only paid by those wealthy households that could afford them.

Johnsons plans to scrap the licensing fees however are conspicuously missing plans to replace that income with government funding.

One of the first acts of Johnsons new government was not to focus on Brexit but rather to push through a requirement for the BBC to exempt over 75’s from their fees.

A noble gesture but for one thing. Over 75s weren’t paying their fees as they were already fully subsidised by the government. Through this one seemingly innocuous act the Conservatives have pushed the financial burden off the government and onto the BBC.

Many critics fear that he is attempting to commercialise the BBC.

The BBC is however safe until 2027 when its budget comes up for review however Johnson and the Conservatives have shown they are more than capable of getting around this.