BBC - how does it fight back?

[Toby brown]

TVLF comrades, most of us love and support the BBC but it's in trouble.

Opting out of the licence fee seems to be accelerating (although some of that may be offset by the creation of new homes and dwellings to an extent).

In today's Times, Julian Knight, Conservative chairman of the Commons media select committee, said it was “clear the BBC is haemorrhaging support amongst a significant proportion of the British public...(I)f this trend continues, (it) could soon reach vanishing point where evasion is so widespread as to undermine faith in the TV licence system. This is fast becoming a crisis for the BBC.”

I have to agree with him.

A couple of friends of mine have stopped paying the licence fee. I have had discussions with them explaining why I think the BBC is so valuable to our cohesiveness as a nation and our soft power as a country abroad.

I would personally never stop paying the licence fee as, because there is much I dislike about the BBC, that is far outweighed by what I love about it.

So how does the BBC fight back?

If I were in charge, I would petititon the Government to sell off the radio bandwidth (including local radio) which could be catered for by commercial rivals (leaving perhaps Radio 4). As well as the one-off income boost, there would be savings of hundreds of millions of pounds per year which could then be reinvested into programming.

I would scrap BBC3 and, as much as it pains me to say in, BBC4 to free up another £100m for the type of content I describe at the end of this post. BBC Alba and S4C should be protected imo because they are indigineous minority languages crucial to the identities of their speakers and both are under threat, especially Scottish Gaelic, but I would lobby the Welsh and Scottish governments for more assistance.

Does the BBC really need to spend £350m pa on news and £100m on its online services? Could there be a cull in these departments without diminishing quality too much? Could another £150-£200m be saved from these departments?

With these actions, the BBC would save hundreds of millions of pounds per year.

I would then focus on investment in content on BBC1, 2, Cbeebies, and CBBC. I would then try to create brands for example on iPlayer where people within given demographics are more likely to easily find the content they want.

It's amazing how much we rave about the BBC for stuff like Line of Duty, Life on Mars, and event/appointment to view type programming. Let's hit the public with one new brilliant thing a week which is quality, distinctive, and unmissable.

Because, when it boils down to its essense, the BBC is loved and respected for its content. And I think that's where it has the best chance of making it relevant 100 years after its formation.

MODS - I didn't know which forum to put this in - please shift if you think fit.

If the bbc did what your suggesting it would have no future as all the services aimed at young audiences bbc three cbbc cbeebies radio 1 1xtra and Asian network would be gone. Those networks are far more important than radio 4