I applaud Jeremy Hunt's signal that there is to be a reduction in the amount of money that the BBC is able to demand a amount from those who own televisions capable of receiving signals (whether they use them to watch the BBC or not). To my knowledge, regardless of economic conditions the licence fee has only ever gone up since it was introduced - also regardless of the fact that during the lifetime of the state broadcaster there has been a proliferation of provision that really, to my mind, makes the BBC tax an anachronism in the first place.
I think that the claims being made on the BBC's behalf (and widely broadcast by, ahem, the BBC) that the licence fee should be exempt are absurd. Those responsible for every other aspect of public life are required to make serious cuts in their budgets - who could possibly maintain in a plausible way that the BBC is uniquely different from everything else? And if anyone can make that argument, could they please try, rather than just blustering away about the supposed "quality" of output from the BBC, which is a notion that is - to my mind - open to serious challenge?
Having listened to Radio 4's PM Programme today, it is evident that the BBC's fascination with itself continues, along with a remarkable determination to drive up the news agenda the notion that the money it receives from us should be protected. The show had two uncritically pro-status quo advocates who got to make their statements entirely without rebuttal, and then the great John Whittingdale, who - as he stuck up for the proposition that perhaps the BBC might have to be treated like everything else - was inevitably grilled.
This is a narrow economic part of a wider debate about the future of our state broadcaster, and the those who maintain that the BBC's position should go unchanged look even more ridiculous than usual as a result of that narrowness. Consider the wider issues for a moment. Given the success of the market in providing broadcast content in... well, everywhere else, I question whether we need to have a state-funded broadcaster at all. Just try explaining to a friend from abroad that we have to pay this cash for our state broadcaster if you want to see how silly it is. Moreover, I think it a severe limitation of freedom of speech and expression in this country that, in order for me to receive the message of commercial broadcasters who wish me to receive that, for free (paid for by their advertising), I have to subsidise a different set of stations. I don't know why the BBC has this uniquely protected position, even within the world of the arts. Imagine if it existed in, say, the theatre; imagine that if you went to the box office and asked for tickets to La Boheme, you were told that you had to pay a fee to subsidise Cats at the theatre next door. "No!" you'd cry. "But it's a uniquely good cultural product," you'd be told. "I'm not going to see it!" says you. "Tough - pay anyway, or you can't go to the theatre - oh, and I know where you live - it's all in the database." Finally, I resent being forced to subsidise the propagation of a worldview and political agenda with which I disagree, given that I question the supposed political impartiality of the BBC - no, worse, I think that the BBC - which given its funding structure should be the most impartial of our broadcasters - is in fact the least. But perhaps all of that's a debate for the longer term. In the meantime, the BBC should certainly not be exempt from the general round of belt-tightening caused by Labour's absurd largesse.
