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SOME April Fool’s Day jokes are funny, some less so.
This year it is the BBC’s turn to take the role of jester-in-chief when it will declare on April 1 that the licence fee will rise by £10.50 a year.
Haha. Hilarious. Hold on to your sides, folks!
But wait. This is no April Fool.
This is the latest, government-sanctioned cash grab by a broadcaster already funded by us to the tune of £3.74BILLION.
Yes, you will now have to pay even more for services that many of us are using less and less (88 per cent of adults use BBC services compared to 96 per cent ten years ago).
And it will keep going up.
The new annual charge of £169.50, which comes into force on Monday, will rise with inflation until 2028.
If inflation continues to run at the 4.5 per cent recorded in February then you will be paying nearly £200 by 2028.
Aloofness and vanity
So that’s TWO HUNDRED POUNDS for news you can get elsewhere, pop songs available on ten different commercial radio stations, smarmy chat shows, lazy gameshows, Alan Bloody Sugar and an East End soap opera that has become so p*** poor only 2.2million people bothered watching it on Tuesday night.
OK, I’m being harsh.
There is, of course, some good stuff on the BBC, but when you put a gun to someone’s head and demand £200 a year for it, they will start to question whether it is actually worth it.
Is a few weeks of The Traitors (a bought-in format), Strictly (series 22 next), a biennial Planet Earth (Attenborough will be 102 in 2028) and the odd Jed Mercurio drama (six hours a year, max) really worth 20 hours of minimum-wage toil?
And for many, the soaring costs may not end there.
This week the BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, finally admitted the feather-bedded broadcaster needed to wake up and smell the Nespresso.
So from 2028 there is a chance that if you happen to earn a decent wage you could pay MORE than those who do not.
At the end of a typically long-winded speech during which he extolled the benefits of a broadcaster that even he had to admit does not have a “God-given right to exist”, came the rub.
“What of the licence fee?” the £527,000-a-year former Pepsi salesman asked, adding: “There is no doubt that the market has changed hugely since the licence fee was introduced.
“And I think it is right to ask fundamental questions about its longevity in a world that is now full of choice.”
In short, he conceded: “We will need reform.”
Exactly what the extent of that reform will be is as yet unclear — a public consultation will take place — but Davie was keen to stress it was unlikely to mean “adverts for Kellogg’s” on BBC One (a move that has hardly harmed ITV).
One thing that has reared its head though is the idea of a more “progressive” pricing around the licence fee.
And for that read: Means testing.
So from 2028 there is a chance that if you happen to earn a decent wage — and thanks to our onerous fiscal drag, around a FIFTH of taxpayers will be pulled into the £50k tax bracket by 2027 — you could pay MORE than those who do not.
Therefore, for working hard and providing a good income for your family you would be subsidising the entertainment of others.
Sound fair?
Well, it’s a big ask.
Especially when you consider that the number of “economically inactive” people in the UK is a staggering 9.2million.
Will a progressive licence fee regime mean they pay a miniscule amount . . . or even nothing at all?
The corporation, with its mantra of “inform, educate and entertain”, has become drunk on a cocktail of aloofness and vanity.
It is the kind of patronising thinking that goes to the heart of the BBC and its belief that it has been put on this earth not as a media company but as the pre-eminent force for good.
Davie’s 4,600-word speech on Tuesday was a masterclass in pomposity.
“Now we stand at a significant moment. The jeopardy is high. The future of the UK, democratically, socially and culturally, is at risk,” he warned, as if our country was a basket case and the only thing that could fix it is the BBC.
The corporation, with its mantra of “inform, educate and entertain”, has become drunk on a cocktail of aloofness and vanity.
Pampered people
Executives play god with the news and shrug off any accusations of bias.
They commission programmes solely to impress their chums at Soho Farmhouse.
And they ignore the vast swathes of the population who pay their six-figure salaries, expense accounts, limousines and business-class travel.
These pampered people need to watch their backs. Because there is a devil in the likely detail of any reform, one that could — and perhaps should — tear down the whole enterprise.
As Davie admitted in his sanctimonious sermon, a key plank of the review into the licence fee is “making sure its enforcement is fair and proportionate”.
Many… who are happy with Netflix, Apple, Disney+ et al will vote with their feet and stop paying altogether.
Decriminalising non-payment (currently around 1,000 non-payers are prosecuted a week — 70 per cent of them women — facing fines of up to £1,000) looks almost certain.
More than ten per cent of people who should be paying chose not to last year.
The BBC knows it can no longer justify strong-arming taxpayers into handing over money for something they no longer use, or can afford. And certainly not, as Davie admitted, in “a time of limitless choice and interactivity”.
Many more who are happy with Netflix, Apple, Disney+ et al will vote with their feet and stop paying altogether.
Then the 102-year-old British Broadcasting Corporation will face a very real existential threat indeed.
Auntie is on borrowed time.
