Buzz word

The debate about what next for the licence fee is in danger of being hi-jacked by an odd and confusing word - 'contestable'.

DG Tony Hall tries to engage with the issue this week at the Oxford Media Convention, and bits of his speech are already out and about, in which he takes on current BBC critics thus...

"Instead of saying that the licence fee is so bad that no one should have it, they have begun to suggest that the licence fee is so good that everyone should have it. They say the licence fee should be competed for and allocated to a range of providers....  What purpose would this serve? Would it make the BBC more responsive and accountable? We are not a monopoly supplier of Public Service Broadcasting. We are subject to intense competition in a market where consumers can easily switch between providers. Would contestable funding mean more choice for audiences? Audiences have never had a greater, richer amount of media choice....Fragmentation of the licence fee risks de-stabilising a broadcasting model that works. A model that is based on competition for quality – but not funding – between public and private broadcasters ".

Not, perhaps, checkmate to the DG, but a reasonable piece of castling. Lord Grade is the leading proponent of the idea that all BBC programmes except news should be made by private companies; John Birt got us on to this slippery slope in the first place, conceding the first indie quotas. In Conservative thinking, there is no point in partial pregnancy - let the market place make the whole lot. The problem is that it reduces the BBC to a group of pointy-headed commissioners, focused on performance, not the passion of programme-making; an organisation of little heart or soul, with no ballast of creativity.

Roger Mosey, former Editorial Director of the BBC, now master of Selwyn, seems to go further than Grade, with what looks like a hint on Twitter that he would rather see some of the news budget made "contestable"; there's "still a case for being bolder in supporting a range of voices in public media".

The Oxford Media Convention is the baby of the IPPR, which itself is a beneficiary of the Conservative thinking on "contestable" funding. If you want to hear the DG's speech in person, it'll cost you between £294 and £654 for the day, depending on your class employment or lack of it.