Argumentative

These are things I regularly hear.

"The BBC was obviously Remain-biased, still is, and unless we clip its wings, it will stay that way."
"The BBC is simply too big" (from those with an interest in making money from some of the things the BBC currently does)
"The licence fee is a tax, and I don't want to pay for something I don't use".

The last one ought to be easy to dismiss, but is stubbornly held. The licence fee is a sort of tax, falling generally on heads of households. The OBR has classified it as a tax (which is one reason Conservative Chancellors resist licence fee rises, and make it stick to Civil Service-style funding formulas).

Tax payers cough up for plenty of things 'they don't use'. Many avoid prisons, live their lives without using all the specialisms in the NHS, never use a train, never need the Fire Brigade, don't require Universal Credit or six of its previous components.

There is a growing myth that there's a wide chunk of the population that is NEVER consuming BBC output. It can't be right if the BBC's figure is right - it believes it reaches 91% of adults every week. This myth is often propagated by Conservative-voting parents, who believe their children are getting everything they need and want from Netflix and YouTube. A longer conversation with their children would reveal that even they are getting a little bored with Netflix; it might also reveal that there's some use of Bitesize - 80% reach among secondary school pupils.

It's true that BBC1, with The Antiques Roadshow, Call The Midwife, The One Show, Countryfile etc is doing less than it has ever done to encourage teenagers back to communal viewing in the living room, and the BBC3 online ghetto has made that worse. I'm not sure, however, that Conservative parents would welcome a licence-fee funded answer to Love Island and Bring Back The Bush.

Maybe the BBC should bring back Top of The Form, but this time pitting children who've never used the BBC against those brought up entirely on Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube. Might help my argument...