Trust me

Who's really delivering the Government line on the BBC - Dominic Cummings, Darren Grimes, Philip Davies, The Telegraph  - or John Whittingdale ? 

The re-born Culture Minister was out and about yesterday, opining at an Ofcom online seminar. He re-stated his position that changes to BBC funding can only really come when we stop getting tv through aerials and move completely to broadband. Thus subscription “should be part of the debate about what [public service broadcasting] looks like in ten years’ time”. 

“The BBC charter is in place to 2027 and I don’t think we’ll see huge changes in the immediate future, but the world is changing and its right to look at how PSBs should evolve. We've begun to see evidence of people beginning to question whether they need to pay licence fee because they get all their content online through on-demand platforms. There will be a debate about the licence fee but that will be for the end of this decade, in the main.”

This is the man who won the confidence of Lord Hall in the last Charter Renewal, which was going alright until George Osborne butted in, with Rona Fairhead in tow, demanding the BBC take over responsibility for free licences for the over-75s. Here's John again, telling us to calm down - there's plenty of time. He's wrong. 

The Cummings axis will continue to deliberately destabilise the BBC, because they both enjoy it and are completely serious about marginalising it, way ahead of the 'subscription debate'.  De-criminalisation of the licence fee is totemic, and could easily take £500m a year out of the BBC's funding. The BBC, torn between coddling its traditional audience and chasing 'yoof', cannot possibly get the consequent cutting of services 'right' - and will be hobbled further by a new chairman in the next round of 'negotiations' over the licence fee. It will be at best frozen in the five years up to 2027.