Working from home

I hope Tim Davie is having some coaching ahead of an appearance at the House of Lords on Monday afternoon. 

It'll be his first public outing since Nadine Dorries announced a six month review of BBC funding, and reiterated that the licence fee was a dead duck. "The licence fee is an unfair method of funding for the BBC.  When we only had one, two and three channels, or four channels, I'm sure it was the right model at the right time. But to sit here and say, all those years later in the broadcasting landscape that we are now, that a model for funding the BBC all of those years ago is still applicable and still appropriate... I think is almost antediluvian."

Mr Davie's last public position on this, expressed at the end of January:  “I don’t think it’s for one person to decide the funding model of the BBC.”

“I think the debate is more centred around ‘Do we want a universal public service media organisation at the heart of our creative economy, which has served us incredibly well?’ And if we want that, we have to support a publicly-backed and not a fully commercialised BBC.”

I doubt the DG will share any of the current thinking by BBC wonks about alternatives to the licence fee. First job - push for terms of reference for this review.