BBC Director General Tim Davie pushes for higher licence fee - weeks after it rose to £174.50

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

BBC boss Tim Davie has suggested the licence fee should be hiked - just weeks after it rose to a new high of £174.50.
The Director General has pushed for the Government - including Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy - to give extra backing to the corporation for its services, as he complained about a decade of 'grinding' cuts.
His words came after a series of controversies surrounding the BBC which is financed by the licence fee anyone in Britain owning a television must pay.
Mr Davie, 58, who took the top BBC job in September 2020, has been in post for a period which has included the conviction of BBC1 newsreader Huw Edwards over child sexual abuse images.
He spoke last month at a conference amid criticism for Gary Lineker, who was the BBC's highest paid presenter on £1.3million a year before his departure ahead of schedule.
Former England football captain Lineker, 64, presented his last edition of Match Of The Day last month, as previously planned as his BBC contract approached its end.
He was earmarked to continue with the corporation next season fronting coverage of both the FA Cup and the 2026 World Cup.
But his time with the BBC instead finished following widespread condemnation for his sharing on Instagram of a pro-Palestine video that included a rat emoji.
That prompted criticisms that he had shared what was an anti-Semitic trope about Jewish people previously widely promoted by Nazi Germany.
Lineker apologised for the post, which he deleted, saying he had not spotted the emoji and that he would 'never knowingly share anything anti-Semitic', adding: 'It goes against everything I believe in.'
Days before Lineker's departure was announced, Davie told reporters at the Lowry arts centre in Salford: 'The BBC's reputation is held by everyone and when someone makes a mistake, it costs us.
'And I think we absolutely need people to be the exemplars of BBC values and follow our social media policies, simple as that.'
He has now been speaking about about future BBC funding, appearing to give a signal over the licence fee which contributes to two thirds of the BBC's income.
The annual charge was recently raised to £174.50, having garnered the BBC about £3.7billion last year and will rise in line with inflation to 2027.
But Mr Davie has now called for more financial support from the Government, as he carped against funding cuts in recent years - amid a series of BBC News job losses.
The BBC Director General was speaking at the Deloitte and Enders Media and Telecoms conference in central London.
What is the annual TV licence fee and who needs to pay it?
The licence fee was introduced in June 1946, when television broadcasts resumed following the Second World War.
If you watch or record broadcasted TV programmes, you must have a TV licence either through purchase or given free to those receiving pension credit and 75 years or older.
All forms of transmission include using the BBC iPlayer on a smart television, laptops and tablets.
The annual fee, reported to be worth more than £3billion to the BBC, currently costs £169.50 - but this will rise to £174.50 next April.
The cost pays for TV, radio and online programmes and services including iPlayer, Radio 1, CBeebies and the World Service.
It also funds Welsh language TV channel S4C and local TV channels.
He said: 'I do want universal funding and I want proper investment and not begrudging, grinding cuts to the BBC, which you've had in the last 10 years, which have just not helped.
The BBC has said that its licence fee revenue has fallen by 30 per cent in real terms from 2010 to 2020 after various freezes and cuts.
And the number of British households paying the licence fee is believed to have slumped by about half a million last year - against a backdrop of rival competition from streaming sites such as Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video.
Mr Davie told the conference in London of his worries about a 'mainstream weaponisation where people don't care' about the BBC, the Telegraph reported.
Culture Secretary Ms Nandy said in April this year the BBC TV licence fee was unenforceable and unfairly targeted women.
She told the Telegraph there were 'problems' with the charge and that 'fewer and fewer people are paying it'.
She said: 'We're about to kick off the charter review and as part of that we're reviewing the licence fee.'
Ms Nandy has previously said she could be open to replacing the flat licence fee with a sliding payment scale after a suggestion by the BBC's new chairman Samir Shah.
She has ruled out the licence fee being replaced by general taxation.