Tim Davie warns that a move to subscription would mean the BBC is “no longer a universal service” (BBC faces ‘profound jeopardy’ without funding overhaul, Tim Davie says, 26 January). The outgoing director general is right: the threat to BBC universality within the next charter period is very real. But that threat in part is coming from the corporation itself.
The BBC is proposing to switch off digital terrestrial television (DTT, or Freeview) in 2034. This would force all UK homes to take out a high-speed broadband subscription or lose access to BBC services. For the first time, you’d need a subscription to watch “free-to-air” UK TV.
Switching off DTT would push the entry cost for access to UK television to more than £500 per annum. That’s a conservative estimate of the cost of the BBC licence fee plus a decent fixed broadband subscription. By 2034, the combined cost is likely to be much higher.
This approach would hit the poorest and the oldest in our society hardest. Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable households could lose access to TV altogether. The era of BBC universality would be at an end.
The BBC’s response to this challenge is to make it someone else’s problem. The pensioners and poorer homes impacted would just have to find the money somewhere – or perhaps might qualify for a new public subsidy yet to be invented, let alone funded.
The alternative to such wishful thinking is simple: maintain Freeview – and BBC universality – into the 2040s. No new public funding would be needed. There would be zero risk to those vulnerable homes still dependent on DTT. And the cost would be equivalent to just 1% or 2% of BBC revenue. Ultimately, as Davie says, preserving BBC universality should be a “societal choice”. That choice should not be prejudged by an ill-considered and premature Freeview switch-off.
Christy Swords
Former ITV executive and former chairman of ITN; adviser to the DTT infrastructure provider Arqiva
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