Pity the poor BBC: it is a political football in a game with hostile referees and 24 million stakeholders – its licence holders – who all seem to want different things. Its job is to serve all of them, while under constant attack for spending too much time at the wrong end of a multidimensional argument: left v right; local v national and international; news and current affairs v sport and light entertainment.
A combination of high inflation and a two-year freeze of the licence fee – its main source of income – has left the BBC facing a £500m gap in its funding. It was hoped that this dire situation would at least get no worse next year, when an end to the freeze would allow it to raise the fee in line with inflation.
