Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
I'd rather be able to choose which providers that did not show commercials I subscribed to.
Incidentally, I've just seen that Rishi Sunak, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has confirmed that subscriptions will not replace the licence fee before 2027.
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It would be immensely difficult to do that anyway, as the BBC’s funding arrangements are enshrined in a Royal charter that doesn’t expire until 2027. However what’s really happening here is the groundwork for a debate that will occur in earnest from about 2024 when discussion about the next charter begins.
Personally I think, when it comes to it, that a charter-mandated subscription paywall would be politically impossible to implement, because the charter also details the services the BBC must deliver. The draft charter would therefore lay bare just how far BBC services would have to be cut in order for the organisation to get by on its projected subscription income, which would inevitably be rather smaller than its present licence fee income. When confronted with the loss of a great deal of output that by itself is quite niche, a coalition of lovers of the BBC’s niche output, amounting to quite a large number of people, is likely to result in any such plan being sidelined.