Tim Davie has warned that the move to subscriptions means the BBC is “no longer a universal service” (without a funding review, the BBC faces “serious crisis”, Tim Davie said on 26 January). The outgoing Executive Director is right. The threat to the BBC’s universality within the next establishment period is very real. But some of that threat comes from the companies themselves.

The BBC proposes to end digital terrestrial television (DTT, or Freeview) in 2034. This means every household in the UK will have to cancel their high-speed broadband contract or lose access to BBC services. For the first time, you will need a subscription to watch ‘free-to-air’ TV in the UK.

Switching off DTT would push the cost of entry to access UK TV to more than £500 a year. This is a conservative estimate of the BBC license fee and the cost of a decent fixed broadband subscription. By 2034, total costs could be even higher.

This approach will hit the poorest and oldest members of our society the hardest. Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable households could lose access to television completely. The era of BBC ubiquity will be over.

The BBC’s response to this challenge is to make it someone else’s problem. Affected pensioners and poor families will simply have to find the money somewhere. Or they may become eligible for new public subsidies that have yet to be invented, let alone funded.

The alternative to such wishful thinking is simple. The goal is to maintain the ubiquity of Freeview and the BBC into the 2040s. No new public funding is required. Vulnerable homes that still rely on DTT are not at risk. And that cost represents just 1% or 2% of the BBC’s revenue. Ultimately, maintaining the universality of the BBC should be a “social choice”, as Mr Davie puts it. That choice should not be prejudged by prematurely switching off Freeview without thinking.
christie sword
Former ITV executive and former chairman of ITN. Advisor to DTT infrastructure provider Arqiva