Former BBC presenter Roger Bolton has delivered a damning verdict on the future of the broadcaster, declaring it "doomed" despite offering "incredible value for money".His comments come after the TV licence fee rose to £174.50 in April, making it the third-highest in Europe.READ THE FULL STORY HERE
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00:00by former BBC executive and presenter Roger Bolton. Morning, Roger. We often talk to you
00:06on this issue. I noticed at the moment the BBC are asking you as a listener to feed back to them
00:13what they want to see from the BBC. They've got a campaign going for people to tell them what they
00:17want. I do wonder how many people will say, what we want is for you to stop charging us to watch
00:21the telly. We're not going to pay it anymore. Well, I suppose because they don't get charged
00:25to watch the telly, what they get charged for is a raft of services at the cost of about a cappuccino
00:30a week. I mean, just to tell your viewers, you know, there are ten, there are eight BBC television
00:37services and regional television you get for that. You get ten in radio, ten pan-UK, six national,
00:4340 local radio stations. You get the online services, the sounds, you get the BBC website,
00:49you get the World Service, you get a contribution to S4C, you get local democracy reporters. On the
00:57online, you know, you get news, sport, weather, CBC, food, bite-sized arts, BBC3 and so on. So
01:03suggest that it's a TV tax, it's levied through a TV. But to suggest that all you're getting for
01:08the licence fee for this, you know, just over £3 a week is a television, is just not right.
01:14But so many people now, Roger, are not paying it. That's the problem.
01:19Yeah, well, the first question, is it value for money? And I try to address that. I think
01:23it is. I think it's incredible value for money. I also think it's doomed.
01:28Do you agree with that? Because so few people are paying it now?
01:32Yeah, I think what you've got, there's always been a fundamental problem with it, which is
01:35it's not a progressive tax. Everybody pays the same, which that was unjust. I think you've
01:41got an increasing number of people who are refusing to pay it. And I don't think that
01:45that's, you know, containable. You can't keep, well, very few people actually get prosecuted,
01:50but I don't think you can do that. So I think it's doomed. The question is, can you find
01:53another way? But as I always say on these occasions, what we should have a conversation
01:57about is, do we want, what is the role of public service media? Is there a role for it
02:02now? What do we want? Then how do you deliver it? Then how do you pay for it? And what I'm saying
02:07when I have the opening, when I was trying to suggest everything, you know, that we
02:10have, we mustn't just take this on the basis of television. I mean, the BBC license fee
02:15in real terms has dropped because it's been squeezed by government by about 38 to 40% since
02:202010. So inevitably, you're seeing less on screen. But don't forget all radio, all the
02:26local radio, don't forget the website, the World Service, all of those things. So before
02:31we jump and get rid of the license fee, which is doomed, I mean, I can't see it lasting
02:35more four or five years. Let's have that conversation about what intervention we want, and then what
02:40we, how we pay for it. And just to say, when you look at the alternatives to the license fee,
02:45you hit a number of problems. Advertising, well, if you want to have programmes interrupted,
02:49OK, but the television industry and your company would go out of business because the advertising
02:54market isn't big enough and the BBC would suck it up. If you go to subscription, there's still
02:58a significant number of people who are not online. So you've got to deal, governments have
03:03got to deal with that. Otherwise, you're just switching them off altogether.