The King's printer answered to me. The pulpits of every parish in England carried such message as I determined they should carry. When I wished the people to know a thing, they knew it; when I wished them to forget, the silence was arranged with equal care. I make no apology for this. A state that cannot speak to its subjects with one clear voice will find that other voices — less scrupulous, less honest, and less answerable — speak in its place.
I say this not to boast of what I did but to establish a point that the present age seemeth unwilling to grasp: that the question is never whether the state should concern itself with what the people hear and read, but how far that concern ought properly to extend. There existeth in this Kingdom a Corporation, established by Royal Charter and sustained by a compulsory levy upon every household, whose original commission was admirable — to furnish the nation with news that could be trusted, with culture that enlarged the mind, and with such education as might reach those whom the schools had failed. For a generation and more it kept to this commission, and the thing it built was the envy of the world.
But an institution that faceth no competition and suffereth no consequence for failure will, in time, mistake its own convenience for the public good. The Corporation hath spread itself into music, into sport, into cookery and fashion and the commerce of celebrity — into every corner of a market that private men and women are willing and able to serve — until it competeth openly with the very enterprises whose taxes help to pay for it. It levieth a charge upon the possession of a device that no household can now do without, and spendeth the proceeds upon much that no honest man could call a public necessity. The news remaineth; the arts remain; the education of the young and the languages of the smaller nations remain. But around these worthy things there hath grown a vast apparatus of entertainment and distraction that hath no more claim upon the public purse than hath the theatre or the alehouse.
What followeth is a proposal to cut the institution back to what it can honestly justify — to preserve that which the market will not provide and to withdraw the subsidy from that which the market already provideth in abundance. The Corporation will be smaller. It will also, for the first time in a generation, be able to look the taxpayer in the eye.
I. The Case for Reform
Why the BBC's current model is no longer sustainable or defensible.
The BBC was designed for an era of spectrum scarcity, limited channels and national broadcast monopolies. That world has been transformed by global streaming platforms, digital-first news providers, commercial radio on DAB and the internet, on-demand audio and podcasting, social media and creator-led entertainment, and online education. In this context the current licence fee model is financially fragile (due to declining compliance and changing viewing habits), structurally outdated (given platform convergence), competitively distortive (especially in digital news, education, music and lifestyle content) and missionally unclear (because public money subsidises both civic content and mainstream entertainment).
Public funding should be reserved for the former. The latter should transition to subscription or commercial funding. This is not a hostile act but a recognition that the BBC's most important functions are being diluted by its least important ones.
II. Television
A reduced and clarified portfolio, distinguishing between civic broadcasting and commercial entertainment.
BBC One
BBC One would be retained as a free-to-air national events channel. Its publicly funded remit would be limited to general elections and major democratic events, state occasions, royal events, national remembrance, emergency broadcasting and moments of national significance. All other content currently associated with BBC One — mainstream drama, entertainment, factual entertainment — would be funded by BBC Studios, commissioned from external creators, supported through subscription revenues or sold internationally. This preserves universal access to shared national moments while ending taxpayer subsidy of mainstream entertainment.
BBC Two
BBC Two would become the BBC's principal public value television channel, consolidating arts, science, history, documentaries, factual programming, public affairs, specialist education and cultural programming. BBC Four would be merged into BBC Two, concentrating high-value intellectual and cultural content in one strong brand.
BBC Three
BBC Three would be closed as a standalone service. Any youth-oriented content retained would be commissioned only where it demonstrably serves education, mental wellbeing, citizenship, social awareness or under-served youth audiences.
BBC News
The UK and World News services would be consolidated into a single integrated news operation. Editorial priorities: strong field reporting, domestic and international bureaus, fact-led journalism, less studio commentary and opinion framing, and stronger public trust through visible impartiality.
BBC Parliament
BBC Parliament would move fully to free access within iPlayer. This retains live Commons and Lords coverage, committee hearings, devolved institutions and searchable archives while reducing linear broadcast costs.
BBC Alba & BBC Cymru
Both BBC Alba and BBC Cymru would be retained. These services justify continued public support because they preserve minority languages, support devolved civic identity, involve higher production costs and serve audiences the market is unlikely to sustain. They would follow the BBC One model for nationally significant civic broadcasts, with supplementary public funding recognising language obligations.
CBBC
Retained in scaled-back form, prioritising UK-made factual and educational content. Entertainment commissions would be subject to stronger public value tests.
CBeebies
Fully retained as a publicly funded early years service, with strong emphasis on literacy, numeracy, inclusion and developmental support. CBeebies is one of the clearest examples of legitimate public media investment.
S4C is currently an independent broadcaster with its own governance, funded partly by the UK Government and partly by the BBC. This proposal would absorb S4C into the BBC as BBC Cymru, mirroring the existing arrangement for BBC Alba in Scotland. There is no compelling case for maintaining a separate Welsh broadcasting organisation when the Scottish Gaelic service already operates successfully within the BBC. Consolidation would reduce administrative duplication, simplify the funding settlement and bring Welsh-language broadcasting under the same governance and editorial standards as the rest of the BBC's minority language output. Welsh-language programming would continue to be made in Wales, by Welsh producers, for Welsh audiences — the change is institutional, not editorial.
III. Radio
A move from numerical legacy branding toward descriptive, purpose-led station identities.
Publicly Funded Core Radio
BBC Classical & Jazz
Core remit: classical music, jazz, live concert broadcasting, new composition, orchestral and choral support, and full Proms coverage.
BBC Spoken Word
Core remit: news, current affairs, documentary, drama, philosophy, science, ethics, long-form interviews and national debate.
BBC Live News & Sport
Retained for breaking news, live event coverage, minority and public interest sport and emergency information.
BBC Archive Audio
No longer a standalone station. Becomes an iPlayer audio archive for comedy, classic drama, major speeches and landmark documentaries.
BBC Asian Network
Retained under its current title for brand recognition and legacy value. A future strategic review should consider whether this model ought to evolve into a broader multicultural service, a contestable diversity audio fund or a multi-community commissioning model.
BBC Local
BBC Local Radio would be significantly rationalised. Retained only where it provides clear value in local democracy reporting, weather and emergency broadcasting, rural and isolated communities and local accountability.
Commercialised Audio Services
The following stations would no longer receive public funding: Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2 and 6 Music. These brands may continue through BBC Studios, subscription bundles, international audio subscriptions or advertising-supported global products.
IV. Arts, Culture & National Events
A ringfenced fund for nationally significant cultural broadcasting.
A ringfenced Public Cultural Events Fund should support nationally significant cultural broadcasting. This includes the BBC Proms, Young Musician of the Year, literary festivals, major theatre broadcasts, dance and opera, and regional arts festivals.
The delivery model would be: BBC Classical & Jazz for full audio coverage, BBC Two for television highlights and explanatory features, and iPlayer for permanent cultural archives and schools access. This ensures that high culture remains universally accessible and not restricted to private subscription platforms.
V. Digital Platform & Funding
A unified platform, a reformed and narrowed licence fee, and a rapid transition to subscription funding.
Unified iPlayer
BBC Sounds would be retired. All BBC media would sit inside a single iPlayer platform, combining live television, live radio, podcasts, archive audio, box sets, parliamentary streams and arts archives. This reduces duplication and simplifies the user journey.
Reforming the Licence Fee
The licence fee in its current form is indefensible. It is a tax on the possession of a device that every household now requires for purposes far beyond the reception of BBC television. Worse, the law as it stands requires a licence for the reception of any live television — including purely advertising-funded services such as ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, and subscription services such as Netflix and Sky. A citizen who has no interest in the BBC and no wish to consume its output is nonetheless compelled to fund it if he wishes to watch anything at all broadcast live. This is not a defensible basis for public funding.
The first and most urgent reform is to narrow the licence fee's legal scope so that it applies only to the reception of live BBC television services. Viewers of other live broadcasters and subscription platforms should be free to watch without any obligation to the BBC. This change alone would concentrate minds within the Corporation, since it would make the licence fee's revenue directly dependent on the BBC's ability to attract and retain viewers to its own live output.
The second reform is to reduce the licence fee to a level that reflects the cost of publicly funded content only. The current fee subsidises entertainment, sport and popular music alongside news, education and the arts. Once the commercial services described in this proposal have been separated, the residual public value output would cost substantially less than the current licence fee. The fee should be reduced accordingly and ringfenced to the public value mission.
Transition to Subscription
A subscription offer for the BBC's non-public-value content — entertainment, drama, archive box sets, commercial audio brands — should be available to overseas users immediately and to UK audiences as soon as the platform is ready. This subscription route should be made equally visible to domestic audiences alongside licence-linked access, beginning a deliberate cultural shift from compulsory levy toward consumer choice.
The narrowing and reduction of the licence fee, combined with the visibility of the subscription alternative, creates the political and operational pathway to abolish the licence fee entirely within a single Charter period. The end state is a BBC funded by a modest direct grant from general taxation for its civic and cultural core, with everything else sustained by subscription revenue.
VI. Website Retrenchment
A major withdrawal from digital areas that displace commercial and specialist providers.
Education
Bitesize should be scaled back. The BBC should refocus on broadcast-linked educational support and develop formal partnerships with schools and exam boards instead of broad digital competition with commercial education providers.
Local Journalism
The BBC should remove local features journalism that competes with regional newspapers. It should prioritise broadcast news support only and strengthen links to local democratic coverage. The regional press in England is in a fragile state; a publicly funded competitor with no commercial constraints accelerates its decline.
Lifestyle and Consumer Content
The BBC should remove recipes, travel, fashion, celebrity culture and general lifestyle content from its website entirely. There is no justification for publicly funded competition in areas abundantly served by the market. The website should instead focus on supporting broadcast services, democratic information, accessibility services, core news and archive discovery.
VII. The Reformed BBC
What the BBC becomes under this settlement.
This model would restore legitimacy to public funding, sharpen the BBC's public mission, reduce distortion in commercial media markets, strengthen arts and minority language provision, modernise digital access, create a credible pathway beyond the licence fee and preserve universal access to nationally significant events.
The BBC would be repositioned as a focused civic and cultural institution: the national broadcaster for news, democracy, education, the arts and the languages of these islands. It would no longer attempt to compete across every part of the media economy. Its claim upon the public purse would be smaller but far more defensible. And the content it produces with public money would be content that no private enterprise could or would provide — which is the only honest justification for taking the money in the first place.