Fighting for his political survival, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is attacking a pet peeve from his base: his government has frozen the audiovisual license fee funding the BBC for two years and questioned its maintenance in the longer term.
An institution renowned beyond the British borders for its programs and its journalists, the public audiovisual group sees the dark clouds accumulating on the horizon. He is criticized by the authorities, who accuse him of a lack of impartiality, and subject to budgetary restrictions which have caused massive cuts in his costs in recent years.
A new cleaver will come to complicate its finances in times of soaring prices. Culture Minister Nadine Dorries announced on Monday that the license fee, which the BBC said she wanted to increase to 180 pounds, would be frozen at 159 pounds (272 Canadian dollars) until 2024 and then “would increase depending on inflation for the next four years.
“At a time when families are facing a steep rise in the cost of living, we simply could not ask hard-working households to pay even more for their license fee,” she told parliament.
A blow for the institution, whose president, Richard Sharp, and managing director, Tim Davie, extremely “disappointed”, considered that the claimed royalty represented “excellent value for money”.
Vendetta
“A freeze over the next two years means the BBC will now have to absorb inflation,” they added in a statement, noting that “the BBC’s revenues for its UK services are already 30% below they were ten years ago. »
This measure caused an outcry as the financial survival of this institution, supported by great figures, is already undermined by its difficulties in rejuvenating its audiences and competing with digital platforms.
“The BBC is an institution that the whole world admires with envy”, thus affirmed on Twitter British actor Hugh Grant, worried that “those insecure crackpots who vociferate in government want to destroy it”.
The government initiative goes all the worse as many observers consider it a political maneuver to save Boris Johnson, mired in scandals for parties organized in Downing Street in full confinement.
According to the British media, this announcement is part of a series of measures with populist overtones dubbed “Operation Bone to Gnaw” (” Operation Red Meat “), which should allow the conservative leader to regain his base, often very critical of a BBC deemed too elitist.
“Is the fee really at the heart of the cost of living crisis? Or is this really their longstanding vendetta against the BBC? Thus accused Labor opposition MP Lucy Powell, responsible for culture and digital issues, accusing the government of “distraction”.
More comprehensive reform
Beyond this agreement, Mr.me Dorries said she wondered about “the BBC’s long-term funding model”, after hinting on Twitter over the weekend that she wanted to scrap the license fee after 2027.
Upon taking office, Nadine Dorries had warned that she wanted “real change” within the institution, which the Conservative government regularly accuses of not reflecting the diversity of the country and of lacking impartiality, as for its coverage of Brexit.
“I have made it clear that the BBC needs to tackle issues of impartiality and community thinking,” she said on Monday, half-blaming the BBC, which has planned to outsource some of its services. in the provinces, to be only the reflection of a “London bubble”.
The license fee freeze sends “an important message about the need to contain costs”, she said, but it is “just one step in our roadmap for BBC reform”, which she wants to completely revamp the model to “thrive alongside Netflix and Amazon Prime”.
Referring to an openness to “private financing as part of an ambitious commercial growth strategy”, the Minister affirmed that “the future financing model remains to be discussed”.