BBC 'may shrink licence fee spending'

Digital UK chairman Barry Cox has indicated that the BBC is considering spending licence fee proceeds only on a "core" of public service programming.

Speaking as part of a round table discussion on the future of public service broadcasting in the UK for the Royal Television Society's Television magazine, Cox said:

"There is a big question for the BBC. Indeed, the BBC knows that and is preparing for it. There are signs that it is beginning to think it may have to, as it were, withdraw the licence fee-funded programming to a core and do something else with the other stuff."

Cox welcomed such a move on the basis that "it is finally addressing the point that public service broadcasting is shrinking".

He said that "senior people at the BBC" are considering such a plan, and added:

"They haven't settled it but they are beginning to ask questions like, 'What is the proper role of a licence fee-funded BBC?' And by implication, it is a lot smaller than it currently is. It doesn't mean they can't have lots of other stuff that is funded commercially, whether it's pay or advertising or whatever."

A sign that senior BBC executives are considering various ways of moving to different funding models in the next decade was most recently delivered by BBC Worldwide chief executive John Smith - a member of the BBC executive board and the corporation's former finance director - who said that increased profits from the BBC's commercial arm would bolster the BBC's UK finances.