Five: 'BBC should charge for services'

Five chief executive Dawn Airey has said that the BBC should charge people to access its online services to improve market competition, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, Airey suggested that the corporation should pare back its free-to-access resources to avoid unfairly affecting the offerings of new pay-for providers coming into the market.

"Perhaps the BBC should go back to having a couple of big broadcast channels, a couple of radio stations with a clearly defined remit and a reduced licence fee to support that," she said.

"And all the other things that it may do are still there but you have to pay for them. It allows other players to come into the market. This is one of a number of options."

Also at the festival, BBC business editor Robert Peston said that most commercial news groups will "very soon" start charging for access to news content, which may make the BBC's free output appear as "unfair competition".

Peston's comments were in response to scathing criticism of the BBC by Sky chairman James Murdoch, including his assertion that the UK is now the most challenging place to launch effective pay-for news content due to the dominant position of the corporation.

Murdoch also criticised the shift in Radio 2 focus to appeal to younger audiences, as well as "the nationalisation" of Lonely Planet after BBC Worldwide took a major stake in the travel book publisher.

In his Richard Dunn Memorial Lecture, Peston said: "I understand why James Murdoch has argued that the BBC's online news service looks like state-subsidised unfair competition."

However, he also moved to question whether everyone would get access to the information "they need and deserve" in a completely liberalised commercial news market.

Despite generally believing that the BBC is "a force for good", Airey said that tighter control of the corporation, including its funding, was "inevitable" to ensure it remained "very honest".

"I think how public service intervention is funded is surely going to be reduced, not go up. I do think that the BBC has made some mistakes in some of the investments they have made," she said.

"The Lonely Planet is just a spectacular own goal and the BBC recognises that. They do limit choice because how do you compete with a company that has such phenomenal revenues."