If Clive Myrie asks you to close your eyes and imagine a world without the BBC, you do it. It will look a little different for everyone but, for me, there’s no Traitors, Planet Earth, Interior Design Masters, Panorama, Ten O’Clock News and — perhaps worst of all — no Gardener’s World. Personally, I’m not sure there’d be much point in going on, but others might not even blink.
Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC, delivered a speech on leading the UK into digital. His speech was followed by a Q&A with RTS CEO Theresa Wise on an internet-only BBC, the streamers and the future of PSBs.
The event took place on Wednesday 7 December at St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Session chair Amol Rajan: Is the licence fee the least bad option for funding the BBC?
Tim Davie: Yes…. If you believe in universal broadcasting… the licence fee, for all its problems, [has] enabled a few things: the BBC has been able to keep [to] its mission, it’s kept us independent [and] impartial; and it provides a certainty of funding in the medium term….
BBC journalist, Mastermind presenter and opera lover Clive Myrie didn’t pull any punches as he defended his employer in this year’s Steve Hewlett Memorial Lecture, entitled “The BBC: Destroy at your peril”.
Myrie, who joined the BBC in 1987 as a trainee local radio reporter, laid out his reasons why the licence fee was a better way of funding the corporation than subscription. He stressed the importance of a trusted, impartial news service and the BBC’s universality at a time when notions of truth have become subjective and impartiality “a false God”.
