Our correspondent takes a sceptical look at the funding of the BBC

Did my esteemed readers enjoy Wolf Hall? Swift did not. Overlong and overacted. The critics loved it, the audiences were less impressed (at least according to Rotten Tomatoes). Not uncommon among BBC drama, increasingly aimed as it is at a narrow range of middle-class right-on urbanites, or exploring what the late Tony Benn (Swift’s younger readers might need to Google that) used to call ‘ishoos’ rather than entertainment. The most egregious example being Dr Who, which has been completely destroyed as a work of imagination and replaced by a party political broadcast on behalf of the LBGT etc. ‘community’. Unwatchable.

However.

Swift noticed recently that the director of Wolf Hall was busy bemoaning the fact that the BBC’s budget did not stretch to including a whole joust as well as other exterior scenes. So Mark Rylance was stuck talking in rooms to Damian Lewis. The answer is - according to this person - to impose a 5% UK tax on streaming services like Netflix for a ‘UK cultural fund’.

There’s a whole bunch of nonsense to explore here. 

The Uk already has a cultural fund. It is called the Arts Council England (it is not a great example, but more of that in a future blog). What this jackanapes really means is additional income for the BBC so he can put on jousts at the public’s expense.

Now, there is no shortage of high-end drama production in the UK in any case. According to the same BBC report which quoted the Whiner of Wolf Hall  £5.6bn was spent on high end TV and film production in the UK in 2024 - that is a whopping 31% increase on 2023 (figures from the BFI).

But the BBC plaintively notes that domestic UK programmes accounted for only £598m of that total, down 22% on the previous year.

Swift has a ‘so what?’ moment here. Is it better for audiences to watch Adolescence on Netflix, unquestionably the sensation of 2025 so far, while paying a subscription; or to snooze through Wolf Hall 2, funded by a state broadcasting tax (lightly disguised as the BBC Licence Fee)? If you don’t want Netflix you don’t pay. If you don’t like the BBC you mostly pay up anyway including watching live streaming services, and BBC content even on catch-up, on any device you can think of. And the BBC is quite happy to fine you or stick you in jail for not paying (prison, to be absolutely clear, follows on from a failure to pay the initial fine, but it is prison all the same).

The reason is simple: money. In 2024 the BBC had a total income of some £5.39bn, the bulk of which (£3.66bn) came from the compulsory BBC Tax (as it should rightly be called). Times are very tough if you can’t manage a decent joust out of that. 

The horrible nature of this system is made clear by the fact that the vast majority of those imprisoned are women (about three-quarters), and they in turn make up one-third of the total female jail population. Apparently this is caused by the fact that women are more likely to be at home in the day, and to open the door to the TV Licensing Inspectors. As Cicero would say: O tempora, O mores! 

In Swift’s eyes, dear readers, the Licence Fee has completely run its course. He remembers well, when working for a more commercial broadcaster back in the day, that the BBC turned up at party conferences with literally regiments of lobbyists and journalists. The BBC is a flabby, overstuffed part of the public sector with as much commitment to efficient operation as the civil service. And frankly why should it bother, as its tax revenues will roll in regardless?

We live now in a world of superabundance of good quality TV or TV-style content. Da yout watch YouTube and TikTok. Consumers of the old-style linear TV are dying off. The BBC continues to make huge quantities of middle-brow entertainment to compete with ITV (two bald men fighting over a comb), while the streamers expend into what Ofcom calls ‘public service content’. This is splendid for consumers, but not good for the BBC. Oh dear what a shame.

We are promised a review of the BBC Tax in 2028 - partly by the government as part of the BBC Charter Review, partly by the BBC, itself (hollow laugh), exploring how the tax can be reformed.

'Reform' should not be an option. Start the review by announcing that the BBC Tax will be abolished and go from there. There are plenty of better ways to give consumers what they want without sending some of them to jail.