BBC Charter Renewal

This effectively kicks off the public debate about the next BBC Charter.

The current Charter ends in December 2016. So we face almost three years of debate about the future of the BBC. IBT will be submitting evidence to the Select Committee. Please let us know if you have any views you’d like us to include.

The central argument will be about the optimum size of the BBC. Do we want the BBC as it is, with a licence fee of £145 a year, or do we want a much smaller BBC at less cost?  The BBC Director General Tony Hall has begun to address this issue in his public statements. It’s IBT’s view that the size of the BBC is one of its great strengths and, as Tony Hall reminded the audience at a recent VLV event, the BBC is no longer the biggest broadcasting organisation in the UK (that’s Sky) and nor is the BBC the global player it once was (it’s dwarfed for example by CCTV).