A panel of media experts commissioned by the Conservative Party has recommended that “the television licence fee be steadily reduced from 2007 onwards, and gradually replaced by a combination of subscription and indirect public funding.” The experts say that the tax “should be abolished completely when analogue television transmission is switched off.”
The report also argues that the BBC’s state charter and board of governors should go. Instead regulation of the media giant should be through what it calls “consumer power, creative and commercial competition and a new institutional structure.” The BBC’s production and sales operations should be sold off in order to end the stifling of independent production that the corporation’s current dominance encourages.
According to panel member Barbara Donoghue the BBC would still be able to maintain its social purpose and high standards.
The report, which may not be accepted by the Conservative Party, was commissioned in response to the government’s consultation on the future of the corporation prior to the 2006 expiration of its state charter.