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BBC told to justify license fee or lose it

By AL WEBB, United Press International

LONDON, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- The troubled British Broadcasting Corp., struck by declining audience figures and accusations that it is "dumbing down" to try to regain viewers, is under pressure to justify the license fee it charges the public or lose the $4.2 billion that pours into its coffers each year.

In an abrupt about-face that has taken the corporation by surprise, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government says the BBC will face a hard-nosed review of its television, radio and online operations and the funding that pays for it -- an implied threat that its charter might be in danger when it comes up for renewal in 2006.

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A license fee of $3.30 for television viewing was introduced in 1946, when there were about 7,500 TV sets in public hands. Today, the fee stands at $185 annually for a license to watch BBC color television, and it rises steadily every year, often well above the rate of inflation.

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Money raised by the fee pays for the BBC, and until now the licensing system -- seen as necessary to maintaining its standards as a premier public service broadcaster and keeping it free of the influences of advertising -- had been virtually sacrosanct, despite public grumbling over the rising cost.

Only last summer, Blair's culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, described the BBC as one of "the most loved and trusted U.K. institutions" and said the likelihood of the almost traditional license fee of being revoked was "anywhere between improbable and impossible."

Now Jowell says scrapping the license fee has not been ruled out after all and that when the charter review begins in earnest in 2004, the government will demand that the BBC explain "what shape (it) should be, what range of programs it should provide and how it should be accountable to its audience."

It will, she promised, be a "tough review," centering both on the level of funding that the broadcaster receives and the choice of the programming it puts out.

U.K. broadcasting insiders said a key reason for the Blair government's seeming reversal on the issue lay in a secret review of the license fee ordered by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, Britain's treasury secretary, who is facing the prospect of a widening black hole in public financing over the next few years.

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One source cited "a fear within the Treasury that unless this (abolishing the license fee) is done now, there will not be another opportunity until 2016," at the end of another 10-year charter period for the BBC.

But analysts also cited the blunt truth that the BBC, which once owned a monopoly on public TV and radio broadcasting, is now under stiff competition from fast-growing commercial broadcasters as well as a range of some 300 satellite, cable and digital channels now available to British viewers and listeners.

From the BBC's standpoint, the statistics are not kind. The share of viewers for its premier television channel, BBC1, slumped last year to 26.2 percent -- barely more than one in four across the nation. Cable, satellite and digital terrestrial channels were getting 22 percent of the audience, a figure that is still rising.

In its bid to stem the hemorrhaging of viewers, some critics claim, the BBC is guilty of "dumbing down" by targeting youthful audiences with pop music and "become a star" programs, while marginalizing arts and documentary broadcasts, to try to win in the ratings race.

Jonathan Dimbleby, one of the BBC's own stars and a member of one of Britain's most notable broadcasting dynasties, says the network still produces "wonderful programs -- but it also produces a load of old rubbish." And as long as it keeps doing so, he adds, "people will ask, why pay this poll tax?"

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A recent opinion poll conducted for The Daily Telegraph newspaper indicated that Dimbleby may be right. The survey showed that of the 2,055 viewers and listeners questioned, nearly two-thirds said the $185 license fee should be abolished given that more than half the households in Britain have satellite or cable television.

"The BBC would be wise," the Telegraph said in an editorial, "to address the issue (of funding) before public support erodes further."

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