Events | 2010.03.03
What will the BBC do with its spare £600m?
The BBC is distinctly vague on plans for its vast additional programme budget. And that may help the Tories take it away
Central to the announcements by the BBC\'s Mark Thompson and Sir Michael Lyons is that £600m a year, a fifth of the total licence fee budget, is going to be shifted into a range of BBC programming by 2013.
The bulk of this money is available because after 2012 the BBC\'s "current major infrastructure projects" – principally in Salford, central London, Glasgow and Cardiff – should be complete, as should digital switchover.
Some of these grand designs and their cost overruns were the subject of a critical National Audit Office report published last week .
So the BBC says it can start to "redirect a higher proportion of the licence fee to its core mission": making good programmes.
But this is a very large sum of money, equivalent to the current budgets of BBC2, BBC3 and BBC4. It exceeds Channel 4\'s annual programme spend.
Neither Thompson nor Lyons were able to give a clear breakdown of where the vast bulk of the money is destined – that is, to which channels and genres – despite being pressed several times. They looked uncomfortable when asked.
Thompson said that BBC1 would receive "a small amount", and that a "lot of reprioritisation within programme genres would be going on".
Sir Michael Lyons added that the strategy prepared so far was "not a proof for implementation" and that these spending details could not rightly come before the consultation process.
"A model will eventually be agreed and written into a three-year rolling plan," he said. "Each of the areas highlighted would receive significant increases."
But the strategy document is extremely selective when it comes to attaching spending priorities to areas of output.
The review makes a commitment to invest £50m a year in a better BBC2, and to put £10m more into additional children\'s programmes. Thompson added that international newsgathering would benefit. He also underlined the proposals for higher quality daytime programmes, upgrading the current property, cookery and antiques shows.
The current furore over the closure of a small digital radio channel, 6 Music, will make any politician pause before interfering in BBC output. And the way is open for the BBC Trust, as the final arbiter, to step in later this year and save the station.
But the central question remains: where exactly is the £600m going to be spent, and by which channels? BBC1 and BBC2 are well funded already.
There is a cap on BBC bonuses, a clamp on executive pay and talent contracts.
Some may come to the conclusion that the BBC licence fee after 2012 may be too generous, and has been spent too heavily on property development in the past eight years. The Tories may conclude that after 2012 the licence fee could safely be cut, with little impact on programming.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgri[...]3/bbc-cuts-licence-fee-funding
